001okay it is seven o'clock we are going to get started try to keep everything on time tonight so if i could please have everyone stand for the pledge of allegiance is okay thank you very much um we do want to welcome everybody to tonight's uh regularly scheduled may board meeting um so everybody who is in the room thank you for attending we appreciate it and all of those folks who are watching online or who will watch the meeting later also thank you for being involved with our school district 1.04 we are going to adopt our agenda and board members just remember we do need to um amend the agenda tonight so i will take a motion on 1.04 i move to amend the agenda including 1.05 suspending board policy bddh in order to allow more
002than 20 minutes for public comments second okay we have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda to suspend board policy bddh under 1.05 is there any discussion on this adoption of the agenda tonight seeing none all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye hi all those opposed motion carries unanimously 1.05 is we are uh looking at suspending policy bddh which applies to our public comment period so i would take a motion on 1.05 i move to suspend board policy bddh for this board meeting and allow more than 20 minutes of public comments okay we have a motion and a second for 1.05 is there any discussion on this just for background for members of the public typically we only allow seven uh people to speak in up to 20 minutes
003this uh so we are suspending that so all people who signed up on time by yesterday are allowed to speak tonight okay see no other discussion all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye all those opposed motion carries unanimously we are going to move to 2.01 so we're going to ask dr buck to step down with katie bergen two days ago we had our retirement ceremony out at the mic for all of the employees who are retiring from our district this year the board of education felt that it was important to recognize all of those individuals who have served 25 years or more in our district and we wanted to recognize them tonight since it was not possible for everyone to attend the ceremony this past tuesday so the way this
004is going to work we are vice president marshall and i are going to alternate reading the names of those individuals who are retiring and have 25 years of service or more if you could come if if you could come up we do have a certificate for you that dr buck will present you um and so we'll do a little pause here because we are going to read every name regardless of if they actually are here um tonight so it could take we'll do a little pause in between each name we'll go in alphabetical order so those of you who are in attendance you might have an idea kind of where your name will fall here so first up of our 25 years of service is joyce arnold 27 years in lsr7 next is sabrina bangert
005with 25 years of service sherry beale 25 years of service nice shirt kim bergstresser with 25 years of service william briggs 25 years of service paula brooks 25 years of service tracy colon 25 years of service diane daltrey with 31 years of service cheryl frankie 30 years of service kristen gokenhour with 25 years of [Applause] service craig heaney 30 years of service billy jackson 38 years of service [Applause] lisa keiser 27 years of experience of service sorry deborah capronis with 26 years of service santa langford 26 years of service [Applause] denise libo 29 years of service laura maxwell 31 years of service debbie savory 30 years of service [Applause] gene schonemann and that is 20 sorry 26 years of service tiffany simkin 25 years of service [Applause] wanda shepard 26 years of service sharon shortini
006stratino 25 years of service samantha skyles 33 years of [Applause] service cheers annette stewart 27 years of service beth stratton 27 years of service gregory swaggart 25 years of service [Applause] deanna thorne 29 years of service [Applause] tony willis 29 years of service [Applause] and ron zimmerman 25 years of service as dr buck is kind of making his way back up here is that did i miss one oh so yeah i'm going to keep talking even while they're doing that because at the retirement um ceremony on tuesday a cool fact based on all of the retirees that we had this year 1 806 years of service to our district which is phenomenal um there we go okay and as you're making your way back to your seats i we will note we put you first
007because if you'd like to stay you feel free if you don't want to we totally understand that as well we spared you the superintendent's report and everything so oh did i say that out loud i'm sorry i'm really sorry we'll give them just a second here okay on that note we are going to move on to 3.01 which is our superintendent's report and we will turn it over to you dr buck welcome everybody it's good to see a full room as first of the year when we did the national anthem it was uh the pledge i'm sorry it was it was wonderful to hear a course instead of just us up here so a couple of things to highlight first congratulations to multiple students from summit tech academy lee's summit high school lee's summit north
008high school and lee's summit west high school who earned biomedical honors from kc stem alliance competitions this spring um kudos to two students uh annika toussey from lisa mcwest whose geoscience project was recognized by the association of women geoscientists and the society of american military engineers anika's classmate lauren eckerson has received the missouri award for outstanding achievement and citizenship from the state education department so kudos to both of those finally this is a postseason for a lot of our athletic teams in the spring and lee's summit north and lee's summit west are now state bound if they've won district soccer and then tomorrow lee's summit high school has a district championship game to determine if they move on state playoffs and then this weekend is also sectionals and we'll find out which of our athletes
