KSD Board of Education Work Session - February 9, 2022

001so alive okay welcome to the february 9th um work session our special meeting and work session at this time mr cross can you please leave us in the pledge yes please allegiance to the flag 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 okay before we get started i wanted to take a moment to recognize a loss in our school community our tillman students teachers and families are mourning the passing of tillman fourth grade teacher dan yule a loss is never easy but is especially difficult with a teacher as loved as mr mueller tonight our thoughts are with his family students and colleagues please join me for a moment of silence in his memory okay thank you before we

002launch into our first item i want to thank my fellow board members our staff and those watching tonight for their flexibility earlier this week our district experienced some connectivity issues we wanted to ensure our live feed of the meeting is clear and not interrupted by tech tech issues this is why we folks phone the meeting until tonight i'm so glad we were able to quickly reschedule to ensure we could complete our work with that i am going to turn it to the first agenda um i need a motion and a second uh to approve the agenda or the february 9th special board meeting as presented all those in favor please raise your right hand and say aye motion passes okay 2.02 um laptop refresh purchase doctor thank you very much president andrews uh i'm very

003excited to bring this to you this evening appreciate it being put on the agenda uh mr roman i'm going to turn it over to you to give the board details on what we're asking for approval this evening yes thank you in april the board of education approved the purchase of new ipads for our k-8 students which we deployed over the summer to start the school year at the time when we asked for the that purchase we also indicated that our plan was to refresh the laptops this coming summer these laptops were purchased in 2017. we worked with apple and we were able to secure a three-year zero percent financing plan through apple and with this the purchase would include new macbook airs for all of our high school students 1825 macbook airs that they're 128

004gigabyte computers we would also purchase new macbook airs for our staff that includes teachers administration and it also includes ssd staff and ssd will reimburse us the cost of those computers that's 550 computers in addition we're asking approval to purchase four years of apple care along with laptop cases we would buy a case for each high school student and then 150 cases for staff and we would give those out upon requests we were awarded an emergency connectivity fund grant that tools 940 thousand dollars that we can apply to this purchase which leaves a net lease cost of just over 1.6 million dollars the ipads are laptops that we would buy for ssd 75 of them that total reimbursement cost would be dollars we will also sell the uh laptops that we are currently using we'll

005sell them sometime this summer we expect the minimum buyback value of 594 000 so tonight i'm asking for approval to make this purchase approval to enter into the apple lease agreement and then also approval to seek bids for the sale of the laptops that are currently using and if approved that the recommendation for the sale of those laptops will be brought to the board of education this summer all right thank you very much mr roman mr may i want to make sure that we highlight i know that we said uh during first semester we brought good news to the board of education specifically surrounding a grant that we had received for technology and connectivity um so uh mr romeo if you just for for the board would you just reinforce uh how much that grant

006was uh in terms of uh money that uh that we're going to be uh that's going to save us money and money we're going to be able to use elsewhere for resources for our students so if you just give that number one more time yes correct it's 940 000 it's 400 for each device and so we applied for that grant and received approval sometime in the fall and you know so it can be used for this purchase we were already planning to make this purchase but we can apply these funds to it which will save us 940 thank you okay board at this time i need a motion in the second to approve the laptop refresh so second okay and are there any questions okay seeing no questions we'll move to a vote all those

007in favor of approving on the laptop refresh purchase please raise your right hand and say i okay all those opposed motion passes okay next up 2.03 safe to return to school plan dr ulrich thank you very much again uh president andrews thank you to the board of education uh want to make sure that the board understands exactly the distinction that to be made this evening the safe return to school plan that you see in your packet is our current uh covet protocol which is a mass required environment we are doing that if you if you'll recall we brought this to the board every time that we've met as we know in terms of me being the leader of the political subdivision as appointed by you i can make make changes to our covent protocols but

008the board of education needs to approve those in a timely manner and so it is time to do that again for our current code protocols but i think i want to make sure that we make that distinction for what i'm asking for approval and then make sure that the board is really aware of kind of the next steps that we have uh in moving forward because as we begin to see the omicron surge has uh has gone uh certainly we have reached its peak those numbers are coming down uh very quickly just as was predicted by our medical profession so by way of review will be above and beyond those covet numbers our internal school data if you've taken a look at that recently uh looks very good and st louis county continues to have

009the highest vaccination rate in missouri and just in january as we went through the omicron surge i want to remind the board that we provide vaccine clinics and booster opportunities the opportunities for our students and staff we initiated daily free pcr testing for staff both symptomatic and asymptomatic just for your awareness um uh we were over at the uh ms dietrich and i were over at the turner building this afternoon we had an interview with the owner and founder of quantum laboratories and we were interviewed by channel 4 that will be on 10 o'clock this evening on channel 4 news we're very happy about that partnership to provide free pcr testing to both students and staff and then of course we provided km95 masks to all staff i can also say that the health advisory

010group met yesterday to review the new data that that we have as well as taking a look at the things that we have put in place since since we came back from the holiday break and they were able to give us some good advisement want to remind folks it is not a decision making body for the district it's a health advisory group we thank them every time we have the opportunity for their for their guidance that they've been able to provide and certainly uh as a group the consensus was that we the omicron surge has peaked and it is coming back down and we can expect those numbers to consistently come down um over the next couple of weeks so having said that it you know it's uh i think it's important to share our

011next steps that we have to to continue to take a deliberative data driven approach to what we've done i'm certainly well aware that there are those among our parents in our community that don't feel like we move fast enough in some areas and one of the things that i have consistently said is that we want to make sure that we don't put our families our students quote unquote on a yoyo we want to make sure the decisions that we're making are truly deliberative done in a timely fashion so we're always adhering to our goal of maximizing in-person learning while keeping our students and staff safe and so we've appreciated the flexibility of our families our students and staff which have allowed us to modify these plans i think we've shown that uh we uh we

012brought a plan to the board that was uh in december and then we saw a surge in numbers and we were we changed course based on that data and so as the health officials keep reporting these decreasing case counts lowering positivity rates and reduced hospitalizations um we're seeing a corresponding a corresponding really lowering of cases also in our schools so this data and this advisement that we're getting from health professionals uh and all and the work that we put in place in january does allow us to begin moving back towards implementing the plan we introduced prior to the winter break which would allow for a mass recommended environment in our schools just as it did previously the plan would include very conservative thresholds 1.5 percent in our schools total between our staff and our students

013if we reach that threshold we would go mask we put mass back on for required for at least two weeks to allow those numbers to go back down below 1.5 so we want to make sure that we uh adhere to our guiding principle of transparency as we have these conversations and uh and very be open and clear about how we pursue this plan so if and i want to make sure that that we say that if as predicted um as the health of uh officials are predicting our numbers continue to go down and also if we have um uh or in a situation where the numbers in our schools still look very good which they do now that we would look to go to a mask recommended environment no earlier no sooner than tuesday the

01422nd which if you're thinking about this that's that's the day after we come back from president today so i want to make sure i bring that to the board in a very open and transparent way um i'll communicate these things to uh uh to our staff um and to our families uh you know in the uh in the next couple of days to make sure that they understand the foundation upon which we're building or we're making these decisions so again i'll wrap back around to what i'm asking of the board to approve this evening what i'm asking the board to approve this evening are our current covet protocols which is a mask required for all students staff and visitors to our building ms andrews okay do i have a motion in the second to approve

015the continuation of the current question more of a statement because i know that uh obviously as you mentioned the trend lines are favorable at this point um and so at the same time it's obviously a situation where we want to make sure that we're we're prepared when there is a change so i do want to make sure that you understand one of my concerns is for students particularly at the primary level who over the last couple years have become accustomed to feeling like they always need to be masked and the people around them always need to make math may become uncomfortable now being the same classroom as unmatched people i just want to make sure that in the planning the teachers and parents frankly are given the tools that they need to make sure that

016the kid is empowered that if they feel uncomfortable they they can uh direct that to the appropriate resource and that there are the resources there and if you feel like additional resources are necessary that you'll come to the board and i'm sure that will get deliberated on favorably absolutely thank you very much mr frost thank you madam president first to dave and staff i just want to thank you guys we've been pretty measured in our approach we're paying attention to the numbers i know we have the health advisory committee but i know you're looking at other sources as well thank you for that approach because what i've said from time is use the data and we have done that so thank you for your for doing that now dave can you talk a little bit

017about what you're seeing in other districts and how they're handling this are you doing a collaborative thing like have you heard from other districts thank you for the question mr frost yes we we have been in communication uh it has been less collaborative as uh as we've moved forward and districts have looked at their data and made decisions based on their current context some districts have already announced other districts have announced dates very similar to the to the dates i mentioned tonight but there's not one concerted effort in st louis county at this point to to make an announcement in fact the majority of st louis county school districts are still under a mass mandate thank you okay just checking in can you hear me okay so seeing no further oh thank you sorry that's

018okay i'm on the end here thank you um i appreciate your thoughtful approach and data driven approach and i just want to check once more in with you from now until the 22nd if you could just let us know then what you'll be doing um to prepare that's a great question ms bernardi thank you uh the first and foremost again thinking about communicating from the from from the inside out we want to make sure our staff is aware make sure that again their staff has the information that we have and show them the foundation upon which we're we're building these decisions uh and then we would work to move to include our families about exactly what those what that will look like the good thing is is we laid much of this groundwork back in

019december we have faqs for our for our families and also for our staff we'll make sure that those are posted so everybody's very clear about what the expectations will be specifically in a mass recommended environment if we're able to move okay seeing no further questions we'll move to a vote all those in favor of um the continuation of the current mitigation standards please raise your right hand and say aye always a post motion passes okay now at this time um we are going to transition to our work session so first item on the work session is curriculum selection process dr ulrich well thank you very much i appreciate our guests here this evening that are going to be giving you the information that we have with regard to both of these subjects that are on

020the agenda for this evening i want to make sure that again what i said a couple of weeks ago when we were last together i want to make sure that i reiterate those things uh these are certainly topics that are at the at the top of everybody's minds this is something nationally regionally and certainly locally that districts the districts have had to have had to deal with i want to applaud the board of education for your approach to dealing with this in a proactive way and from a governance standpoint of taking a look at our current policies that govern things like curriculum curriculum choices and library media selection for those materials i don't think there's any better time for the board of education to really model frankly of how we can have conversations surrounding these

