LSR7 Board Meeting - 03/17/22

001[Music] do [Music] do [Music] me [Music] foreign [Music] yes [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] for oh okay we will call this regular meeting to order i apologize for us being just a couple minutes behind um if i could have everyone please stand for the pledge of allegiance keep it a little light just so you know last month we weren't in sync we were much more in sync this month so thanks that was excellent so um welcome to everybody who is in the audience tonight we appreciate you being here um and for anybody who is watching online we also appreciate you being willing to interact and be a part of the district so thank you to everybody who's here happy st patrick's day certainly have lots of green in the

002room so happy st patrick's day to everyone um we do need from a board member an adoption for tonight's agenda please second okay we have a motion in a second for tonight's agenda is there any discussion on tonight's agenda okay all those info in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously we're gonna move on to 2.01 this is our superintendent's report for march and we'll turn it over to dr buck good evening everybody and good evening board of education i have several things we want to point out um so there are uh quite a few i think there's 18 now sum it up podcast if you want to go out there and listen to them and the latest one is by jeff buckner and jeff is going into

003our entry into registered youth apprenticeship with jci industries so jci has been a great partner of ours uh they actually sent an employee once a week over to our metal workings class and they're actually the kids are making parts and if they pass the qualifications it actually will be used in products that jci produces but so this allows a child then a student of ours to go get work experience get college cred or get high school credit same time they're getting paid so this is our entry into you registered youth apprenticeship which is only about 13 of them in the state of missouri so thank you for jeff for setting that up and that's a big part of our push to have graduates as many as we can get earn a market value asset before

004they graduate and that's which is a regional push in the kansas city area um that was originally kind of instigated by the kauffman foundation and prior to this year i think 52 percent of our graduates having a market value asset was a record for us after first semester our current graduates are over 70 percent and we think by the end of this next semester we'll have over 80 percent of our graduates this year having a market value asset so um you know thank you to shannon booth and her team and everybody in the in the high schools for helping us get there so and kudos to the kids because that's above and beyond a high school diploma um we do have uh some special olympic regional basketball events this last month and individual skills we

005have two students and then we have the team the ls vipers they like to call themselves the ls vipers of doom their official team is just vipers but they had the shirt ellis fighters for doom of doom they're competing in the state championship tomorrow and saturday i think there's some archers also that went to state from elementary that today um and then we also have our uh our team of a cyber patriots are competing in cyber security there's about 3500 teams nationwide the final 12 are competing uh this weekend for the the national championship and one of those teams is right here from lee summit has kids from all three high schools so good luck to all those um congratulations to all those who and the accomplishments they've had so far i'm going to skip

006down and let you know that tomorrow night uh we have a unique event so we have a new baseball field for lee summit high school uh with the turf and it's over there off of bailey road and you're gonna hear a little bit about the middle school renovation here later tonight but uh that turf is ready to go and so we're having an alumni baseball game so all alumni who played baseball in the past five o'clock is the sign in starts the game starts at six o'clock so we're very excited about that event and if anybody can do an anti-rain dance it would be great yes it's a turf field we can play in the rain but you know at my age i know if i was playing out there i might pull something if

007i was in the rain so do an anti-rain dance if you could and then uh last thing i want to mention right now is that one of our board members yet another one has achieved the level of what they call master board certifications through the missouri school board association so join me in congratulating vice president megan marshall thank you dr buck appreciate that um we're going to move on to our presentations and recognitions tonight so we are at 3.01 we are going to start with our school spotlight on greenwood elementary and so i think we will just turn it over to principal johnson here to introduce greenwood all right um my name is rachel johnson proud principal of the greenwood wildcats and we have a very short video to share with you um two of

008my three code narrators are here so i'm going to have them come on up here so please welcome shaina farias and claire keaton our third co-narrator couldn't be here with us tonight but you'll get to hear his voice and see him at the end of our presentation so we have a video um that we're going to play for you inwood elementary in this short but amazing video we will be sharing three things that make greenwood so special our history our people our present my name is cameron my name is shayna my name is claire and my name is mrs johnson and we will be your guides to greenwood did you know that our school wasn't always named greenwood elementary it started as a grammar school in high school today together the building was built in

0091910 it was known as whiffen hall and taught students in grades one through 12. just to check in on what was happening in 1910 when wiffle hall was built a postage stamp cost one penny believe it or not it only cost one penny to mail a letter it was just two years after the model t board was introduced and three years before the invention of the electric refrigerator that everyone uses today in 1937 additional classrooms and a gym were added to the school the basketball court in the gym was known as the finest high school facility in the area the basketball teams work hard the wildcats which is why we are the wildcats today in spring 1950 greenwood school graduated its last school senior class because in the fall of 1950 the school joined the

010lee summit school district and became greenwood elementary on september 18 1950 just weeks after the start of the k-6 school year this letter was sent to all greenwood families it started with we the teachers of the greenwood school are well pleased with school in the opening days we hope that you the parents are too we also hope that you will take a lively interest in this school year the letter goes on to discuss one big problem with the start of school and that was that students were not taking part in the school lunch program in previous years the students were used to leaving the building and walking into town to get lunch or treats as stated in the letter the highway presented a real safety problem and we needed to encourage students to eat lunch

011at school it even went so far as to say ice cream bars and candy bars were available in the cafeteria after the lunch period the letter concludes to say the school cafeteria is in operation and soon we hope to have in your home the menu as planned for the week a good warm well-balanced meal is a bargain for 20 cents we hope all children will avail themselves of this opportunity and as if this letter in history isn't neat enough let's take a quick look at who wrote it signed the teachers of greenwood school and w j underwood director of elementary education this was one of dr william joseph underwood's letters during his time as assistant superintendent we've got a few more years of history to review in 1965 we got another edition because lsr7 continued

012to grow it now cost five cents to mail a letter the sound of music came out and the gateway arch was finally completed in st louis but back in greenwood the school expanded to include a cafeteria and many more classrooms this section of the building is now the main entrance and the center of the school in 1978 we got another gigantic edition in the back of the building the section now holds our fifth and sixth grade classrooms greenland elementary was serving all of lee's summit students who lived south of 50 highway our school grew to almost 800 students before trail ridge opened in 1993. oh and for a pop culture check a stamp was 13 cents and everyone was watching happy days in 2002 greenwood's library was built and we enjoyed it every day today

013there are six schools serving students south of 50 highway that was a lot of history 112 years and three minutes wow now that we know the history of our building let's get to another great thing about greenwood elementary our people take a look at this computer lab in 1996 fancy huh and look at the fifth grade class in 1983 well guess what the student in the computer lab is mrs rath she now works at greenwood i just saw her at recess today and as for stephanie moore she is now mrs cornelius and she teaches fourth grade grade at gwe okay let's keep diving in do these three former wildcats look familiar that's miss shipley miss former and mr grego they were all students that became teachers at gwe mr gregor is my teacher his grandma

014went to greenwood school when it was a first to 12th grade school his dad went to greenwood and mr grego was here in the 1990s and what's really cool now is that his son bennett just came to kindergarten this year so bennett is a fourth generation greenwood school kid i guess what we're trying to say is that greenwood has always felt like a family it's a school that feels like a home and people are drawn back to us take linda clark linda clark taught at greenwood for 31 years and now that she's retired we see her back almost every other week to sub in our classrooms also folks that retire from greenwood come back to support kids and staff in other ways through our great team they might host a luncheon during parent-teacher conferences or

015volunteer to come read with students because everyone knows greenwood retired educators are terrific now let's get to one more thing that makes gwe so great our kids when mrs johnson asked us to help with this video she asked us what we liked most about going to school here we all had the same first answer our teachers obviously but right after our teachers we said our friends i feel like our teachers are always happy to be here with us at school i feel like everyone here is respectful and kind and when we think about school this year we don't think about the pandemic we think about our school families which we call wild cat dens our wild cat dens have about 11 or 12 kids in them we've learned teamwork while making cool structures like marshmallows

016and toothpicks we've learned cooperation and the importance of listening while we navigated a blindfolded student through the classroom it has been so fun this year to work with the younger kids we've gotten to help them be better listeners i love how grateful they are whenever we get to do done time and i go pick up my first grader she holds my hand the whole way there it's just one more way to feel like we all belong at greenwood thanks for watching our journey through greenwood's amazing history learning a little bit about our people and for being excited with us about where we are today thank you for letting us share a little bit about our home at greenwood elementary school it an eight-minute video took us about an hour and a half to record because

017i think we just giggled most of the way through um but we did not subject you to the blooper reel of all of my typos so you're welcome for that thank you thank you very much for that that was fantastic um 3.02 this is going to be lee's summit west high school school spotlight and so we will turn it over to dr chad herzog who can introduce everyone who is with him tonight i did so i felt they already left that's too bad so i was i'm a proud wildcat a proud greenwood alum i got left off of that video 1985. i started there so i feel a little bit left out but uh but no greenwood elementary is a wonderful place my grandfather was actually there when it was a high school as well

018so wonderful i'm glad they did that tonight i'm really excited to be here tonight to talk about lee summit west a little bit we chose to focus not on the whole school but on one program of our school that we're extremely proud of i'm going to introduce some folks who are going to come in and talk a little bit about our avid program i'm going to let them do most of the talking because they're the ones doing the work in the class each day but let me just say this four years ago at the end of my first year at west myself and some of our teachers and staff members went out to uh a avid summer institute and it was truly just kind of almost like life-changing in terms of our focus we changed

019our focus a little bit out there and avid became a clear focus that we needed to move into our school community this group you're going to see tonight it's a special group some of them because this is the first senior class of students who have gone through four years of the avid program at west they are very excited to share their story with you and i'm very excited for them to share that as well i'm going to introduce our avid elective teacher and math teacher at lisa midwest sterling edwards you can make your way over here coach edwards he is our avid nine teacher and then also avid 12 teacher he is going to start the program off and i think he has quite a few students who are going to help him tonight as

020well so sterling edwards thank you come on in guys so yeah we we really appreciate the opportunity to we um we have drank the kool-aid with the avid program and we could talk for for a long long time about this and we're going to try to condense it here to about 10 minutes um but you know we we love the avid program and so what i want to talk about before we get uh before we do the introductions and let the kids talk and really i want to let them talk more than anything but just a real quick overview on what is avid and avid is a college readiness program okay it's a four-year program and and like dr herzog said um these this is our first graduating class coming up so you're going to

021hear from three of our seniors who have been in the program for four years and you're going to hear from some of our underclassmen as well so it is a class in their schedule every day okay it is an elective class and so in that class again it's a place of high expectations it's a place to wonder and explore we it's an accelerated program okay um we we are pushing these kids to take classes that maybe push them out of their comfort zone a little bit but then behind the scenes we're supporting them within the avid classroom teaching them strategies teaching them some study skills and and supporting them that way um and so it's a place to build skills and develop behaviors that lead to success and so i'm gonna we're gonna do some

022introductions we have two of our avid elective teachers with us today marissa tucker and ashley jones and they they teach are we have two avid 10 classes and and they each have one of those and then and then matt welch also is one of our avid elective teachers who couldn't be here tonight and teachers are having 11 11 class okay and so with that i'm going to take the microphone down to the other end and let some of these guys introduce themselves hi i'm addison kirkham i'm a sophomore in avid i am involved with multiple choirs at west and i am also the girls varsity basketball manager and my plans for after after high school are undecided hi my name is bria carradine i'm a sophomore at west and i am in chamber orchestra i

023run girls track and girls cross country hi i'm avery daugherty i'm an avid student at lisa midwest i'm a sophomore and my plans after high school are to go to missouri state and major in interior design um hi i'm shakimi beg expangio i do kindness counsel and i also have symphonic orchestra and my plans after high school would be to go get a major in biochemistry my name is amara gant i'm a sophomore i am in ro rotc and i plan to possibly pursue a military career hi i'm max and i'm a junior and i play football track and lacrosse and in college i plan to just play football in college hi i'm dylan i'm a junior i am in our school's esports team and i plan to be a game designer hi my name