009at our three high schools will go on to compete at state um after this saturday congratulations to hilltops mrs mitch white lee's summit west mary humphreys and r7 online academies yvonne medrano all three educators were honored in the learning for life awards this spring and we do put those on social media if you want to see those presentations um and also congratulations lee summit west debate teacher matt good he is the lsr7 teacher of the year we're so proud of matt and the 14 other talented educators who were nominated for our excellence and teacher teaching and teacher of distinction awards um through the lsr-7 and the lee summit chamber of commerce and thank you to matt baird for helping us host that one thank you big thank you to laura maxwell who organized and put
010all that together facilities and sports uh it was uh such a pleasure to celebrate the groundbreaking at least summit high school thank you to everybody who has been involved in that ground uh breaking the bond project and the envisioning of what lee simmons high school become and then last our middle school boundary team is hard at work uh they've had several meetings already they've worked with the demographer i think they had 45 iterations already that are possibilities and their team plans on conducting community engagement in early june so please stay tuned for more information on our middle school boundary team thank you thank you dr buck appreciate that we are going to move on to 4.01 this is our comments from the public this is where um our board policy was amended um even before
011uh board member hedrick reads through the um comments uh kind of guidelines here we do want to note please that with 12 of us speaking please stick to this the three minutes you will hear a timer that will go off continuously um so please stick to the three minutes or under with those comments board member patrick if you would go over those please i would appreciate it we appreciate your attendance and your willingness to speak to the board here are a few guidelines to govern your comments this evening please remember while this is a meeting held in the public it is not a public meeting the board does not respond to public comments during the meeting we want to hear what you have to say and your comments will be noted by the board and
012if appropriate we will direct the subject to the administrators who are responsible for that particular subject matter as parliamentarian i am going to exercise my authority to keep comments within a reasonable time limit therefore we will be limiting all comments to no more than three minutes tonight your three minute allotted three minutes will be counted down on the screen and please end your comments when the timer expires only those who have signed up to speak prior to the meeting will be allowed to address the board we ask that you refrain from using the names of any students or staff in your remarks and remain respectful lastly when your name is called please go to the code podium and clearly state your name and the organization you represent if any thank you board member uh hedrick
013um so what i will be doing is i'll announce the first person and then the person who will be coming afterwards so you kind of know what the order is that we'll be going in so you'll know when you are up next our first speaker tonight is going to be marla stout and second will be melissa baldwin i'm marlo stout i'm a parent and sometimes substitute teacher in our district our district did not lift the mass mandate even for staff that are fully vast the county may have been loose about not implementing a mandate but the district made up for it this same district has already communicated mass policy directives for summer school and fall with the preface that it could change based on vaccine availability i would have expected this to be a district
014that is considered to be one of the best in the state one that is often looked to as an educational institution that goes above and beyond for its students staff and community namely lee summit however as we all know it was not instead nine days before the end of the year of highs and serious lows within our district the final low was ushered in in the same week that students and staff and buildings were still being exposed to and testing positive for covid lsr7 decided they would open up our schools and allow students staff and visitors to go mask free our community has been told repeatedly that our schools would follow the directives of the jchd after direct conversation the majority of larger schools in our area kept mass mandates in place because over half
015of their student population just like ours cannot be fully vaccinated and even one critically sick child is one child too many but lsr7 even after the gchd who didn't initially give a directive for schools changed those directives and recommended schools keep mandates in place has chosen to pass the buck and stay the course with lacks policies so nine days parents who felt secure in sending their ass rich at-risk children into buildings buildings are once again questioning for nine days kids who would be wearing masks put themselves at risk by succumbing to peer pressure that says mask or ugly mask or political you can't breathe or you look stupid on the flip side if you don't have on a mask you are selfish you will die you are stupid through all this teachers and staff are
016asked to referee and find ways to make safe mass vs non-masked kids do we all appreciate choice yes but when over half of your student population has no choice the intelligent thing to do is keep mandates created for their safety in place for the sake of the most vulnerable in our schools and community please put a mass mandate back in place if not now then for summer school and next fall until all children and their families have had the chance to decide once again which mode of learning and or the vaccine is right for them i humbly ask that the board revoke the decision to give our superintendent the ability to change safety protocols in regards to covet in now and into this coming school year this one quick decision has once again put our
017staff and community at odds further there has been a complete lack of accountability for that decision as well as disregard to change the decision even though it was stated early in the year that jchd recommendations would be followed in closing i want to switch for a moment and take a moment to thank all the teachers staff and board members who stayed the course this year and did everything necessary and possible to get us safely through a pandemic an extra thanks goes to those staff members who reached out and went above and beyond by calling can i finish the sentence calling emailing allowing into classroom on off days some of our most at-risk students as well as those teachers who further engaged in training and activities that modeled and championed equity within our district thank you
