LSR7 Board of Education Meeting - 05/04/23

001foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] oops all right I'm going to call this meeting to order can I have an adoption for the agenda uh board president I would actually move to amend the agenda to combine items 2.01 and 2.02 as I think they deal with similar topics that will be hard to differentiate as we want to talk about policy versus also dealing with the current book appeals do I have a second for that motion second Miss Linda kind of a roll call yeah board member Johnson board member Garrett vice president Foley hi board member Murdoch I remember Eslick aye president Sparks aye sorry we're combining the discussion around our book appeal and the policy on klb and then also we're going to have the

002discussion about the current appeals that are in place and so Dr Buck who is going to come for that presentation so with board policy klb um Miss uh Amy Taylor is going to come up and to the Mike if you would Amy kind of going to go over what we have and and and you've got some feedback I think also from from Librarians about is there any potential changes or anything you'd want to have in there so this is Amy Taylor she's in charge of Library Services throughout the district if there's a green light there you're good okay there we go I better get my glasses wouldn't be the quintessential librarian without my reading glasses right okay so uh we met as a department a while back to discuss K klbap and to make some

003recommendations for potential changes uh if in fact the board ever made a decision that they wanted to do that so what you're getting right now is the is some of the resources that we'll be using later on in the presentation in my presentation but for the klb piece I'm going to pass that around right now and as as she passes things around just let you know klb is a borderproof policy AP as administrative procedure we use to support it's not necessarily board doesn't vote on APS okay so our recommendations all kind of centered around the AP piece as well as the uh the um the form the reconsideration form that people fill up people fill out whenever they would like something reconsidered so you will notice that what we did is we took this information

004and we made adjustments using the suggestion mode so everything in pink and green are things that we changed or adapted and when we had our our conversations about this we decided that we really wanted to kind of focus on what was the intent of the policy and we wanted to make sure that our procedures reflected that intent and so that's why you'll see some of the different changes that we made would you like for me to go through each of these changes or do you guys want to look it over and then ask questions does anyone have a preference I think I think since we're getting this right now at least a summary of of these changes as you're going through them or the most impactful ones would probably be absolutely so one of the

005things that we wanted to make sure that we did is that we uh added some definitions so that it would be clear as to what the policy centered around and so you'll notice at the top we have added a series of definitions we also wanted to make sure that the policy again was for its intent so I would say I don't know in the last 10 or 15 years we haven't had but a couple of reconsideration forms submitted by a parent who had received or a parent whose childhood come home with a book that they were concerned about most of our reconsiderations were submitted this year or last year we had the one and they are from community members that have concerns that they they've learned about these books from different resources and lists and

006that kind of thing it's not coming from our students and our policy really kind of reflected that it was intended to be if if his parent has a concern about something that a student brought home from the library and so we added the definition of a directly affected person and indirectly affected person and then what district materials actually are and then we just kind of fine-tuned a little bit of the procedures um we made sure that we defined you know who um who would be serving on the Committees see what else did we do here oh we defined what professional uh see where that was at yes we defined exactly like who they would be contacting and what those staff members would be saying or how they would be acting or how they would be

007replying and then on the second page number six you'll notice that we changed um retained with without restriction and retained with restriction and just put retained and that's because really in our districts we don't have the ability to restrict within a particular building we just have the ability to restrict at levels so for example the only restriction that we can that we have is to say that if a book is owned at a high school level uh but not at a middle school or an elementary level then we do not check out that book to students at the middle school or the elementary level but that is a standard policy that's been in place and we've been practicing so uh to have that as a vote within this procedure really isn't applicable because it's already

008in practice if that makes sense so we made that adjustment um and then I believe I can't I don't know exactly where it's at right here but I believe we also changed so that the board if there was an appeal that it would be done within five days because that hadn't been noted in the policy or the procedures previously and then the form itself we made some adjustments to that form in order to make it more clear to the folks filling it out what it is exactly what that we're asking and we also um made some suggestions to to read the book um prior to to filling out a klb reconsideration form some things like that so we just made some adjustments to make it more clear and to make it more kid focused student

009focused we felt like the previous form that didn't necessarily do that and if I may so this is all with an AP but obviously if it's not supported by the policy klb it wouldn't work so if you go over to on your board docs the two policies new hit policies then you see the K at the bottom left the K series it says School community relations and you click that you can scroll down to find klb it is a very short board policy so I think the discussion that I heard is that some people would like to discuss do we need to change klb or keep it as is and so you can see it's only two short paragraphs only maybe what four sentences long and right now in that policy it doesn't talk about

010um appeal time or anything like that so the question is do we want to keep this policy as is or do we want to alter it because if we're going to alter the AP it needs to be supported by board policy so we would not change AP if it was in alignment with the actual board policy it's approved by the Board of Education is there any questions at this point on what some of the recommendations to klb AP are that we may want to see adopted in the official klb policy do I need to push my button or is this okay okay um I definitely think that we need a timeline um uh like uh there's a couple of points of timeline in here but I I like the point in here number 11 which

011is on I think it's the second page that references um the Restriction of not challenging a book once every but once every three years I think we definitely need something there whether it's three years or not but I I like that we have that and I don't know if we need to carry that over into something that's in policy as well because I don't know how deep someone would dig into a procedure to determine whether you know they can um challenge a book again or if they're still not happy with the decision so I think that definitely needs to be in there um I'm uh number eight that's on this as well um I'm not sure how I feel about three days I feel like that's a really short amount of time um but regardless

012whatever we put in there as a time limit I do think there needs to be a time limit three days might be a little short but I also think that we might just want to clarify just for semantics purposes maybe business days or what the type of days we're talking about that way it's clear and someone can't even if you enforce this procedure then someone can't come back and say well it was three days including the weekend or whatever you can there's just something finite there that makes it very clear um those were my two points right now so um I'm not sure if those I definitely think that the challenge within a certain time frame of once every three years I think that should be in policy with the recommendation of the response time

013don't know if that needs to be in policy or not but um appointed discussion for the rest of the board for sure well remember Eslick I know you said number eight gotcha anyone else I can't reach it you need to move my thing there so sorry president Sparks otherwise I would hit that um one um I agree on number eight I think five business days seems like a reasonable kind of thing that way you were just saying it's a week essentially to make sure that we would do that so from a wording perspective I think that that that works just fine I agree also on number 11 that we need to have a time frame issued with that under number three and definition so I apologize for skipping around what is policy 4600 I think

014that that may be a a copy and paste carryover from a different from a different just from using from definition using definitions yeah so it's so we have we have a policy about selecting learning resources and it may be that that number is incorrect and I would assume I mean if we're if we're trying to look at other school districts and try to mirror on two other school districts and stuff like that I I get some people use thousands and two thousands as they're probably as their policy serial numbers okay um so I just we would want to clean that up obviously just a little bit here remember Murdoch real quick can we make sure that we're identifying what what particular pieces we're talking about um so for those that are kind of still looking

015yeah sorry I'm on number three number three definitions I apologize yeah number three of definitions on the first page um we just need to clean that up to make sure that it corresponds to our policy letters and and um within there um for for our selection of learning resources we just want to make sure that those go together um I think the the the other question kind of um that I would have you know just from a policy standpoint um at this particular point and I I get here in just a second if we're going to also be talking about how to handle appeals we're probably going to end up coming back to this just a little bit probably as well so I do want to I'm going to save some of those comments here

016for just a second when we talk about the media review committees and stuff like that that we're going to do in terms of five members and who those committee members are going to be and things like that I noticed in the reviews that we already have that there were times that we had committee members who were absent not able to participate and all of a sudden that number dwindles pretty low is there a benefit to going to seven or five with two alternates that maybe you don't use even the two alternates kind of things so that we always make sure that there is a broad range and that we actually are hitting the people within the Committees that we're supposed to meaning if a student wasn't there and they were the only student now we