021issues and specifically the idea that the goal of tonight is to ensure you as a board of education uh feel like and have a confidence that you can speak to the the policies that govern the selection of curriculum and the structure of library media materials as well as the board specific role with regard to that the processes and procedures the manuals that we have and have had in place as well so as we move forward again i want to commend the board for their commitment to our processes i think that uh having helped and seen the preparation that dr painter ms granham isaac you guys have given uh i think you're going to find it to be very informative i expect it to generate questions and where we don't know the answers we'll say we

022don't know the answers and we'll commit to getting those to you otherwise we'll give you the answers as we know them so with that i'll turn it over to you or should i turn over to dr fannery's team all right dr payton all right thank you so much is that working is that working yeah on the plug-in okay all right i guess so thank you so much that's working out i do appreciate the opportunity and this is really an exciting time for us to be able to have essentially two hours to talk about curriculum and instruction and library uh resources in our in our district i'm very fortunate to be joined tonight by liz grant our director of instruction and professional learning and isaac dirk who is one of our outstanding facilitators in the district

023who works with teachers across pre-k-12 really in working around curricular instruction needs and identifying resources he is specifically here because one of his facilitator roles is is supporting our librarians and so as we engage in our conversations tonight and i truly do hope their conversations um then we might need to tap into them and and their expertise i will just start by saying uh we feel good about our processes in our district we feel that they are strong proceeds many many of these have been in place for years from predating my time in this position but we also know that we can and will continue to improve and so as we continue through these conversations and into whatever is next we look forward to you know we're taking notes we want to make sure that

024we're getting you the answers that you need but we're also making adjustments and improvements uh where necessary as well so as always we think it's important that we start with our strategic plan these really start our strategic plan whatever the strategic plan is our district at the time really serves as our guide post it is our foundation that we look to for decisions in anything that we do at the district level and and really as it filters that into our classrooms just going over the vision again for everybody who's at home every student engaged empowered and ready for success that's our vision and our mission is to equip students with the skills knowledge and understanding to be empathetic successful and to value all people there is specifically a priority objective in this year's strategic plan

025that is aligned to this work objective 1.1 is in sure curricula are relevant inclusive and challenging with consistent use and expectations across the system and one of the action plans under that is to implement ksd's curriculum or six year curricular review cycle and make curricular information readily accessible to students staff families and community members that is ongoing work we have to date been able to get k-12 ela and english online and our library media curriculum is online as well we are still on track to have that later this spring for all of our curricula areas online our objectives for today's conversation we want to review the policies as dr ulrich would mention and we'll review the policies that govern our working curriculum development and the selection of instructional materials we want to review additional documents

026specific our our manual or our curriculum review cycle that guides and informs our work we're going to describe our current procedures and practices and review the components of a complete curriculum we finally next we want to discuss the instructional resources materials that are that we use to support delivery of curriculum and really the process for selecting those and then finally um we will make sure that we're we'll double back and make sure that we're answering the questions that were mentioned at the january 24th war meeting as we dive into policies ms bernardi i know you're excited about this um the policies that govern our curriculum work are listed here idf is about curriculum development and the associated ministry of district procedure and iia is about the instructional materials and there is a regulation associated with

027that as well you'll note the dates that are listed there are when they were last revived as is often the case with our with policies there are a number of policies that are listed at the bottom of the policies that are cross-referenced for court press referencing and even in some cases some court cases those are listed here and in specific i think it's important to mention i think dj f2 around purchasing because that is that is one that we are always mindful of as we are selecting resources in addition uh we have our curriculum cycle and process guide which was developed in 2018 19 and was really built upon a previous document that was in place from 2007. but we went back we had a a group of about 12 or so people who went

028back as part of the governance plan this was around a smartphone that we had and we revised that um that was the last time it was revised to assist with adherence to our personal review cycle and and honestly it was getting us back onto a curriculum review cycle that's what the smartphone was primarily about having a curriculum calendar which was very important for us because as was the case with many districts getting we got off of a curriculum calendar or a regular curriculum calendar in part response to changing standards with comment core and then the missouri learning standards and so it's been very helpful for us to be back on a regular cycle this document also guides our curriculum i'm sorry it outlines our six year cycle as mentioned and details the steps within that

029which we will share more about in just a moment it also highlights the important role of our curriculum review committee we have students staff members parents community members who serve on a curriculum review committee that is meeting frequently this year actually we're asking a great deal of them because there are a number of curricular areas that are in cycle for division for development and board approval and then also it includes information about resource selection and purchasing as mentioned we do have a six-year curriculum review cycle we went back and forth and trying to identify something that would allow us to review curriculum the many courses that we have in curricula that we have across the district on a regular cycle knowing that things change so quickly that it is important for us to to review

030these areas on a regular basis but also knowing that there's a limit to how much can be done in a given year there's also frankly a limit to how much our teachers can respond to that work and so i believe this year we have 14 areas that are in review and we'll get to those more in a little bit our review cycle actually really starts with it's it's a six year cycle that has four years of intense work around that it starts with program evaluation where we are gathering data from our current and former students we are doing we are looking at assessment data from our students and in informal and informal we then transition that into research where we're taking we're building on those data and the information we're getting we gather from students

031who've had the course recently and then we look at best practices and research is really about identifying what are other districts doing what's out there as far as research based practices around that discipline or that curricular area and then all of that information feeds into development traditionally most people think as development as the big year and that is really a time when our our teachers are working with people like isaac and liz and and really getting into what's most important for us to be teaching what does that scope this sequence look like what are the enduring understandings the essential questions that we that we think are important for our kids that is all very important that's what goes through the crc cycle and we'll be talking more about that piece in just a moment but

032the implementation part of that is also very important because there's a lot of work that has to be done even once board approval happens and as we roll out this into our with our teachers into classrooms and we continue to fine-tune the actual what this looks like in our classroom i believe we have a question last month about what kind of what constitutes a complete curriculum as far as more approval goes and our current practices in our district are reflected on this screen and this is a screen that we share every year with our curriculum review committee members as well within that top circle there that is what we have been bringing to to the board for approval includes prime our priority standards or alignment to standards and now it has become priority standards um

033the essential questions that we that we these are kind of the big picture sort of questions that we want our students to know and understand as a result of taking this course or being a part of this year's learning the enduring understandings what what do we what understandings that we need our students what are they learning that will endure beyond that year the essential things that we want our kids to be learning that they will withhold they will hold on to for years and years hopefully um we're not these aren't the finite things these are the kind of real enduring understandings that we expect our kids to be learning that our teachers are going to be building everything that they do around and then finally the scope of sequence that is essentially the order in

034which things go and so it looks like there's not very much there there's only four things listed but when you unpack each of those it is a lot and it is a is very time intensive to get our teachers uh number one to agree on all of those things and number two to really understand what those mean and come to agreement around not only what's most important for us to be teaching how does it align with the standards but also the order in which we're going to be teaching those in a semester or a given year all of that's important that is to date what we've been bringing to the board and to crc for approval you can see there's a lot of things that happen after that or and sometimes it's in conjunction with

035that as well but the learning plan and the evidence of understanding or the assessments that's how our curriculum plays out in the classroom so those are also very important and we understand that everything that happens in those final two circles is directly tied directly linked to everything that happens in the top circle so that's really important for all of us to to remember and so any work that happens with our teachers in implementation year one for example must be aligned with what we're bringing to crc and to the board for approval during this process we also talked about this one our crc the difference between standards curriculum and resources standards are typically written at the state level though i think 2016 was the last time that most of our disciplinary standards were changed and those

036were approved by the missouri state board of education the math test for example those are the eocs those are aligned with the missouri state learning standards curricula that includes what we teach this so that's everything that we just talked about in the last slide it's not necessarily how it's done but it's the what we teach it's the scope and sequence it's all of what i talked about with the essential questions and during understanding those are what's approved by local school boards and that's those are happening around the country that's what that's really when people talk about local control um that is that that's how that's happening i will say that our district we've been very fortunate that curricula is written by our teachers that is not the case in every every district or every situation

037but that is something that's very important to us there are times of course that we might have curriculum that's informed by resources but we we believe that it's important that kirkwood teachers are writing perfectly curriculum curriculum is not something that we're buying from other people and we are aligning that curriculum to the standards in our case from zero understanding and then finally many times we will purchase programs textbooks or other instructional materials to support the delivery of that curriculum it is important for us to separate those two because having having a resource or a textbook or whatever that we that we might use in our classrooms that is not our curriculum that is how we are that's a resource that we're using to support the delivery of our curriculum and it can be very important

038but in some cases particularly in kirkwood we have a number of courses where we're not purchasing a textbook or even adopting a resource to deliver that because the teachers have other routes that they might be using and we can give some examples of that here shortly and then finally um our teachers and administrators work through a vetting and selection process when we do decide to adopt textbooks or programs that doesn't happen in all cases but we have had some recent recent examples where that has been a case pause per second because i need water okay um we are all probably a short stop now we're not quite the third base um but on this slide i just want to reiterate this is kind of going back there's another slide that we share with the crc

039every year this is what we the information currently that we provide to crc and then we bring to the board of education we bring our findings for from the evaluation and research work again those were two earlier stages of our process all of that builds into the development work we share with crc and the board activities that are involved in our revision our planning process who was involved in that so kind of walking you through this is how we've gotten tour around right now we also need to be sharing if we don't always we need we share communication strategies that we use to engage colleagues so while not sometimes our committee that works on their curriculum isn't representative of all or isn't all of the teachers who might teach that it would be very difficult

040for us for example to have a committee of all all elementary teachers that are teaching elementary finance so we have a representative sample of those groups of those teachers who are doing leading that work and then they are charged with going back and getting and sharing with their colleagues and giving additional feedback that they can bring back to inform the next steps and then of course we are bringing to you scope and sequence the essential learning and priority standards and also any significant changes or additions or deletions from our previous curriculum document through our process and i think this is something that i'm very excited about because i think it has led to some good practices over the last three or four years as a result of the task force report from 2016 there was