024is marcia madden i'm a junior at west i plan to pursue a career in social social working and counseling and at school i do harmony council bsu and kindness council hi my name is riley biggie i am a senior at lee summit west and i plan on going to northwest missouri state to major in elementary ed with a minor in special ed and then i will also be a part of the grow your own program hi my name is lily frazier i'm also an avid senior at least midwest i plan on going to the university of missouri and majoring in marketing and double minoring in spanish and digital media my name is brady bertho i also plan on attending the university of missouri i will be pursuing a major in elementary education and a minor

025in special education so i'm pretty excited for that i'm also part of the grow your own program with riley it's also yay and i think that's about it and so and so with that these last four that spoke we're going to have them talk a little bit more about what goes on in the avid avid classroom so marche if you go ahead and step up to the podium here and hi so yes so one of the biggest things in avid is organization we kind of relearn how to learn how to organize because growing up like a lot of us do not learn how to study or organize our binders we kind of just stuff stuff in folders so one of the big things that we do is tutorials which is each week we all gather

026in groups of usually seven and we each present and say we don't know how to do this now when we first did it it was very nerve-wracking because we didn't you know you don't ever want to admit that you're wrong you don't ever want to stand up in front of people and tell your peers like i don't know how to do this but as we all kept doing it as we kept going and kept encouraging each other it becomes more and more comfortable and you are able to build a community with that so another big thing is the focus note-taking process the first big one is taking the notes but beyond that we process notes so we go back through them we highlight key points pull out important information we connect thinking to things that

027we've learned prior to maybe in that class or things that we've learned outside in the real world um summarizing and reflecting on learning is big for us because sometimes you just need to condense things down to where you're not having all of this information all at once because not everything is important and then being able to apply that learning to projects tests homework things like that okay okay so i'm going to be talking about a little bit of the community service project that we did back in november so we raised about two thousand dollars to feed a homeless shelter here in kansas city and we were able to go down there and serve the community and get to work with these people who are underprivileged and we got to hands-on like work with people who

028are in our community but also just need a little extra support and throughout the night we were able to meet like hundreds of people who benefited from our fundraising um so with avid we are encouraged to take classes that allow us to get more experience in like the real world so for example riley and i both attend summit technology academy me for digital media and her for education without avid i can say for both riley and i i don't think that we would have had the courage to take these classes we also are both ibcp candidates so only about like 11 people from the high school get this when they graduate you have to take rigorous ib courses and you have to go to some technology you have to have at least i think it's

029like a 3.5 um unweight gpa so it's it's really hard to do and um through avid we have been able to do things that we never thought we could do so all right so another part of the avid program is getting ready for college it is a college readiness program and so we focus on this starting as early as our freshman year in high school we start by doing things such as the college campus visits just because of kovid just the seniors we've only been to a couple colleges which isn't ideal but for the freshmen and the sophomores they've gotten a good opportunity since we'd be able to come back to school and with that we've actually visited a couple of colleges like ucm mizzou ku which is really exciting another thing we do is

030get ready for the act and also how to take the act we learned that in our sophomore year and that is a really good skill because a lot of times especially for juniors and seniors their first time taking the act they're not prepared at all but with the avid program we are set up at least two years in advance to be ready to take this test and hopefully get the maximum score we can get in our first or second try we also prepare for things such as the fafsa and scholarship applications because as many people know fafsa is a very sometimes not fun thing to fill out so just kind of looking into what exactly we need to fill out like all the paperwork you need is really helpful we also learn about scholarships part

031of the avid class especially your senior year is to fill out two scholarships every month this is just to help you kind of get out there and see what opportunities for money you have for these colleges and that's something i personally have benefited from i've gotten a lot of money from doing these scholarships so i'm very excited for that and then the last thing that we do is our college applications hopefully by our senior year through the average program we've been exposed to colleges and enough colleges that we can kind of narrow down our decisions so by our senior year we're applying for those colleges and hopefully getting in so that's another exciting part and then up here we included some of the um colleges that our avid 12 senior students sorry uh will be

032attending so mizzou arkansas and ucm just name a few and we also have longview if a lot of our avid seniors are not going to a four-year college but instead to a community college or going to a trade school so avid also exposes us to that option if we don't want to go to a four-year college what our plans after high school are going to be thank you so you can tell you know these these kids are excited about it one one thing that i didn't mention before is is you know avid isn't like a for a gifted program okay but don't tell these kids that because i mean they think after they go through the avid program and you heard them talking about the courses they take and things like that that you know

033they they they end up in those classes that maybe they didn't think they were going to be able to take and so so that's that's exciting for me and um one thing that you know if we if we did this presentation a couple months from now we'd be able to we'd be able i'm i'm certain of it that our senior class 100 of them are going to get accepted to four-year colleges and and we're going to have you know huge numbers of scholarships um dollar values that that we're excited to announce and so there's just some crazy exciting things that are that are happening um and and appreciate and it's you know like i said this is the first senior class and so when they graduate here in a few months it's going to be

034it's going to be an emotional emotional night for all of us involved and and along those ends you know none of this is possible without without support from administration dr herzog has been a huge um advocate of the program from the beginning dr potts as well it's just it's just exciting to see the great things that are going on and the and the lives that we're changing here as these kids go on to bigger and better things after high school and we appreciate the opportunity to share our share our story tonight thank you mr edwards before they even walk out how many kids total at west are in avid right now so yeah we've got i think the number is 88 is the is the total so we've got five classes i just wanted people

035to know that right that there's a lot of people that are in the program so sorry i didn't mean to stop you so yeah that's fantastic so hey on that point i'm just curious to know is that offered at all of our high schools yes and then this summer our middle schools are going to avid training so we'll be at the middle school level as well coming forward perfect thank you he was ahead of both of us right there so there we go okay uh we are going to thank you to everybody who came for those presentations and recognitions we are going to move on to item 4.01 this is our public comments 14 i'm just joking i'm totally joking we're going to go to 3.03 because we do need to and want to hear

036about east trails middle school middle school so the guys from account gordon i'm sorry that's my bad um so we do have representatives from account gordon who are going to take us through all of the work that's going on at the middle school and then those of you who are here for public comment then we'll hear from you so gentlemen if you would like to take us through the slide presentation that'd be great so real quick before we get started i've brought or mccain gordon has brought cookies for school board appreciation week so oh boy i've heard they're really good right right here we'll here we'll we'll pass we'll pass them out at the end of the meeting okay and then there will be zero left i say let's give them to the kids outside

037oh no okay ryan you can get a cookie thank you very much one more thing before we get started um whitney the new principal for the east trails middle schools brought out about 80 plus teachers and they've toured and everybody is very excited about this new school so here's kind of a overall drone picture of the entire site um we're making really good progress and actually they had their this is a drone picture of the kids playing baseball in the new field the turf field they had their jamboree i think that was monday and it went really really good another picture of the baseball field and then this is the main entry and west side of the new school we're getting sidewalks in um glass and frames in i'll let deandre take it from here

038all right so this is our wood ceiling um this is in a few areas of the school but it's pretty neat it's in the main commons area also this is a restroom you see so we got tau and sink's going in right now so it's pretty exciting it's pretty nice to meet so this is a storefront got glass in now pour some concrete down there one of the entries this is a picture of our wood soffit panels that's going in you kind of see them back there i think it's another picture see a little better there yeah those are pretty nice also this is a picture of our kitchen equipment it's being installed now i think we're starting to hook everything up maybe next week or the following week so we'll have all electrical employment

039hooked up to this next couple weeks this is our locker rooms i'll let jeff go ahead yeah so this is the locker room we're actually going to be starting epoxy floors in here next week and then this is one of the band or orchestra rooms and this is the competition gym we've actually got it about halfway painted now and then this is in the auxiliary gym we've got basketball goals up and the first week of april the wood floor shows up and it'll acclimate for a week and then we'll start installing the wood floors any questions on the east trails middle school i have one i just wondered how you are on your schedule um we're looking good we're gonna meet the date in fact they have furniture in may starting to arrive and they

040and they're preparing for that and then we've also got the interceptor work the sewer work going that's also part of this project and if you've driven down bailey road we've got the road improvement work going and the signal like stuff going so we're getting that road widening portion started also so everybody bear with us on bailey road it looks awesome so i appreciate it thank you thank you remember sparks go ahead i'm just curious when the teachers took the tour were there anything that really just stood out to them that they were excited about pretty much everything i don't know if you've seen their twitter and facebook post but they were very excited it was awesome thank you for all your hard work and we look forward to when you are finished and it's time

041for us to take a tour we would love that thanks guys um i'm i'm bobby volcanic i'm a superintendent over pleasantly mainly helping out on the other summit lakes and bernard campbell the summit lakes middle school a few pictures that we have going here [Music] so right before it warmed up we were able to get the rooftop unit set on top of the new addition so as you can see the new addition the the black that's on there it's the air barrier so everything's getting watertight and it getting ready to start brick um here pretty quick on the new uh edition here i think these are mainly just classrooms if i remember remember right so this area is an area we started um just a little bit ago this is an addition on to the

042uh the music room the orchestra so we were able to we tear down an existing exterior wall that's where that you see that blue tarp is over there's a nice temporary wall there and then it comes around and we have some doors and windows to cut in yet over there so that's the slab getting poured down and which actually started the block which isn't in here so that's great but the blocks going up i promise up on that side there so and then on the inside of the new edition starting to you know we got all framed in everything rough day and mechanical electrical employment and all that and starting to do some topping out of some sheet rocks we can start getting rest of the ductwork and everything else up in there so looking

043really good at some of the lakes there um trying to get that big goal to try to get that new edition about wrapped up before summer work starts i'm on the inside for the renovation so pleasantly here's a drone shot a fairly recent drone shot at pleasantly the new main entrance um the roofing has uh has been completed as of this week here so when i would dry it in i feeling good about that working on our air barrier and then you know brick comes up after that so doing really well on the exterior there it's a nice nice addition onto that onto the school inside of the school here this is in the administration area so framing is going up and again like summit likes a lot of the mechanical electrical plumbing um everything's

044going in getting ready for some uh for some sheet rock here pretty quick roof of area a this is over the administration wing roofing going in there and yeah hello everyone i'm tyler dalvinpool project manager with mccown gordon um i'm overseeing all three of these middle school renovation projects the last we have for you tonight is bernard campbell middle school this is the smallest of the three editions uh as you can see currently we are working on our envelope um we've got the black is air barrier that's complete uh we're working on the brick now so largely the addition is the work that we're doing at bernard campbell once it hits summer we'll have a lot of renovation work within the facility but for now we're really working hard on the addition um as you

045can see we've got uh framing up it's a block structure with a little bit of metal framing uh overhead rough in is largely complete and while roughing is going on and we're getting ready here for drywall very soon so that area this is a band edition will be complete very soon and that's all we had was there any questions questions or comments on any of the schools board member ritchie yes i think you said um that that's the smallest edition on campbell but um the basement of the main classroom section then is going to be converted into classrooms is that correct yes and that work is actually going on now the basement work we started a little bit early the bulk of the work in that facility will happen in the summer time once the

046kids and faculty are out okay and then um i also wanted to ask about the summit lakes uh edition that's going on the north side is that right yes the building and is that the sixth grade area is that the designated sixth grade i think it's a sixth grade area yeah sixth grade on the north side yeah and then you've got the addition of i know where the music room's going because my daughter's the vocal music teacher there okay and she told me she had to clean out the music office because you guys were tearing out that okay but that's great and of course i love seeing pleasantly middle school and that new facade i think everybody got used to seeing that 1970s vintage canopy out there and uh it's really cool that i i

047mean i just i just absolutely love what you're doing with pleasantly it's deserved to make over for quite some time and and i know that the staff there's really excited about it too all of the all three schools all four schools so just great so happy for all of our middle schoolers out there yeah and all three of the renovation projects are on schedule so they're looking looking good that's great because we have had some questions people are going are they going to be finished on time thank you very much that's fantastic oh just get it done on time okay now we really are going to go to 4.01 um that's going to be our public comment section tonight and we will turn it over for the instructions for those who are going to give