017don't have the student voice associated with that particular thing I think it would be wise to make sure that we have something essentially as you know that we we have a backup to making sure that each group actually is represented within the review process so that if there is an absentee or they can't finish the thing I think that would be wise within um number five there and for now that's that's kind of all the comments I have on on that one and I'll just interject that generally well I shouldn't say generally we've only really done this one other time in the last 10 or so years and we tried to make sure we had a larger group a larger team and this year just because of the sheer volume of committees um we we

018went to the five so but I concur I I'm just going to ask the follow-up question from um board member Murdoch was there ever a time where there was a minimum number of individuals where you all said okay we only have two or we only have one person that's in this group that we are gonna not be able to move forward in this process so in terms of this this last round of teams so no because we ended up I think that there was only one time where we ended up with three and each time most of the time there were a couple of exceptions people who uh couldn't come at the very last minute but all of those people that knew in advance submitted an initial vote as well as their comments that they

019would like shared with the committee if the committee ended up in a discussion so we were able to still harness their input and use their input and so we didn't end up canceling any committees most had all five or at least input from all five any other comments or questions at this time go ahead vice president thank you I apologize if I missed this uh when we first received this but who put this together this particular document so this was the library Department and then I did have a question on a second page item number six um in regards to removing retrained or retained with restriction um so you mentioned that high school books aren't checked out to middle middle school but I have heard concerns where people see a book they think that it

020is inappropriate for middle school but acceptable for high school So currently that book might only be in high school and so they would vote you know to keep something with restriction because they want to keep it there if you remove that is there anything that would keep a middle school from just acquiring the book just our standard practice so our policy is that we read reviews and we determine whether or not a book is is appropriate for its level based upon those reviews as well as based off if we have the opportunity to have read the book but also just professional judgment and concern so of all the books that had been in the first round that had been challenged uh only one was in a middle school and the rest were all just in

021high school and they had been in the district I'm going to speak off cuff here I think probably most of them an average of at least 10 years because a lot of the titles were pretty old and in those 10 years that they had been here nobody had purchased them for a middle school or elementary school so professional judgment and and police and our own procedures kind of protect that from having happened thank you all right any other questions before we move forward okay Dr Buck you want to call up the next person sorry hit the button to call it myself uh before we call up the next person so what I'm hearing is there's a couple of things that maybe look to clean up that Amy could look at but there's two things that

022if you were interested in we would have to write into board policy klb and then bring for you for a vote at a future board meeting and that would be time limit on re-challenging a book that's bored because right now it's board decisions final was it final for 80 years I mean or is it final for three years that's kind of the question I'm hearing and two time limit of appeals um we often see 10 and 30 days those are two numbers we see often it's usually business days but there are some in calendar days all right Dr Carlson so it depends so getting that uh feedback will want that at the end of this so that we can put something up you'll have thought time then next board meeting we can see if if

023the board wants to move forward and make those changes I didn't hear anything else that would impact board policy and I'm looking at the lawyer to see if there's anything else you heard that would probably need to be in board policy Joe would you agree those are the two things that probably needs to be in board policy and time both of them are time limits one on can you re-challenge it so for example if somebody challenged a book this year can they challenge it again the very next month or or is it never challenge 80 years from now or is it they could challenge if it's more than three years from now that that's kind of the numbers I kind of heard thrown out Boardman wrestler thank you I I do have one more to

024potentially add um if the rest of the board finds this uh useful there's a lot of time and dedication put into this procedure on describing who can file an appeal to begin with so it might be appropriate to add that reflection in the policy as well to spell out in policy who were allowing to appeal books to begin with OR curriculum literature whatever or member Murdoch yeah I was just going to say on the bottom of that policy Dr Buck one of the things that we list there is the superintendent or designee will create the procedures um from a from a true flexibility standpoint um if we make those these timeline kind of changes right based on that particular language it would also mean at least it reads to me like we would also be

025able to if we needed to make Minor Adjustments also to the AP form as we go through we could also be doing that because you would have the the authority to make those particular changes since it's a procedural change is that accurate 100 for example this year since we had 90 challenges it was very different than last year we created One Challenge right so one challenge we created one committee well one committee couldn't do 90 books so that's why we created two rounds and we had 148 people I think and associated in the first round and I and I just wanted that to be vocal that there will be times if things like this arise that the procedure is going to have to be flexible enough for us to be able to actually make progress

026on things okay all right and I think it's also important just to note that our job as a board is to set policy and to allow Dr Buck and his staff to be able to sit procedure and so as we navigate through this and I would say I don't want us to walk away thinking this is our final opportunity to be able to look at this as a board to be able to change policy but if possible if we could possibly have some of those recommendations or changes so that legal Dr Buck can also review to give us feedback if there's any type of challenges with maybe some of the changes that we want so that we could possibly have a vote prepared for May the 18th if we're going to make any changes does

027that sound good Dr butt yeah so we'll have I'll try to put in a draft policy those three things and just make something up to start with so I'll pick a number for a time limit for example but then that that board meeting then you can change move that goal wherever you want and we'll take a vote on that so we're not taking a vote today it's a work session but I'm hearing three topics to include we'll put something in your starting point then after we make a motion we can discuss it and you guys can vote on which direction you want to go does that sound reasonable to everyone good all right all right thank you Miss Taylor we have two people signed up or not signed up in your package so I don't

028know if Matt good and Beth groom if you want to come forward at all I see Matt and Matt there do you want to come separate do you want to come together were you wanting the the presentation about the the process the book review process at this time or do you yes that's that's what we're looking for next and so these are two members of committees one of the requests I had was hey what did they receive what do you know what were they given um can they walk us through the process so both Matt and Beth were members of the committee um of review committees um I don't know what books they read they read two books each I think um so they're going to walk you through what that was like um for

029an education piece if you have questions about that because that might also flavor your it's no longer an ex-gen item previously an ex agenda item of talking about reviews and how you want to go forward so okay so I'll start by turning it over to uh Beth Grimm and Matt good they can kind of give their uh their thoughts on the process and then I'll follow up with kind of a detailed timeline of what we did as well as if if you would like a a walk through of a mock meeting so you can kind of see what it felt like to be a part of one of the book review meetings thank you hi Matt good I teach at West and I'm having this wild moment where I talk with a board member I

030taught a board member and I'm currently teaching a board member's child in my classroom over the years I've actually served on two committees I served last year with the one book Challenge and then I served this year on a committee that looked at two books I'm Beth groom I taught Ela for 21 years I'm now broadcasting teacher at Summit Lakes Middle School and I was asked to serve on This I Believe by my building level librarian and I was I received emails with from I think Amy I believe was Amy and I said of course yes I would love to be a part of this and so our email is kind of like I don't remember exactly how what book I was selected for but I am a middle school teacher so I believe I

031was selected because I was the one Middle School book on there and so initially we received a copy of the text and that a challenge form has been filed with the district we do not receive that challenge form in advance because the goal is for us to read it as objective Educators who are evaluating whether something has a place in the appropriate level collection so the pr the pump is not primed in advance in terms of what's been objected to or what could potentially be objectionable and we read it with an open mind as to whether this belongs in a collection or not and we have a time frame in which we get to read the the text or texts um we'll see next step well we've received the books is that where you want

032to go there okay so um I as a former English teacher I sticky noted everything I could possibly think of from all different perspectives I really deeply dug into the text the other one was a graphic novel I did that as well and I didn't talk to anybody about it I just made my own decisions this is a book I had read when it first came out so I believe it was at least probably around 10 years ago and I hadn't read it in 10 years so as you greet older and change and your filters of Life get changed you read things so I um didn't discuss anything with anyone I just read this I had all the notes I wrote some thoughts down I waited for the next email and then we attended the

033meeting the meeting was at Lee's Summit High School and we I don't know if we want to get into that yet but we were I was in the meeting with a diverse group of people and the procedure was that there was Megan who read the script we had voted once and you had a chance to explain yourself we had a two-minute time frame and everyone listened to everyone it was very professional I enjoyed the conversation in fact I really did and we voted again we had a second book we all voted we discussed everyone had a voice everyone spoke I don't believe anyone didn't say anything we all had things to add we voted again both of those books were retained at the middle school level and then we left and that the process itself