041and then the strategic plan work that happened directly after that there was an intentional desire for us to make sure that equity and wellness particularly social emotional learning skills and life skills around that that those were not viewed by people in our district as separate courses there may be separate courses where that happens but they were not viewed as something that for someone else to do that these are some these are things that need to be taught to all of our courses by all of our teachers and so we intentionally embedded a process where no matter what the course is and we've done this for biology we've done this for planetary space and planetary science and we've done it for african-american through america experience for black experience in america and so we so with all

042of those courses we have intentionally asked our teachers to find direct connections to culture equity and wellness looking through those lens how are we making sure that the curriculum is relevant to all of our students and looking through the rings of culture not only from a race and culture lens but also from engaged lands and there's a number of other ones that we that we ask our teachers to look at as well that has been very enlightening for us i think our teachers have come back with wonderful ideas that i would have never expected to be honest with you and that has been terrific over i'd say this is our fourth year of doing that in addition we use the castle will from uh or the seo sdl castle will um to identify uh specific

043life skills and social learning skills that can be taught in all of our courses those are what some people may refer to as soft skills but they are really i think life skills and and many of our students feature employers are now saying that those are every bit as important as some of the uh content that we teach in our classes just so you can get a picture of what's happening this year these are all of the courses that are currently in the development phase of our curriculum review cycle you've already had a chance to learn more about child development one and two that was group a um the next group um group b those are all in our crc process right now and then we are once those are through then we will move

044into group c and that and those curricular areas i will say all of the teachers are working with our facilitators in all of those areas right now they have been for the last two years actually but they are working in all of those areas right now with the intent of being ready to bring these to you for approval this year and then for us to begin implementation year one with those in our classrooms next year significant dates you can see many of these are actually checked off but our next big date for crc is for them to come back on february 24th for the final meeting of degree b courses and then on march 7th the goal is for us the plan is for us to be bringing those courses to you in a board

045workshop and that will be a busy one because as you might imagine we were fortunate to start off with just two courses child development one and two but there will be a lot coming to you on march 7th and then we have one more cycle that will be coming to you on may 9th moving to instructional resources and materials our district policies and procedures find a and iii aap1 outline the selection of materials to use across the district in support of teaching curriculum again it's very important in our district we we're intentional in our delineation between curriculum and resources the formal selection and adoption processes are typically reserved for textbooks or other district-wide programs for example we've taught a number of when physics came several years ago they requested not textbooks and not even instructional

046resources from an instructional lens but they they actually asked for materials they could use in their classroom to support the work and so that was their request for that conversely we had [Music] our middle school science they actually did request additional textbooks for six something they had created and that was something that we actually did bring for board approval i believe the cost of that was roughly 32 000 which went over the threshold what the threshold was at the time with a policy dj app 2 which required us for board approval and so i just want to point out that instructional resource process there are some classes that don't even request resources at all but some do and some have asked for textbooks or programs and when there are textbooks or programs the way we've

047been currently operating is if it requires more approval through apology policy dj out too then we would certainly bring that to you again that is just our current operating process and those predated again created me in this world us decisions about the primary instructional resources are typically made by purple teachers administrators there is there are processes outlined that we receive feedback from our teachers and often from students and from parents as well we did that recently with our book purposes for our high school ela and english classes and then the selection processes are in place to make these make these decisions quotes and bids may be required if we're going for textbooks for example we may have to make sure that we have three um three quotes that we can for them the three different

048vendors that we work with that we can put those not only get prices from for consideration but also we have our processes require us to put those in front of our teachers as well so they have an opportunity to gather to provide input on different options just a few more bullets here curriculum review teams may choose as i mentioned to adopt a textbook for courses but the purchase and use of a traditional or digital textbook is not required there's a wide range can be used and our teachers again often they will they will ask for materials for the classroom not instructional materials and we have that built into our into our textbook budget and what else do i need to mention specifically on that the third bullet is an important one to note you may

049remember that we've adopted sunday systems for clients instruction that's a good example of a research program research-based program that is being used to guide teachers instruction and as you'll see next month we are we are actually using the program the research-based program to inform our curriculum design as well and so that is that is kind of an exception to the rule where we we know this is how this is how the program the instructional resource is important for the instruction in all of our classrooms and so we are building the curriculum to that in mind that does not always happen usually the curriculum is adopted before the resource procedure procedure happens the resource selection procedure happens but that's a good example of the other way around i think we can that last one's fine and

050then just want to review these were our objectives for today review the policies look at the additional documents you had additional documents we we added we gave you a lot and more docs um and then at this point we want to make sure that we're then we've answered all your questions as well so i'm going to take the volume of the drink and then just remember this probably shouldn't be bigger but just you know it's important again this is this is this is our home base our vision our mission is our home base from the strategic plan okay thank you this time board members at this time if you have any questions now would be the time to ask them well let's i guess they'll drown through dr albert okay yeah i'm fine ms andrews

051i'm fine in a work session uh environment i and i do appreciate you as board president for setting us back up in a work session environment we've been working so much from a zoom platform where we've had to kind of all be up front um so this is a a nice a conversational so i'm i'm very fine uh with the board members with your permission directing questions to uh dr painter and his team last time perfect all right i got a few they should be relatively short answers but i um i make a living based on my ability to interpret the federal tax code and i felt right at home trying to interpret the material that we were sent uh early of his week so i just want to make sure that i was understanding

052it and that presentation correctly so some of these might be easy questions i hope that they're all easy questions where a course has a primary text or electronic resource it was unclear to me if those are approved by the school board as part of the curriculum review process or as part of the functioning process or both the way have we the way we have been interpreting our our manual and our policy has been it has come to you as part of the budgeting process we can certainly examine that further but that has been the way we have been looking at it now that being said it is done in i believe the word you used last month was in cadence with the curriculum review process and so we do budget around having curriculum adoptions or

053sorry resource adoptions aligned with curriculum adoption okay so then does that mean that the the type of spoke or core electronic resource is noble uh by the board and by the community as a whole therefore uh prior to curriculum approval i would say it's knowable but it would not be prior to curriculum approval our current practice is curriculum is adopted and then resource adoption occurs after that by parents and students of the secondary level when they're selecting what class they want to take i saw your question about that earlier today and i think that's a good point um i would say in many cases that probably is not the case right now but it will become more the case as we have our curricular information online and so our expectation is by by this later

054this spring into the summer for sure we will have that information online with the curriculum with with with the course curriculum and then you would mention kind of buckets of standards curriculum resources and that's a learning plan kind of below that if i remember the chart one of those are available to parents the public or potential students that's a great question as of right now they all can be available as mentioned you know one of our strategic objectives includes getting all of that online so that parents have access to that parents and students have access to access to that as it is right now if it's unless it's k-12 ela or english or k-12 library media they can call our office and that's how we've been operating when people call and request it and we

055give that to them but we recognize it's really important for this to be accessible to anyone and having that on our website okay and then like at the high school level for example there's an enormous course catalogue absolutely the expectation that that would that at least the core tax information would be available there i i can't tell you for sure that that is in there right now but that is something we can explore thank you i've had the privilege of being like watching um some of the teachers who volunteer their time to kind of do the curriculum i'm telling you if you've ever seen a movie a beautiful mind and you watch them sort of be in their element it's amazing to watch and it's great and i want to thank all the teachers for

056volunteering who put their time in for our curriculum it is a special thing that we have our staff creating our curriculum i want to make sure we highlight that but i also want to thank you and highlight you on there on your linda's slide because we really worked hard in this district on our task force and i don't ever want us to make we want to always highlight the work that was done because what we tried to do was lay the foundation of everything else built on top of it and this shows me right away that our curriculum uses those lenders and their rings of culture and the things that we talked about are years that we're actually doing day to day with our students so thank you very much for highlighting that new slide

057thank you so a couple questions when you talked about the vetting process i don't remember what slide it was was that relevant or relative to the um you'd mentioned that some of our resources support the delivery curriculum and i thought you said there was a vetting process there it is yes can you hey so let's just let's keep it very as mark would say pedestrian um what exactly are you saying when you say support delivery quick lemon give me an example about the vetting process yeah i will say for a more traditional what we might do with the textbook whether it's a hard copy or online in those situations typically what is done is the facilitator or department chair or whoever will reach out to multiple vendors who would have a text that may be

058appropriate for that course and in that situation there is typically some period of time where all the teachers who might teach that course and potentially others in a department might spend some time going through and seeing we have we have some checklists for example there's some rubrics that can help with the scoring process and they also i believe they all seek input from students as well it has been three years since we've had a since we've had a department who was looking specifically at a textbook but i believe that they all look have students look at them as well and then the main point really for the teachers to look at them on this rubric is will does it align with our curriculum does it align with what we have written that needs to align

059with our missouri learning standards and so that vetting process is important in and of itself we will often go with them with the lowest price but not not always because what's most important is that it's going to meet the teacher's needs and thus the student's needs through the instruction process i will also say if that our like one of the more recent adoptions that we what we've done are ela and english teachers middle school and high school selected whole class text and possible texts to be used for small group literature literature groups or bookmarks basically and in those situations they had rubrics again that they that they used to evaluate the books and teachers reviewed the books students reviewed the books and i believe that they had some parents who reviewed the books as well

060from the high school to middle school and just gave their input and then they use the rubrics to make decisions based on that okay so when you say text it could be a textbook and or supplementary books in in that situation we follow that process because we think it's important if if we're using a whole class text specifically if the book is going to be used as a primary document to support our curriculum with all kids regardless of who the teacher is for that course we think that that in my mind and our mind qualifies as a primary instructional resource okay so bear with me so as you because you brought up group reading and ela so if i am a upcoming senior and i'm signing up for my class let's say ap like or

0618p1 either one well i know those focus group books when i sign up and my parents can review them or i can review them or does that come after i'm in the classroom well now we have those online and so you so our students could know these are these are the whole class text and these are the potential small group text when i say potential there's there's a list there and in most i believe all of our classrooms it's the students have the opportunity to choose from this list of books so none of them in those situations are required texts by everybody in those situations it would be the kids can pay for one of those so now yes they will have access to that i will say prior to this year they would only