018our second speaker is melissa baldwin and then it will be zach alshawish my name is melissa baldwin i am a mother of four daughters an educator and an advocate for health freedom two of my daughters attend school in the lsr7 school district and i homeschool my youngest too because of this disastrous school year i am here tonight to express my concerns for next school year i was extremely happy to hear that the district finally ditched the mask requirement for this school year however i was saddened to see that it could be considered again if the district feels the need math squaring should always be a choice that parents and students make and no students should be harassed for their choice next it has been brought to my attention that there are people in the lsr7
019online communities pushing for the school district to require covet 19 vaccinations next school year if you aren't aware as i wasn't the school board does not decide vaccination requirements the state does these same people are also proposing that students should be grouped by by vaccination status this is segregation and will never be tolerated if this is even a consideration that the board is making please stop now if you think for one second that you won't have a fight on your hands you're sadly mistaken even the idea that people are thinking like this is disgusting i just want to reiterate that this school year has been a disaster because of the decisions that have been made i am thankful that i pulled my third grader to homeschool her before the school year even began i am
020continuing to homeschool her and my upcoming kindergartner next school year for many reasons but mostly because of the indoctrination that is happening in lsr7 not because of covid19 my husband and i have always taught our kids to love others no matter their race gender or religious beliefs we have been called to love everyone for some reason though this school district sees the need to push their race-based agenda on our students this is causing division in our schools community and homes listen teachers are hired to teach academics and that is what we expect first and foremost let my husband and i teach our kids how to be good humans i just want to conclude with this in all the years i've had kids in school i have never been a helicopter parent until this school year
021i have emailed more people spoken with more administrators and more and had more interaction with concerned parents about things happening within our school district i've even been on the news twice i've never felt the need to be so vocal about my concerns but here i am and i will continue to voice my concerns to the lsr-7 school district for as long as i have to thank you [Applause] our our third speaker is zach alshawish and then our fourth speaker will be micah wieman all right i'm zach alshausch i'm a parent of a first grader here at lee's summit uh elementary school so i originally signed up to speak at this event in order to fight you guys against the mandatory masking of our children but after this week that policy has been removed so i
022guess i'm just here now to thank you so thank you guys all right uh just to be clear though i'm not thanking you for moving this mandate that never should have been implemented against our children i'm thanking you for a full year of incompetence and otherwise we wouldn't have been able to organize like we have as a group and i'm sure you see all the people who've gathered it here today to be vocal against what you've done to our kids little do you know in addition to this group we have a group that organized a group of parents that came together the past few weeks and we had pledged over twenty thousand dollars and began talking to a lawyer the same lawyer who is currently representing parents from blue valley in olathe school district and
023they were being sued over the same masking issue so the masking policy may be removed for now but i can tell you us parents have zero faith in you to continue to do the right thing and make the right decisions going forward when the cdc basically said mass would save lives lives they ignored actual scientific studies and data showing that their position was incorrect instead they continued to propagate pseudoscientific garbage this board accepted that garbage as fact and our children were the victim of it so when the cdc comes around again and says hey vaccines are mandatory or that unvaccinated kids and you'd be segregated from vaccinated kids i don't have any faith in you guys to do the right thing for that reason our group of parents is going to stay together we're going
024to stay organized and prepared to fight you on any any sort of continued incompetence or cowardice that we see in the near future if there are any parents in this group here tonight would like to join our email group please catch me afterwards and we can get your information for the parents who still haven't figured out that you're being lied to and manipulated i hope for the sake of your children's physical and psychological health that you can turn things around there's only a pandemic on tv turn off the tv and join the rest of us in the real world i you the rest of my time our four our fourth speaker will be michael wieman and then corey mcdonald hello my name is micah wieman i have two boys a fifth grader and eighth grader
025that have been in lsr7 until this past fall we chose to pull them out and put them in private school for several reasons one of those main reasons was due to the indoctrination and critical race theory that has become a pervasive theme throughout the district i quickly realized that most parents have no clue what crt is i'm wondering if the board or the teachers within the district actually understand what it is it's based in neo-marxism and describes white people as oppressors and goes as far as to claim they are responsible for all the evils of their ancestors on the reverse side all black people are told they are victims or oppressed and that they must be liberated crt makes the assumption that racism is present in everything and that all white people are inherently racist