034the librarian that facilitates is completely neutral you read a script that walks you through the process and the procedure they've thought through everything in terms of the structure so the student voice speaks first so that that student would not be intimidated if the adults in the room spoke first and then might color their perspective I believe then the Community member speak second for similar reasons we want to hear that voice without having Educators who you know may have other things in mind when they give their perspective and then the District employees who are represented on the committee speak at the end of that sharing session that Beth talked about um in terms of you know how we read it I may look at it similarly but I read it not just as an educator but

035I'm also the parent of three children who attend school in this district and so I'm thinking if my sons had this on a shelf in Lee's Summit schools and and brought it home that they checked it out would I be okay with them reading the content of that not just as a teacher who wants it available but as a parent who wants my child to be able to access that material in a public school library ask me questions I'll I will before before you go you did not know your committee members until you showed up to committee oh no they did not know who else was reading the book unless somebody happened to be walking by reading it I guess maybe but they did not know who else out of all these committees twenty thousand

036nine hundred nineteen pages and we asked them to log their hours they spent on this and it was 1983.41 hours I don't know how we're getting 0.41 but I guess we went down to the minute for some folks but oh nearly 2 000 hours spent on twenty thousand Pages reading it reading materials and then conferring as a committee yep that's correct just to kind of navigate through this conversation let's start with are there any procedural questions with how they explained the process that they went from being selected for the committee all the way to how they gave the recommendation to the district because at the at this point um it has not come to the board of what they're recommending well we do have it what I reckon what the recommendations were are there any

037questions about that peace all right is there any questions about anything that they shared all together I just want to say thank you to the committee thank you to you too for taking the time to review the books because that's a lot of time you guys spent so thank you you're welcome all right Boardman brass lick yes also that appreciate both of you I'm curious um could you just kind of walk us through what kind of considerations were discussed um when you were in your group sessions kind of talking through if you can I'm assuming it's not confidential I don't want to put you guys in a bad spot I just I'm curious like how that conversation went what kind of considerations people were batting around when they were talking about whether to retain the

038book or not retain the book since mine was middle school I'll speak the sixth grade just the addition of the sixth grade because that also throws in another level of layers of thinking there's a obviously a big difference we had talked a lot about the rights of the library policy the rights of a reader one of them is to refuse a book that you know that is inappropriate for you so it's about self-selection and about it's you don't have to read the book if you don't want to read the book it's like if you don't like it change the channel kind of what you tell your kids on TV and that's we did talk about that yeah we we look at the criteria that was used for initial placement in the collection to begin with

039right and so we look at the professional journals reviewed that that were used and the placement recommendation from those professional journals and professional Library associations and then the conversation is based around you know is this particular content um such that this recommendation would no longer be valid as appropriate placement for this text and so in terms of um like you know there's no discussion before the meeting starts and and and once it starts it's all fairly objective in terms of okay well let let's consider this as if it's in good faith and then um knowing that we're going to consider it as if it's in good faith do we think that uh what they're objecting to me actually violates or makes it a bad fit in terms of placement in the collection I'm I'm just

040going to add on that as far as the procedure so if we did not vote to retain on the same levels we had more choices and so we everyone every person that talked we had two whole minutes to talk about why we thought the way we thought and then we did come to consensus because the concerns that were voiced and raised were thoroughly discussed and so if there was someone that had their two minutes it was like the next person didn't just say yeah what they said they would have other thoughtful conversations that things that I had actually enjoyed because I hadn't even considered maybe oh okay now I can see it through that way so I do feel like the process itself of who we had on our committee and how we were able

041to voice our concerns was extremely it was extremely professional and it was very it was very neutral and the most the most powerful voices you hear from are the you know who our professionals have put first right it's the students and then it's the the Community member um the parent of a kid um who who is not looking at this Through The Eyes of like I'm a teacher or what I want the kid to check this out and read it they're they're as our actual constituents as Educators um they're the voices that we we hear from first and hear their perspective any other questions at this time all right I just have two I just want to make sure were you two in the same group nope okay and then my second one is at

042what point did you all receive the comp the um I want to say Complaint Form or the challenge form I did not see it till that day okay like it's part way through the process so we're given the procedures and then we get a packet that has both the a reconsideration form and then like the criteria that was used for when it was acquired for the collection to begin with and you're given a few minutes then to review your text and your notes in light of both the information for why the text was purchased and then the the request for reconsideration and then once you look at the request for reconsideration and you saw the pages that were labeled that were of concern were those things highlighted for the group to kind of focus on

043those pages to kind of address the exact complaint you speak two years ago so the page numbers were different on each level because the book that so it didn't really translate well to that but there was when we read the what I don't know what the form is called that thing we read it and we decided like oh it's probably they're talking about it somewhere in this five pages so let's talk about that scene because there's a couple of you know scenes that happen in there yeah so the resource that most of the requests for reconsideration of used has a particular edition of the book that references page numbers that of course may not match um ours so it was a similar and I would say it's not it's not sort of a like oh

044let's dog ear this and I'll go look at this it it actually sort of happens organically once you're in this conversation where everybody's sharing their perspective okay well this scene was an area of concern let's think about it and let's think about um you know does this make us want to reconsider placement at this level one last question I have before we move forward in the conversation um when you all were going through the process was and now that this process is over at least the first phase of that process have there anything that's been said from either one of you since you were two different groups that you would say different from your group to your group was there anything that either one of you have said that y'all would question like oh that

045didn't happen in my group no no the process is really standardized I would say even from you know serving last year on the one to this year that that administrative procedure is is following fairly scrupulously scripted and it was almost like I apologize but I'm going to read from a script because I want everyone to hear the same message okay 44 different meetings you want the language and the approach be the same absolutely okay thank you so to help out with that Amy do you mind Amy started every meeting with about a 30-minute kind of orientation really before they actually started their work do you want to explain what you did during that 30 minutes yeah yeah absolutely I'm going to go ahead and go through kind of like the lead up as well so

046at least I have this presentation so I'll skip through it pretty quick and then I'll get to the part that you're talking about okay um so January 17th we received the reconsideration forms and we established our process and our community member criteria so because we were going to have so many people there was quite a volume of numbers we wanted to make sure we had an established criteria and so we did that right away on the very next day we started our call for adult volunteers that was done by Dr Barger she sent out a requests for volunteers from community members she sent a request to the principals to find teachers in each of our comprehensive schools with library programs at them and then also to um to the people here at SLC so we

047were looking for district-wide leaders and then that at that time too we had a secondary librarian meeting where I shared with him the klb forums share where we were at told them what the process was going to be we were going to establish 2018 teams each team would read two books and then the criteria that we were using for selecting committee members we did choose to focus to ask our book club members to serve as our student members or we asked for volunteers from our book clubs primarily because we knew we were going to be asking people to read quite a large number of pages in a fairly short amount of time so we were looking for students who we knew had the capacity to do that so the very next day our Librarians at

048the secondary schools sent out requests for book club members to participate most of that was done either through schoology or through email um Lee Summit West just so happened to have a book club meeting on the 20th so they got the most volunteers because they met almost immediately after that initial conversation we also at that time were Fielding questions from committee community members and other teachers who wanted to be involved in the process but weren't eligible so for example Elementary School teachers would reach out or we would have community members whose maybe their child had heard about it and they wanted to observe and so we sent them all a standard email the same email that said we're sorry this was the pre-established criteria maybe in the future we appreciate blah blah blah so you

049can see that a lot of this information I know is hard to read on the screen so you have a folder I believe it's called reconsideration materials or something like that where you can see some of the different letters and things that we sent then we sent an initial volunteer letter asking or thanking people for a volunteering and then asking if they had any preferences regarding their placement did they want books that were audiobooks did they want um was there any material that they didn't want to read were there topics that because we all know reading something and then processing that yourself or talking with a trusted individual is very different than reading something that maybe is a is a topic that is concerning or disconcerting to you and then having that conversation with a