062have access to that if they asked that from the teachers or their principal or counselor so going forward they would have access to this is a possible reading list not required could be required could be optional it could provide a report correct now it's possible that the teacher that during the course selection process of the high school i don't want to shortchange them because it is possible that they have been sharing that information with students but it was not available on our website okay and is there any type of checks or balance with the teacher who's selecting those focus group books in other words if i'm if i'm a high school teacher i i pick eight books from degrees yes that's where i'm a little confused those those those eight books that they group that

063they picked would have to come from from the larger collection of books that have been approved for that course and that was approved with the facilitators in the teachers earlier yes and that's the one where the board of education approves in that particular case they did not but that that was i will say that was our current practice doesn't mean we can't we can't explain the possibility of the possibility in the future so i think in the spirit of the work session we're trying to identify maybe possible gaps and improvements in my opinion that's that's a big one so for example if i have a son or daughter who signs up for ap led and there's a book on there that i might view as controversial i think as a parent i would want to

064know that and i also think as administrators there should be some checks and balance with those books that the teachers are selecting so that they're not in the vacuum and that there's some some awareness of what those books are and in that we know what they are especially if if it's kind of slipping through the cracks and i mean nobody may have eyes and ears on so just for my clarification um addition when you say checks and balance you mean beyond having a controlled list that they can choose from well i'm saying is that controlled list i think you just said is not approved it has been approved at the district level but not on the board right and i think that's where there might be a little bit of gray area where we might

065want to talk and have more conversation around yeah the all of the curricular resources when they are requested from any group that is writing curriculum most particularly resources the approval process happens currently happens at the district level with basically our department so they they make the request and the approval happens um by name essentially or by latest or in conjunction the way we have been operating is that it has come to the board again if it met thresholds through the purchasing policy that has been our current practice does name mechanics options going forward thank you okay great thank you dr greener for that explanation because all board members are not curriculum experts so we appreciate all that and i just want to you said i was excited about the policy as you know i am

066so i'm just going to have to talk about that a little bit here so there's six policies associated with your curriculum selection process and i think what board approval is most important for instructional materials policy but the ap administrative procedure is the one that through the district kind of we delegate that responsibility to you and that includes your selection of resources and textbooks so that's ap1 and one thing i think that might guide us and that we might add is subject matter guidelines and those are in some other district's policies and i think that your slide that mr frost referred to with the key lenses would be very appropriate maybe to put in as subject matter guidelines because i know the equity task force did so much work on curriculum and we actually had a

067subcommittee on curriculum in equity task force and as you said i was happy to see the objective that you stated to make sure that we include diverse resources so with that and also wellness and culture that you very nicely stated on your slide i think incorporating that into subject matter guidelines for instructional materials might be something that could be added into your administrative procedure for selection because as a board we're more concerned with the policy of the instructional materials and then the district is more the um procedure and again for my clarification you're saying that the subject matter guidelines would be helpful through our basically our vetting process the rubrics that we use to make those selections okay and i think you're already doing that but that could be something that's more of a more

068defined maybe but and again it would be your decision but i think to um to the point of selection and then um what we see as appropriate that um there might be some i said i've seen some examples too that i could share so i appreciate that sure and then that the other thing about the public american general yeah absolutely sorry relevant to that and i know dr painter if you don't have this information that's okay i want to make sure the board has it but i did i do know that just paying attention to the board if you go to slide five that talks about the um excuse me the relevant uh policies that govern this work um i did notice a little bit of a of a of a surprise i mean it's

069been 20 years since we've this these but they've been revised by kirkwood do you have any idea is it are we up to date with msba if you don't if you don't have that information now that's fine but i think that's relevant information for the board to look at and say okay perhaps these are relatively static msba hasn't had however if they do do you have an idea about when msba has updated them these these actually are up to date with msba we have some of our neighboring districts have updated these policies more recently based on whatever their their own district's needs may have been that these are currently up to date within the scenario thank you well that i was just gonna um okay okay go ahead because it was about policies exactly what

070you just said and i i agree that they're up to date some of them even though their date is so long ago uh but there have been some updates with the subject matter guidelines more recently so i would just suggest that our policy committee you know that and i love to look at these policies when we do look at them that we look at them all together and make sure they're in alignment with each other because also the klb policy and procedure that you have updated so when we do that we should have a look at them all together you already did she said okay um oh mark sorry uh something that mr kavanaugh said going back to his discussion uh reminded me first of all i'm not sure that i'll admit that 2003 is

071so long ago um but the in mr cavanaugh's example the list of approved books you said is approved at the district level but not by the board right in that particular case here uh is that list uh available to the public or would that be a potential you know to use the phrase gap that we could film that list currently is available to the public is that because that is one of the curricular areas that has been posted on our website but that would not have been that would not have been the case if you asked me three months ago okay and then if if a parent you know is helping the student decide courses for senior year and realize they want to look at uh ap lit and they see that there's a book

072on there that they find objectionable for whatever reason is there a mechanism for them to i don't know that challenge book is even the right word in that situation but to express uh in some way a desire for hey i still want my kid to take ap lit but i want to find out if there's something i can do about this particular book absolutely in most cases we would ask our parents to talk to the teacher because that's the best place to start in this particular case maybe the student hasn't yet enrolled in that class and so they could talk to their current english teacher for example or they could talk to their grade level counselor or principal we certainly want to you know our teachers work with kids um on these and and i

073know of some specific examples even this year where teachers have um have have made arrangements so that a student could have an alternative text it may or may not be the exact same experience that other kids are having in the class of course but our teachers are going to work with with students and families in those situations and so so even though that list is not approved by the board formally it's something that the the parents have a mechanism of making sure their students still have the same learning opportunities and not deny course courses based on uh the fact that a book is in that list i would believe that okay so real quickly just just so we can close loop on that i just want to make sure that everybody mainly you understand where

074i think the gotcha is when we talk about kids in group reading it it can be awkward and uncomfortable for a kid to be put in that situation where they have their having to deal with this so again if in the past we weren't as good as having that supplementary material available for the child to review and the parents to review and at least be able to have an opt-out uh and we're fixing that going forward that's great um but i just want you to understand the nuance there when it comes to the group reading because i have a i've had several high school kids and i know how that works and that could be a bit tenuous for the child thank you well absolutely thank you i'm sorry no i just wanted to um

075make a comment a question from kevin sorry from what mr kavanaugh has said so looking at policy um instructional materials that i a correct yes where the board we're legally responsible for the selection of instructional materials but right now we are approving curriculum without and coming back i guess later during budget to approve the instructional right i think we need to be clear that we're not improving the actual material we are approving the dollar amount correct when it's coming to us as a budget item doctor alright we're not approved i mean i think that it's really important to that everyone's clear here we're not improving the right right because we're responsible for this election right yes i think i think the policy dr oak's referring to is the one where we delegate our authority it's

076bba and it says um the board's responsible for establishing educational goals which will guide both the board and the staff and working together toward the continued improvement of educational programs in the district yeah that's correct so that's what i was trying to see if we're first we need to align and coordinate these policies obviously because you're saying they're not aligning obviously but so my confusion or question is that on this specific policy it says that the board is legally responsible for the selection of instructional materials but then it does say that we delegate to the certified personnel in the district to facilitate the process for the selection um so i just think if we are um looking at instructions instructional materials and we're responsible for that that maybe we need to talk about how we

077do that together not during budget but and not necessarily looking word for you know censorship books or anything like that but approving the curriculum at the same time with the instructional materials i think would be helpful so in all of this work um dr painter and team are there any areas that you look at that you're like oh man this is an area that we need to look at and work on or an area that you're like man i i see this as we need you know there are always places that we can improve absolutely but i guess just give us a sense of well we want to make sure that our in our community knows what they're what their kids are doing and so first and foremost i think this process will help when

078we have curriculum high level curricular information on our website which includes scope and sequence the very understandings the priority skill standards that these are aligned with the essential skills and we also include the resource the if there's a primary resource that's being used to support the work then that's included i think that's going to be an important first step we want all of our all community members we want our families we want our kids to know this is what this course is yeah and i think that's important i think that will help i think that there are places within our pub within our manual i mentioned that it hadn't been reviewed since 1819 where it was kind of updated from 2007. there are places where we could lost i'm sorry the curriculum the process guide

079sorry yep um i'm like there are so many manuals right um you know just like anything else when you live with something for a while you realize what is working really well and what maybe needs to be adjusted and there are some timelines in there that we might need to adjust we've talked about having some common vetting scoring rubrics that sort of thing that because as as it is right now our facilitators work with the team to create that but it would be nice if we had some common ones that are used so we can make those again available to our public on the website so they can better understand it so that you all can understand what that process looks like those are bit in the works and i think that you know our

080our team uses this is the guide and this is what um our teachers and our facilitators use as they work towards crc and then we'll improve it um and there are some places where we could review this even further and again make sure that bf gives us direction on identifying places where you know if policies need to be updated but we want to make sure that our work with guy is fully aligned with the policies however they may be if reviewed by the board okay go ahead the other thing that i would add is that we've already we've already pointed it out is you know as we were putting this together and certainly um reviewing this and helping dr painter and his team uh prepare the the slide where i had that we still have

081up is that that's the one that stood out to me i i i will tell you in 2002 i was still in the classroom uh you know teaching so i'm sorry i'm mr boycott that seems like a long time ago for me um but and so it's good to know that we're updates up to date with msba that's always obviously that's our that's i think as our floor that the board would expect and for the purposes of our certainly our conversations um i am uh certainly happy to bring to um bring to the policy committee uh and start with these policies and the related policies that we're going to show you here in a little bit regarding library media selection the fact is the floor is in sba we need to look and see if

082there are model policies that have evolved over the last now 20 years and see how they apply can be applied to the work that we do and so i will tell you from from from my position my position as working for the board this is the slide that stood out the most to me okay miss bangborn i just went into my questions and i forgot to check on you first so i'm sorry i'm gonna come back do you have any questions before i ask them most of my most can you hear me no we can't i'm sorry most of my questions were already asked i did want to just also throw out there dr painter have we checked with what some other districts around us are are looking at or you know have they updated

