LSR7 Work Session - 12/16/21

001yes test test test good okay okay we're gonna try this again we're gonna call this one to order board members we're gonna try to keep the work session to just about an hour in length so that we can be done around 5 30. that's the goal here for the work session so that then we still have time for closed before our regular meeting so at this time we will take an adoption of the agenda please i move to adopt the agenda as presented motion in a second any discussion on tonight's agenda okay all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously we have three items on our work session agenda tonight we're going to start with 2.01 it's titled discipline process clarification it's more to go through

002and give us a quick recap or overview of some of the changes and consistent practices that we're trying to implement in our schools dr buck i'll actually let you start and then we can turn it over to the presenters we're going to turn it over really quick because dr potts has something else he needs to get to so he's going to start off and then he's going to do his clark kent and head to the phone booth so okay first of all good evening everybody it's it's uh nice to see everyone and as we bounce up against this break that we've got coming that i think everybody deserves so our task dr kenny's my task was to review with you the process that we went through at the beginning of the school year to create

003more clarity around our disciplinary referral process that a disciplinary referral would be given by a staff member typically a teacher or staff member when there's a discipline issue referring a student to the office and so we wanted to review that process and we took our principles through that process this past fall and came up with some clear clear instructions on how to present that information to their staff at their pre-service meetings in august so again our task was created communication and guidance to clarify processes procedures and protocols for disciplinary referrals for teachers and staff that is consistent across all of our buildings at the secondary level we met over at mic before teachers were back had all of our principals assistant principals all of our secondary level administrators together we spent some time we i

004developed a template to kind of guide our conversation and we spent time in mixed groups but also time was given to each of the team building teams to work together to look at past practice look at current practice um and and look at things that we wanted to keep i always like to use a keep stop start methodology when we're working with folks so we talked about what was what was actually functional and working well with our referral process some things maybe that we had them discuss maybe some things that were not uh working well that maybe we need to stop and then uh we looked at maybe different practices that needed to be placed put in place moving forward so again we we put those templates together eventually they work their way back into

005after hearing from each other to try to normalize or find norms and commonalities among the around the work that they were doing they met together and they're building teams and recorded their conversations on a common document that everybody could see we then i then gather all that information uh about a week later a representative team a smaller team got together then to take the information that they gained from these conversations and put together guidance for communication at the beginning of the year that principals would share with all of their staff and all of the buildings so that guidance came in three categories first what are some things that we can do prior to the referral maybe to avoid a referral um and then if it does come to a place where a teacher or staff

006member wants to referral a student what is the actual process that we are going to commonly use all those situations a little bit different but there are some common guidelines that we wanted to put in place and make it clear to our staff that they follow and then always when there's an office referral there's there there has to be follow-up and and follow through with some level to attempt to make closure so that we can move on with this with the student and they can get past the incident that caused that referral and and get back into the swing of learning so um prior to the referral uh the group agreed that we needed to uh emphasize to our staff members they don't have to solve the problem that if it's reaching a place where

007there's a referral that it's important to consult and talk with administrators most of the time a lot of the time in these referrals there's not a rush on this that any getting an extra uh mind and voice thinking about it might avoid uh conflict or misunderstanding so we emphasize uh to our teachers that they can they can if they're if they're wondering if they should write a referral or how to handle referral that they they always can go down and talk to administrator and put their heads together and decide what the proper course of action is there's a commitment process that has been in place in lee's summit and it's been the commitment process is is like a a disciplinary reflection process that happens after something happened after an incident um some buildings had kind

008of gotten away from that commitment process they felt like it was a great way for a student to reflect on behaviors so they felt like there was an opportunity for us to re-establish that commitment process and have a communication protocol uh with teachers um and then you know if if it's something that we're afraid is gonna be ongoing or we wanna correct the behavior always working with the student the parent the teacher to come up with a plan for that student so that we don't have future behaviors moving forward so we're wanting to work on these things if if we can do all those things before there's a referral before there's a need to write a kid up and we get the kid back on track that's what we're that's what we're trying to establish

009but sometimes things happen and and there has to be there there has to be a referral and and we view a referral we talked about what a referral is about that's when a teacher is basically indicating that that i've done what i can in this situation and i need some support i need some help from an administrator moving forward so we want to make sure that that referral process or the group the collective group wanted to make sure that the uh that the referral process remains student-centered process remains student-centered focused on maintaining the dignity of the student throughout the process and make sure that privacy and and confidentiality or priority as they process it in every stage that was that was a real important uh aspect to the communication that the administrators wanted to make

010sure was clear to our staff i'm telling staff that if they send a student to the office that they don't necessarily have to write the whole thing up right then and stop class and do that that they can get a kid get somebody to come get the student get to the office they could process with the administrator and write that uh you know all they need is just a brief description of the behavior what happened and then the the referral process can be written later i think a lot of times there was concern that sometimes teachers wrote up referrals in the middle of of a time where there was conflict and it's not necessary we can get that stuff sorted out later that sending a student the office with a quick email would suffice we