050group of of strangers and so we asked if there was any of any any topics people wanted to avoid and then I began pairing books I paired them based off of page number format so some of the books were written in verse so they would read a little bit faster and also Series so we paired all the books and then we placed the volunteers based off of what kinds of of considerations they asked us to make then we didn't answer your question right there I'm sorry were there anyone that asks for any considerations we had several people ask for audiobooks adults and kids in fact more adults than kids and then we had several people who contacted me about content that maybe was upsetting to them after thank you then we distributed the books we

051gave them an introductory letter which you will see in your packets as well as kind of a statement of purpose it was just a statement that said these books are library books that are Choice books we gave any relevant notes which for example we had several books that were in a series and so if you got number three in a series we gave you a summary of books one and two so that you didn't go in cold you kind of knew what to expect and then also we um had several books that were there were four that we felt met weeding criteria and so that's also known as deselection in the library World these are books who were maybe dated and by dated I don't just mean old but I mean they were dated in

052terms of maybe their content so for example maybe they talk about jordash jeans being the in jeans I just dated myself maybe they were talking about flip phones or those kinds of things so uh the we had made a recommendation that three books be weeded because they were only owned in one building they they had dated material we were having difficulty even finding copies to purchase and then one we recommended be weeded because the information within that book was no longer accurate it was a memoir that was written about a man who had been convicted of a rape and when he um there's been DNA evidence since the book was written that exonerated him and so we pulled that book as well or we recommended that that book be weeded as well we did ask

053the teams who had been assigned those books if they would vote on whether or not they approved of our recommendation or not so that was included in that material as well we also gave those people who wanted audiobooks the information about how to access the uncheck out the audiobooks the fourth through the ninth we had the book team members read collectively so you know we had I can't remember what the number was I think Dr Buck mentioned it like 19 000 Pages or something and that those were read by five people so collectively there's about a hundred thousand pages that were read approximately 1700 hours and each Committee Member spent approximately 12 hours but we did have one committee that spent probably 18 hours reading um and all of that is based off of a

054study about reading time we kind of averaged that out on the third we did send the emails to those people that were not going to be able to attend so you had asked about did we cancel if they couldn't attend um we people that we knew previously couldn't attend we sent them the materials that would be shared in the book review meetings and made sure that they were able to give input and then we held the meetings following the meetings I did a send out a survey asking how people felt uh in hindsight I should have done that the day of the meeting and I didn't and so I didn't get nearly as much feedback as I would have liked but this is one of the the last question that was on that survey was

055the voting process fair and unbiased and you can see that everybody that responded said they agreed so if you would like I can lead you through what the meetings looked like so you can get a feel for that or I can kind of give an abbreviated version how would you prefer I do this next to the board what do you prefer go ahead absolutely okay I would like to ask a question first um you mentioned the books that were weeded and then the members had an opportunity to vote on that what was the result of that and all committees voted to accept the librarian's recommendation to weed the books thank you any other questions before she go through the abbreviated abbreviated yes absolutely okay so um I will read the scripts but not all of

056it how's that okay so thank you so much by the way we're doing this over Goldilocks and the Three Bears because I assume that most of you guys know the story okay so thank you so much for being a part of this process it is very important that we get input from all stakeholder holders on this important issue we are grateful for your time and attention let's begin with introductions and at that point I introduced myself or whatever the whoever was facilitating introduced themselves and then we had the group introduce themselves starting with the student we always started with the student to try to help them feel comfortable today's instructions are being read to maintain consistency among all 28 teams as previously stated should a request for written information from these proceedings be made the

057district would be under obligation to provide them however voting will be done anonymously to maintain a courteous and professional discussion it is important that we follow certain guidelines in this meeting we will and then we listed some guidelines some standards that we would follow then we shared with him the agenda which you'll see up here on the screen that agenda included showing a short video about our selection process some information about how uh or some information about the reconsideration materials that we were handing out to them and we would take an initial vote have a discussion if necessary if the initial vote was unanimous then we moved on to making a recommendation if it was not unanimous if it was split then we had a conversation and then we moved on to another vote at

058that point I showed a video and it says board policy can be difficult to navigate especially in terms of how it impacts actual practice therefore three of our high school librarians have prepared a short video which outlines the district's selection policy and how it actually works the video is about six minutes long I can share it with you now or you can watch it's available on the district's website okay it just kind of outlines how we make our selections what criteria kind of influence why we choose the books we choose and then also what professional reviews and those kinds of things that we use then we went on to reviewing the materials so in your packets which I believe all of you guys have a packet labeled Goldilocks in your packets you will find the

059book reviews with circulation stats this first document you see includes the professional reviews discussed in the video as well as some circulation statistics be sure to read the note below the circulation statistics the next document you see is the rights and responsibilities poster that hangs in our secondary libraries it is also used when students are given direct instruction regarding their rights as a reader now the the document that you see is what's hanging in our secondary libraries our elementary libraries have an elementary version that hangs in theirs as well next you will see the definition of pornography included are the dictionary and the legal definition in the state of Missouri all three pieces listed in the legal definition must be present for material to be considered pornography next you will see the reconsideration forms these

060are the forms that were submitted by the patrons asking that these books be reconsidered and then you will see the board policy this is we've also included board policy that directly relates to the selection and reconsideration of Library materials as well as why Library materials may be removed please take 10 to 15 minutes to look through the provided materials at which time the committee's members looked through the materials there were sometimes questions about what something meant or especially in in terms of the retain or retain with restriction that kind of thing then we gave them the voting directions we understand that we are asking you to do something very difficult suspending our own bias and Prejudice can feel uncomfortable there are five guidelines and board policy related to removing library books we read those five

061um guidelines and then we said we are dealing with the final guideline therefore when voting consider the following two statements from board policy when judged as a whole do you believe this book meets its stated purpose and placing principle above personal opinion and reason above Prejudice do you believe this text contributes to a comprehensive collection appropriate for the users of the library on your ballot you will see three options vote to retain vote to remove vote to be retain with restriction currently the LSR 7 libraries can restrict books by limiting High School circulation to only staff or high school students or limiting Middle School circulation to only staff or middle school and high school students in fact these titles are already restricted in that way lsr7 high schools do not lend books to Elementary or

062middle schools unless those schools already own the book therefore a vote to retain with restriction would be a vote to maintain the status quo in terms of our lending practices as well as restrict middle and elementary school libraries from purchasing these titles in the future then people voted and we went on through the process of making a recommendation have any questions about our process remember Eslick thank you I do have a couple of questions um I was just reviewing the portion of the AP uh with regard to the selection process um was there any consideration uh given to elaborating a little bit more on number five in this procedure to lay out a little more clearly the expectation that parents or community members have to be involved in CAC or Parent Academy in order to

063be considered because that was the rationale that was given to people who wanted to participate but weren't permitted to so in terms of I'm sorry but just everybody's on the same page remember that's like what were you at sorry I'm on the AP and number five there was some conversation around people who wanted to participate but weren't permitted to participate so I was just asking if there maybe could be or whether there should be clarification around how those committees are selected with regard to you know community members or participation in other committees we didn't discuss making that clarification when we started talking about making the edits the determination to make to to ask for volunteers for those from those particular groups was because we were sending out such a wide net we knew we were

064going to have a lot of people that we were going to have to be recruiting and we wanted to try to make sure that we were pulling from a diverse group already as opposed to me trying to have having to figure that out so that's why we made that choice but we didn't necessarily discuss that in terms of making any changes to um AP but certainly we could do that okay um just the only reason I'm asking the question is just because um you know this situation has obviously been very public very controversial and the way I understand CAC and Parent Academy to function is CAC is by application only parent Academy was by selection only so from the outside it kind of looks like the Committees were already for lack of a better term