083their curriculum i'm sorry when you talk about what other good nights yes there are there are other districts in our region who have updated their policies more recently okay okay and maybe dr allard that's another place to start for your your commentary so just that was my only other thought okay so i guess my question is this um do you had mentioned that you approve the list of resources so if a teacher wants a new resource do they number one does the teacher know that they need to come to you for approval well i can't speak for every teacher i will say that we have had teachers come to our facilitators asking about additional resources or using resources and that and if for that matter it depends on if how they're they might be using

084it there are terrific graphs and charts and i don't think that's what you're speaking of yeah no i i mean again i mean i was in the classroom classroom so like i wouldn't come to a facilitator to read the book about whatever you know but if this was uh i get i was elementary so i'm thinking of if if it's a resource that is being used throughout you know the year consistently um and it's new i guess i just want to know you know if you're approving them do teachers know that they need to bring that to you for approval and it's okay if they don't it could be another area that we i don't know that i can speak for every teacher that they all do i know that we have had some who've

085requested materials and actually we've had some done we've had some that we've said no okay you have to wait until it's time okay and i i think i heard ms sharon say well do they have to bring i think that that is a great question and i think that there that's what i think we need to help our teachers understand what is it that they have to bring to you and what is it that they don't have to bring to you and where is that i think you have to paint the picture for our our staff so that they're not kind of trying to figure it out on their own right and then likewise i think it would be helpful to the board to kind of see what that is that you painted for the

086step does that make sense yeah the difference between a primary or a core resource and a supplementary resource could be a very fine line in some situations absolutely yeah now i will say the expectation is even for the supplementary resources that they're aligned with our curriculum they they kind of you know our teachers know this is if you will this is this is the path that we're on these are these are the boundaries these are the parameters that we've set as a as a course as a curriculum and the expectation is that we are following and that any resource that we use needs to needs to be aligned of what we're expecting from the course yeah okay okay um but i appreciate your comment about us making sure that we're very clear about that yeah

087i think because as a teacher all of a sudden it's one more thing on their plate that they're trying to like figure out and i think that just to have that clear understanding or nothing like they're walking on it exactly because i think that that can it is very hard so the other piece to this is i i was one of those teachers writing curriculum and my question is this and you don't have to answer it but i'm just wondering if have you surveyed our staff on whether they want to to be building our own crypto i would say no we have not okay so here's what i i just want to make sure that um that that's the case right if you know because we're putting a lot on teachers and um is that

088something we still it that is still a priority in our district i guess i would ask um and i mean i think that that's where some teacher voice comes in that if we see the majority of our teachers are not interested in that maybe we need to kind of turn a different direction and then my other question is just have you looked into school districts who review their curriculum all curriculum every year we did we have like a broken record if you haven't noticed yeah we did we had a great conversation with the team from um i guess i could handle park hill school district outside of kansas city um they were wonderful liz and i had a i feel bad because you're here and haven't had a chance to talk or anything but they

089they do they have a process really it's a survey process absolutely that that is available for elementary and we've talked about the fact that we can we can do something like this now where teachers have an opportunity on an annual basis to provide feedback about the curriculum and productive feedback that leave that is this isn't just what i think but this is how we can improve it and so that is something that we think we can do and we'll say that they they told us in order to get to that place they did it all all out let's make sure all of our curriculum aligned and for most districts that's that's hundreds of curricular areas yeah uh hundreds of curriculum the account all the grade levels for example in came by reading they did everything

090in three years and required a lot of time resources people that sort of thing to get that work done um so that they felt like it was everything was fresh and new and um i guess up to date enough so that they could manage that ongoing process and then in a brilliant move in my opinion any adjustments that are made at an annual basis they have a tracking form and that tracking information for changes is then shared with the board because we you know we don't want to be making changes to curriculum that aren't coming back to the board um and so we have to make sure that we have a process in place for that as well and is that something that your team i will say that we're absolutely interested in any process

091that can that can make this better i will tell you that uh park hill is about at least twice as big as us and they are able to bring to bear uh greater resources so i will say that what i think in all fairness to dr payne and his team um if that's the direction that uh that we wanted to go um you could expect i think would be reasonable for the board to expect a commiserate ask in terms of additional resources to allow them to be able to do that um okay so just to kind of wrap this up and everyone make sure that what what they heard is kind of checking so i heard that we need to look at our policies we need to align our policies when we're looking at our

092policies we need to be looking at other districts we need to discuss the approval of resources right now it's during a budget cycle pulling that out of the budget cycle and kind of what that looks like with also aligned within the policy work is looking to add some subject matter guidelines and then just the idea of helping our teachers the board understand the process of resources what resources you know and also the understanding of what what lines they're choosing those resources within and then did i leave anything off mr count i would just say that to continue looking into that whole supplemental list is it on is it viewable and are we and we don't have to answer tonight but we probably really need to define what we are proving and what we want to

093approve because we as a board get to decide that yeah yeah and that is pulling it from the budget right okay um so the other piece to this is the just the idea of pressure also on kids that you know i think all of a sudden if parents are saying no i don't want my kid to to participate in this it becomes um an embarrassment for some kids they don't no no kid wants to stick out at any point i mean they don't want to be um you know different so i just think think about that that piece too so um did i cover everything okay so we'll kind of check those up you know figure those out and then come back and have a at some point regroup um i think at this time

094we'll take a five minute break um and then we'll come back um thank you again dr painter and um mr beer buret yeah okay thanks again and so we'll take a five-minute break for all those viewing online stick with us we will be back in five minutes and mr vitale and back from intermission okay so next before we begin this discussion i want to just table set um i want to make sure that everyone's aware that the librarians voices were included to get this information that's being presented tonight no changes are going to occur tonight if it is determined changes are needed we will follow our process sorry if changes are needed we will follow our process which could include committee work the intent of this work session is to learn about the process practices

095with regards to book selection and access relative to the board of education policy compliance yeah well thank you very much uh again for that uh president andrews and i appreciate you acknowledging that i know that's part of part of the presentation that dr painter has put together with his team is to certainly make sure that everybody on the board uh is aware that librarians voices uh were were the primary voices really uh in uh gathering this information for the board one thing i neglected to say earlier with regard to putting this in context is i made the comment that there's a this is there's no better time than now for the board to have this information and i didn't follow up on why we are into our legislative session and one of the major roles

096for board of education is to uh is to monitor and uh and watch how the legislative session evolves and i know if you if you receive the same legislative trackers we do you know there are several of the bills that have been introduced in the state legislature specifically surrounding curriculum and also surrounding library media center uh selection so there that's what i meant earlier when i said there's no better time for the board to hear this information to hear this information in an open transparent way i don't have a the most recently updated numbers but i know that we have a community of members that that are joining us and i want to make sure that uh read willy we really as a board um have an opportunity to model uh these types of conversations

097uh for other boards of education and uh and other uh and other communities so i thank you again to you president andrews on the board for affording this opportunity and with your permission i'll turn it over to dr payne all right thank you as we begin act two is that working okay yeah as we've been as beginning our second conversation i'd just like to go back to the first conversation for just a moment and just once again hold up our teachers and our facilitators who are doing the curriculum work as several of you mentioned it is not easy to be a teacher right now it's never really been easy but it's much more difficult right now and they are they are doing an admirable job supporting our kids supporting each other and then doing classroom

098work and doing curriculum work in many cases and so i just want to hold them up and just say how much we appreciate them i know i feel like some of them are watching tonight and so i'm just want to make sure that they know how much we do appreciate them and we see it we see what they're going through we see what they're doing and we appreciate all that they're doing for kids as we shift into our next conversation this is really about our library media center and specifically our selection processes um i i'm sure quickly i again appreciate the opportunity to talk about this important topic with you i do think it's really important and we did as uh as andrews mentioned we did have an opportunity which we'll dive more into shortly

099spent some wonderful quality time with our live library media specialists over the last month to really get to know them and their work even more well again i you know i'm always going to start with our strategic plan because i think that's really important for us to keep that in mind um but i will just highlight as we look at some of the guiding principles some of the things that we talked about in the last conversation apply just as much here there are so many things and it all starts with being a student center i think and inclusive and i think some of the things that we're discussing in the last conversation just reiterate our desire to be fully transparent with our students our staff and our families and community members our objectives um the

100format for this will look like will look very similar to your to our first conversation we will review our policies govern the selection and reconsideration of library media materials we'll look at the additional documents that we have describe our current processes our procedures and practices practices we'll discuss the review and age recommendations information that we have that we gathered from our librarians and then we'll make sure that we're answering any questions that were asked at our january 24th fourth meeting there are two significant policies that govern our work related to regulations and administrative procedures i i a c and i i a c r one outline the rules are library media centers and district librarians with information about the selection and reconsideration of materials also included in iiacr1 is the direction for the superintendent or

101does he need to adopt procedures as needed to accomplish the goals of the regulations we'll talk more about that here shortly klb and klb ap1 outline the processes for reconsideration of library materials and also the reconsideration of instructional materials used in our classroom you'll remember from our conversation last month that klbap1 was recently revised once again i'll just go ahead and save you the question the dates that are listed there are are the last time that they were revised and they are all up to date as per msba at this time you'll notice the last one klb ap one obviously that was revised in december of last year as was the case uh with the last group that we talked about there are additional policies and relevant court cases noted here that are cross-referenced for

102a iiac and kob these policies are noted and on this slide there are related court cases that are noted as well specific to library media and they're working on class in our school as mentioned a few moments ago iiacr1 does direct the superintendent or does he need to adopt procedures as needed to accomplish the goals of regulation hercules procedures happen to be outlined in our library procedures our library media procedures manual while the document itself includes several sections the sections that are highlighted on this slide provide information and guidance to our librarians about the selection material of materials guidelines for evaluation and leading of guidelines for evaluation and meeting and then also procedures for reconsideration most of our focus tonight is on the selection process and so we're going to dive in the next several

103slides kind of hit hit those three four areas under 3.1 a little bit more for collection development this section 3.1.1 outlines the purpose of our library of media centers and duties of our library media specialists as noted the primary purpose is to support enrich and assist in the implementation of the educational program of the school the duty and library media specialist to provide without bias or prejudice a wide range of materials at varying levels of difficulty with diversity of appeal and presentation of different points of view materials shall not be excluded because the brain's nationality or the political and religious views of the writer 3.1.2 of this section delegates responsibility of material selection and recommendations to the library media specialist and also notes that material selection should involve the input of principal teachers students parents