026furthermore it states that america was founded on racist principles and that capitalism is in fact racist crt trainings involve overt shaming of white people and conditions people to hate groups of people based on the color of their skin instead of looking at them as an individual with training crt people are no longer judged by their character or moral content typical trainings involve telling people to be less white and spin the false narrative that all white people have privilege based solely on the color of their skin it is creating a massive race war across america and further dividing this great country lsr-7 is an active participant in perpetuating this divisive grace war and this is wrong last time i checked you and i had no control over the color of our skin we are all born
027this way according to god's plan i have an ethnic background that includes scottish and irish descent but i'm an american first and foremost to place judgment on me based solely on the fact that you see me as a white woman is wrong it's wrong to place judgment based on me solely as a white woman just as it is to judge anyone else based on their ethnicity what if i ask black students to be less black or asian students to be less asian i'm going to quote one of america's greatest leaders martin luther king jr i still have a dream it's a dream deeply rooted in the american dream i have a dream that one day this nation will rise up live out the true meaning of its creed we hold these truths to be self-evident
028that all men are created equal i have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character and yet everything crt stands for goes against mlk's teachings and against the very foundation of america as a school board you are elected by parents in this community who have entrusted you with the responsibility to advocate for our children crt is not advocating for any of our children it is absolutely un-american in every way the fact that you have made this particular equity program the number one priority per your own words above education is incredibly concerning i think you need to ask yourself where your ethics and integrity are in regards to properly educating our
029children as long as crt continues to be pushed in this district we will continue to fight you need to get back to your focus on education and not dividing our community through crt and equity training our next our next speaker is corey mcdonald and then it will be danielle pearsall good evening i'm corey mcdonald as i requested of you last month uh please provide data and measurables for closing the achievement gap in lsr7 please provide a plan to improve math and reading proficiencies as of today no such data exists because your number one goal in this district is equity and inclusion not education local tax dollars are being spent to fund organizations that insult people and divide communities all the while we see other districts like shiny michigan school district using covet money 3.8 million
030dollars to hire additional teachers to create smaller classrooms to help students get caught up in efforts to closing their achievement gap how is our district spending coveted money lsr7 students deserve better than what you're giving them from the sport education the webster's dictionary definition for serb says ridiculously unreasonable unsound extremely silly or ridiculous so it's absurd to think that every white person is racist it's absurd to think that every black person or people of color or oppressed it's absurd to think that the color of your skin is more important than the content of your character therefore it's absurd to think that white people on this school board have adopted the notion that they are racist oppressors based off of the color of their skin you're not fit to run this district i'm asking you to
031resign immediately or renounce these ridiculous ideas or resign immediately it's absurd to think that black people on this board member i mean on this board are oppressed people who are oppressed are not put in positions of influence so one can conclude that it's absurd to think these oppressed board members will be effective in moving our district forward because they're being controlled by their oppressors lastly it's absurd for a school district to say that their number one priority is equity and inclusion not education the this board needs to reevaluate your purpose and realign your priorities it is our suit students who are falling further and further behind it is our community as becoming more and more divided rid this district of this ridiculous crt now our as taxpayers parents and residents of this community we have
032the responsibility of holding each of you accountable and moving this district forward and that's what we intend to do education shouldn't should always be the number one priority of any school district not race education is and always should be colorblind thank [Applause] you our our next speaker will be danielle pearsall and then faith hodges good evening lsr 7 board members and superintendent dr dr buck my name is danielle pearsall i'm a member of suburban balance and also a mother of an eighth grader in the district thank you for allowing me this chance to speak on behalf of one of our suburban balance moms davoya marshall who cannot be here tonight her letter reads we live in a time when it seems that only opinion let me start over we live in a time when it
033seems that only opinion only our opinion matters this is in many ways dangerous the world functions better when we can take the time to understand the thoughts feelings and experiences of others tonight i'd like to emphasize the importance of equity the first definition webster dictionary provides for equity reads justice according to natural law or right specifically freedom from bias or favoritism i believe it was important to clarify with adding freedom from bias or favoritism because what seems natural or right to some may not seem natural or right to others it is important to recognize that life's experiences influence perception and perception influences our understanding if we take the time to understand the thoughts and feelings of others before we jump to a conclusion or jump to speak then we may have a different outcome but