065cherry-picked from people who were already kind of involved with the district and really supportive not to say that we sh you know that we should pick unsupportive people I just mean when we're talking about like making sure that we get diverse perspectives that's just an outside perspective that might arise from kind of picking from people who are already you know kind of recycled through participation so I don't know that it should be in the AP but if that's going to be going forward if that's kind of our process then it just might be something to consider to clarify that way it's already in our procedures and you know anybody who raises their hand they're not told something different that isn't already kind of communicated up front so just just a thought thank you yeah if

066I if I could president bordock sorry I mean Project Sparks board member Sparks um actually board member Murdoch he had his book he did have okay there you go Euro you go well I was just gonna before we I don't want her Escape before thinking her so I just looked it up she has been logging her hours just on this topic and it does not include today because I'm sure she's done things today this week 199 and a half hours she has spent on book challenges this semester um and she helped organize uh you know just just the first round 18 865.70 of purchases of books for the Committees because we do not pull books off shelves during review here so we have to get additional books by the way when we do those if

067the book is kept we do return those then the the readers who you just saw earlier they don't get to keep those books they go onto the library shelf so um if we only had two copies but we had to buy seven because there are some committees had seven members um now we have nine copies on shelves so just gonna let you know that because it's paid for with District dollars so it's going to be a district bookshelf Library shelf if we keep them so um kudos to Amy for doing a lot of work 199.5 hours not a small number and I'm sure it's over 200 by this point you um and I should clarify that that number the the dollar amount includes subs and a variety of things but books is a large portion

068of it yes board member Murdoch I have a couple of questions for you just from your library background so not even necessarily all that specific here number one with this policy do you believe that it should apply to elective books within our libraries whereas the policy intended to be instructionally based meaning as a former teacher if I'm going to assign materials within a light to my students and they're going to go to the library to look up resources the policy applies if I'm going as a student to just check out a book is this what the policy was intended to cover and I know that's putting you on the spot so I apologize so I so I would say that the policy is I am supportive of the policy of of having some sort of

069of way of checking to make sure that books are appropriate for readers what I am most supportive of or what I would like to see is I would like to see it used when students have checked out a book and those students and their parents have concerns and then I would like to see it followed in the path that it's supposed to be followed in in terms of my child's checked out a book I'm going to go and talk to the person who has purchased the book so that's that's what I think in terms of that the policy um libraries are intended for free choice and in order to have free choice you have to have access and so I can understand where folks may be concerned about materials that their kids can read but

070it is free choice and so we don't make anybody read any book in the library so I'm going to follow up with two more number one under our current policy would it be is it essentially possible that we would have to form a Review Committee if somebody wanted to challenge Harry Potter because it has sorcery yes now but the board policy does State and I don't want to say exactly because I can't I don't have it in front of me to quote it but there is a piece in there about we don't just pull books because it offends our personal values or morals I I get I get that okay yeah we're on the same page there so that's okay um I think that in this whole thing we've done that but that's not towards

071the librarians um my other my other question in regards to this is so we have a policy um that I'm gonna I would argue is is not necessarily for elective um checkouts and stuff like that can you give me the difference between how we check out books within our high school middle school libraries versus what people would go do to check out books at the Mid-Continent Library is there much of a difference no well can you kind of clarify what about this how about this sorry are there more restrictions for somebody to have a library card at Mid-Continent and go and check out a book then the Restriction that they would have from an age level capacity within our district I if I'm understanding your question correctly my answer would be no I mean neither

072the public libraries nor the school libraries Place restriction within so for it but and I and I'm sorry because I'm not doing a gotcha on this I'm actually trying to articulate a point um here in that a middle school student can go into a Mid-Continent Library and check out the exact same book that is available to the high schools but that we have restricted only to the high school level is that accurate that would be I should just be more blunt here yes that would be accurate right we have more restrictions actually within our libraries than we do if you go to the Midcontinent libraries because we hear that argument all the time go to the library and check it out yourself in the Midcontinent Public Library okay um my last my last Point here

073um in regards to what you were actually describing as um in terms of the process and stuff that we ended up following here the initial com the vast majority of complaints are from one person we need to acknowledge that we already have those but the majority of the forms that we have under the appeal sorry the appeals that we currently have going is is is one person we need to be willing to acknowledge that under that did all of those complaints actually start with step one under this particular process did the complainant actually talk to the librarian about each one of the books they complained about in fact that's why I pushed the button if I could answer for you Miss Taylor um no um none of the six people who filled out challenges have

074kids at the level that the books were um uh and my understanding is anyway so they would not have had a librarian to go to so that's why they came straight to my level that would be the preferred way it's not in policy though so there's nothing precluding them from coming to my level first but obviously we always want to start at the at the site first is always the in any topic you want to start the building side first but but that's that's kind of my point here and I'm not trying to argue with you on this right that that is my point here is that the policy itself and then the AP policy that we have as a result of challenges it's supposed to follow a certain format you talk to the librarian

075or you talk to the teacher whichever right in this particular case because they're elective books anyway if they're elective books then you would be going and talking to the librarian they have control over their particular library that isn't followed so why do we then go to the next steps of the policy when we didn't even start with a conversation with the Librarians in which the books are housed they didn't have a library and that they are assigned to that's why they didn't have kind of answers my question I got it so yeah I'll be quiet for a little bit here there may have been some email exchange at some point but not about and even that I can't say for sure but not about like my child's checked out this book and I have a

076concern which is how the procedure is supposed to go the intent of the policy yes any other questions at this time vice president Foley um in regards to the the books that were we did there's one in particular that stands out to me because I was aware of this book being pulled and unpublished because of the false claims that were made against a person um was that weeding process did that just occur because of these challenges or is there some kind of a system within the libraries that could have alerted to say hey these are books that you might want to consider you know like how how does that process work is does this only come when someone brings it to your attention or what's that look like so usually well our libraries go through

077weeding regularly so every every year and in fact I believe there was a a poll earlier this year of how many books we had weeded over the course from like January through whatever and it was a lot of books we we read all the time constantly um in terms of that particular book there's not really a place where Librarians send out and say hey here's a list of books that we're reading you might think about weeding it as well so that that doesn't necessarily happen um so that was one that we recognized and realized after having gotten the list generally those things are caught the next time we weed so would that have been caught the next time we were going through that section yes but at but we hadn't gotten to that section or

078the libraries hadn't gotten to that because we we bisection oftentimes so we'll go through you know fiction or we'll go through the zeros or speaking Library jargon now or the 700s or whatever and so that section hadn't been gone through or had been missed so presumably it would have been caught the next time thank you any other questions okay so um thank you so much thank you is there anyone else Dr Buck that is prepared to speak no I think the the next topic then for us is um I have three to Do's but the next topic I think is do you how do you want to handle appeals you have 45 appeals right now that is correct and so with that um segue um let's start talking as a board on um things that

079we've heard things that we know we know that we've been provided all of the appeals we know that they have boxes and things like that for us to all kind of discuss talk about and I would like to see us come to a consensus on how we're going to move forward we do know that there is an additional set of appeals that will be coming our way as a board and I just kind of want to make sure that we're all on the same page and that we know how we're going to move forward so that also Dr Buck knows how the board desires us to move forward as a district so with that being said is there anything that someone wants to open and start with board member Murdoch I don't mean to dominate

080the mic go ahead sir people feel feel free to to step on me here that's fine when I talk for too long I'm going to start with a question on this one which is out of the 45 appeals is there any book that this particular complaintant did not appeal from the original complaints meaning did they appeal every book that they complained about initially how many did they not appeal I don't remember the number exactly it's very few like three or four maybe I'll look it up and okay that's that's fine okay it is unreasoned first off I'm just going to start with a very blunt statement this is an abuse of the policy flat out this is an abuse of the policy um challenging some material okay I I can respect that but this is