011also wanted to create the opportunity to try to submit all of these referrals electronically if they're unless there's just not a way to do that to eliminate what they used to call the green sheet to have an electronic copy that that is consistent within all the buildings that the teachers are familiar with and they have easy access to it they don't have to dig around try to find it they've got access to it clarity is is huge i think we all know that making sure that the language on the referral is clear concise accurate non-judgmental those are the aspects of the of the communication that the assistant principals and the principals felt were essential in communicating to staff that we don't have to write a book on this we don't have to get into all

012kinds of different things just the incident and keep it simple and non-judgmental just the facts the investigation then by the administration after the incident might uncover other things or or more information that's necessary to determine what the consequence might be but the description of the incident just needed to be clear and concise this is important part of this we made it very clear that we do not want them to write out profanity racial slurs anything on that referral they can abbreviate they can denote things to indicate what actually was said but they do not actually need to write the actual words and we said that there is not an instance where you would need to read the referral back to the student um that was made clear uh in the conversations with staff at the

013beginning of the year as well you know obviously if there were other things that happened beforehand if we if we made contact with parents what other things that had happened in addition to the conversation with the student teachers would need to write that down so like for example if they'd asked a parent for some help with the student behavior they needed to note that you know two days before they called the parent or emailed the parent about the same uh behaviors and and that this is a this is just the next step so anything that they had done to intervene prior to that needs to be denoted on that referral so the administrator knows what actions and efforts the teacher had made to change the behavior and then when when having a conversation with the

014student about the referral to try to do it in such a way that doesn't solicit some sort of an additional conflict or additional problems that might arise from that simply notifying them that they that this situation has reached a point where they feel like they need to involve an administrator that's about all they need to say and we gave a couple of examples that we could share that the staff members could use with that so that's the during referral process after the referral the follow-up the important piece is communicating with everybody involved and the the administrators were adamant that that what we communicate to our teachers needs to make sure that again the dignity of the student is important that student in that t if it happens to be a teacher and a student that

015students got to have a way back and feel safe in that environment and feel welcomed back and so we always have to leave that door open no matter what happened so that that student we're the adult in this situation we need to make sure that that student feels welcome coming back um and when they do come back every effort needs to be made to repair that relationship and and build that that relationship back up um again you know we want to be intentional about the the the way that we work with students when a student reaches a point where we've had to do an office referral it's important to be genuine have positive interactions and try to make sure that student feels good about coming back and like always i think you know one of

016the things that the teachers don't think about or don't realize they're very busy is you that use your administrators a resource administrators work with parents and and with conflict situations way more than teachers do and they've got some insights and some skills and some abilities that can be very very helpful in helping our teachers work through some of these problems so that we can get the kids back on track and get those behaviors corrected and get back to learning so that's the secondary process good evening so the elementary principles we have a little bit different um we went through the same processes but um we are dealing with younger students so we don't necessarily have a referral process okay so we just kind of looked at our discipline in general so we reviewed the secondary

017guidance as a team and we did a lot of what dr potts talked about with the secondaries we met in small groups who met in a large group and we kind of mulled over what the secondary guidance was then we started as a team kind of drafting our own guidance knowing that we're not really working through the referral process most the time our students if they're having trouble in the classroom or having an issue distracting them from learning and they typically go to our focus room or to another teacher who can help and support so we collaborated together as a team drafted our guidance kind of sat on it for a few weeks tried to think through it work the process in our buildings and then we came back about two weeks later and provide

018some more feedback and edited our version so once it was finalized all of the elementary schools shared it with staff during the first week of november all right so you know in elementary we use bist as our discipline kind of processes and so that's our behavior intervention support team where we sometimes help students rethink through the think sheet process through statements we take from students as we're working through issues and so notes focus room slips and power school entries it's kind of how we looked at all of our referrals per se so it went into three categories the same with the secondary all of the ways that we help students follow up and follow through closure and our conversation with parents so this is about teaching and protecting kids and our goal you know obviously

019we start with students at age five is to help teach and protect and help them grow so we the same as secondary administrators we're going to remain student centered focus on their dignity keeping things that are private private and confidential we talked to teachers about having clear and concise accurate non-judgmental description of what happened and that if it was a larger issue than the administrators would investigate we were very clear about how we would um not talk about profanity racial slurs or inappropriate words and we would abbreviate as clearly as possible using asterisks so we asked teachers not to read back anything to students and especially if those words were used when um in the in the process so that we won't read them back to kids so thinking about the types of often times

020our our kids in elementary are not able to write things themselves and so we would um through the think sheets through state statements we take from kids notes that teachers write to one another the focus room slip power school entry we asked them to write situations in their own words if they could if clarification was needed we thought the best thing to say would be what did you say and help us kind of understand obviously some of our spelling at the elementary level can be a little bit confusing as to exactly what student maybe has said or done we're going to use our very best judgment when asking for clarification without repeating words we're using the same guidelines when talking to witnesses obviously in elementary we have to talk to lots of little people and