034since we are still here addressing this topic change still needs to come a more specific definition related to tonight is equity and education simply put it is en ensuring that every student has the support he or she needs to be successful if you have ever had any contact or communication with multiple children then you know that children learn respond and react in different ways i am a mom of four boys and there is no cookie cutter approach just for the children in my household so imagine trying to apply the same approach to a class school district or school district total failure it shouldn't be hard to see that to see that support may look different across the board age race gender sexual orientation socioeconomic status physical and mental health conditions etc equity is hard imagine
035you have three 8-ounce glasses drinking glasses one has two two ounces of water one has five and the last has seven each glass requires a different amount poured into into it to reach its maximum potential equity is only hard when we make it anyone that doesn't believe in equity or equality does not belong in or anywhere near an educational system or process thank you our next speaker is faith hodges and then it will be carrie critian my name is faith hodges i am here to raise extreme concern regarding the infiltration of critical race theory into our local schools if you watch the news you see that this has become a very controversial issue with many districts and has even been banned from them as well which is what i would like lsr7 to do critical
036race theory is based off of lies and racism in itself it has no place in our schools and i challenge you to really question your values when considering this it is wrong and our kids do not need politics thrown in their faces kids these days have a lot more to worry about without pushing racism at them and telling them that they are less than rather than all are created equal instead of trying to be a politically correct district wouldn't it be nice to say that we are a district who prides itself in showing our kids that we are all equal and skin color does not matter we need to teach our history of racism racism so we do not repeat it we cannot get rid of our history books because all as we know if
037you erase history it is sure to repeat itself this idea of critical race theory in our schools is indoctrination of our children and it is sounding a whole lot like the hitler days where hitler said and i quote whoever has the youth has the future and this is exactly what this critical race theory issue is about another quote from dr joseph goebbels states if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it people will eventually believe it this is a lie about brainwashing our white children to believe they are the oppressors because of the color of their skin and it is about teaching children of color that they are oppressed and should feel that way it will never be anything because they are and will always be oppressed because of the color of their
038skin how sick is that does that not make you angry because it should shouldn't our focus in the public school system be to teach our kids to love everyone and be kind to them no matter who they are or what they look like whatever happened to teaching our kids that you can be whoever they want to be as long as they work hard and don't give up that sounds pretty simple to me these are children there are children of all color in all different social statuses and hard work has never stopped someone from reaching a goal regardless of where they came from or the color of their skin you know it is funny how quick everyone is to take god out of schools yet at what point are we going to realize that the moment
039that started happening our school started to suffer and the fact that i am even having to be up here to try and fight for our kids to not be indoctrinated should say a lot about where we are i know everyone quotes dr martin luther king jr's popular speech but have you ever thought about how in the bible and never references about god's actual physical appearance what it was or the color of his skin that is because it is not important and he wants you to focus on his character and that is exactly what we should be teaching our children i'm going to fight for our kids freedom to be who they truly are and will not allow them to be told at any point that they are any less than any other child because of
040some off-the-wall indoctrination that makes for a cool or hip district now our kids livelihood matters to me and it should matter to you now it's time for you guys to prove it say no to critical race theory in our schools if you have any values at all you will see that this is correct and will harm our children's future our our next speaker will be carrie critian and then courtney ing i'm slow but sure good evening and thank you for allowing me a few minutes to speak my thoughts i have a son in the district that's in sixth grade and the sun that's in eighth grade with no playbook to work from it's my opinion that district leadership has done a pretty good job of navigating through the pandemic the teachers and staff have been
041outstanding while students have been in the building district leadership has mostly put students health first that is until last week by now we've all heard that cvs's new guidelines and leniency refers specifically and solely to fully vaccinated individuals according to their website which was updated on the 13th of this month jackson county went on to remove mass mandates and according in accordance with the cdc guidelines last week as well last friday district leadership removed all mass requirements the cdc issued a clarification last saturday stating mass should continue to be worn in schools county recommendations mirrored that recommendation on monday of this week city choice pediatrics one of the city's largest practices in an affiliate children's mercy hospital gave me permission today to quote them quote the entire ownership group is in complete support of student