081an abuse of the policy and we know it because we have an entire second round of reviews that are getting undertaken at this particular point and I would venture a guess and speculate that we would get we will get appeals from this one as well it is unreasonable to expect us as a board unreasonable is not the right word if it's an abuse of the policy to then say that we're going to try to review 45 books over the course of however many months that is a um an abuse of the system and it is not an appropriate use of everyone's time and I say that knowing having read now the original complaint forms and reading the appeal forms knowing that we're being asked as a board Now to repeat to go through an appeal

082process read the entire book which this the complaintant has not done and admittedly has not done on every single form didn't read the entire book so words now supposed to come together as the group of seven of us read the entire book have a discussion and then override or being asked to override okay the recommendations of a group of people who have already done more than the complaintant initially did and so from my perspective and I get it people I'm sure I will get messages that this is for some reason I don't think we should hear the appeals and the reason I believe that is they didn't follow the process to begin with um it's not designed for elective materials to begin with there's a limitation listed right at the bottom of the policy um

083in terms of what this policy is even supposed to be for because it flat out says no parent or group of parents have the right to determine the reading viewing or listening materials for students other than their own children it says it in the policy it's spelled out that it's supposed to be or the intent of it is for instructional materials if we want to hear 45 appeals I mean I guess we could do two a month right and take three years or years to actually do this but my personal recommendation is or what I my opinion on this is is I believe the board should be taking the recommendations of the committees as a whole and say we accept the recommendations of the Committees for these 45 books and we move on to business

084that actually is stuff that we need to be dealing with as a board otherwise we're going to be dealing with this for years so that's my opinion do anyone want to respond to or member Murdoch on his position okay all right before we go on to the next one so what I will do then is that our May 18th of a board agenda item saying accept all 45 then you can have a discussion and have a vote is that what I'm hearing yes I would just say just bring the recommendation forward and then we'll have a motion on the floor and we'll vote from there okay let me get back to you Mr President Murdoch sorry vice president Foley I apologize I'm just taking a little bit of time to kind of process everything I

085I don't agree that we should lump them all together but I don't know the best way to deal with it because it is a large number of books but just looking through the list of the committee recommendations a lot of them did say you know there were some people that would you know even though they weren't the majority some people did want some of the books removed or a lot of them were retrained retained with restrictions um and so I do think concerning especially that we do need to figure out a way to evaluate the books and not just lump them together and just have one decision more member Eslick I too was taking a moment to process because uh I don't entirely disagree with board member Murdoch in terms of uh the process and

086how it was done um but I also have read through some of the forms um you know some of the comments that were received on some of the books and I I struggle with just throwing the entire thing out um I I do think that this particular Community member that made the complaints uh potentially abuse the policy I don't entirely disagree with that statement but I do think that there are other community members and parents who have expressed concerns as well about some of the books on those lists so I have trouble with just throwing it out and saying that we shouldn't consider some of but again I also struggle with how we actually attack the problem I just don't think that I'm I don't agree with the solution of just not hearing any of

087them I think we need to come up with something that addresses the ones that were brought up as having some level of concern some restriction suggestion something and maybe that's how we approach it um but yeah I I don't know that I could say yes to just not hearing it at all so thanks board member Murdoch I think I I I understand where you're coming from so first off that's that's I'm going to start with that same with vice president Foley I believe it is less than five percent of all the votes and in fact actually I think there was only two votes that ever said remove on all of the forms and maybe as part of starting as a board to look at this particular issue if we wanted as a board for example

088to review the two books that had the remove that had people who actually voted to remove them that could be a start of the conversation for us understanding that then you know I just have a hard time of us as a board with all with having the vast majority of these and I think it's 31 or 32 of of the appeals were retained right without restrictions and I have a hard time saying that the seven of us should go and read 31 books when uh somebody else didn't read them anyway and we had unanimous retain votes going through the Committees so if if people think that I'm going too far I I've always hopefully hopefully been somebody who is willing to come back towards the middle of the group here um and maybe if we

089want as a board to look at two or three um even per month right if we want and take the ones that have the re that have people who wanted to remove them right and I think that that's very few of those or take the ones that had the majority that had retained with restrictions and we can actually go through some of the review process but I think it's really really important as a board that we hone the policy a little bit more and recognize that what the intent of the policy was that's where I hope we will end up eventually so you know if if come may you know maybe the process president Sparks and Dr Buck maybe the process would be instead of trying to bring it to a vote as a lumpier

090in May let's take the one that had the the remove or the two that had removed and let's say we we will review these to start with right we'll go through the process as a board and then come June if we come to some kind of consensus on even those two books and we then want to approve the rest of them as a lump or whatever the case may be we can we can do that even in the June meeting we can have that discussion again that might be that might be a good compromise because what I don't want to do because I agree with you there are committee mem there are community members besides the person who have complained who have indicated that they would have concerns about some of these books so um

091I respect that and so reviewing some of these books fine no no problem I just don't think that the board should be spending time on 45 books before I give my closing remarks is there anyone else that want to speak to this matter um I'm going to say I appreciate this dialogue that's what we're supposed to be doing we're supposed to be working through these issues as a collective board so I appreciate everyone's input um so while some struggle with some things I struggle with others um I struggle with tax dollars being spent on reviewing books by individuals that didn't take their own time nor use their own resources to purchase the books I struggle with that um I also struggle with the fact that we have students in this District they can't even read

092and instead of us talking about that we're talking about books that is about to take away our focus on those issues instead of the issues of the fact that we have issues with students in this District that are struggling with reading so um with that being said I'm not supportive of wasting our time as a board when the individuals that are having complaints are not wasting their time or I won't even con I won't even go far enough to say wasting their time but taking the time to read the book that is so offensive so um I am not supportive of hearing any appeal if you're not willing to read the book yourself that's number one I'm also um I'm I'm supportive to the fact that this we have everyone has a right to an

093opinion they have a they have a right to bring a concern to this District to this board they have a right but they also have to follow the process and I'm encouraging our community is to follow the process and if there's something wrong with the process then bring that concern to the board and allow us to be able to review the policies and be able to see if there's changes that needs to be made and then if there's processes that needs to be changed we give those directives to Dr Buck and we allow him to make those to tidy up those processes so that not only is our job able to focus on what we should be focused on but also so that the community feel that they're being heard and also that things are

094done decently and in order um so I'm I'm gonna obviously support whatever this board supports as a majority but I I struggle I'm just going to be completely honest I struggle with spending time and putting us in a position as a district to where this becomes an ongoing problem so I would like for us to truly take the time as a board to look through this policy bring concerns together let's talk talk about those concerns and then let's bring a recommendation of policy changes that we can be able to vote on come May 18th so my ask is within the next week if there's changes or things that you want to see please email myself and vice president Foley so that we can get those to Dr Buck and to our attorney and so that

095that can be reviewed and then anyone else Dr Buck that you see fit if it needs to go through policy committee or whatever may be let's get that done so that we can come together on May 18th let's have an additional dialogue if that's necessary and then let's take the vote so that we can move forward with that being said I think it is important that we as a board kind of prepare Dr Buck on what that recommendation is going to be on how we're dealing with these appeals because the other question is whatever we discuss on this first set are we immediately saying that that applies going forward even with the second set that is coming our way and I think that's something for us to to talk about and to discuss and so

096is there any input on that are we going to give instructions on where we're at today and that's moving forward or are we going to do something different I think that I need to kind of know that direction and just let you know the scope there's 33 books being reviewed right now correct Miss Taylor yes yes and it should be concluded the first full week of June one more point I'm sorry this just came to my mind um I'm board member esselict um to your point I agree when we talk about um forming of committees and so that is something Dr Buck that I do want you to kind of look at I want to make sure that this community feels that we are not hand picking or single or narrowing the scope of individuals

097that can participate in this process um and um so I wanted to be fair I wanted to be just but I wanted to be to where it is open to any and everyone that is a taxpayer in this community but I want to make sure that we're not just allowing a group of individuals that have one mindset to be able to come in and be able to to a board member um Murdoch's point take advantage of a policy or abuse the policy that's been put in place thank you so if you don't mind what I think I will do is list the 45 books and put it one agenda item and you guys can pull which ones you want to review or vote to accept recommendations and that's all I I we have to you