021sometimes it can become confusing and so just asking them what did you hear what did you see the adult should use abbreviations with profanity racial stories and inappropriate words we feel like the best for our elementary kids was using their first letter and asterisks for the other letters we also decided that as a group that some words we just wouldn't even do that with that we would just use um for example you might just write a description that this was used you know a bad word was used versus using the asterisk system okay maybe a a term or just because a lot of times our kids walk home with those sheets our follow-up our follow-through enclosure is that when the students come back we always welcome back into our classrooms and we also work on

022repairing relationships sometimes in some situations it might be important for the teacher or the focus room interventionists a debrief with administration if that is appropriate and possible and the teachers at the elementary level have provided a statement to include in their substitute plans obviously in the elementary world we're with our students for most of the school day and so we thought it was really important that our substitutes know how to handle situations that may arise in the classroom and in elementary just like in secondary we have a lot of conversations with parents oftentimes in elementary those conversations are happening while students are present sometimes they help us call sometimes we may make calls while they're waiting and so we've also asked that abbreviations may be used in conversation with parents and we ask parents would

023you like us to say it would you like us to spell it and that we always let them know that we're uncomfortable if we feel uncomfortable saying or repeating what's been said additional departments dr potts and i thought it was really important for you to also know that under the discretion of dr miller and bruce maples this information was also shared with transportation leadership on december 12th in all remaining transportation drivers and things on december 18th i failed to mention in in mind that um the pre-service in august is when all of our buildings all of our principals for the secondary shared this information with their staff as as those teachers came back to work so that's when that information was shared agreed upon to be shared in those first days back okay um i

024think that concludes the presentation questions comments all that kind of stuff here for this one board member campbell thanks so much i appreciate this presentation and and sharing the information and the hard work that was done by everybody to get to this information so thank you for putting it all together i think um a couple of questions that i had you shared how it was shared out with people um was there an attestation process where teachers signed something saying they had heard the process and learned the process or was a role taken at these events where this information was shared role was taken but there was not a sign unless there was an individual building decided to do that that was not something that we required okay but role definitely was taken so we know

025the names of the people that have learned this have had the opportunity to hear this principals always know they always have an uh a role of who is present at their presentations absolutely and then if anybody was absent in that follow up with that individual great thank you and so i appreciate that you mentioning the green sheets because that was my next question as much as possible everything now is electronic green sheets have gone away they there were some instances where uh the principals knew that there there may need to be a handwritten referral they're very rare you know if the substitute doesn't have access to the computer and they need to write it up but they're they're trying to get even substitutes not to write things up to come to an administrator have the

026administrator fill out the sheet electronically as much as possible so to my knowledge they're not using it then there may be an exception to that that i'm not aware of okay and speaking of the um substitutes i noticed that dr kinney you had mentioned that a teacher would put that in the plans at the secondary level how is this communicated to substitutes uh honestly that's a good question i need to follow up with principles and make sure that this is communicated again to substitutes thank you um and then i did notice and this might have just been a perception thing on my part but there seemed to be a difference between secondary and elementary at secondary direction is that nothing is read back to the student at elementary it's read back but not if there

027is profanity or racial slurs or inappropriate words did i get that right it is so a lot of times in elementary because they're little so um they're not always able to especially when they're upset articulate and so there might be times you know if dr potts kicks me if i'm really upset that i'm not able to write that down and so a teacher may scribe that in the elementary sometimes too spelling can be kind of a concern and so making sure we understand what's going on so we are sometimes reading those back to students you know like you know you said that you you know kicked someone so that we're making sure that we have an accurate documentation thank you so i i might add that that from the what weird these instructions are for

028teachers and that an administrator in their investigation with referral in hand may reference the the referral to get clarification may read parts of that but we we would prefer that be happening with an administrator in an office as opposed to the teacher reading the referral back we couldn't we don't see a benefit of that teacher just reading it back to them as it is that doesn't mean they're not going to ask for clarification but really all we want teachers doing is reporting the behavior because they are asking for help from the administrator they don't need to investigate it any further they write down what happened from their perspective invest or the the assistant principal principal takes it from there so that's where that don't read it back we don't need a teacher to do that

029it's not it's not necessary that in an instance that the at least the administrators could think of but it may be referenced in an investigation by an administrator later on that makes sense great thanks for going through that i appreciate that that makes perfect sense um and i appreciate the last part about the additional departments um again i think my question is it sounds like it was communicated at meetings i'm assuming even in transportation because they have direct face-to-face with our students that a role was taken in those meetings as well and follow up with anyone missing no i can't speak for dr miller but we have hired a lot of bus drivers and so that's probably something that they'll need to revisit at most meetings and so i can definitely follow up with her

030about that okay great thank you and then that's kind of what my last question was so what is the training going forward appreciate that this was done because i think many of us have discussed you know one of the concerns that came to light in the past year was that tribal knowledge or things that common knowledge that some people kept over the years you know of a process that really was maybe retired years before so what is the ongoing training process is it going to be a review with all teachers and staff is it going to be just new teachers what's the plan going forward um the team felt like it's important to review it annually at the beginning of the year and at the same time that they did at least i do know