048comment tonight to our parliamentarian uh dr hedrick dr hedrick thank you we appreciate your attendance and your willingness to speak to the board please remember that while this is a public meeting this part of the meeting does not contemplate a conversation between speakers and board members board does not respond to public comments during the meeting but may ask clarifying questions your comments will be noted by the board and if appropriate we will direct the subject to the administrators who are responsible for that particular subject matter pursuant to board policy bddh we will be limiting all comments to no more than 10 people with a limit of three minutes each your allotted three minutes will be counted down on the screen please conclude your comments when the timer expires only those who have signed up prior

049to the meeting will be allowed to address the board please refrain from using the names of any students or staff in your remarks remain respectful and ensure your comments pertain to district operations we also ask all audience members to remain respectful lastly when your name is called please go to the podium and clearly state your name and the organization you represent if any thank you dr hedrick as we've done in previous meetings we will call the first speaker and then we'll always say who is next so essentially who is on deck so our first speaker tonight will be larry anderson and we are using the podium that is right over there to buy the doors so larry anderson and our second speaker is la triviate grant well thank you i appreciate the opportunity to come

050before the board and i wanted to share a few things that uh i think are important first of all uh i've noticed and watched you guys over the last few months and and i've really been inspired by how you've handled yourself you know as a parent who's a child and this who has a child in this district i want to thank you for your dedication and commitment i've been in your shoes and i know the amount of time it takes for you to do your job well i also know why you do this you do this because you want to support a winning team and lsr-7 is a winning team i've been in your shoes and i know what you're thinking and i know that it's hard to listen to all the people who come

051before you you've been called names you've been ridiculed and you've been accused of lying and i'm truly sorry that you have to endure that in these modern times but i am very impressed with your courage and your mental toughness it takes courage to listen and not react it takes mental toughness to prioritize student achievement in spite of the noise so thank you i also want to recommend that you adopt and i'm sure you will the salary presentations that are coming on tonight and i also believe that team lee summit worked very hard to produce those recommendations we know that effective boards must be forward thinking and we must anticipate challenges that are coming up and our challenge is already here as you know and that's hiring quality teachers i believe the best way that we

052can stay on top of this district is to promote pay and incentives for our teachers so i know we need to be fiscally responsible but i truly encourage the board in the near-term future to re make that a priority because i believe that's the best tool we're going to have to meet that priority and finally as a parent of of the public i'm proud of my school district and i know that it's among the best in the country and the state so i ask the community to step up and support the schools as i do and i'm proud to be a part of the community and always ready to support thank you our second speaker is la triviate grant and our next speaker after mrs grant will be best hails um i'll just i've come

053to talk about you know i hear a lot of parents complaining about the board the district the teachers and i'm i'm just kind of concerned that their concerns are more veins to their life versus seen as a seen as an opportunity to shine as parents stop blaming the board stop blaming the teacher stop claiming blaming the district blame yourself kids aren't looking to the district they're not looking to the teachers they're not looking to the board they're looking to the parents and i just noticed that the parents constantly are putting the blame elsewhere instead of doing something about it like for instance the mask mandate being being by two by two parade of and rating the board and everything else that's not a good example for your kids your kids are gonna do what they

054see you doing so if you're acting like that way and like the gentleman said before how tearing tearing down the board and criticizing them they think that's the way to do things when things aren't going their way that's the problem in schools crt is not the problem it's the parents that are the problem kids that are raised in a home where parents are teaching them a positive way of handling their situations are going to reflect that by their words and they're not going to be affected by actions of racism they're not going to be affected because they know their self-worth because they got that at home kids that are free and have high self-worth will not be will be a lot more they'll be the teachers prize and our joy they'll be like the prized

055possession my boys are their teachers favorites they're respectful they they don't they don't tear down other kids when situations arise in the classroom that other kids are going ah my sons are sitting there like calm they're not affected because i teach that to them how i handle my situations i mean it's not just schools there's there's your job life how are you handling it are you taking it out on your kids i mean during the mass mandate i am extremely against the mask we had movie night we had we had s'mores every friday night i spray um eucalyptus and spearmint on their pillows i made them feel comfortable and loved so when they go to school that's what they that's what that's what the teachers got when my fifth grade teacher told me he is

056the most polite respectful student i have he says yes ma'am he's polite at home he's different but it's okay because i want him to be wild and widely at home that way when they go to school they're polite and they're they're their teachers favorites my five-year-old my his teacher told me oh he's so adorable and enjoyable what do you do what's your secret i said i love them i keep my stress from them and that's that's what i just want to say parent parent that's where it starts and thank you guys our next speaker is best hails followed by adriana paez hello um thank you for allowing me to speak tonight my name is bess hails and i'm here tonight speaking as the sponsor for the newly formed black student union at lee summers high

057school now you might be thinking you are the sponsor of the black student union what's a white lady doing as the sponsor and trust me i get it however the number of black teachers at least summit high school is almost zero so i would like to start this speech by encouraging the board and our human resources department to hire more teachers of color diverse religions and or sexual orientations it is essential that our students see themselves represented in our staff next i would like to give an update on the bsu and what i've seen from them this year this organization is truly student-led and i'd like to give a an anonymous shout out to our three student leaders so far this year we've hosted two black history month presentations a student lock-in and social outings

058to support local black-owned businesses i have heard some people say that an organization like this further divides our community but i would like to tell you that i think the exact opposite is true lee's summit high school currently has around 11 percent african-american population this means that in a class of 25 a student may have one or maybe two other students who look like them in the class at our meetings black students are able to connect with other students who have had similar experiences and a shared culture they can communicate with their fellow black students without needing to explain nuances and backstories they understand one another better than they do their non-black classmates our next step now that our students understand each other and have built trusting relationships with each other is to invite non-black

059students to our meetings so that the two groups of students can begin building bridges of understanding compassion and respect without the bsu our black students remain isolated and their voices remain silenced i cannot wait to see what the black student unions of lee's summit are able to accomplish in the next few years thank you our next speaker is adriana piez and then merle bowers hello i'm adriana payas and i'm a parent i have two young ones uh and lisa and i'm also a social worker and an educator and um i love that i got to follow best more power to you and what you are doing um and how you are supporting students in your school um which is kind of what i'm here to talk about um i've been listening and hearing a lot

060of great things and i just want to commend the district and all of the teachers and the staff and and you all as well that are that are bringing lots of enriching opportunities to all of our students i've been a member of the parent d team and i also want to just really say thank you to shelly saunders for offering up that opportunity to parents and our community to come together and do what best was just talking about coming to a place where we can talk to people who are different than us um but also find opportunities for connection and developing that sense of belonging um so i'm i'm wearing a shirt about uh democracy and um in my college role i talk to our students a lot about the importance of civic participation and

061i hear a lot of the things that are being constantly emphasized within our district around real world learning opportunities and the market what are they tell me market value assets yes so things that that we're hoping to um help our students prepare for what's next after they leave our district and i know that um we live in a an interesting time when it comes to talking about political things and i always get the wide-eyed look even from my master's level college students in my classroom when i talk about how social work is political how you know we have this part of our code of ethics that we should be engaging um in our communities and um that we should all we all have a responsibility even non-social workers we all have a responsibility to participate

062in that process and i really just want to encourage the district you all to consider the importance and the value of bringing those conversations and those opportunities to our students um more often so that so that they get used to participating and so that we can change the culture around engaging in our democracy and you know normalizing the fact that it's it's all of our responsibility to do so thanks our next speaker is merle bowers and then rachel voss good evening i'm merle bowers an alumni long time substitute and lifetime patron of the lee summit r7 school district i am a proud 1977 graduate of lee's summit high school my three children attended with two of them graduating from our seven schools my three children were adopted with the two boys being biracial i feel

063these facts allow myself and make way for my attitude toward equity in the lee summit school district and give me a unique perspective messed up a little there before having children my attitude toward equity was indifferent at best after having children my attitude changed i would view each youth of color as he reminds me of one of the boys or she could be a future daughter-in-law when i began to see the world through their eyes it was not always good among people who didn't know our situation we would get looks and awkward questions and comments one particular incident during the election of 2008 one of the boys said an adult at their school asked them who they were voting for in the school's mock election mccain or obama my son replied mccain all the way

064i wonder where he heard that the adult's reply was are you sure i would think you two would vote for obama as the boys grew up i became more interested in u.s history as it pertains to race it was through this self-teaching and inquiry that i learned about emmett till the tulsa race massacre negro league's baseball and bass reeves the african-american u.s marshal who is believed to be the inspiration for the lone ranger this was only part of my journey in growth after leaving teaching and subbing in the district i changed careers i'm now a foster parent advocate and in this current career and my previous career as a teacher in the raytown school district much of my training focused on equity not only in regard to race and nationality but also gender issues and

065in all that training i have never felt ashamed or blamed i don't wish to excuse or blame past practices my call to action is simple i'm calling on our communities to stop the partisanship stop the division stop the false narratives and come together for the best of all of our students i apologize for going over our next speaker is rachel voss and then kristen grubbs hello my name is rachel voss i'm a senior at lee's summit west high school and a cadet teacher in the summit technology teacher academy first i would like to thank vice president marshall board member sparks and board member fritchey for visiting my sta class about a month ago while i was there board member sparks challenged me to speak at this month's meeting about my concern with the removal of

066elective courses from schools from school districts across the nation when i brought it up in class i was assured that this wouldn't be happening here anytime soon but as a future family and consumer sciences teacher i believe that still needs to be talked about for awareness purposes the schools that are removing these courses argue that they aren't valuable because they aren't aligned with standardized testing however my experience as a student has led me to believe that those elective courses are just as valuable if not more valuable than the typical core classes i'm not saying that core classes are not valuable because they do teach us a general base of knowledge but elective courses are an amazing tool to help students figure out what they want to do post-secondary or even just help them find a

067new passion in our district we are focusing on real world learning and this is this can easily be implemented in elective courses wire graphic design architecture engineering culinary and clothing construction classes are all examples of elective courses that i have seen students come out of wanting to learn more about and even pursue as a career option as mentioned my personal passion with these elective courses is the family and consumer sciences area these classes offer so much more than the traditional home eq courses of the past they teach extremely important life skills that students will use later in life including budgeting household expenses child development interior design fashion marketing and manufacturing culinary arts and good nutrition practices facts classes equip students with skills that they will need in order to succeed outside of the classroom setting

068i believe that all elective courses are vital because they can help foster and guide students passions thank you for your time and your dedication to the district as a future teacher i have appreciated each of you for your support and programs you're putting in place to help me over the next few years thank you our next speaker is kristin grubbs and then jennifer foley in a board meeting or a board workshop meeting on february 25th 2021 an esteemed administrator in our district presented lsr7 data through a lens of equity beginning the presentation with this advice and i quote what we need to do is look at the data and reflect on the the data and let the data tell us the story as opposed to adding our own inferences end quote here's the story the

069data from our district has been telling me since july 2019 our district has spent or committed to spending over 142 000 encore collaborative nearly 400 000 on educational equity consultants over 580 000 on panorama that totals 1.12 million to clarify our district sees value and core collaborative consultants and their curriculum which was mandated to our district staff a book called belonging through a culture of dignity which openly notes its basis being in critical race theory our district sees value in educational equity consultants a consulting group that on their very own website defines racism as quote a complex system of beliefs and behaviors that result in the oppression of people of color and benefit the dominant group it is the system grounded in the presumed superiority of the white race end quote they conveniently define white

070privilege too our district sees value in dispensing panorama surveys to our third through twelfth grade students multiple times a year asking questions like how much do you matter to others at this school and overall how much do you feel like you belong at your school neglecting the trigger these questions could be for students who are battling depression and suicidal thoughts these divisive and ineffective tools were deemed worthy of funding yet here we are three years since implementation and their efficacy has yet to be proven meanwhile our staff training is being run by a firm that narrowly defines racism staff curriculum is built on crt and our children's survey results merged with their demographic data and via student ids are stored on a panorama maintained server in virginia if we added the contracted 1.12 million to