098can't take a vote here now so I have to have something for you to start with action-wise it doesn't mean you're going to vote all 45 together but you have that ability but you also can pull separate ones out would that be acceptable so I'm one of seven so I'm going to State mine and then if someone differs from what I'm stating then let's then let's kind of just have that conversation right now my position would be if they did not read the book that's immediately eliminated of us reviewing so if they check that bar that Mark that they did not read the book I would say cut it out um then then I would go to the second one which is if there's any remaining books that there were split votes on removing the

099bug then I would also want that to be included for us to be able to review as a board so to um the point of Vice President uh to board member Murdoch um that it's going to be a limited of books I think it's going to be remaining of two books that will be left for us to review so that's my position oh I'm sorry I don't know who was first all right let's let's go with ladies first let's go with board member essling uh I was actually just gonna request that when um you're making that list Dr Buck if it's possible and I don't want to add too much work for anybody but just to um collect um for each book how many votes for retain retain with restriction remove just so that it's

100like okay we can prioritize that way and kind of the unanimous maybe are ones that were towards the bottom just I think that should be easy which is actually to your point that would be that would be my recommendation as well on the to do it as an agenda the books that had any removal votes in one section the books that had retain plus retained with restrictions in one boat and another boat of all of the books that were just eligible to be retained it might be the easiest way to to sift through them a little bit um because yeah I I I'm not sure that there is a book in the appeals that was read in its entirety I think there was one or two I think it was very minimal I think I

101know there was at least one but I think there was one but I think I think sifting through them in in those three things um might be the easiest from an organizational standpoint to your question by the way about what do you do with the 33 that might be coming well I I believe we shouldn't presume as a board I know I speculated earlier and I shouldn't do that so um we need to it would be my opinion that we need to make a separate decision once the review is done of the next 33 since we just said let's make sure that we follow the process so let's actually make sure that we follow that particular process and then should appeals come from those 33 then we can make a decision again as a board

102Fair Point vice president Foley I just wanted to bring up a couple points for clarification because I have heard so much misinformation that's been going around about our conversations and what's going on with these books um I've heard that one of the books that was challenged was Huckleberry Finn that is not a book that is on this list that is not one of the topics that is being discussed so I just wanted to throw that out there um but um in in looking at this the list of the books that we have received that have been appealed um I decided to use uh artificial intelligence to do a little bit of analysis to see since I had not read the majority of these books you know where where did they stand you know what is

103what is contained in them and um it did alert that several of these books do contain sexually explicit content and then also when I asked to analyze this list of books and give me some reason so that it would violate the the terms and restrictions that artificial intelligence is allowed to use due to some of that content so that is one of the reasons that it gives me pause for any kind of just blanket approval because you know we could have some books in here that really they're they're okay but there are some books in here that might not be okay and so I want to make sure that we really thoughtfully evaluate that is there anyone else Dr but do you feel like you have what you need that's yes thank you very much

104okay let's go and move to the next next item is mine that was kickoff for this 2.03 covered resolution discussion so you have a link there in public content um it says October 22nd 2022 but it's actually October 22nd 2020. um that we passed this resolution so it's a resolution that many um districts and entities pass in the fall of 20. uh around keeping uh days for isolation of uh either exposure or positive case of covid from going to your your sick days or PDA PDO days or PTO days depending on what you use that your employer we use PDO and PTO this year this current year we're the only one of the 12 districts in the county that has this we do not have a Sunset date on it so in order for it

105to stop being in use we would have to have a vote by the board I reached out to uh ask for the region Raypak and Liberty the only two in the Kansas City metro that'll also have a resolution they have I think less days in the resolution but they also have a sunset so they they uh sunset at the end of this fiscal year and neither district has any plans to re-up it so we would be if we don't Sunset ours at some point we will be the only School District I reached out to the health department and asked hey are you hearing this as well and they said many medical providers are also and they either have or in the process of also removing the resolutions that they have for employees protecting sick days

106from if you have a positive case so in other words you treat it start treating it like the flu or not um why now while we're coming towards the end of a fiscal year and then next week Thursday the federal government stops the pandemic emergency at May 11th it expires so you have those two pieces plus where the outlier only one of 12 public school districts in in Jackson County that has this resolution so not asking for a vote but I wanted to kind of go over that we could answer questions Dr Carlson's probably got some stats over there for you if you want and then we'll Bring It Forward and the May 18th board meeting for your consideration all right let's open it up is there any questions around the covert resolution discussion board

107member Murdoch just offer mine first and get out of the way it's time to end the resolution we should end it at the end of the fiscal year I don't know of any organization that's going to continue it quite quite honestly our city included we ended ours at the end of 2022 so we need we need to we need to end it anyone else all right when I was when this was brought to board leadership I believe me and vice president Foley we agree and we just wanted it brought before the board with from Dr Buck and we will have this as the item for this decision on March 18th not March 18th May 18th okay all right let's move on uh item 2.04 is the board retreat topics and format I believe aboard president

108Sparks is going to lead this discussion all right so we've had some discussion um around our board retreat and we also had a survey to go out and we want to make sure that um under my leadership it is important for me that everyone gets their input and that is you feel valued with that input and so a survey did go out from myself and vice president Foley and it was about topics that you want to discuss during the board retreat and what are even some of the goals that you would like to achieve through that Retreat and so I just kind of want to openly just kind of have that discussion to see if we can narrow it down so that we're having an effective time together but also um time that's well spent

109and meaningful and so if you would pull up the surveys that um ER provided to us and I believe it's in executive content and it's going to be the first slide and you'll kind of see the responses of everyone for those that haven't reviewed yet and if you will kind of just give um board leadership just some direction on kind of trying to narrow it down of what we want to discuss and talk about during the board of retreat and just push your red button when you're ready to go so while you're kind of looking I know um I think we all can agree board relationships was important to all of us and so can we say that that is one of the things that we really want to be one of the main focus

110of our board retreat is Board of relationships okay and then if you all would give me the Liberty to add not only for us to be able to have that um relationship building but I think it's also important for us to have the relationship with our employee to where there's a component there that is helping us to also um have a a strong relationship with our superintendent so is that okay all right and this is kind of just an open discussion so if y'all want to just kind of just chime in you can just kind of just chime in together with me we have we have multiple we had multiple things they're talking about communication and that can cover a wide variety of things I think we would probably want to tailor that just a

111little bit more but um to that point for those who aren't aware we'll have the communicate the community engagement committee going at the same time so I don't know if if possibly Dr Buck maybe you know even a small a small portion dedicated essentially just to a review of how that is going right in terms of of those and that will be concluded on May 24th so include before that and it does and by that bill 681 last year the past the board will have to adopt a board policy by July 1st and have it in place we're supposed to get community engagement so we've had eight different groups give engagement now this committee is going to try to wrestle the differences they see and then make a recommendation to you but you can go

112a different direction so we do need time at that because we'll have to have at the regular June meeting first and final reading of a board policy so we'll need a block of time to take whatever's recommended keep it change it however you want because of facts affects board policies bddb bddh and KC right and and so like a a block of time to summarize how the community engagement team came to any of these recommendations also so that then if the seven of us have any of those changes we're not trying to change them on the fly in in the June meeting I think would be wise um to have to block out some time for that and I know that this is volunteer time do anyone see the value of having individuals from that

113committee if they're willing to come to our Board of retreat and present to us does anyone see the value in that or is um I think there's always value in somebody presenting outside of those of us who are going to be sitting on the committee okay like I mean I'm on that committee but I you guys will hear enough of my voice sorry so somebody else presenting I think would be wise if if they're willing to come Dr Rebecca that's something that you can yeah well as for record volunteers there's 33 individuals including six kids on that committee I just think if we do that President Sparks super important that we are spot on schedule for whenever we ask them to be there so that we are not invading more time than necessary I totally