031that a couple of principles went beyond that already and remind every now and then but i think the agreement for the secondary was to not allow this to evolve into something else to reflect on it if we need to make some tweaks to it whatever but uh that that we have the same conversation every year with our staff at the beginning of the year so it's clear great and same with elementary we typically we just kind of train new teachers but i think it was just something that we thought there are certain policies that we review at the beginning of school every school year and this would just be one of those processes that we would include in that excellent well i really appreciate the hard work and and thanks for going through the questions

032with me uh board member hedrick i just am curious in terms of when you had the training uh for the teachers was there conversations at that point in time about consistency between staff members so so the purpose one of the purposes of of us going through this process with our principles is to create that common message among all of our buildings and so that there is a consistent clear message going to all of our teachers what principals did with that message that we that i shared with you or that we shared with you a second ago if they went beyond that i'm not sure there's several buildings but that message that you saw was shared with every single staff member at the beginning of the year so this process should be fine yeah i'm just

033curious how they handle you know consistency between teachers in one certain building because i think there's probably been some who can you know manage you know student behaviors better than others and just wonder what that conversation looked like or what the plans were to uh try to provide some additional resources where that's needed for those individual staff members so so what i what i think i'm hearing you say and correct me if i'm wrong we're talking about maybe this teacher would deal with the behavior and handle it in the classroom well another teacher may decide to write a referral for that behavior those inconsistencies are present you know across the system usually just everywhere i've been we didn't we didn't this this conversation did not get into what constitutes a referral or what behaviors need

034to get there or norming those uh practices out it simply was about if it does get to a referral how do we process those referrals so we didn't have that conversation we are having ongoing conversations about office referrals how do we reduce them what are some behaviors some ways that we can mitigate de-escalate do those types of things but nothing nothing formal from this office has gone out in regard to that that's something i'm very interested in personally but that was not the task that we had here we simply were reviewing the okay well i appreciate that and i think that would be a good kind of next step to do that and then i think my other question was already answered but the other one i had was in addition to transportation is there

035other support staff members who would need to be involved in the training or to be even just being made aware of what the process is at this point so elementary principles in our system we have interventionists who would not necessarily be at those meetings during professional development we have resource aids and so they also talk with all of those staff members who are not present in the week of november to make sure they're aware of the process we really tried special education some of their staff has been provided this most of the special education team members are on our staffs but we have a few that travel and so we provide that to dr mathis as well board member sparks again thank you for this great work um you all obviously put some things together

036that is necessary and needed um the only question i think my colleagues did a great job asking their questions which were some of my questions but i just have one additional question i know from the elementary side it was stated that we will take sheets and sometimes the students walk home with them um if we are doing things electronically and if one of the reasons why we would not want to possibly send sheets home because of maybe some wording is it not possible to get those sent directly to parents electronically if the forms are in electronic format so so it probably could that's not really been our process part of the best process is when you work through a think sheet it's not always has a problem so sometimes working through that sheet asks questions

037more about what are you going to do next time what could you have done that was better what strategy might you use not all teachers use think sheets some do some do not but part of that is that thinking process so to have electronically maybe at the end typically kids just take those home if they and some don't even send them home some teachers do not so we're we're just not in a place that we do electronic yet or or maybe even plan to it's it's part of that growth piece okay i understand that i'm sorry one more question the other question that i have is um i know for the secondary um level we had mentioned that we really don't do um there should really not be reasons that we should do the paper

038but we should be doing electronic do you have any situations to where we would have to do the paper outside of possibly possible a sub i honestly i i can't think because when we we started talking about that every one of those instances let's take substitutes for example right i would prefer that a substitute not write something up i would prefer that substitute send the student to the office describe the behavior and let the let the administrator process it and write the referral i think just taking that off their plate because they may or may not have been there i mean we have substitutes changing all the time and so i think the the ins when i think the instruction or the directions to principals was let's have our substitutes work with an administrator if

039there is a disciplinary referral process so i honestly uh i don't know when we would use a piece of paper i think i don't know if it's if they're even being used right now we even went in i didn't mention this but they even went in and kind of tweaked the form the online form so that it added some spaces for them to add information um and they made it a little bit better but i don't know there may be instances out there that they're using paper but i can't i have not heard about it i just think that it'll be very com important that we make sure that it's not a preference and that it is the process that we should be using electronic format um and not be using paper right and the

040paper would be only if there was no other option and i honestly i haven't thought of an option yet that couldn't be done electronically eventually right i would agree thank you so much okay board member alan oh thank you thank you both and um i think most of what i was going to ask was already covered but working with students and parents and mentioned and i think the secondary level well both levels i mean there's a my question is is there a very distinct point or step or you know natural point that the parents get engaged this should be the first like the number one intervention for a student behavior is parent contact okay so um anytime any time that there is a referral to the office parents are engaged in that conversation okay i