104and community members section 3.1.3 notes that the selection of materials is an ongoing process and it's based on changing curricular needs in the diverse interests of our students and teachers and finally 3.1.4 of the manual provides further details about the selection process including the evaluation of existing materials and curriculum needs there's an expectation that our librarians consider recommendations and also review professionally recognized journals and reference aids prior to the purchase of materials okay as we shift into our current practices and um and procedures i this is a time where i really want to make sure that we're holding up our librarians as well and we're really celebrating the work that they do since our january 10th board of education workshop uh dr albright uh liz isaac and myself had the opportunity to visit the librarian's

105regularly scheduled plc meeting on january 20th we had very i think thoughtful conversations at that time about kind of what our next month needed to look like and how we were going to proceed going forward and as ms andrews kind of noted um just kind of let them know any conversations about any changes that may or may not be made would include a process would include their voice throughout the process as well isaac and i also had the opportunity to spend at least an hour with each librarian in their library going over their current practices and from the from gathering input all the way through getting books on sheltered available kids we were able to pick their brains on a number of things we had we had three or four base guiding questions that we

106asked them that they were able to prepare for but it really was just an opportunity for us to see in their library how they do business and how they gather how they how they generate and select materials for for use in their libraries we also then gathered all of that into a large grid and doubled back and shared that information with them because they don't often get a chance to hear all of that information from each other that we were able to so we wanted to give them the basically the insights that their colleagues i think most of them they probably already knew but it was it was good for them to have that that they could refer to so the big question that we asked and i want to make sure that i'm catching

107some of the questions that were asked before i think one of the questions that i heard in december earlier started in january were how do our schools seek input from from our stakeholders students staff parents and administrators as you can see here the ideas are gathered from our students and staff on an ongoing basis formally both formally and informally student ideas are most likely to come via informational informal conversations quite honestly and our staff ideas usually come through collaborative planning sessions that our librarians have with teachers in many of our libraries we have the opportunity to do flexible scheduling that is honestly that is that's the ideal in in school libraries and that involves um having our teachers bring their kids into the classroom and work with our librarians and then they often plan prior

108to that there are our librarians serve as fantastic resources to support curriculum in many ways and gathering resources for from the library that are that our teachers may use as one of those ideas from students are often related to their favorite authors series or topics of interest which and staff recommendations and requests almost always relate to curricular conversations and needs some schools do have a formal survey process in place right now some used to and no longer do right now but we did have those conversations with all of our librarians i will be honest and say that our parent input and request are welcome but very rare our librarians did say that when they have received a request from parents or recommendations it is i believe in every case either been either a library volunteer

109who has who has offered that up because again those are informal conversations that happen a lot in our libraries or it has been a parent who wants to make a donation to a library and i should point out that any donations that come to our library is applying to the same review process applies to any book and so we would again we need to go through the review process that we'll outline work in just a moment and i think it's important to note that any book that is requested or recommended from students or staff before it's purchased it needs to go to that review process and so just because a student may request something or a teacher may request something doesn't mean that it automatically gets on the purchase list it does still need to

110go through that reading process uh some additional questions that were asked i want to make sure i'm highlighting these because i think that we'll try to answer those in the next slide or two how do we pick library media materials what does the selection process entail what if there are differences in the reviews or if there are no reviews at all and then how are materials uh reviewed if needed i believe there also is a question about roughly what percentage or how many of our books are reviewed in one or more of the of the journals that we have outlined we do use our if you want to call it a card catalog i'm showing my age but our online our digital management system in the library our database and our card category if you

111will is called follette desk or call at destiny discover right and it is it is a management company is fallen and they also have another service that we use called tidal wave that we'll discuss more in just a moment but destiny is where our destiny destiny sorry destiny is the kind of the housing database where students staff community members anybody can go in and see what books we have available in our collections and then our students actually use that to check out books as well from from our librarians it's kind of sister software title wave is a related database that allows our librarians to check reviews often they will go sometimes they will go to the actual review websites or have subscriptions to the journals but more often they use tidal wave because tidal wave

112collects all of their reviews from the main journals that we just that we've discussed before and i'll share more again shortly all of those are included in tidal waves it's also important to note that just because something has added two time waves doesn't mean it automatically is being purchased because we do have teachers who use tidal wave kind of as their i guess they're a place where they gather all of their requests that they have um so any requests that might come in from a student from a teacher or whatever you can create lists um if you think of it as a almost like a wish list sort of thing these are the things that people have requested and asked for just because it makes that list doesn't mean that it gets purchased number one

113we have to go through the review process for each of the titles and secondly sadly in most cases there have been prioritized because our librarians usually want more books to make them for based on their budgets that's just that's just our reality i'm sure that's reality for many libraries that they have to make even more difficult decisions than needed our let's see we're going to make sure i don't miss something here go back to some of your questions um i will say what percentage of of our books are reviewed by one or more i will say at the eighth level so elementary and middle school none of our librarians can think of any books that weren't available as reviewed by one or more of the of the journals when we asked them specifically they couldn't

114make a video they only exceptions might be they said this could be an exception that they can't think of one is if there might be a book that is published by an independent company that then is somebody asked about it there was actually one example of a librarian who said somebody got like somebody had their own book published by kind of a self-publishing sort of thing and brought the book in there was no review for that they couldn't and they said it was fine we appreciated the donation but it never got on our shelves because it didn't go through a review process that we felt comfortable with and so so that's an example of what something might not be in and reviewed in one of these journals i will say at the secondary level there

115there are some books that are that our library has said are more difficult to find reviews for particularly one of the five that we that we look at they do their best to go out and seek additional information anytime they can and sometimes sometimes purchases have been made even if there wasn't one of a review in one of those specific journals because they've been able to find information other places or they or they they read the book and compare notes with other librarians in other in other school districts that sort of thing but more often than not if it's not in one of those five it's because it is listed as adult interest in some cases because they do have adult interest books in our high school library as well and they may be reviewed

116in library journal as opposed to school library journal so that is where they also gather information from okay i just want to mention this we talked about the task force report in our previous in our previous presentation that action 96.3 of the 2016-16 password passports report basically uh asked us to make sure that we are finding diverse and inclusive instructional materials across the board in our classrooms in our library and so um i will say that our librarians i know them individually i i know that they were looking for diverse facts prior to this they didn't have to wait for a directive like this but i will say that all of them have placed an additional emphasis on making sure that we are gathering and identifying high quality diverse texts in recent years once again

117just like i said i think three or four times now just because it makes this list as a diverse text doesn't mean it's an automatic purchase it still has to go through the review process it still is going it still is is being vetted by the librarians in some fashion but we want to make sure that i just want to highlight that because we have we have definitely increased the number of diverse texts in our libraries and for that matter in our classrooms in the last five years or so i mentioned these journals i probably should end have disliked earlier but professional journals that we regularly use and i and i can't say with complete certainty that this is kind of like one of those blurry clouds but i would say that school average or

118on purpose being bigger are probably two of them that we use more frequently and rely on most um and they bring they frequent and the school library journal for example is one that i think more often than not particularly paid a book eight books you're going to find to find it in there if school aboriginal or purpose for that matter book list i think is kind of the next one if one of those three have a as a start review then it definitely is one that it stands out from the others because their review process to get a start review is a big deal so that that probably tells us to do this it is a book that is going to be of interest to our students excuse me you'll notice really small down there

119the lj that's the library journal and that again is kind of the the adult version of the school library journal and that is is on here because again at the high school level that that is used sometimes obviously at the k-8 level we're never using that and so but i wanted to include it on this slide as well our current practice is continuing this work who writes the reviews and are there standardized criteria for these i was very fortunate i was able to dig a little deeper into kind of the review process and reviews and recommendations are typically written for all of these journals by school librarians or by librarians who work with children on a regular basis so there's some qualification there to begin with um individuals do have to apply to be reviewers

120with these journals and they are trained by journal editors uh one of the school library journal for example new reviewers have a probationary period where everything that they review is kind of cross-referenced with other people and with their with the editor to make sure that basically they're critiqued for inter integrated reliability just to make sure that everybody's on the same page even with the training this is important um this was i found this from from school library journal i also found it in our conversations isaac and i did with our librarians even with the training age recommendations can be and are somewhat subjective they're based on reading level interest level and subject matter but when it but there's some level of subjectivity there because these are librarians and who who are writing generally who are

121writing these reviews i know there was a question about okay well what if there are differences what if something doesn't what two journals may have different opinions about that and that points to a little bit about the sometimes there there's just giving differences because you have different opinions from the people who are writing um you know for for a journal not all books get reviewed by every journal and not all reviews are positive so what happens if we do get some variations and we discussed this last time as well about the fact that we have large grade spans of kids six six years of age difference at the elementary school for example from a kidney writer from a fifth grader and middle school even has three in the high school has four well first of

122all this is really important all of the librarians talked about this every librarian teaches in the book choice there are lessons that are taught with kids even our high schoolers they met in the library and they have book choice conversations and lessons that are taught and all of our librarians help match our students appropriately to the text and reading levels i think that there was one the biggest takeaway that i had in our conversations with the librarians is that our librarians not only absolutely they put in hours and hours and lots of energy and work is knowing their collection i think even more so they put in hours and hours of energy at work into knowing those who use their collection they know their kids so very well they have those conversations with them about

123them as readers about them as people and they are working constantly to help match our students to appropriate text and reading levels there are times where kids might say here's a book i want to read and the librarian listed and said i'm not sure that that's appropriate for you or i'm not sure that that's something that would that would really be in what you you're really interested for and so they will redirect them in those cases and we heard that from our elementary librarians and our high school librarians fiction titles for our younger and older elementary kids if you can go back and think back to elementary school time there definitely are everybody books and there are chapter books and usually there's even kind of older chapter books so at the elementary level those fiction

124titles for younger and older kids are typically physically separated by space there's two different fiction sections for example the illinois library in most cases in all cases in our district our middle school libraries do use stickers to delineate more mature readers books for more mature readers in one of the schools it's called teen and the other one is called y a and so they actually do that and there's in both librarians said that there have been cases where books have been shown one way and then after some students read it and gave them feedback we've had kids who came back and said i think this probably should be have a stick ride and so the students offer that insight as well and they appreciate that and then finally kirkwood high school library is not the