071the 1.5 million in salaries to our equity leadership and over two hundred thousand in staffing travel and other costs we'd have three million dollars going off our district salary chart i figure since summer of 2019 we could have added 13 to 17 more teachers to our district we need more qualified teachers and specialists who can meet the needs of students or meet students where they are and support them as they make progress on their own path to success our district has been so distracted with the inferred idea that race is keeping our own our students from receiving an excellent education but the data is telling me the blame rests on a mismanaged budget and fouled up priorities i implore you to stop with this race-centered money pit called equity and do what you committed to

072doing by hiring qualified teachers and support staff who will indeed prepare each student for success in life our next speaker is jennifer foley and then aaron gregory good evening to create a better future we must learn from the past tonight i would like to share a past proposal with you about which you might not be aware my hope is that this lesson from our past will provide perspective for the future in october of 2018 our former superintendent presented data to the community in hopes of securing a contract with the consulting group the data and values that were presented demonstrated a significant finding not highly publicized the rate of poverty in the students was highly correlated to their academic performance impoverished kids were entering kindergarten well behind their wealthier peers once this was identified a group

073in our community was inspired to make a difference and created a committee to develop a proposal to help the district improve literacy in elementary students an educator who tutored dyslexic students with barton offered to oversee and train future volunteers more than 30 volunteers were on board with the plan to serve two one-hour sessions per week one-on-one with students before during or after school the meadow lane principal at the time volunteered to pilot the program and business owners in the community offered to pay for student transportation if needed the proposed effort would be judged on the success of the progress of the students throughout that year with hopes that this grassroots effort might grow across the district a true partnership of home school and community the tutoring program was offered at zero cost to the district

074in summer of 19 the community group approached the interim superintendent and two assistant superintendents to offer the proposal the fall the proposal was rejected with the claim that since this district was purchasing a new reading curriculum this edition would be too much for teachers to handle this reasoning conflicted with the willing principle at meadow lane and was counter to the fact that teachers would not be involved with this highly specialized tutoring instead the group was told that they should direct their volunteers to fall under the currently held volunteer program which had neither reading as a focus nor measures in place to test the efficacy of the volunteer work the sitting board of education at the time was advised by the interim superintendent that the district assistant superintendents turned down the community offer and unfortunately the

075school board did not intervene our district has weathered some significant changes in the past few years but when i talked to any of the people who were involved with that proposal i'm saddened that the district was closed outside help from retired teachers and business leaders for its struggling readers two and a half years have passed considered the good that might have been done especially in the face of the fact that we have yet to fully implement a tier three reading intervention program the administration has shifted some the superintendent has changed and all i ask of you is that if a proposal like this would come up again where citizens of the community offer to help students to learn to read with a proven program without charge which would be conducted by professionals that you strongly

076consider it i know you care about the success of our students our community also cares about the success of our students any opportunity to partner together to benefit the learning of the kids is something that i think should always be explored thank you for your time our next speaker is aaron gregory and our final speaker will be gina meyer hello i'm erin gregory and i'm a parent in the lsr7 school district as you know um i'm here tonight to say thank you to lsr7 for continued communication and transparency specifically surrounding panorama surveys as a parent i appreciate this information and i encourage others to read those communications given an uptick in misinformation namely regarding student data collection and sharing i want to thank you for providing our students the opportunity to share their feedback and

077for working to incorporate students voices and perspectives into decisions you make surrounding learning planning and putting students first we need to amplify all student voices and we need to empower our teachers with support and relevant information that allows them to best serve their students and manage their classrooms specific to panorama i can't comprehend the outrage over a survey that gauges how students think and feel about learning experiences in the classroom and about their safety and belonging at school especially considering two things one many parents having so bravely shared their own personal experiences here at this podium of times their children didn't feel a sense of belonging at school or worse they faced outright racism homophobia or other harm and two the mental health issues that have surfaced amid the pandemic especially during times of social

078isolation to wring your hands over panorama surveys is to deprive our teachers and administrators of vital information they deserve to help our students and to prioritize their mental health and sense of belonging which are certainly factors in academic success i also want to thank this board for adopting the board of education equity policy in december in part it reads the lsr7 school district will promote equitable educational experiences for our students in building the individual and collective efficacy of staff through mandatory continuous equity training while supporting their personal well-being i encourage this board to continue making progress swiftly and purposefully to implement that deliverable to provide relevant rigorous and most importantly policy-required continuous equity training for all lsr7 staff and teachers and even for the community if even at our own cost those who decry equity

079training as a failure in closing student achievement gaps must understand no one training has ever been scoped to close achievement gaps to expect as much would be ridiculous i've seen some excellent examples of our schools fostering belonging for all students and certainly some opportunities where we've missed the mark that's why training for all lsr 7 teachers and staff is so important and a foundational building block in upholding this board policy thank you to this board our teachers and our administrators for caring about the whole child and focusing on lsr7's mission statement thank you our final speaker of the evening is gina meyer hi i'm gina meyer and i have three children that attended lee summit schools k through 12. i'm here to talk about two words and show that they don't have to be divisive

080we can find common ground the first is inclusion we've heard about sorry about that guys muffins with mom and donuts with dads right and we know that not all of our kids actually can participate in this because it doesn't actually work for their family structure but we care about inclusion so we say all the kids can come with whomever they want and that's a good thing but a better thing is if we change the name to maybe uh donuts with grown-ups and then we fixed it and it wasn't even hard being inclusive doesn't have to be scary but it does have to be intentional and the second word is a little more complicated it is equity we've all seen the image of three people of different size trying to look over a fence and watch

081a baseball game and it doesn't work for all of them so sometimes you'll see images where they have boxes to try to help but the obstruction is still there and what i would like to suggest is that instead of boxes and considering the different size of the people being the problem that we don't see the people as a problem we see the obstruction is the problem and if it's appropriate we remove it but sometimes the obstruction is there for a reason and in this case it's the fence and it's there to protect people so what do you do when the obstruction is necessary well i don't have an image for my suggestion but my suggestion is a chain link fence because when you remove that solid fence and you replace it with a chain link

082fence you've made structural change and then everybody can see and everybody can still be protected so equity is a little more complicated but it doesn't have to be divisive and if we look at all situations through lenses of inclusion and equity we can recognize when obstructions need to be removed and when obstructions need to be changed for the benefit of everyone and i want to thank the board and let you know i support all of your efforts in equity and inclusion thank you thank you to everyone who came to speak tonight we appreciate it we are going to move on to 5.01 this is our board reports and meetings attended uh board members if you can let's do short summaries tonight okay of where you have been here over the last month i would i

083think we all would appreciate it so um because you looked at me first we'll start with board member allen tonight and then thank you i only have three pages okay perfect no excellent i'll make it quick february 25th you and i were at government relations we listened to the proposal the outline of discussion around the half cent sales tax for our police and firefighters uh march first you and i again well no not this time uh i traveled to jeff city with the lee summit chamber and eight other chambers for a um for an advocacy day around uh chamber interests primarily meeting with state rep senators then the next week you and i went down march 7th with ms campbell and mr sparks dr buck a few others for our advocacy day with the missouri

084board of hello missouri state school board goodness gracious and then um kathy and i enjoyed uh meeting with the state board of education yes i actually enjoyed it and they talked about um msip six which is um i think great actually and then back up a little bit kim and i had a work day here with team lee summit talking about phase two which is later in the agenda and then uh drill down on and unpack the employee survey which is ongoing and good feedback good participation this year roughly 1700 or so employees over 1700 employees out of 20 through 2300 that's awesome okay very nicely done all right uh board member hedrick yes i just have two um the first one was the board policy committee met at the end of february and we

085finished up our work in the board policy g series which really deals with employee lots of different types of employee board policies we finished that workup and i think we had some recommendations and we also did discuss um policies that are on our agenda this evening as well in terms of jeca and gbcb so that is pretty much concluded for this school year and then the other meeting was our finance committee meeting yesterday morning and board member campbell will give be giving that report here shortly thank you dr hedrick board member campbell i attended finance committee with board member hedrick and we'll report on that a little bit later i had the fun time with board member allen to do a transportation tour so thank you to bruce maples because just appreciated him taking us

086around we learned a great deal about the transportation organization and it was a great tour and great information i also attended the msba legislative days in jeff city i want to give a special thank you to representative ingle for meeting with us representative patterson and senator sirpo i enjoyed our time together and appreciate so much their support of public education and our opportunity to learn a great deal about how to advocate more for public education in our roles and as a part of the msba so that was very exciting also part of that session was in particular around a bipartisan bill on literacy i know there's been some updates around that and it's looks like it's taking a little bit longer to get there but i appreciated everyone's participation in that bill going through the

087senate including a lot of organizations around the state and the good listening that was done around literacy and the important for the importance of that for our students as board member allen mentioned we did attend a portion of the state of missouri board of education meeting and that was very informative it felt very much like our board meetings do but the great presentation that we got to sit in on was on the m6 which as we know you know desi sets the standards for all of us as as districts in the state of missouri and so while we have our csip which is our strategic plan we adhere to m s m sip six um and a couple of pieces of that so equity is called out in m66 that's a change as well as

088they've added so not only are districts ranked and evaluated from a performance standpoint but also districts will be evaluated on future planning so that'll now be a part of that mc6 so that was very informative to me and i appreciated that learning uh the cac legislative forum appreciated the cac for planning that and sharing information again thank you to representative engel and representative stacy for partnering with that and i loved that dr buck had invited three of the students that are a part of his student council that meet with him on a regular basis because they were awesome and i will share one piece of learning from that that they shared with us that they would love to see more information going to parents and the students in the later elementary years in the middle

089school years about all the different clubs and opportunities and activities at the high school level and so i thought that was great feedback and great ways to engage parents and students in discussing what are those clubs that you want to join what do you want to look at what do you want to be when you grow up all those kinds of conversations starting those in elementary and middle school and just that that came from student voices i loved hearing that so also had great conversations so thank you to all the groups that attended that day because that was a very that was a great opportunity i think so cac business roundtable participation student participation and then we had folks from the district and so thank you for that opportunity also i got the opportunity to

090tour mason elementary with board member sparks and representative sanders and i think the benefit part of my learning around the advocacy and around being engaged from a legislative standpoint is the more that we can bring our representatives and our senators from missouri into our schools so that we can see all the hard work that our teachers and our students and our parents are putting in to education here in our district i think that's going to help them in jeff city all the way so really excited about that tour and representative sander taking time with us um i also participated in a meeting for the pratt team regarding the jec a board policy that we're taking a look at those waivers we know that it's important you know we have the requirement that people live in

091the district to attend school but there are some exceptions to that and talking and thinking about those exceptions i think is important also just a note i also attended taste of lee summit that was great and thank you very much and that raised a lot of money so that was very exciting to see that action as well but also i wanted to share just a piece um from a personal standpoint um at my work there was a session called equity and health and technology that was presented for all the employees that work at my company and one of the things that was brought up in that that really resonated with me was the important correlation between good health good lifelong health and early education and i just felt so strongly you know as a district

092and as a community we all support early education so much in our district and that just goes hand in hand with health and equity issues from a lifelong standpoint so i was really i was excited to hear that and i just felt very strongly that i wanted to share that as well so thank you thank you board member campbell uh board member sparks i'll just add what has not already been said um i also attended a meeting with uh board member fritchey with some concerned parents about some issues and it was a great constructive conversation where we actually have some goals in some direction that we will be meeting with the rest of our colleagues about also i attended the step show at least summit north let me tell you as a full house we

093had some bernard campbell steppers some in north steppers there were steppers i believe from it was either lawrence or topeka it was raytown school district it was truman high school so it was just a great time and we had a ball i'm also had a meeting with dr miller and dr dale sims of of their um particular areas of expertise and then i'm just going to do this shout out miss vostat spoke from the girl you're on it was that is why i'm here that is why i'm here and i and i i wanted to kind of get emotional because we get to encounter so much and we all have our own personal lives and then we also take all of these other meetings but to meet the needs of our kids and to see