041guess i missed it it's probably in there sorry about that well i mean i i probably did yeah trust me i think that's understood but yeah it's me let's make that out i apologize what did i say it's not you it's me it's definitely me on this one i'm sure i mean then um how often has this whole process been reviewed in the past do we even have knowledge of when this entire sort of larger scale process has been reviewed i don't know it's not right here so i don't know the last time it was reviewed i'm sure it's yeah so in elementary we have we've been using best for quite a few years probably since i've been here we have had some annual training for the last three years we've asked that every elementary

042teacher be involved in some sort of summer training it's usually four to five days and to be refreshed i think this year alone we had over 200 people at the training that was held in july and so this process maybe not using the asterisk or reading things back but our best procedures have been reviewed yearly okay but comprehensive fully transparent 360 degree review of this process of first in quite some time right i would say not bit this decide i'm talking about that this type of comprehensive view of our entire disciplinary process which i think is well noted and should be i mean this is good i'm glad it is thank you both for doing all of the work it's great um okay so we have the information electronically or whatever how long are any

043of these records kept on an individual student i mean where do they go are they forever shredded for are they passed along from elementary to secondary how do we what do we i mean once this is captured what do we do with it i'm not sure what it i came from kansas i apologize i'll admit that but they were kept for five years in my previous life they were kept in five years but i don't know where they are now and i don't mean it as a gotcha question it just kind of dawned on me about hey are we you know we're using these throughout is that something that's in mike allen's file for years or if it hasn't changed in the last 10 years elementary stops when they go to middle school and they

044start clean okay with the record and then when they start in middle school you know that's a clean record right there and goes but and then the high school basically starts over again okay so you know so you get a fresh start at each level okay and so it's in terms of keeping and i know there were several parents when i would be working in the office they would say oh this is going to stick with them forever no no it's not okay when when you graduate from high school the record stops and the only thing that's kept on the permanent record are long-term suspensions okay am i right yes sans if a kid transfers to another district um so say you're between your eighth grade ninth year your year you move to rala missouri

045we do transfer records over but when you graduate in missouri it doesn't go to college or workplace i mean it doesn't go anywhere it's okay we're the terminal spot dr parker might have she's i so our student management system power school it used to be that that was kind of the way with um paper records and so when they had the dra or other types of assessments in elementary we kept those and we we hung on to those you're talking about discipline records and those actually are housed in power school and those actually can be accessed year they don't really kind of they're not accessible you have to kind of jog back to the school year that you're looking at but they can be accessed if they were a power school entry and you're talking

046about who accesses that than the parents right obviously no administrators administrators okay and parents cannot or parents can parents do not have access to that insider power school okay yeah but to what kim was speaking to i think it's important to delineate what stays in record and what might be considered a first offense again right so in power school we have something perhaps that somebody a log entry that goes in for an incident and fourth grade that would remain in powerschool as a log entry until that individual graduates and then would remain in that child's powerschool file in terms of whatever the retention record requirement is for that but in terms of what what kim was speaking to um if a first offense for whatever is um is x consequence for the most part there

047may be some exceptions to the rule at the level change those schools try to allow for a first offense to be a first offense at that level so some clarity there all right thank you um board member fritzy thank you i was really happy to hear dr potts talk about um the commitment process um because uh the commitment process is a long-standing process it's a four-step process and that you said that they're going to re-establish that because i think over the years it kind of has kind of some teachers use it some teachers don't and you know and it's a really great process because it does it does promote communication with the parents that commun promotes communication first of all this first step with the teacher and then the parent and then the parent again

048and then the fourth step is finally to the office so that by the time the child gets to the office there has been intervention steps taken you know several times and so i'm glad to hear that that's happening that i'm a little bit confused um because i've i know that that several of the secondary at least the middle schools have had this training and then i've heard about some confusion there about when do we use bist versus when do we use commitment process so um do we have a do we have a delineation of what's used when um i'm not real familiar with bist being new to the district i've not been best trained but my understanding best is a de-escalation process trying to avoid that referral so it lines up with the commitment process

049pretty well i don't think they're in conflict with with each other i think the effort of putting that commitment process in place is exactly what you indicated is to go through a series of what i call interventions or or efforts to change the behavior in partnering with the parent along the way in that and i think best if i'm not mistaken it just provides some language and some and some training in support of the teacher so that they can go through that what would be essentially the commitment process well i think the best language helps yeah yeah and i'm not sure you know not every teacher has been best trained not every uh building is has as committed to the best process completely um and so but i agree anything we can do on the

050front end and that before the referral process anything we can do to keep from getting to that um is important for us to make an effort to do well and i'd like to say i also appreciate your efforts in in in getting this together and and revisiting this and making sure that everyone's on the same page because i think that consistency is really important it's it's important within the building but it's also really important it you know with the other buildings that everybody's on the same page so you don't have one building doing one thing in another building doing another thing um i i sometimes i wonder about you know consistency and discipline when i guess there's a discipline guide and if you look at the discipline guides that are established for each of our