114agree and if you can put the emphasis on student voice so if we could try to at least have one of those six to show up that would be great thank you um so two board member um Murdoch's point when we're speaking of communication and I see Communications a few times so I know we have that one piece when it pertains to the policy of us having that discussion about Community engagement is there other discussion around communication that you all would like to see addressed during the board retreat uh I didn't write it so I um but we have long had and this is going back years discussion about whether or not it is appropriate to try to hold a town hall meeting we've had the discussion even in the last year the four of

115us that are here right on whether or not that is something that would be beneficial and or actually cause more conflict sometimes depending on how it is structured right so our summer Retreat is the time to talk about that as a group on whether or not that could be an effective tool or not um I don't think I'm out of line in saying that there are risks with doing a town hall versus the benefits that we would get from a town hall and so we would need to or be willing to have that discussion and I think the summer Retreat is a perfect spot for that is everyone supportive of that to have that conversation that was my comment so yes okay also I realized that I missed a letter on my policy that I

116put in there gcba sorry I can't type I guess or proofread so my bad but that's what I meant that was strike one okay [Laughter] I get two more like you know just this meeting right okay just make okay so we have um order relationships board relationship with superintendent we have communications we're going to be addressing policy that goes into effect on July 1st we know that those committees are that are gathering is 33 individuals six of them are students we're asking Dr Buck to open that invite unto those individuals that will volunteer to come and to make sure that there is student present if possible we also are going to be talking about town halls other engagement of us as the board getting out in the community making ourselves accessible I will say that

117we are accessible they can reach us through email many of us have phone numbers but we want to be more creative in ways of making ourselves available to the community so that they know that we since we don't get to engage during our board meetings because that's not the appropriate time because that's us doing our business but us being able to have an opportunity to engage with constituents in a larger scope and then also just to know that we are committed to making ourselves available as individuals and so I'm having that discussion um anything else Dr Buck so the board member asks a question on gcba it's going to be an agenda Topic at May 18th so it'll happen before the retreat by vice president Foley something that came up in a prior meeting was

118just a I guess a question about the census how how some of the other committees are kind of run and what their discussions look like especially when we can't be present one of them in particular was team Lee Summit and so I don't know if we could get representatives from Team Lee Summit to to come and meet with the board shortly introduce themselves something like that I think would be a great opportunity but then in taking that I wonder if we could expand that to some of the other committees maybe some Representatives that come from citizens advisory committee just different groups that might be able to come just for a few minutes and talk to the whole board about you know what they do what they're looking for you know for the next year if

119we have any guidance for them kind of going forward that might be a great way to have a little bit of a conversation maybe in a controlled you know short compact discussion so it doesn't take you know the duration of the retreat but an opportunity to have some of those and uh more relational conversational type setting what I will say to that is um I'm number one team Lee Summit I think is a topic that we do need to have as a board um especially with um some recent activities right so I think that is a is a great um opportunity for us to talk about that um committee um the what I want to cautious uh caution us about is we have superintendent committees and we have board committees and so I think it's

120appropriate for us to probably have that conversation um and not and if we utilize our work sessions possibly to discuss or bring in maybe those committees to present to us and those type of things or even us that are having the representation but if it's about having the outside voices then we obviously can have that open dialogue through other work sessions I just know that we're limited to the two days and I just think if we bring so many too many groups in then it may take away from some of the valuable time that we can have with each other of building those relationships so that's my only I guess response to it but I do think teamly Summit most definitely needs to be a topic and a discussion and I will just say that

121Dr Buck he kind of shared that with Tim Lee Summit that that is a desire of the board to have those conversations and possibly recommend changes anyone else my board member Murdoch they've had a lot of roles tonight um I think I think I can I I do agree with vice president Foley I I think it would be beneficial to um respecting what you're saying here of trying to keep it separate but at the same time CAC is a valuable part of the community and also makes recommendations to us especially with bonding capabilities and stuff like that so having a representative from CAC especially with as active as they are in helping us I think would be wise to have a conversation among us as the board if we can see fit it might be

122hard to hit every committee right but especially the ones that have high Community involvement I think would probably be wise whether that's Business Roundtable whether it's CAC those kinds of things I think would be wise along with Team Lee Summit piggybacking on that though and thinking about CAC I do think it's going to be important that we as a group sorry Mr holder I'm going to put you on the spot here I do think we need to have a budget discussion of some kind an overview of where we're at budget wise what we are seeing from I gonna harp on your comment here I agree because I didn't think about it until after I saw it on there right of the reassessment um that are going on for people right now the essentially the tension

123that that is bringing from people within our County um how that might impact our school district but I would like to also Dr Buck maybe between you and Mr holder figure out impacts of legislation to our budget right that are going on especially if in the flurry of this last week if some of those things pass like property tax the property tax bill things like that if those things go through we really will need to have an idea of where we're headed budget wise and then maybe even as a part of that you we can actually get where we would be for the 2025 Bond right isn't that I mean that was essentially from stifle that's where we heard we'd be going next right and so I'm kind of where that is going from a

124future perspective I think it'd be helpful for all of us to get re-engaged with the budget so okay so what I'm hearing is budget discussion CAC possibly have that Community come in Business Roundtable and Tim Lee Summit representatives to come to our Board of retreat and possibly um do you would you all prefer to have that all in one day do you prefer to kind of have a split up to where we're doing other things and then kind of have a few per day split it up is everyone okay with that kind of doing a little bit of something a little bit of something on each day all right um the other thing that I won't think that is very important for us as a board is to talk about goals and board priorities I

125think that's important especially knowing the conversations that we've had about superintendent evaluation and kind of moving in that that direction on us working together and I think that would be a great opportunity Dr Buck of possibly doing the relationship building first and then having the conversation around board goals so that's something that I would like to see us do during the board retreat is there anything else we have two days not trying to limit us but I just want to remind us of that two days that's what we have and this is another proposal um and I think that this came from a former former president um Kathy Campbell we possibly could do a phase two of a board retreat I know we've only you know the past year especially since I've served on the

126board we've only did it just the one time that does not mean that we cannot do it mid-year and and have another Board of retreat so just think about that and that's something we can obviously just talk about during our first one yeah on when we see how productive that was anything else around that topic you don't mind board president Sparks can we add prop C to 2025 Bond because there's a potential we could ask for a prophecy full waiver and then we have 18 committees that boards are on would it be okay if I have Linda send a survey to all of you these 18 committees which ones would you want to have at the retreat and we see which ones have the majority would want to have a retreat and if we could

127go from there because I don't want to you may not be thinking about all the Committees I don't want short Change of committee and I appreciate that and so I'm supportive of that and looks like we have a majority that's supportive of that and what we will do is let's pick um Dr Buck let's pick the top five is that fair top five okay so we'll go with the top five what comes back all right is that the last item on the agenda that is correct thank you facilitator so on the survey I know that there were I think three said yes I think four said either way don't care and so is the board okay with the facilitator yes okay so we'll have a facilitator um this um I know we had some conversation

128around facilitator kind of what we're looking for I know we talked about bringing facilitators in we are limited in our time of being able to orchestrate a lot of this and so um I think that we possibly could possibly do Zoom um [Music] um Zoom interviews versus trying to bring someone in just because of where we had on time and so is the board open to possibly having like us would that need to be a special meeting for us to probably do a zoom or you could give someone the right to select somebody so if you want to have one or two people select the person because right now on the vendor list you only have the one person who is we kind of looked at it today we could find that facility except you

129also have Missouri School Board Association if they're available they also will facilitate Retreats we just don't know their availability yet because we didn't know if you wanted one um is the board okay with me and vice president Foley working together and finding a facilitator to facilitate okay so we'll work together we'll get that done and we will bring a report back to you as soon as possible on what that who that choice was um and making sure that we're meeting your guys's needs there okay all right the so that's it so if there's nothing else um this meeting is adjourned thank you [Music] thank you