125lineage books for more mature readers i mentioned fallout destiny just a minute ago or several minutes ago at this point but this is our management and checkout system and kind of what does it offer to us um every librarian said nasty is widely viewed as kind of a top of the line cataloging checkout and recording system out there districts that don't have destiny discovered usually wish that they do our parents can currently use destiny discover so anybody can go outside and use the destiny discover dashboard to search any of the titles in their school library collection that's available to them right now parents can also use their child's student number if they want to to go on destiny to view the books that are checked out of their library currently by their child that is

126available to our parents right now and then finally students can be flagged investing in a list of questions about this that can be flagged investing with those added to the student account if desired okay and so we are now to the end of the information so i just want to review this and again everything i want to make sure that we've answered your questions if need be but we've had a chance to review the policies um our library media guide a process guide and our current procedures and practices and discuss the reviews and edge recommendations okay thank you and at this time board members do you have any questions welcome mr boycott i'm not even first alphabetically here i know um so i i did have a few uh questions i appreciate the uh i

127as a parent probably should have realized i could go on from my destiny and see what my kid had checked out so i appreciate that well you mentioned something to be flagged in destiny for example could a parent could ask that a particular title or in the middle school case a teen or young adult stickered books not be checked out for their student right that is a possibility yes is there um i guess as i was looking through the media procedures manual i apologize this is a question i just had today so i understand if you don't you know know or have a comment but uh there was a section about how gifts are handled and i appreciate that and the fact that even a book that's given to us doesn't automatically go on the

128shelves it goes through the same process i do think the way the procedures are written right now it could be it could be a concern it's written a book that is gifted to us but doesn't meet the criteria could be used in a sent to a classroom collection and obviously the book can be rejected for a number of reasons maybe we already have five of the same book or similar books on the shelf and their voice rejected i don't think anyone have a problem with it then go into a classroom collection but if it's obviously rejected for some other reasons there might be reasons why we would want to make sure that that book isn't a question of questions that might be something that we're visiting the policies or procedures uh we're a little more

129clear about the circumstances under which a book could fall into those classroom collections and then is there a way for a parent to know particularly at the primary and middle level but i supposed to apply the high school to whether a title that's in the library would be used as instructional material in their child's classroom i i don't know i don't know that i have an answer for that that would be a blanket statement i do think that i do think our teachers use the tables from the library for classroom instruction but i also think that they're mindful of how that first of all aligns the curriculum and secondly any book that we use for all kids has a higher standard i guess as opposed to voluntary checkouts from the library but as of now

130no there wouldn't necessarily without discussions without without the teachers notifying these of the books that we're using for this unit on sure thank you dr painter um question tale be the public question comment it says that there is a um i guess if parents have um the public questions comments and or concerns yes the citizens can register their complaint or what have you is that being followed in um or do parents know how to i guess submit this if they have an issue with them anything within them i i can't speak with certainly i know that all parents know how to do that i will say just from a communication standpoint but it's not something that we put out to everyone at this time if parents have any concerns that they bring to the school

131level then that information is provided to them to them okay so it is then we have to have that yes absolutely thank you so much for question when you talk about that policy and complaint are you talking about any thank you dr painter and isaac and liz i know you've done a lot of work with librarians getting some research done i have a couple questions the three categories are selection how do we categorize books and then access and i guess we'll we'll start the selection because that's chronological so if i'm a secondary librarian how many books am i ordering in a given year we talking about hundreds or thousands i i honestly i i'm sorry i don't know i don't know that answer i would say that it is um it's more than a hundred

132i mean it might be more than a thousand in a given year but probably not given their budgets and where and where i'm going is if i'm ordering books am i ordering 10 at a time two at a time 50 at a time what does that look like well that's a great question i think both of our middle schools order a i believe both of them have a bigger order in the summer they spend a lot of time kind of looking at their data from destiny that there's a lot of analytics that they can get about checkout patterns that sort of thing they review the list that they have created the year before and prioritize review look at the reviews of course that sort of thing and really look for holes so they do not

133purchase all of them in the summer but they do purchase it seeing there to get chunk at that time knowing that they want to they want to hold back some money for ongoing approaches throughout the year particularly award winners requests that they have at the high school level i believe they spent roughly a third of their money in the summer and then i believe that janet amy said this maybe make a purchase every six weeks or so based on needs that have come up since that time these are interests that have come up since that time okay so it's fair to say that sometimes there's large orders there are some large orders in the summer because that is when they have a new budget clinic and then how do they know what books order are

134they are they being recommended by publishing companies are they is there some software where they're having access to these books are available do you want to buy them how does that look all of the above okay i feel like i skipped that slide because there was some information that i had no way to share with you but they they do it really is all the above in addition to get their information from students and staff they are also they they all subscribe to or have access to the library journals and so there are a lot i mean i i i'm subscribed to them now and there are lots of great reviews in there that might give them some ideas i will say many of them in addition to purchasing like when they particularly from their

135smaller purchases they go to a lot of book stores and so they um they have relationships they try to give as much business to our local bookstores as they can and they spend a lot of time in those bookstores gathering ideas which they again they then they don't just buy it then together the idea is they go back and do the reviews and then they go back and place an order they look at library other libraries they spend a lot of time looking at those all of them follow library networks and those library networks usually via social media or a list server or something like that they gather get lots of information there and then there are some publishers that will put out things and say the new one from gary paulsen is coming out

136uh you might be interested okay and how did they handle the review so is it software driven where i'm ordering 25 books and then on my computer screen it just pops up the reviews and i read them is that how that works you yeah go for it if you want uh yeah um that is the um thank you that that's the um capability of tidal wave and fallout is that they're compiling it is a database to where those five reviews are all in a singular place but because to look up a singular title that you're unsure about and you go to five different or more um different databases to check those reviews so it collates all of those it gets the right words into a singular database where i can type in a title and

137i can see below the from the sources that brian shared uh earlier school library journal book smart purpose booklets and they're there in a singular spot and that's how they can manage the machine of all those reviews so kind of a harder question i i've read you know we we had the 20 books that you all looked at thank you you provided the analysis and all the reviews i think what i'm struggling a little bit is when you read the reviews they seem like mountaintops versus specifics and in some cases the reviews will contradict themselves so for example one review on a book will say it's a must read and the illustrations are ethereal and beautiful art yet a different review says disturbing violent and graphic sex scenes and one of those books is in

138our library so how do we reconcile that when we order that book or do we do we not know well i can't speak for specifics in that situation to be honest with you but i will say that our librarians if there are varying reviews we'll typically do more research they will seek out information from other librarians either in the network or in the district or in neighboring neighboring schools um they will in many cases read it themselves we've had every single librarian well at the middle school and high school for sure no elementary as well said that they have actually ordered books uh based on on reviews and then because of the mixed reviews they read them themselves and every single one had an example of a book that they did not shell that even

139after the purchase because they didn't feel like it was right for their school and in most cases at the elementary level in many cases they sent it to the middle school and middle school librarians sent it to the high school in those cases and at the high school level they just don't they don't shelter do we ever have a book like that where again there's clearly whether you agree with it or not it could be viewed as controversial it could be viewed as some people might have a problem with it some people may not do we refer to our manual and go talk to an administrator or other people or do we just order the book yeah i can't speak with certainty on every situation but i will say that they they i know the

140librarians have spoken with their principles about books and i think again there are books that they've chosen not to bring into our collections and there are books that have been in the collections that they have decided to pull for example when we have librarians who come in after other books may have been purchased by previous librarians but i think yeah i i get you i understand i just say that might be a possible gap yeah i understand where it comes from and i do think that um yeah well i mean let's be honest if you're if there's two librarians at the high school and they have to keep the lights on be there during the day check out books help students attend meetings and they're also ordering books and they're reading reviews in their reading

141books that to me seems a little bit of a bandwidth issue and that maybe we can't be as on point with our compliance as we like and it's nobody's fault they're not bad people but they've got a lot going on so there might be something to consider no i appreciate that i will say that i don't think any of our librarians would put a book on the shelf if they didn't feel comfortable with it going there so i get that but what i'm trying to say is that might be their opinion and are they checking with other people's opinions and i think that's where maybe a little checks and balance would be something to consider and then the categorization so how do we if we have a book that has explicit sexual material how do

142we categorize that and how do we control the access there are long and short answers to that and there probably would be different people would have different opinions on that as well i will say that in some of the information that i that i gathered around the review process and kind of how do reviewers categorize that it has more to do with is is it suggested or explicit and kind of recognizing that there is is not a one-way works for every one sort of situation yeah and i think that ultimately i think the the ultimate answer for you forgive me dr payne i think in terms of uh the spirit of the question that you you hit on it when you said before uh about you know about the the gaps that we make sure

143that we need to identify i mean ultimately i forget exactly what slide it was on dr painter there is not a current process in place where we delineate where what students check out which books uh in the library and i think that's the simplest answer at this point our current library process specifically at the high school is there is not a delineation in terms of students checking up on it would that be a fair thing to look at like if you went to other libraries in the county or here in kirkwood would they have that process i don't know but that's something we can't get yeah and they do i've looked at it so it might be that might again be another opportunity for us and again i'm not talking about just adult interest or

144adult material because that could be economics it could be social studies it could be anything that's going on in the world but when you see some of these books and the explicit sexual nature of them there at least has to be a flag that says we need to handle this with care and make sure that we're following policy and doing everything again it's not just throw it in the library or anybody can check it out i'll make sure that that's included in the work that we do moving forward okay thank you jennifer here's a question can you go ahead yeah um angie and then jennifer sorry okay thank you thanks so much um i know that the challenge would be that there are different parents who have different opinions there's different people who have different

145opinions but one thing that i think is very good again to repeat it i know so the subject matter guidelines because our librarians are really trained to do this and it even says in the handbook there that it should be appropriate for the subject area for the age emotional development ability level and learning style of the students for whom the materials are selected so every child is different and it's good and i know this for a fact that the librarians interact with those students and they can advise them but um it is difficult because the children are at different levels of course of all these different things and then the selection as well they they mention controversial issues and a balanced um collection so i think that it's already stated here and it's also stated