051schools our middle schools and our high schools um there is a step process on many of those infractions in that discipline guide and then you hear that some schools that that they're just giving warnings for everything instead of going step one two three but other schools they're going step one two three and following that so a kid could do one thing in this school and get a warning and do it over in this school but get a one-hour detention so you know i just my concern is that we're we're consistent across the board within our buildings so that you know all of us are being treated the same way when it comes to you know discipline infractions um and you know and the one thing that came to my mind when you said you couldn't

052think of one where you you would need to use a a green slip or a discipline notice my only thought was what about cafeteria monitors do they carry around their computers and file electronic again what what what i what i would suggest in terms of cafeteria monitors those are typically teachers they've had they know what the consistency what the rules are and the protocols that we've discussed and if you'll remember i indicate they could simply send a kid to the office with a brief description of what happened and then that referral could be written up at a later at a later time when they're at their computer it's not like they've got to rip something out and write up a referral they can send the student to the office without a written referral and then

053get that referral to them later thank you appreciate it thanks a lot again i'm not sure you know where those green sheets there may be an exception that an assistant principal or principal can come up with that would make sense but in in in answer to board member spark's question i i can't think of one right now okay thank you board member campbell thank you i am apprecia i always appreciate board member fritzy's um ability to to go back and and share with us you know what's been in place in the past but i would like to reiterate board member allen's question and maybe if it's a follow-up that we need to have some clarification and and get back at a future date i would like to get really clear on what that process is

054currently across the district secondary and elementary about where these referrals go if they're expunged at the time they change schools or what that looks like and i don't have to have that answer tonight but i do think understanding the up-to-date information is really important because that's that's what we learned was that sometimes what was common knowledge 10 years ago or 15 years ago is is not what current state process is so i think some clarification around that would be helpful appreciate that comment thank you um i don't see any other lights on i have just one comment it's not even really a question i think it is important to articulate here um that i don't think it's a secret that incidents have been up in buildings um this year not only within our district but

055across the region the state the country quite frankly in terms of student behavior and interactions with staff and as a result i do think it's also important that we give staff the support and make sure that they are understanding that there's a difference between obviously classroom management and trying to hold a referral down versus tolerating a behavior that they don't need to tolerate and sometimes i think that and this was true even when i was teaching in high school sometimes you try so hard under a classroom management kind of approach to keep a student right from a referral when actually engaging the administrator just like you've talked about is actually the proper step at that particular point rather than letting it just fester over and over and over again because it actually brings both people

056down it brings the staff member down it brings the student down because there's no good relationship there anyway so um it's just kind of a point i wanted to make i do think that that's important that um we recognize that we've heard obviously i mean you guys i'm sure have as well right and so um that there's a difference i think between those two things so um that we want to make sure that we're supporting our staff and students obviously as much as possible so that it doesn't become a contentious situation between those individuals any other comments on this presentation thank you all very much dr potts thanks a lot we really appreciate it um board members um dr buck and i um chatted just real briefly here um in terms of where we're at

057time wise um and with your all's permission and if you think that um this is fine we are going to move dr wright if that's all right with you to our next meeting and do data either we can either do it at a closed session early january or at our regular january meeting we'll kind of get flesh out those details here um after this one but since we do have an item for decision in the regular meeting we need to make sure and get to item three here in the work session okay so if that's okay is that all right with board members if we do that because i don't think we would have i don't think we have time for both dr buck would you agree with that okay so um i think we're

058gonna move on to item three then um in our work session uh board member sparks yes i just think that um 0.2 is important and i would actually be open if my colleagues are too to have another special meeting if we could try to get this done um to be able to hear this instead of waiting to january um we we could try the other thing we could do is right after the new year we're scheduled to meet anyway um on january 6th so it would be well ahead of our meeting if we wanted to put it there so that we're still getting it right at the beginning of second semester if that would work if you think i'm not sure from a meeting schedule um for next week but we could certainly look at

059the calendar okay is that okay yes okay i agree with you though that we need that we need to hear it sooner rather than later okay um okay so we're gonna move to item three here dr flack i believe that's gonna be you um and this is in regards to the book appeal so we will turn the presentation over to you thank you and so i'm going to give you the background information as to how the book appeal came to you all and then turn it back over to you for your discussion conversation etc and so uh two community members challenged book that book those were received on september 30th and october 4th and the book was all boys don't wear blue by george m johnson the book was is available at all three of

060our high schools it is not available at our middle schools or in our elementary schools and so following board administrative procedure klbap a district review committee was assembled to read and review the book following those administrative procedures that book stayed in circulation during that time during that review process the media review committee met on thursday november 4th to review the book and the committee while reviewing it had three options that are outlined in that administrative procedure those three options are either to retain the material without restriction to retain the material with restriction however that's not really an option at the high school because students have self-checkout at the high school and it's self-selection and so even though that's part of that board administrative procedure that's really applied more at the elementary or the middle school