094them engage in wanting to see progression in the district that means so much to them is why i'm here and i'm glad to be here thank you board member sparks board member fritchey thank you president murdoch okay i'll try to keep this quick i i had five different meetings it's been a big meeting month um but lisa my educational foundation first of all some of you may have been hit up by kids to buy major saver cards we made approximately 95 000 this year off of our major major saver cards and some of that will be split with the participating schools that sold those cards so that's great and we exceeded our budget goal for that taste of lee's summit thank you to everyone who attended or donated we had probably more than 500 people

095in attendance not or 475 not including volunteers so it was over 500 it was it was great to be back to taste of lee's summit 13 participating restaurants so we appreciate our community support on that and all of the donations our community made it was just a great event was very positive um we will fall a little short of budget for this particular event but we made up for it in other areas so um you know it's it was good to be back scholarships this year the review teams are reading right now 842 applications this year for our scholarships yes i have 24 in my inbox right now that i need to read i have not had time to read yet peak classroom grants review teams are reading 75 applications for peak grants this year

096and llcf has budgeted to award 60 000 to those grants applicants selected will be notified during surprise visits in early may so yay thanks lscf um business roundtable meeting um this month we had a legislative overview presented by our own dr buck on our current legislation in the missouri house and senate shannon booth provided our diploma plus update to keep our membership informed on that and members asked great questions the group had a very good discussion regarding career education so it was a great business roundtable meeting then on to citizens advisory committee meeting and we had members heard a summary of the again the important bills that were being discussed and voted on in the missouri legislature that was presented by steve carell our legislative consultant and lobbyist for the cooperating school districts of greater

097kansas city and then our committee members worked in small groups to actually examine bills and practice on communicating with our legislators because some of us you know need some extra help on how to appropriately communicate with our legislators and to appreciate them for what they do for us finally last night we had a great meeting for the struggling readers parent group led by dr eric flack it was a group of interested parents and district employees which spent quite a bit of time meeting in the meeting generating and discussing the big topics surrounding dyslexia that this committee wants to address and to see addressed in the upcoming meetings and so we there were many great ideas discussed a lot of ideas generated and work on them will begin in the next few weeks and this committee

098has several meetings on the calendar for this spring actually we're meeting every two weeks in that committee so it's not a do nothing committee it is a let's go for it committee let's get some things done to help our kids who have dyslexia or are struggling readers so a lot of great things happening in our district thank you thank you board member fridgey vice president marshall well believe it or not it's already been covered i'm good well that was very quick nicely done okay uh just three three things for me number one is i did want to highlight when we were down in jeff city for legislative day um we did get to visit what was called the public student showcase which was up um in the rotunda of the capitol this was groups of

099students from various schools throughout the state essentially highlighting and showcasing some of their different programs it was really fantastic the one that i spent the most time with i just have to give a shout out to because now i i want to admit i forgot the school but it was a young lady who is growing plants with no soil um which is pretty amazing and i can't remember what the rocks and stuff were that she was using to to do this it was like some chemicals and stuff like that but it was uh i told her she needs to watch the movie the martian now so um and so uh we also like kim mentioned we had cac but i did want to give a quick uh thank you to elaine blummel stephen hill steve

100carroll for meeting with us and then katie for getting it organized i really do appreciate that it was a good meeting and it was actually prior to us getting to go down there on legislative day which was even more helpful we had our leadership meeting between vice president marshall myself dr buck um to kind of plan through the next month or so and we'll continue those here in the coming months and i do have to because i promised him i would and i'm sorry i'm going to take five seconds here the kansas city kings wheelchair basketball team will go to nationals in wichita here the first weekend of april with the prep kids that's 13 and under which have multiple lee summit kids on the team 29-0 and ranked first in the country and the

101varsity program who are 14 and up will go in as the number four seed in the country um which is pretty amazing for a program that started just four years ago so kudos to them so that's where i'm going to stop board member sparks you wanted to add something i'm sorry i felt rushed um i also took a tour of hazel grove elementary and as i was coming out of uh mrs murrell's office dr kinney was there and she took me on a tour of the entire school so that was exciting that is awesome fantastic so we got through all of that um we are going to move on here in tonight's agenda so thank you board members for reporting out on all of those things and we are going to move on here to

102our finance committee and finance committee report and it sounds like it will be board member campbell so we'll turn it over to you great thank you we talked about a number of things at the meeting one item for approval tonight will be and i'm sorry that our future teacher vos left because she would be very interested know that bernina sewing machine purchase so the current models that are used are very much out of date and this will replace those machines for the family consumer science classrooms across the district also our purchasing department has worked hard to look at our copy paper for the next year and see the potential savings of buying in bulk and being a part of the co-op around that purchase so we'll be approving that as well and again that the

103cost savings is great for the district so really appreciate that the purchasing department staying up on that our nutrition department needs new technology so laptops desktops and point-of-sale computers are needed and they've worked with it and so we'll be moving forward with the funds coming out of nutrition services but that will be replace their technology one question you might have is why would they need new point-of-sale computers when we know that right now we're still on the free and reduced lunch waiver and the reason for that is even with the waivers we have to have the point-of-sale technology in place so important to replace that as well also with our east trails middle school one item that is moving forward is around the phone installation and one thing dr whaley shared with us is they've

104actually done quite a bit of research and they'll be implementing new phone technology in east trails that then they'll work in the coming years to take out across the rest of the district so they made sure that this will work with the existing phone systems in other schools and we'll move forward with that implementation and installation also looking at real estate purchases it was it's recommended that we include um the law firm of chinery evans and nail as one of the law firms that we use within the district and target especially those real estate contracts and purchases around that we reviewed the contracts for fifteen thousand dollars in less and there were no questions around that we also looked at the transportation program evaluation and i know that's a bit available for all board members

105and talked a little bit about the committee that's being put together that will kind of be the preparation committee ahead of getting ready for an rfp process to look at school bus purchases and fuel and all of those kinds of things and so we'll be getting updates around that committee work but i again really encourage all of our board members to get engaged around if we're starting a committee you know knowing who's a part of the committee learning what the committee's looking at so that it's a partnership with the committee and that as we're working towards any recommendations they would make that we're part of that understanding and that we have questions asked and answered way ahead of when we might be approving a recommendation so just encourage everyone around that a couple of facilities

106items around the lee's summit high school so an air chiller that was not scheduled for replacement needs to be replaced so fortunately within our capital budgets we have the money to cover that and so we'll be moving forward and i really appreciated kyle guerrell sharing some information around that because he's also having the other air chillers that are at least summit high school evaluated so that that we can make sure that they're not going to have the same problem or if they are that we're seeing it very early that this air chiller had because air chillers are quite expensive so we'll be approving that also for richardson and summit lakes the walk-in freezers are going to be replaced again as part of the capital budget and then continue to work on the bond report and

107look at those bond expenses so we have some updates we know that because the bond funds have gone over multiple years that getting that report in sync was a little bit challenging so we've got good data and good information that we'll be able to review um as each board member and then they're still continuing to tweak on some of the incumbent encumbrances so we'll look for that in coming hopefully in next month for resolution so any questions on those items okay i will share one other item that we discussed and it was a little bit later in some of the financial reports but i did just want to touch on with nutrition services we talked a lot about the waivers that will not be in place next year and um just like she has always

108done lori danella did a great job of letting us know the planning that she is going through right now to be ready for when we don't have those waivers anymore to ensure that we stay positive on our nutrition services funds and that we keep that money in the positive state so i really appreciated her just jumping right in and walking through the great work she's doing and the planning that she's doing to help us stay ahead of the game so just wanted to give her a shout out of thanks for that so as a next item i moved to approve the transfer of two million nine hundred and thirty eight thousand four hundred dollars and ninety eight cents from the general fund to the special revenue fund second motion in a second for the transfer

109of funds um is there any discussion on this all those in favor raise your hand and say aye aye opposed motion case unanimously board member campbell i move to approve the treasures report and the payment of the bills second motion and the second to dr hedrick on 6.03 thank you any any discussion on 6.03 uh all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously thank you very much board member campbell um we are going to move on to our item seven this is our consent agenda this is just a quick reminder to anybody who might be watching online too um the consent agenda are all items that we have uh as board members reviewed and essentially agree to pass as what who does so uh it does

110anybody need to pull an item from item seven okay i respectfully request that we pull 7.03 from item seven so that we may ask a few questions and discuss it okay mr smart do you have that and we'll put it down in an item for decision please uh board member sparks okay we've 7.08 my bike wasn't on okay so we will pull 7.08 and add it to an item for decision um so board members the consent agenda now is item 7.01 um essentially through 7.12 okay because that will be what the numbers will correspond to so i just want to make sure that we're all on the same page with that um could we have a motion on the floor for our consent agenda then please i moved to approve the consented agenda items as

111presented in item 7.01 through 7.12 okay thank you dr hedrick thank you board member campbell and board member marshall you need to uh oh we're not going to do that so all those in favor here of the consent agenda please raise your hand and say hi hi any opposed that motion carries unanimously we're going to move on to now our items for decision so now we will have six coming up here so item 8.01 is the compensation package for two thousand twenty two twenty three and we're going to turn it over to mr holder to present those uh findings from team lee summit good evening it is my pleasure to be here this evening to present the recommendation for the 2022-23 school year from team lease summit for our salary and compensation package and on

112the board agenda item we really highlighted uh the features of of this recommendation as well as a one-page summary sheet and so i will spend just uh a couple minutes highlighting really the three main areas and then we'll take questions if there are any um before i get started with the three main items i would just like to highlight the process with team lee's summit this is my first year here in lee's summit school district and when i came i was told hey you're part of team lee's summit and i didn't know what that was at the time uh but i have come to find that it is an extremely unique uh feature and i think a really tremendous feature of the lee's summit r7 school district it is a group of representatives of all

113employee groups from our school district and we meet approximately five times a year and discuss a lot of different items but one of the the key items is our salary recommendations and so we go through a process throughout the year and uh so we've arrived at this point tonight so the the first recommendation is that all of our employees would receive step advancement on our four salary schedules we have a support schedule professional schedule a teacher schedule in our administration schedule the second item that has been mentioned earlier tonight is the implementation of phase two for those that are new to the process last year and actually i believe in the spring of 2020 the board charged team lease summit to look at our salary schedules and part of that what came out of that

114process was a recommendation for two phases of improvements phase one was implemented this year and phase two was left uh to be implemented in a future fiscal year and so i'm pleased to report tonight that our recommendation is to bring phase two to the table for all eligible employees and that is across all four of our ranges that would impact those eligible employees for salary enhancements and then the third item is in addition to step movement on our support salary schedule we would have a slight base increase to that schedule which would bring us into alignment with the missouri minimum wage that will go into effect in january of 2023 and so that would ensure that all of our employees are paid at least at the 12 an hour range and also provide in addition

115to the step increase a increase to the support hourly rate along the entire range of the schedule and the last item that i would mention uh in the additional recommendations is that team lease summit recommends strongly recommends that the the board continue uh to fund the employee cost for all of our health dental long-term disability basic life and employee assistance programs in the 22-23 budget and i would just highlight there that of all those that i mentioned health is the only the health insurance is the only item that could possibly increase because the others are set uh with a three-year three-year rate guarantee and we'll be in year two in the 22-23 school year so at this time i'd be happy to entertain any questions okay so before we do questions i would appreciate if

116we'd get a motion on the floor if that's all right with board members and then let's we can have any discussion and questions so let's take a motion here on 8.01 move that the board approves the proposed compensation package for the 2022-23 school year second okay appreciate the motion in the second board member sparks is your mic on it is not here we go i my comment is i appreciate um that we are doing step two phase two of making some of our wrongs right um i would appreciate if we um seriously understand that our support staff and our teachers they're the bedrock of this district and i think it's important that they remain the focus when it comes to compensating them for the work that they do and so appreciate what has been done