146that we the board delegate the responsibility for selection of the resources to the library materials department so i think that it's here and again we can put it in our policy to mr kavanaugh's point so that the board can oversee the policy of this selection of um criteria so that might just be another opportunity so yeah i do want to say i appreciate the challenge with many parents having different opinions about what is appropriate and as a public school it's a challenge to keep a balance and so i just want to say thank you to the librarians and your process and all we can do is be fair and have a process and follow the process so again we have a lot more policies to review so it looks like we're going to need more

147volunteers for the policy committee i just want to put that out there so but i'm always happy to review them and i know don't forget jennifer she's out there i won't forget you this time jennifer um okay is that are you good all right i don't like all these okay um miss miss painfort thank you uh thanks uh president andrews i did have a couple of questions dr painter um and i do agree with uh and uh miss bernardi's points about consistency across the buildings um i think that that's really important especially following the policy and procedures that you laid out um my first question is kind of along that line do we feel that the reviews being done in the libraries is consistent across the buildings and how is there like how what does

148that paper trail look like for those refuser documentation i believe it is consistent across the schools i do not believe there is a paper trail beyond just honestly knowing that they're professionals that are that are adhering to the policies and practices that we okay um and i guess my my thought after hearing some good questions and discussions is that there is some way to document without creating a lot of ownership or additional work for the librarians right understanding their professionalism and everything that if there is some way to check the boxes that those reviews were done or you know a peer review is done or something it might also be beneficial so just a thought okay thank you um my second question is um i think it was already answered so i will skip that

149but um is there i i was also surprised by the uh fallout destiny um and that parents could go into uh review uh the library is there an faq or something that we could create for parents um on how to use that where they access it um how they see that i just think it might be really transparent something very easy to access for parents about the libraries at the different levels i do not know the current faq that is certainly something we could create yeah just again another thought as after hearing the discussion um that thought it might be helpful so that's all thank you thank you you missed your point though sorry sorry to do this again um so where we are now is that there's uh there's a mechanism for parents to

150see every title that's in their student's library right and they can see every title that their student currently has checked out right and if they have if they believe that there's a title that's not appropriate for their student there's a mechanism where they can have a note placed and followed so that their students can't check out that book dell city has that capability we currently do not have the mechanism we have not advertised that mechanism to our families okay we have the technological ability to do that correct okay and then if a parent feels like a title is not appropriate for any student at that level there's a mechanism for them to challenge whether that book would properly correct the library and then if a librarian has or repeatedly shown before judgment or questionable judgment

151in this collection of materials such that a large number of books are being successfully challenged that would be a violation of one or more of our policies that would that could cause that librarian to be questioned or just abundant i would say if they're not following our policies if they are not following reviews or going through the review process then that would be a violation there may be some books that they could that have been that could be challenged and potentially removed that also may have had positive reviews during that process but yes all of our librarians they are supervised by their principals just as other teachers are and so there is a mechanism in place for support and if necessary um corrective action and so one one to mr kavanaugh's point one checkered balance

152on the library and how they're gonna have a large amount of training in the one checker balance on them is that the administration can hold them responsible in terms of having violent policy if they um you know are consistently selecting books that that haven't yeah just a couple things a couple clarifications so one is i appreciate that our librarians know our students that can't be what we rely on from an access perspective when you have 6 000 students and x amount of librarians so from a it's impossible for a librarian to know every student and then match them with the right book so we just gotta we gotta really make sure we're talking about processes not kind of anecdotal things uh secondly we also have to remember that the onus can't always be on the

153parents we have a reconsideration policy we have a way for them to go in and look we could educate them more on how to do that but at the same time we have to do our due diligence as leaders and professionals to do our work in complying with current policies and doing the right thing and not just assuming it's being done so i just want to be careful that we're not always going back to the parent saying well you can go into this app and go to the the thing and then you can you have to find all the bad books and then you're going to have to flag them that's not that's not the answer i just i just gotta say that we can't walk out of here putting more on the parents thank

154you i also so the other side of that just honoring student voice and towards them it sparked me uh mark when mr um when you mention the system where parents can see what kids check out other instances like sometimes kids are going through identity issues or want to read certain things that they don't want their parents to know about do we have things in place to protect those kids and their rights i'll i'll go ahead and answer that i want to make sure we we're very careful that it's all so dr banner again i apologize for uh for taking that on um i want to make sure that in terms of of the the conversation we have this evening is uh it's it's in the context of questions that we we have the answers for

155if we can at this point i do not know the answer to that i know that this group doesn't know the answer to that and what i want to make very clear is i want to make sure that we don't provide some type of answer or non-answer that makes it somehow sound like we're trying to hide things from parents of uh and their students and so we can look into that i think it's a it's a valid question but i want to make sure that we we do our uh do our due diligence and research uh before before we ask so the answer right now is i don't know um but that is certainly something that we can research again i think it falls under the category of updating our policies um and uh for

156the for the board's purposes looking at comparison districts for uh model policies that would address just that type of thing because certainly i believe in the in the year that issue has been uh has been addressed and and tackled because it's a valid issue but at the same time i want to be very very careful that we don't get into some type of speculative answer but we will get that information for you yeah i'm definitely not saying hiding being from uh parents but a lot of times kids get left out of the conversation their voice and so just making sure that having my students attend a private institution as compared to a public school i think being a public institution all parents are not created equal and they all have different opinions and guides for

157what is appropriate so i think again our process on policies and reviewing all of them and our procedures and making sure they're fair for all is probably the best way for all parents for all parents really quickly and this is more just kind of a procedural question when you're in the library and you mentioned earlier about books being stamped there's something at a different level is that is there software that does that or is that a physical someone stamps a book like is there is that in the system a sticker yeah no that is that is there's a there's a lot that our librarians do and volunteers and we can have them in our libraries uh between purchase and shelving there's lots of work that has with the barcoding with putting a cover on it

158to protect the book uh from the labels that are that are added by hand and so that's that's again that's a that's another piece to mr kavanaugh's point that's there's a lot that our librarians do in the library um to make sure that the collection is ready for kids and that stuff there that that's fine and it's more of like a there could be a simpler way that some of these things could be done with technology that maybe we're not tapping into that we may want to think about that could maybe help with some of these issues so i think one here after hearing everyone's questions i think one of the things that that leaves me kind of wondering is i'm still not sure how we are determining um whether something's age appropriate or not

159and so i think that that is part of um you know like i know we have these sources right and these sources tell us sometimes that it's for sometimes it's for adults but i i think that's part of what maybe we're we're kind of grappling with is like i you know we can't just leave it to you know i i think we need to understand how we're coming up with that developmentally appropriate um does that is so any so just to kind of wrap this up um dr holbrook you and i are gonna kind of piggyback okay so one obviously we've gotta look at our policies and again i want to reiterate that policy work you know this this is going to be a group effort right parents community members librarians we will follow a

160process for this whatever that process is we will be very transparent with that process some of the things that in that work that we need to consider what you know from classroom collection i like when gifts are given classroom collection um books that that don't have reviews kind of is there that checks and balance are we um showing the books to the administrators from our policy and then [Music] okay and then another thing that we talked about was um looking at kind of that that paper trail that kind of through through line of that another thing that we talked about is making sure that our parents are educated in how to search for library books because i think some of some of us are just learning that so kind of that faq piece but also

161that piece of you know the piece to if you have questions and then [Music] dr ulrich the only thing the only thing i have there is how student voice incorporated in the subject matter guidelines and then just how we determine if it is developmentally appropriate and then looking at that right now we currently um you know have adult interests but aren't aren't categorizing and yeah okay any other things that i missed i have a question what do we mean by subject matter matter of experts it's subject matter guidelines they're defined in the policy so be the criteria for selection of materials so dr painters put it up there it's 3.1.3 and this would um be controversial issues it would be the age and it would be how these resources are selected so it's the subject

162matter guidelines so the subject and then the guidelines for selecting it so these are things that we would put in our policy document and then it trickles down to the procedure that the district would administer from our board policy so currently our board policy does not have subject matter guidelines for either so i think it'd be very helpful to parents it's kind of an overview be helpful to the district the community as well and um there would define things for us but it's in our library manual currently yes it is it's in our manual energy so it doesn't mean that we can't be doing it from a procedural perspective today correct i think we are doing it we are doing it right here yeah but we can back it into policy right okay you know

163i think that that brings up i know that you have also mentioned controversial policy i don't oh yeah this is one of the subject matter guidelines it's just mentioned in the guidelines okay okay any further okay so doctor captain can i just say once again i just want to say thank you for the conversations tonight and i just want to reiterate because i'm sure we have librarians who are watching that these conversations about ways that we can improve are in no way saying that they haven't been doing their job yeah definitely they definitely i have reiterated to them that they have administrators support they have support they have the entire board of support in the work that they do everybody knows that this is a frankly a difficult time to be a librarian in this

164country and uh everybody is doing everything that they can in support of their kids knowing full well of course that our goal access everybody we understand the challenges that are out there and our librarians are making sure that we have books in our libraries that mean every kid's needs books that every kid can find a book that works for them knowing that some books just aren't for every kid and so that that's that's what our librarians are absolutely i back you up and i don't i don't think we've seen about the person by the process it's very important that our librarians understand we support them we we understand what they're going through it's a lot out there and we're just trying to get a grip on what what what it is we need to understand

165what we can help them with right yep and this is all part of governance work and as we you know we are committed to continuing this conversation and making sure that as this conversation um continues that you know voices are at the table we'll continue to have these you know voices at the table so with that being said you guys i just want to thank this board because these aren't easy conversations these are easy topics but we're asking the questions and we're doing doing good work and we will continue to work together and grow and learn motion to enter those sessions for the purpose of discussions of negotiation 021 subsection 9 and personnel 610 um zero two one subsection three and subsection thirteen two more seconds okay yes mr frost miss paintborn yes mr mr

166cavanaugh yes miss andrews yes okay at this time um we will go into clothes and we're gonna stay in here correct miss andrew so we can get yeah already on here okay don't fall asleep