061level so just for your information we also have the opportunity uh to remove the material make a recommendation to remove the tyra material so those are the three options that we had um the committee made a unanimous decision to retain the material without restriction that team which totaled nine people included myself library media specialists teachers patrons and students originally we had two patrons which would have made the committee 10 one of those patrons had a out of town business meeting the morning of the meeting and so we had they they stepped out of the team so there were nine of us the rationale for the decision to unanimously decision to retain the material included that the book was not written to entice or arouse and does not meet the definition of pornography which was the

062basis of the two complaints the book is needed for an underrepresented group of students that did not get to see themselves or do not get to see themselves in many of the resources available in our high schools the author clearly provides trigger warnings to the reader to provide options for the reader to opt out of further reading and then the last was that this is a choice book no student is being asked to read this and so once that complaint or once that decision is made information sent to the superintendent and letters are sent to the complainants their next option if they choose is to follow up with a written appeal to the board of education we did have one of the complainants submit a written appeal on november 11th the board of education was

063provided copies of the book for review on november 18th and so now it is up to the board of education to decide um whether to choose one of those three options to uphold and retain the material without restriction or to retain the material with restriction again difficult to achieve or to remove the book from the high school libraries so with that i will turn it back over to you president murdoch okay thank you very much dr flack i appreciate it just for people out there who might be watching all board members did receive the book like you mentioned on the 18th um all board members have read the book um and so um and just as a reminder we do have this in the regular session as the vote so this is just the discussion

064and questions portion here for dr flack or discussion among uh members so um i didn't see which one of you hit it first i was looking the other way so we'll go with board member hedrick i'm sorry i just need to clarification did you say the book was not available at our middle schools or elementaries that's correct we do not have the book just one clarified i thought i thought that's what you said but i wasn't writing and i couldn't write fast enough thank you board member campbell thank you board president murdoch i appreciate so much dr flack the information that you shared in the the memo regarding the committee output carefully reviewing the policy that we have i see that the policy was clearly followed and i did want to just make note a

065couple of dif additional materials that were shared with us were the your rights and responsibilities as a reader that's posted if i get this correctly at every high school and that includes um the following the right to read for enjoyment the right to read books that challenge you the right to skip pages the right to abandon a book the right to reread the right to read anything you want the responsibility to respect the rights of others to read anything they want the responsibility to credit an author when using their work the responsibility to speak with your teacher if assigned a book that makes you uncomfortable and the responsibility to continually challenge yourself and i understand this is posted at each of our high school libraries and it's reviewed with students it is thank you and

066then um also referencing the um american libraries association bill of rights that was shared with us as well and so those include books and other library resources should be provided for interest information and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves materials should not be excluded because of the origin background or views of those contributing to their creation libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues materials should not be prescribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal doctrinal disapproval libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of the responsibility to provide information and enlightenment libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgement of free expression and free access to ideas a person's right to use a library should not be denied or

067abridged because of origin age background or views libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis regardless of beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use and all lib all people regardless of origin age background or views possess a right to privacy and confidentiality in their library use libraries should advocate for educate about and protect people's privacy safeguarding all library use data including personal identifiable information and i found it interesting that this was adopted june 19th of 1939 and while there have been some updates to it over the years that date really resonated with me so it's not that this is something a new document that was just brought about it's been in place for a number of years

068is that correct that's correct and really used as guidance around how libraries are established and how libraries are run would that be correct fair to say well thank you for providing all of this material i also noted um in your report that the definition of pornography came from the merrin webster dictionary and looking at that the depiction of erotic behavior as in pictures of writing intended to cause sexual excitement materials such as books or photograph that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement the depiction of acts in a sensational manner manners so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction to the pornography of violence which i thought was an interesting uh definition portion as well but is this the definition that the committee then used correct yes to review that okay

069thank you for for reviewing that with me i appreciate that additional information board member alan sorry mr uh black dr flack is is this also posted what she just read is this posted in our libraries per chance the library bill of rights i can't speak to that i'm not sure okay i'm just curious i mean i i appreciate you um and whomever providing this and to um her comment adopted in june 19 1939 but then also reviewed and i maybe revised i'm not sure up to date january 29 2019 so it's not as if this was stuck back in some archive and never looked at or never reviewed and i took it upon myself to actually visit with a graduate of our lee summit high school who is now on to larger better works got

070her library sciences degree from mizzou or whatever that might be masters onward working at a at a university library northeast and she and i had some good conversation about this and it one of her first comments was the fact that these sorts of uh criticisms let's put it that way um has been going on for centuries centuries right back to the works of whomever aristotle let's say so um and that libraries certainly lean on and look at the library bill of rights for the rights of the individual who wants to read and a few of the comments that i want to pass along that i thought were fantastic was that you have a reader you know we want to have readers with agency right so agency interesting okay well that is indeed the ability to