117but i want to make sure that that is continue to happen so that we can keep good staff and good teachers here in this district um i my question is with phase two there's no phase three so phase two should pretty much take care of our inconsistence um between pay scales correct yes it will align um in particular on the teacher's schedule years of service with their step placement okay and so next year or at the at the next increase then if we decided to give an increase which i'm obviously a proponent of that then it would be just across the board there would not be any other type of situations to where we're bringing people to their appropriate step because we would have done that with phase one and two correct that is correct

118okay thank you board member campbell a couple of um questions and um nathan i really appreciated you sharing um that and just asking to confirm the school districts are not required to pay minimum wage but because it's important to us we want to pay at minimum we want to make sure that we're in alignment around that minimum wage right that is correct yeah missouri public all public school districts in the state are not required to follow the the minimum wage but that is a choice that we have made yes great thank you and then the other item that we talked about because we know that a lot of these changes don't just affect this year but will have those ripple effects in the future years that you've been great enough to provide us with some

119of those future budget looks and you'll be mapping all of these things that we're voting on tonight into those future looks so that we've got those dollars projected out and we know their projections but you're doing a great job of keeping us informed of that future impact so that we're looking at overall budget given these changes right yes definitely we'll continue to do that and i appreciate that do you think we'll have those updates before next month's board meeting um there was i thought i s did i did you get the update maybe i didn't get the update yeah oh great okay thanks very much yes we've got it now thank you awesome and then that will be as you mentioned continually refined as we get better information sure thank you for doing that and

120thank you for doing it so quickly great uh board member allen thank you sir um mr holder i've told you a thousand times i think you do great work i appreciate all that you contribute to team lee summit um kim and i are on that i know i should say board member for she right kim and i are on that team uh lee summit weigh in on some commentary and and don't try to um set direction and just try to listen as much as any it was some good work by team lee summer over the past few years and it wasn't easy work and certainly i didn't do the heavy lifting it was really done by the employees that are on that on that committee and on that group and weighed in quite a bit

121i mean they weighed into a lot of it and um some tremendous homework done by human resources dr carlson was on the committee and his team so phase one was put in place phase two is is is being considered um we have received some feedback i've received some direct phone calls you and i've talked a little bit about what's next the end of the scale may not be quite as um robust i guess you know and maybe as we are for the folks thank you for that uh and in phase two so we'll have that ongoing conversation um the beauty is i think you want to continue to have that type of conversation dr buck wants to have that type of conversation and our leadership team so it doesn't go unnoticed um i'm sort of

122addressing two folks that called me directly but i know that if two folks call there are another however many out there i do want to lean in on something though that was said earlier and i think i've certainly stumbled on words up here and made comments and certainly paid the price when i haven't thought them through um so don't take this the wrong way mr sparks because i do want to have some reference to the past right and i wasn't up here on the board none of us were in 11 roughly when salaries were frozen everybody was stuck with what they had at the time following a 39 reduction in the s p 500 and the major housing crisis of 08. so that being said i i don't i don't believe we're making you know

123we're not righting our wrongs for the history i mean so i don't mean to be insulting in that comment i'm just it's it's not necessarily making wrong a right we're just able to reflect on what was done the tough decisions that were made across the board and and trying to to make up for some some some hard decisions that had to be made ten years ago so i don't believe that anybody did anything wrong at that time but had to squeeze some blood out of a turnip so to speak and we're we're fortunate enough that we're flush enough in a district that that concentrates enough to to get where we are so sorry for all the word salad there but um i do appreciate the fact of team lee summit over the past three years

124four years or so and the board really drilling down you drilling down judy hedrick putting in tons of work it's really gone um you know without notice but certainly complement your work on getting these numbers that are real and and and making some things good and and right certainly but not not in lieu of what was wrong just what had to be done thank you thank you very much board member fritzy yes i'll try to keep it quick um yes i just wanted to say in addition to yeah this is our salary proposal part of team lee summit but um that group was excellent they worked very hard they dug in rolled up their sleeves and they worked hard and i don't think dr del sem got credit too for her work on that so

125thank you um but i just wanted to say as a follow-up to this though there were thousands of comments on that survey too that we spent a lot of quality time in team league summit looking at the work life issue comments so nathan and i were on that same small group team together and we we actually developed some some basic themes and some action steps or some questions that then moved on to the superintendent's leadership group and they will be looking at those and they will be sending those out to the appropriate administrators for action or follow-up communication that will come out next fall so i just wanted people who are aware of our employees to understand that this salary proposal tonight this is great we all should be happy about it but the second

126step of that is that there will be action taken on some of those concerns and comments that our employees have made because i want them to feel like you are listened to very much so this year they really dug into those comments so we will see what comes out of that when in september appreciate that board member sparks i appreciate the other comments that were said um i do stand by my words choice um in that particular matter and we can talk about it privately if you want um but then also i do have a follow-up question that question is is how is the committee how are those individuals selected that's a good question and i would have to lean on someone else to to answer that dr i'm going to jump in and say

127that there's actually in the charter for team lee summit though the process for elections but that's like a revolving process all of the support staff there's i think there are there's different groups that are elected by those individuals who are in that group like on a three-year rotating basis and then the teacher groups to to teacher organizations that are represented they do their own elections within their group uh for their team lee summit representative so by department by departments it's by it's by like a position like the paraprofessionals they have a representative on there so all of the prayer professionals would uh vote on who they would elect to be their team lee summit representative and bus drivers and um you know custodians and just every employee group it's very bottom-up driven by yeah that

128is great information i just saw the picture and saw that there was not much diversity on that group and so that's what i wanted to know thank you any other comments or questions mr holder thank you for putting together the information by the way not only for this but i know i had asked you for the past data of percentage uh that we spend on salaries and i think there's two points that are important here um for our patrons to understand in this particular recommendation one is we gotta have all the salary schedules but we also have all of the clubs um ranges and stuff like that that are there so if sponsors want to be able to look at that to see um for next year you have that in that information will be

129available the second thing is is that you know we've talked about it for a little bit that we spend anywhere between about 83 and a half to 84 and a half percent of our entire budget goes to salaries and benefits and that's been very consistent over the last 10 years and i should have mentioned by the way that i was asking the question because i wanted to show a few people that it has stayed very very consistent in terms of what the total budget is that we spend on salaries and benefits that being said i'm going to beat this drum until it forever and ever that our benefits are fantastic within this district but they certainly are not getting cheaper and the recommendation i obviously support but going forward it's going to continue to get

130harder and harder and harder to maintain increases in salaries plus taking control of benefits and so um that's that's where i'm just gonna end otherwise i'm gonna get angry about it not at you obviously at the insurance industry so um okay yeah that's actually that that's even better yeah there you go um any other comments or questions okay we have a motion and a second that's on the floor mrs smirk we have a roll call vote on this one and thank you mr holder appreciate it yes and as we do that i'd like to ask the board to hit f5 because that will refresh done and i have i have the order for us we're good to go awesome thanks board member alan aye board member campbell board member fritzy board member hedrick vice president

131marshall hi board member sparks aye president murdoch aye motion carries unanimously um we are moving on to 8.02 item for decision this is renewing our administrative staff for the 2022-23 school year so i take a motion on that item please i move the board approved to renew the administrative staff as submitted for the 2022-2023 school year we have a motion and a second on the floor for the minute for renewing administrative staff for the upcoming school year is there any discussion on this particular item mrs smith we have a roll call vote on this item please can i confirm that it was board member alan that second yes it was board member campbell board member fritzi board member hedrick vice president marshall hi board member sparks board member alan president murdoch aye that motion carries

132unanimously 8.03 is renewing our probationary teachers for the 2022-2023 school year uh we'll take a motion on that item please i move that the board renew the probationary teachers as submitted for the 2022-23 school year second we have a motion and a second you have a choice this time is sismer so there you go um there you go um any discussion on 8.03 we have a roll call vote on this item please board member fritchey board member hedrick vice president marshall aye board member sparks board member allen board member campbell president murdoch aye that motion carries unanimously 8.04 is our new personnel request for the upcoming 2022-2023 school year we'll take a motion on that item i move that the board approved the non-allocated human resources requests as presented second we have a motion and

133a second for 8.04 is there any discussion on this item sorry did you was there anything you wanted to add we can ask a question just ask a question right i mean i'm sorry i i should have i okay all right mr smirk we have a roll call vote on 8.04 please board member hedrick vice president marshall aye board member sparks aye board member allen aye remember campbell board member fridgey aye resident murdoch aye motion carries unanimously 8.05 is the item from the consent agenda that is now an item for decision that's the chinery evans and neo um well that's not what i did it i'm just saying how it showed up he can at least he can at least attest that when i hit it it's opposite so i blame i blame dr buck

134so there we go so okay we'll go we'll go with since since you most of you have the policies but he can at least attest that it is sitting here okay so we'll go 8.8.05 we'll do the board policies ac gb cb and jeca so we'll take a motion on that item and we can have any discussion and questions okay i'll move that the board approved the first and final reading for board policies a c g b c b and j e c a s presented okay we have a motion and a second for 8.05 uh this is the time for discussion and questions board member fritchey yes thank you for moving this two items for um decision um i've had some questions from some folks in our community and i and i just thought

135we needed to to um answer those in front of everyone tonight um this is referring to policy j-e-c-a board policy j-e-c-a um in our background information and we discussed the sort of work session on march the 3rd the session was live streamed and recorded on the youtube channel some folks watched that and had some questions about that it's a revision to our policy to provide full-time employees who live outside the district boundaries to enroll their students tuition free um and so um i if we could get some one i'm dr buck may perhaps this is you um first question i have like three questions okay okay doc dr potts will answer okay thank you dr potts my first question was what's the reason for this proposal or this change in the policy so multiple reasons

136it's a recruitment retention piece so we have some employees who may not be able to afford to to live in our community but they can work here so we want to help educate their students if they choose to bring them along with them it's a work-life situation where they're going to be working in school sometimes the kid can go there the vast majority of public school districts in missouri according to missouri school board association already does this um in fact where i came from before i couldn't imagine i can't think of a single district in the region who did not do it so and we used to do it uh 20 years ago or so and we had stopped when we were growing really fast like 600 kids a year and we're not in that

137situation right now and with our bond issue and thank you to the community for the bond issue we do have the space for it as well and i was actually a recipient of that policy back when i was in high school in my freshman and sophomore year i did not live in lee's summit school district so my mom taught here so i got to come here um but please dr buck or dr potts explain the funding for these additional students where's where does the funding come from to educate them see i thought dr paz is going to get questions so the funding so the funding would be average daily attendance is what generates state funding and so state funding would follow the student okay so state funding does follow the students so we would get

138funded funded for those students who are in attendance okay and then the the last question is um how is the school determined for that staff members student in other words does the staff member get to just select what school that their student would go to or how how do we determine that no they don't get to select what school their student goes to we put a chart into uh the there's an application that the employee would fill out and their child would attend the school in the attendance area of their work report location okay so if if an employee reports to lee's summit north but they have an elementary age student then the it would be as if their address is at least summit north and then they would go to that feeder system so

139we created a feeder system for like nutrition services uh individuals who work at slc uh whatever schools they work on what their feeder pattern is depending upon the grade level so it'd be as if their residence is at their work location and that would determine their attendance area okay and one final question sorry i added one uh but this was also asked by the patron um if the school that they want to attend is that capacity then what happens at that point then we would we would work my understanding is the way we discussed is we would work on finding an alternative location for the individual if there wasn't space at the request or at the at the school okay or if it's like it looks like it's growing so rapidly that they're going to

140the same thing goes for special programming too there are sometimes limited slots or limited space or some special programming if if a student needed that special programming and there wasn't space we would work to try to find a placement for that student thank you very much i appreciate those answers what river campbell one quick question i remember that came up as a part of the work session you know you mentioned recruitment and retainment and i know that we asked do our teachers and our staff really see this as a as a great opportunity can you share a little bit about that yes i have a teacher advisory committee and an administrative roundtable and it was a resounding yes please out of both groups in fact the administrators are saying not only is it yes please