042mask mandates being in place and quote these recommendations were made for safety and because individuals under the age of 18 have only recently had the opportunity to receive their first vaccination however district leadership has been unwilling to pivot back to requiring all students to wear masks thereby completely ignoring the county and the cdc's recommendations this is negligent behavior i'm afraid even while wearing masks my sixth grader had a close exposure to an individual who tested positive and is quarantining the last two weeks of a sixth grade year incidentally i am fully vaccinated therefore not obligated to quarantine the pandemic is far from over only 31 percent of jackson county residents are fully vaccinated according to their website elementary age students aren't even eligible to receive the vaccine according to cnn over 300 families school-aged children
043have died due to covet that statistic does not include the long-term residual medical issues this condition leaves as collateral damage after fighting this disease for over a year and claiming to have the student's safety at the forefront district leadership ripped those safety measures away with only eight and a half days of school remaining the school district is an autonomous entity we ask our students to finish strong but yet leadership has failed in this regard running through the halls at school is not a recommendation it's a requirement not throwing food in the cafeteria is a requirement not a recommendation schools make rules and requirements all the time in order to ensure student safety and this was clearly the intent of the recommendations by both the cdc and jackson county it's surely also the reason that the
044majority of districts in the metro have kept their mandate in place sadly another thorn in the decision is the fact that district leadership has lost credibility by making this decision you can't say on one hand that student safety is of the utmost importance on the other hand to rip away the mass mandate in conclusion please note it's not too late to correct course and make the right decision even one student catching covid at school is one too many i urge you to do the right thing and have our students mask up thank you our next speaker is courtney ing and then it will be rob stitt my name is courtney ing and i know you have heard from many parents like myself this week about why the abrupt change to end the mass mandate at
045the tail end of an already tumultuous year was unnecessary and is the wrong decision for the students and staff in our district when my husband and i read the email on friday afternoon stating that mass would no longer be required regardless of age or vaccination status we wondered why our district which had made such prolonged and careful decisions regarding student safety over the past 14 months suddenly reverse course and removed the best strategy masking that had been recommended by the cdc and had worked well throughout the year to keep kids in school safely with trepidation we decided to send our children to lee's summit west and longview farm on monday with a directive to wear their masks and emailed their principals asking about the percentages of masking in their buildings when we read the principal's
046response that just 14 percent of the students at longview farm were their masks on monday we were heart sick there was no way that we as parents could send our unvaccinated ten-year-old daughter back into the unsafe situation that had been created at longview farm and she has not returned since as we communicated with board members and administrators we were repeatedly told that since the district had been following the recommendations of the jackson county health department throughout the pandemic that they would continue to do so right down to the exact wording of not requiring but still strongly recommending masks and social distancing for unvaccinated persons but because all children 15 and under are not fully vaccinated and jackson county health department is strongly recommending that all unvaccinated people wear masks the new decision by lsr7 is
047in direct contradiction to what jackson county health department is recommending if the district was concerned about determining which students had and had not been vaccinated so as not to infringe upon the rights of those who had been vaccinated why was consideration not given to keep masking mandates for elementary and middle school buildings at the very least as none of these students have been fully vaccinated when a mask feels uncomfortable to a little child when there's no consistent modeling of mask wearing by adults and when there are no immediate consequences for not wearing a mask a child has very little motivation to do so suddenly the strong recommendation to wear masks that lsr7 claims to provide evaporates to the point where 86 percent of unvaccinated students in an elementary building are not wearing their masks for
048seven hours a day giving them no protection against viral transmission our students in lsr7 deserve better they deserve leadership that can critically examine the language in the jackson county health department's removal of the mask order and can discern that this new language of strong recommendation can no longer as a matter of precedent automatically be applied to all children in the lsr 7 buildings the majority of whom are not fully vaccinated and who without mass mandates are completely unprotected as board members i implore you to make a safer decision for the thousands of children entrusted to the care of our schools and reinstate the mass mandate thank you our next speaker is rob stitt and then it is rachel aguirre so yeah my name is rob stitt and i had a um my main comment concerns
049some stuff i'd seen recently in the you know reading in the newspapers and the media source where there have been some less than desirable occurrences at some of the school districts with some of the personnel you know i'm concerned that that the reaction from the school district and the school board you know hasn't been as forthcoming as i'd like to see because i mean some of the issues with you know just in serious misbehavior by you know some of the coach and some other issues not necessarily calling the police as soon as they should you know it sounds pretty bad and you know obviously some of it's one-sided but it seems like something needs to be said about that and it needs to not be swept under the table that you know we need to