071act independently make their own free choices freedom of the reader freedom to read freedoms ability to read for the diversity of their own experience or the opportunity to have an experience of which they might not otherwise be accustomed the opportunity of free freedom of individuality the freedom of identity the freedom of choice independence i also visited with a couple of our media specialists at one of the high schools locally again another couple of great comments that it's non-fiction a person's memoir a book of choice it wasn't randomly selected to make a statement by those who ordered it but relying on reviews from experts i guess at the national scale finding that this book could be um speaking to somebody of this ethnicity and this this what sexuality i guess that there are not a lot

072of options out there that might reach an individual who's at this point um if i'm in high school way back when i'd only remember those days but i look at it i probably wouldn't pick it up and read it it's not much it's my choice to read it or not read it it's also available to folks who are not forcefully fed this book let's get that off the table um it's an individual's experience offered for what they you know what what we discussed maybe in a narrow option for that topic and that ethnicity it's not it's not an accidental read i found that quote today very interesting right it's an intentional choice by the individuals who may be looking for this type of material so i'm stealing others comments but i think they're worthy to

073note and there are other books out there that i found very interesting as well that might be available not on this topic or the subject but there's a book out there that uh my wife and i went through that said what to expect when you're expecting so if i'm a parent i don't like the fact that my daughter might be looking at that book or reading that book unbeknownst to my knowledge she may be looking for that type of material to understand where she fits into that process and that identity i'm also told that as a parent i could also dig into power school or call the librarian and ask media special ask is this a book my kid's reading or you know i got a notice that um there's a book out there that's

074outstanding that you know dues or whatever overdue what's the book title i'm supposed to be told that as a parent so i i i i find a little frustrating i also see that we're now reading this book right belonging through the culture of dignity belonging a couple of comments toward the front of this book is to say that if um it's believed that based on research the authors of this book contend that when students feel a sense of belonging they will achieve this book about belonging the very heart and soul of teaching and learning so if we're going to be as a organization living breathing digesting and understand this book where do we start or stop on items such as this book belonging dignity acceptance whatever that might i mean i'd agree with all of

075this but these are i mean one kind of goes in a sense with the other if we're going to allow an individual to find resources to achieve at their best and highest potential so thank you board member allen board member fritchey just a couple of quick points um and i won't be labor um part of the information that we were given uh when we were told that that this book was appealed to our level was the form that the person filled out who appealed it and on that form it asks did you read the entire book and the answer was no what did you read and it listed a page one page out of this entire book and that's why we're objecting to it okay i have a problem with that i was required to

076read this whole book because there was an appeal made and it's not a book as in as as in board member allen pointed out it's not a book i would readily just go pick off the shelf and i would check out but you know what i'm glad i read this book i am i learned some things in from this book it made me realize some things that i didn't know before it made me have more empathy for a person who is not like me and i'm grateful that i read this book i'll stop there thank you any other questions or comments on um the presentation board member sparks i do have a couple that i'll add right at the end but go ahead go for it i'm just thankful for the process i'm also thankful

077for the dialogue that i've heard today and um i'll be looking forward to support the recommendation thank you board member campbell i'll just um note one more thing and i'm taking this from the kansas city public library statement around books and it says because a well-read and informed population is vital to a free and balanced exchange of ideas among its members an ability critical to the continued success of our union and i think that statement just really resonated with me board member alan to your point about belonging and understanding others i think those points are so well said by this statement as well thank you board member campbell uh board member for ritchie i was actually that's what i had written down to to make sure that it got noted that we were considering an

078appeal from i think if you're going to appeal a book we probably should have read the entire book right to be able to make a challenge i think that that's that's that should be an important part and maybe quite honestly and that was what i was going to bring up board member sparks when you said you appreciate the process i do too but i also think that a part of appealing a book means you should have read the entire book to be able to appeal it so that you know what the entire message of the book is rather than focusing just on one thing within the book so that might be just a fine point that we may want to consider you know i mean appealing one page of a book um i'm just not

079sure is what this policy was intended for um and board member allen to your point um you know i appreciated the opportunity to read the book as well right i think there were a ton of messages in it that i would not have um been exposed to here without having a chance to read it so i think that it was actually probably good for all seven of us if unless somebody had already read it on the board i don't want to make that assumption so i apologize if you'd already read it but um if you hadn't right so um but i do think that it was that it was important and so um i appreciated that opportunity and i don't think it's going to come into shock i absolutely support the committee's recommendation here um

080and so uh i do appreciate the committee doing this for us so thank you very much board member sparks and i'm just gonna acknowledge um and state that i am a little appalled that even though i respect the process and um to your point president murdoch that the person that was able to file this appeal did not even read the book completely but i'm appalled because it is keeping us from doing the real work of the school board and that is to make sure that every single one of our students are successful in life and so here we have an issue that is now taking the place of seeing academic success from our students and that's a problem for me i think it's a fair point board member sparks thank you anything else dr flack

081thank you very much i appreciate it um this does conclude our work session we'll be back at seven o'clock for the regular meeting thank you very much you