141but it's a huge recruiting and retention piece for them as well thank you and i just have one more item if i could i do want to really thank the board thank joe hatley there was a lot of work around ac and gbcb and i really appreciate you know we saw as a board some gaps there and we worked closely together to close those gaps up and shore those up so i would encourage every staff member to review ac review gbcb because those are new and updated and make sure that you have awareness on that and i just want to again thank the board my fellow board members and and thank joe for the hard work around that thank you thank you board member campbell board member alan yeah thank you sir along those same

142lines i'd like to encourage some good strong conversation out of this building to the buildings in our district and to personnel across the board because we're raising the bar and i think we need to understand what that means we also need to understand i think we need to raise the bar across the board all 18 000 plus student students as well so i think one will lead to the next and the next and the next so i i'm i i agree with with ms campbell we um we put a lot of work and effort into this and um i live i face the same same same issues in the private community and uh we're held to this standard so i think it's only appropriate thank you thank you board member alan any other questions or

143comments hey mr smear can we have a we've done a motion in a second right yep there we go so uh roll call vote on this one please vice president marshall board member sparks board member alan aye board member campbell board member fritzy hi remember hedrick president murdoch aye motion carries unanimously 8.06 is the chinery evans and nail um contract um so if we could get a motion uh and then we will have discussion or questions or both i move the board of education approve the professional service agreement with china events and nail pc motion in a second for item 8.06 any questions or discussion on this item board member sparks dr miller thank you for coming up here i have a question for you can you uh privately we kind of talked about this

144a little bit can you i know that this is a law firm that we have had a previous relationship with um and i know it's also kind of like a hometown type of law firm can you tell me what the rfp process was if there was one performed and then also is there is there a need for this particular law firm currently thank you there was an rfp process and we did put out a bid through ion wave and you we we discussed this they did not meet the deadline for that this particular firm really is it's very local it's very specialized in purchasing land and acquisition and this is there's not a need for it right now it would just be in the event that there is a need that we would add them

145were there any other law firms that actually did participate in the rfp pro process well that's and that's where we got our general counsel from our slate of general counsel okay thank you very much any other comments or questions mrs smirk we have a roll call vote on 8.06 please board member sparks board member alan aye remember campbell board member fritchey aye remember hedrick vice president marshall aye president murdoch aye motion carries unanimously thank you all for all of those we are going to move on to item nine that's 9.01 this is our school counseling program evaluation and i believe we have dr hill with us this evening to give that presentation we'll try that again good evening thank you board members thank you dr buck and i want to thank my fellow esteemed colleagues

146who have been encouraging me to be swift but concise at the same time so i appreciate the opportunity to present our school counseling evaluation program i could not be in this position by myself i want to thank my fellow iot members and our school counselors and ed therapists we have one school counselor here in the room with us tonight that's mr casey blakemore counselor at richardson elementary so and i know there are counselors at home that are watching as well so i appreciate all of them and the things that they do i'm truly in awe each year to see the amazing things that our school counselors do excuse me informing connections for our kids from small groups individual conferences with students curriculum lessons crisis situations and unfortunately we have had some crisis situations they genuinely

147show the care and concern for students and staff all across the district we are lucky to be in the state of missouri because the state of missouri is looked to in the school counseling world as the premier state and so the national model is reflected in our state model so we are very very fortunate from that our program design our program overview we have and this is primarily last school year we had 47 school counselors across the district serving and supporting our students we have seven members on our steering leadership and lead department that take feedback from department members bring it to our group we discuss it each month think of ways that we can improve our program but also provide some professional development our school counseling we have a strategic plan our own strategic

148plan that is aligned with the district's strategic plan as well as the missouri comprehensive school counseling program and then of course the student support department budget supports many of the resources that our school counseling depart counselors work with and i would be remiss if i didn't remind all of us this is what our department meetings would look like sometimes last year and um even though that personal touch and you all know this nothing beats that face-to-face collaboration but it was amazing to see all of our counselors jump on the google meets kudos to our technology department for upgrading google meets so that we could have breakout sessions and do some multiple things within the department so again school counseling department connects with many of our departments across the district annual evaluation are annual goals and

149action steps as i mentioned before it is aligned to the missouri school counseling program it's also aligned to the national standards so we have five objectives that we constantly are working towards and working on as you can see their program foundation school counseling curriculum individual student planning responsive services and system support as i mentioned they are aligned to national and state standards we follow that structure which is research and evidence based we follow the needs of our school buildings and the district so we are constantly gathering data and information to support the needs of our students we also work under a multi-tiered system of support in school counseling and at the bottom and i apologize for the very small type on here but there are three kind of components or categories that the school counselors

150focus on they support all students with skill building in each of these areas whether it be social emotional development those are very important skills that we need academic development and college and career development but they cannot do those three things alone and so they partner every day with teachers administrators just as i partner with my colleagues shannon booth in the career and technical world um i'm constantly working with our instructional operations team how can we better support our students from the counseling lens um so and we use data to of course collaborate and problem solve all along the way again excuse me the um those four components the school counseling curriculum that's universal all students receive school counseling curriculum individual career and academic planning again it is universal all students have a an individual career

151plan responsive services this is where we get into that next level or of the multi-tiered system of support of additional supports or interventions for some students and you can see some of the examples there as well as system support those are those indirect student services that are still benefiting students but may look like department meetings or building in district teams and program management some other features of data in the past three years we have been working with counselors to do general check-in data they love it i say that tongue-in-cheek but they keep track of all of the sessions and meetings that they have with students just general overview so that they have data that they can look at in real time to see how they are using their time with students whether it be in

152counseling lessons and presentations individual meetings or sessions and then you can see this is just one snapshot and we had 90 percent of school counselors reporting this data i will share with you that these numbers are low and they are low for last year for two reasons the different learning modalities that we had obviously and then the limited access to students when they're not in our buildings and not in our classrooms it's difficult to to support but our counselors did some amazing things with dividing up for the r7 online elementary and meeting virtually with students in the online world as well as students in person so on a normal year these numbers would be much much higher the next portion of data is the internal improvement review so uh our department as i mentioned before

153models after the state model and there's a a status state created survey in which our school counselors assess their program and then they create smart goals and they are trying to meet those goals based upon the four components as you can see here there's an overview and that is more of the general foundation and then there's the curriculum individual planning responses service and system support you're seeing a pattern over and over and over of the same components so they are constantly evaluating where they are with their program in school counseling and so you can see 87 percent of their programmatic components are in place it doesn't mean that they're doing only 87 percent of the work it's 87 of the program is actually in place the next piece of data for you is a timed

154task once a month again our counselors love it tongue-in-cheek they have a 15-minute random sampling over the course of their day in which they identify what are they doing at that moment and which category or component is it serving and supporting and because we're doing a random sampling this chart shows where the bulk of time was spent at the elementary middle and high school and then the deci suggested percentages i know a question you might have is if our percentages are not in there is this good or bad for our staff or for our teachers or for our students we're always striving to be better and we're always trying to improve the direct service to our students but there are times that we need to be on some committees that benefit students so that's going

155to represent our system support and that indirect time so again always trying to improve direct services to our students so let's get to some reflections strengths and celebrations um these are screen shots and again collaboration with katie bergen and her team we were able to create with their help some seo videos and strategies for students and this was shared with different buildings so you can see on this page the there are some counselors from our elementary and middle and then also some middle school as well as an ed therapist that provided some different strategies to help students as they were coming back to school and looking at that social and emotional development our counselors and ed therapists also did a strategies for staff and provided an sel video for staff reminding them to take good

156care as well um last year we we focused a lot on the social emotional development of our students and our staff and an an amazing feature that we have on our district-wide website is the virtual calm space anyone can access this virtual calm space if you haven't already there are different videos if you're needing some calm music or if you're needing you know we're landlocked and i love the beach so if you want to see a beach scene to help you relax that's an example of something that you can do but also our school counselors and ed therapists they developed virtual counseling offices and so when students were at home or away from school they could utilize the virtual offices our school counselors taught them how to get to them and taught them some of

157the strategies and and opportunities that were embedded within there so there's games that you can play virtually together there's drawings again all on the emphasis of how to better take care of ourselves and one of the most exciting celebrations um for us last year was um christy mann a counselor at mason elementary school received the national record recognition award called ramp and ramp stands for recognized asca which is the national school counseling association model program and to my knowledge this is the first nationally recognized school counseling program in lee's summit r7 and i have challenged all of our counselors they too could do the same thing that christy mann has done because each one of their programs is top-notch just like hers and she she would say the same thing and you know i i

158admire christy so much because she was able to gather all the paperwork and do everything in the midst of covid when we were at home and working on all of this so it it it was truly amazing and this was um at the national convent conference where she received the award um with uh her principal beth ratty and then of course one of our deci excuse me dr sherry sevier who's on the misca missouri school counseling association board so a great opportunity and her program aligns a hundred percent with the national model some other celebrations and strengths i hope you're seeing a a kind of a theme here is we are doing some amazing things so this slide and the next slide just shows a small portion of the programs impacting students in our buildings

159and these are some of the programs in the elementary school that our counselors are key collaborators and coordinators of and on this page sorry for a lot of words all on one page but at our secondary levels our middle school and high school counselors are doing just the same we did have a video but unfortunately yeah it won't load so dr whaley's going to be working on that and now it won't it won't move me so this if we get it to play maybe not it's a very short video i can forward to you all of a student's perspective okay that's fine i appreciate you trying thank you um so the i'll forward the video or you actually have the video the presentation please take a gander it's a great quick video that talks about

160what the kids feel about their school counselor and i really liked our elementary student and her perspective as well so all of those programs that i put together i put it in a in a wordle to kind of show you and the and it's interesting the words that stand out student-centered is bigger is one of the big words and coordinator they do a ton to coordinate the well-being and career and individual planning for our kids so findings and reflections it's always good to reflect as teachers that we wouldn't be good teachers if we didn't reflect and we're always looking to grow and looking for opportunities to improve so we want to continue to implement our school counseling strategic plan and we've worked very very hard this past week we had a department meeting in which

161we did a gallery walk in which department members offered ideas and different ways that we can improve continue to improve on those tasks and strategies we want to continue collecting data and evaluate the effectiveness of our programs we want to align the work of school counselors with the mtss work in implementing the school program and we are working on a district advisory committee to assist in providing feedback on the overall comprehensive school counseling program some upcoming questions of course how can we use data to show stakeholders the impact we have on students so you know we are data rich and so we need to make sure that we are using the right data to help make informed decisions and how can barriers be removed to assist counselors with the full implementation of the school counseling

162program and then of course the upcoming goals and action steps for next year that we are looking towards all school counselors will continue collecting data to reflect on their programmatic needs all school counselors will collect outcome data to understand the impact of their interventions on achievement discipline or attendance and school counselors will increase collaboration with educational therapists and other work groups to best support students and staff across the district and i would just like to say thank you to the lsr-7 school board board of education thank you for all you do thanks for your support thank you dr buck and shelly sanders and all of my colleagues out here i'll take any questions you might have thank you dr hill very much uh it does look like you're going to have a few questions and

163or comments directed towards you so we'll start with board member fritchey thank you um thank you dr hill um regarding counselors time on the time stamp that you were talking about the curriculum percentages to me i've watched these over the years and they always seem to be a little low can you tell me to what we attribute those numbers so i to me i think it's a couple of things and thank you for the question i think some of it is getting time to get into the classrooms as you can see responsive services is fairly high so when you have students that have individual needs or may be in crisis situations they're making that a priority not that curriculum is not an important part but we need to respond to students in need and i

164think another potential barrier is especially at our middle school and high school is the school schedule you know as a teacher some of us can relate to well that's my time as a teacher and um it's it's being willing to give up that time um to to have some of those proactive conversations that curriculum and lessons allow the school counselors to have i sometimes when i look at the state's recommended percentages of time i think to myself is that really realistic you know i haven't been in schools and watched our counselors really work and um i just don't so i mean i kind of i kind of knew what was going on there but i just i just find it interesting to compare those numbers sure um finally um i we can't let you go