050protect the students make sure that there aren't sexual issues going on with coaches and you make sure that that's all properly handled and i didn't want to you know i want to see that not swept under the covers and ignored having listened to this meeting it's really disturbing how much vitriol and hatred people have in this room for each other for the board for the city there's hatred around everywhere um and a lot of misinformation to you know and a lot of people are speaking you know obviously out of you know ignorance or something because you know to say that we don't have a pandemic we had 62 000 people or less died the year before the flu we had 587 dead bodies in the united states right now from just a year's worth of
051this pandemic there's 3.4 million people in the world that are dead now from this to say that's not a pandemic is to grossly mistake the facts you know on some of the other issues with race those are complex issues i mean it's really difficult i think trying to get people together and you know rather than just bashing hatred at each other yeah i'd like to see people try to work together because you know the goal i mean i grew up i went to park hill school district a few years before i was born they were busting all the black kids to the black school i got you know our district was involved in the desegregation lawsuit and got out of it and now i kind of understand why that went on and you know there
052are just a lot of issues and in this city they're serious issues they need to be traded seriously we need to have open discussions and not have the vitriol and hatred when we have those discussions so you know i hope the board's able to make reasonable decisions not get too carried away with that stuff and those are just comments that i came up with you know on the top of my head after hearing the vitriol and hatred in this room so good luck thank you okay our next speaker is rachel aguirre apologize for mispronouncing it the first time and then our last speaker will be sarah mayfield hi how are you doing genesis 1 27 says god created man in his own image can we agree that racism is sin critical race theory is racism
053crt is a marxist socialist movement that has hijacked schools through multiple curriculums and organizations to promote this sin of racism using different terms such as equity social justice diversity and inclusion and cultural responsive teaching and it pits others against each other based on their skin color their gender their socioeconomic status age and religion james 2 1 4 tells us to show no partiality none of us are better than any other person critical race theory attacks undermines despises and rejects our laws our families government education systems religions and replaces them with the values that support the cultural marxist resolution revolution by supporting crt you are telling me as a parent to tell my white children who buy some who just so happened to be one-quarter filipino that because of their skin being white they are oppressors
054in this country and in this state teachers are categorizing their students as oppressors and oppressed by supporting crt you are telling me as an educator to discriminate discriminate against my students on the basis of their skin color you were telling me to teach my tell my black hispanic indian asian and other non-white students that they are oppressed while i tell my white students that they are the oppressors let's start with this group according to the critical race theory the white board members specifically the white men who are heterosexual and show that you are financially successful you are the biggest oppressors according to critical race theory i truly believe each student is made in the image of god and he or she was created for greatness my role as a teacher is to help them become
055better equipped to be productive citizens in our society i refuse to discriminate against any of my students why are we choosing marxism over martin luther king jr crt is exactly what martin luther king jr warned us about when he said let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred crt promotes hatred it promotes an eye for an eye students are being intimidated by marxist activist teachers one example a lee summit north high school teacher gave a quiz with the following question this story has a lot of symbolism isn't which of the following do you think the mountain represents a the way the dominant the way the dominant majority aka white people view themselves far above racial minorities let me be clear here if the she
056was on the other foot we would be here to fight for this by supporting crt you are telling me as a taxpayer that i should freely give my money to support discrimination anti-american and anti-god propaganda one last sentence and one one thing that all of you need to decide is this day whom will you choose god or marxism our last speaker tonight will be sarah mayfield hello my name is sarah mayfield i'm a parent of two elementary age students in the lsr7 school district i'm here to address my concerns regarding the decision to remove the masked mandate from schools the cdc children's mercy and jackson county health department have all urged schools to continue mass use despite the mask mandate ending guidance clearly states that schools should continue masking until vaccines are available to all
057school-age children while there are no longer mandates in place the responsibility is on the individual organizations to continue to implement safety measures to protect its participants why has the district gone from hiring an epidemiologist last fall to ensure that we were being safe to now ignoring local guidance telling a family that they can wear a mask if they are worried ignores all scientific evidence that my mask protects you and your mask protects me in some school buildings classrooms have 26 to 27 kids little to no social distancing often poor ventilation and now no masks how many of you before being vaccinated if you have been would be comfortable in this environment for 35 hours a week when the board agreed to let the administration make changes during the november december case surge the spirit of
058that agreement seemed to be that the administration could tighten precautions when necessary but why was last friday's decision to loosen precautions made without consulting the board this decision to withdraw the mass requirement was put into effect so quickly it left parents over the weekend to scramble and make yet another decision this school year parents trusted school parents trusted school would be relatively safe believing their children would be masked for the remainder of the school year now many students are missing out on end of year activities finals and their last days in schools after all the adjustments that students parents and teachers have had to make this year why did the administration throw yet another curveball this issue doesn't end next thursday the summer learning institute and the 21 22 school year are in the equation