165before saying thank you for your service to the counseling department and to our school district i see that tonight we accepted the retirement of roxanne hill and um you will be very much missed thank you for the great work and congratulations to you and sometime i want to talk to you about what your next chapter looked like but thank you congrats uh board member sparks truly appreciate the work that you do um i have um a question at one of the schools that we were just at and i believe that was mason that had an individual class catered just to the counselor and with the needs that a lot of our schools do really they need the counselors and they're meeting a lot of needs of our students my suggestion or i guess my question

166is what do we need to do to really kind of have that same concept that's at mason to which also would make an impact of the curriculum piece with a lot of our other buildings that's a great question thank you so i know of course next year with sixth grade moving to the middle school that will potentially free up some spaces and i do know that some building principals have had conversations with counselors that they are getting a new space a classroom and so you're exactly right instead of the counselor traveling to the teacher's classroom then the students travel to the counselor's classroom i think there's also benefit in leaving that up to the counselor to decide too because that big space may feel really big to an elementary student that needs a more comfortable

167smaller space too so i think sixth grade moving to the middle school will help with that as well and i know that our building principles are really creative along with the school counselors thank you for your leadership thank you to all the counselors for all your work and meeting the needs of our students thank you thank you appreciated board member sparks board member i hedrick have a couple questions one of them really is a follow-up or uh maybe in addition to board member fritz's question about this particular chart i guess i sit here thinking about um you know have we talked internally with our counselors about these various areas and where they feel they ought to be spending their time because i guess i feel like from you know watching these reports over the years

168you know their role has really changed and i and i think it's really been you know significantly more impacted um just like a lot of people are in public education uh since covid but uh you know and and maybe jesse's numbers or percentages are really out of whack and we we should have our own um you know we don't if that doesn't violate our um you know our msip or whatever so i i guess that was just just a comment and the other thing is and i've looked and maybe and if it's in here and i've missed it i would also want to know where we are in terms of the number of counselors we have and the deci standards um and i didn't see that anywhere and if it's in there just tell me

169where it is and i'll go look at that but if it's not i would like to see that information as well sure it is not in there and i can get that to you and then the third piece is who's providing besides your you and your your your staff sel for our counselors so that's more of a rhetorical question but that's been a concern i've had particularly the last couple of years knowing all the demands um on the on on their time and um thank you they were a pretty big hat so thank you thank you appreciate it uh board member campbell i just have a couple of questions and i'll um share board member fritzi's comments we appreciate you so much and just thank you for all you've done for our district and for

170the kids all the students of our our district and and for me on a personal level so thank you appreciate that um you mentioned social emotional and i know you've shared with us um a lot of times what that definition means but i wonder if there are some parents watching tonight that may it may help them to have kind of a definition or a context that when you say social emotional what does that mean sure i appreciate the question thank you and thank you for all of your kind words um so to me and and i will share with you that we have a committee that is working on um social emotional standards and and well-being components in collaboration with many district administrators here because social emotional learning is really about skill building and making

171sure that our students have responsible decision making have social awareness skills self-management skills it's interesting i let me i went and had a i sat in on a lesson with one of our counselors and she was doing a small group and the first question that she asked them it's a friendship group trying to help build friendship skills and she said being a good friend does that come naturally or is that a skilled building and all of those students in that small group said well it does come naturally for some but not for uh not for everyone and she said and how do you how do you increase that well you have to practice so social emotional learning are skills and we have to practice them and um i cannot say as an adult that i

172always um i need to practice sometimes too and i won't speak for the other adults in the room because there are times we get upset there are times we get angry and we have to have the self-management and social awareness skills to put them in place so i hope that answers your question yeah thank you i appreciate you sharing that and and so we heard earlier tonight some comments about panorama and understanding how that data is coming in about our students and are our counselors utilize able to utilize you say how data driven we are is this beneficial around the social emotional yes most definitely our school counselors are constantly looking at the data and remember panorama serves our purpose as a district in two ways it's gathering the voices of our students and staff

173so that we can see and hear what they feel about what's happening from their perspective and that is so important because for so long we hadn't been able to do that and it's so amazing that we are able to do that so that's one component of panorama is the surveys the second component is we have been working on response to intervention or response to instruction and multi-tiered system of supports our teachers need one place to see the data instead of if i may dr barger has this spreadsheet and then dr potts has this spreadsheet or dr mathis has this spreadsheet if we can have the data in one dashboard for our teachers to see it that serves as an early warning system to make sure that our students are not falling through the cracks and

174that our teachers can put interventions and supports in place early and not late so panorama serves as a two-fold for us as a district and i'm very grateful that you all have approved of that so thank you thanks i appreciate you overviewing that again board member alan thank you sir um thank you dr hill and all your years of service and um a variety of different capacities but you've been here how many years how many years 17. so here at the district okay excellent um to to kind of add on to what ms campbell was just mentioning um you had said we're data rich we use data to study where we need to address concerns where do we pull the data where where are we getting all of this for rich where are we getting

175all the different sources of data well so there's there's data from panorama and that data comes from powerschool so powerschool feeds into that i know dr wright has spoke to you all about nwea so that data is integrated into panorama so not only are they looking at attendance grades seo but then the assessments map scores ames web plus ames web is aims web is after nwea if students fall out of the percentile then there is another screener to assist and that provides progress monitoring for students in ela and math okay and ames web is just the name of the of the those data components feed into panorama to allow us to see the whole student so the academic the seo uh the attendance so that we can put in interventions okay well i'm gonna continue

176to drill down a little bit i don't mean to put you on the spot i think i am but you're you know you skate well out here and so this is good so 17 years of experience um this may be personal reflection but why are all those things so much more important in 2022 than they were in 2012 or even 2017 because i had an interesting conversation after leaving last night's activity that i was in with a gentleman that is highly much more intellectual than me he was talking about critical thinking teaching kids how to how to how to learn how to think not what to think how to think and he said you know it amazes me just over the past five years four years and this gal up here young students said she's

177going to be a game designer right we're we're educating kids for jobs that don't even exist so this idea that what we were doing when i was a young kid in jeff city is way out of way out of lee where we were 100 years ago so light years right five years ago a heck of a lot of difference three years ago with a heck of a lot difference so again it's your personal reflection but in 2022 we're using all this data including panorama because so i i don't think it's any more important than what it was i mean i think it's just as important and when i first started my teaching career so many many years ago that was that was how i taught to think about the whole student but maybe i didn't

178have the social emotional learning name to it or sometimes we just naturally do things and we don't have the specific skill named for us that's just how we were raised you were raised a certain way we were all raised a certain way and we did some of those skills without knowing it i think it's even more important now a because we're coming off of a off of a pandemic but i in my opinion our our social media has had an effect and while i love my friend here who oversees technology but technology can be a benefit and it can be a detriment as well and so because of those things in my opinion this is roxanne hill not dr hill that's that's to me it's always been important there's just a new perspective on it

179and you know partnering with shannon booth and the market value assets employees and and employers are looking for these same skills so self-management can you come to work on time can you do what you are supposed to can you have responsible decision making can you problem solve with your colleagues and can you collaborate those are all aligned together so if you want to call it social emotional learning yes but it really is about skill building in career development and academics and inquiry learning it's all together thank you thanks for you thank you for walking down the path with me a little bit there and giving us roxannes thank you for the opportunity board member campbell i just had one last question i am kind of putting you on the spot a little bit i know

180that we've started some discussions and we're in process with burrell to add some additional counseling opportunities for our students and so when when do you think we'll be talking more and hearing more about that sure i appreciate the question thank you that is another exciting program that we have available for our students and families right now the seven schools that are in phase one they have submitted their referrals and we have over 100 referrals that we have sent to burl and burl is assessing and meeting with families i will share we need families to call them back to set up the schedule and set up a time to meet with them and once they do then and consent has been made by the parents then there is a clinician and a student school-based specialist that

181meets with the student not at the same time but they schedule it at appropriate times during the day with the school and with the student and they work with the student on those skills and or other things that they are needing assistance with and so we are looking to continue to get more students into the program um and as we get more students into the program burrell will hire more staff again this is at no cost to the district this is a mou that was that you all approved of and we appreciate that and then we will start working on phase two which will be all of the second the rest of the secondary buildings and then after that we will have a semester phase in for the rest of the schools thank you any

182other comments or questions i get to finish see so thank you very much and for those of you who don't know roxanne and i were together at raytown south um for a couple of years and it was nice to see a familiar face when you went to north and then we circled back around so um cardinals to lee summit to now so thank you very much it's always been a pleasure to know you so thank you thank you for the opportunity just because you wanted to bring that up miss hill was also a teacher when i attended i was expecting you to say it i appreciate her so right i was like i can't believe you passed on it can't believe you passed on it we have dr shelton back there so i mean we

183got it all here dr hill thank you very much we appreciate it thank you go cardinals okay um we are going to move on to item 10. these are our written reports last couple of things for this evening 10.01 the transportation program evaluation 10.02 the board priorities update so if there's any comments that people want to make on the written reports i'm actually going to lead this one off just real fast on the transportation report bruce thank you for the transportation report but i want to highlight for people the lack of funding that we get for transportation so if you are wanting to try and help in terms of contacting legislators and stuff like that when somebody tells you that they are fully funding the foundation formula accurate are they then ask the follow-up question

184are they funding the transportation that the state board of education has been recommending for our district and the answer is no to the tune of almost four million dollars and so um i do think that that's really important that we um pose those particular questions i wanted to get to tell him thank you too and see you you stole it so uh right so um so anyway i do think that that's a really important part of the transportation piece um that we need to continue to focus on so i hope everybody will continue um to push our legislature our legislators to do what they actually are supposed to do um by state law so 75 and we're at 30 right we're 19 this year okay it's worth shooting oh my gosh okay so anyway uh

185board member of ritchie i second what you said thank you um thanks um for that comprehensive report on transportation mr maples very nice your staff is greatly appreciated and especially when they pulled together during those difficult circumstances such as the absences due to the pandemic you know i i know that it was all hands on deck for you guys to run those routes with probably very few people left in the office because you had put office personnel in buses and so that was truly impressive that only two routes according to his report only two routes were missed during that time frame so thank you transportation i always like reading the findings and reflections of strengths and opportunities for improvement because i truly appreciate your honesty in addressing those issues you know i think it's great

186when each department can look honestly at themselves and go you know we're pretty good at this but we really need to work on this too and and thank you for being very honest about that and and i just wanted to say to all of our transportation employees out there we support you and we thank you for your dedication and getting our kids safely to and from school and just thank you so much for that appreciate that board member fritchey board member sparks and i just will tag on to what kind of kim said um i think it is important that we're looking at shrimps and weaknesses i necessarily don't like the word weakness i like the word rooms for opportunity because it's really opportunities for us to grow and to learn and so that's i

187do appreciate the recognition of that but then also i think it's important that we highlight the board priorities um you know it was a little disheartening on yesterday to mix csip and board priorities and so i think for the community it's important that we understand that the board do set priorities to give leadership and direction for our superintendent thank you board member campbell we'll come back to you here are you sure okay and i appreciate about the board priorities and the one thing that i wanted to highlight um in the board priorities update from the schools that were shared greenwood elementary and i wish the principal was still here because i reading through this report there was actual dinner table conversation at the end of the report and this question just really stuck with me

188and i would just encourage all of us as parents to ask this maybe at the next dinner table conversation parent so what made you happy today and i just thought that was just a great resounding way to start a good conversation at the dinner table so i just wanted to highlight and thank the principal at greenwood elementary for overall the great updates but especially that resonated with me thank you for that board member fritzy yeah i shout out to greenwood elementary as well as lee's summit elementary those were our two schools that were featured this time in our board priorities updates and i also wanted to i just love always reading about all the ways that the schools are striving to meet our three board priorities that we have and um administrators also thank you

189very much for your updates and it's you know it's kind of cool seeing how they fit together with our csip and that evaluation is coming up very soon remember sparks i want to end on a positive note no better way to end with the sign that's in front of us um i think it is an honor to serve with all of my colleagues and i do believe that lsr7 is moving in the right direction thank you thank you sir okay that will do it for tonight this meeting is adjourned board members i'll see you back upstairs you