059too parents especially those with children with pre-existing conditions are concerned for their children's health and are now contemplating or proceeding with unenrolling their students from summer school crossing their fingers that vaccinations are ready for younger children for fall semester the american academy of pediatrics reported that for the week ending in may 13th children were 24 of new reported weekly coveted 19 cases and a 3 increase from the previous report from covid 297 children have died 14 849 hospitals hospitalizations 3742 have developed multi-system inflammatory syndrome what is the board's position on these statistics and how do they support the administration's decision to remove the mask requirements in school how disappointing that we're so close to having some semblance of normalcy return and yet the district is choosing to open the students and community community to backsliding
060i stand with the cdc jackson county and many others and immediately reinstating the mask requirement in schools until the recommended vaccination threshold is reached in our children thank you we appreciate everyone uh being here tonight for the public comments we are going to move on to item 5.01 which is our board meetings uh our board reports and meetings attended so we will share um the different committees uh and report out on those different meetings um that board members have attended we'll give just board members will give just a second as people are some are exiting okay we're going to proceed with our board reports and meetings and so we kind of alter where we start um each month so um we'll start to the left here to spare our newest board member having to go
061first right so there you go um so we will start with board member campbell this evening i had the great opportunity to sit as a part of the insurance committee and hear information regarding the insurance plans the rfp responses as that's going out for rfp this year so great information was shared we'll have a subsequent informational and question session there's an upcoming session with the insurance committee to review those rfp responses and i would really encourage for those of you that participate on that committee appreciate your participation and please join the meeting please also discuss these changes and those upcoming changes with the other folks at your buildings that's the great benefit of having this insurance committee is that each building across the district has a representative that sits on this so we'll have additional
062questions that will be coming from the rfp responses and then we'll be moving forward then with that review and and additional information coming i also set in with board member hedrick on the finance committee and i know she'll be doing the updates this evening on that um great meeting and appreciated so much again all the hard work that goes into the financial aspects for the district especially around the bond project and how we're working hard and and spending those dollars uh wisely that our community so thankfully approved so um the uh last item i will mention is i did go to the retirement of the of our staff and that was a great event the number of hours and years of experience was just mind-blowing and i just wanted to say thank you to all
063of our staff but especially to those folks that are retiring this year thank you for all you have done for our district for our children for our students and for our community thank you thank you very much board member campbell appreciate it uh board member hedrick i have several to report on this evening um in addition to the lee summit high school groundbreaking that dr buck mentioned um i also had the privilege as well i know some of the other board members did to attend the teacher of the year uh ceremony and then also the lee summit retiree ceremony uh just this week and so you know in terms of all of that you tur in terms of the awesome staff that we have in this district so thanks and congratulations to all of our
064educators those who were designated as teachers of the year and then also or who participated in that but also to all of our retirees and also a big thank you to the lee summer chamber and then our own staff laura maxwell and joy james for the teacher of the year uh that whole process putting that together and then katie and her crew for all of their work with not only the groundbreaking but the retiree celebration in terms of board committees um and and again most of us attended i think all of us attended the msba region four meeting which was a couple of weeks ago uh where we were provided uh education education legislative related updates and then the other thing was which i thought was a great part of the meeting was that the
065msba has a scholarship program and they ask students from across the state to write an essay on a specific topic and this year's topic was about what they learned through from kovid and so our at our msba region 4 meeting we were able to take those responses from all those kids all over the state and talk about those in breakout groups and um it again it's amazing like someone said earlier i think board member fritchie about how insightful and smart and all of our students are and have come up with some great things and really one of the things i took away from that is how as school districts we've kind of all in the same boat and we have a lot of similarities and some of the things that we've learned through this last
06614 or so months we're going to keep doing for kids because it's good for kids so i thought that was a very positive outcome from if we can find one glimmer of hope of anything that happened during covid that would probably be one thing excuse me i did attend our board policy committee meeting this month as well and then the finance committee meeting yesterday morning and i'll be giving that report here shortly thank you board member hedrick board member fritchey thank you president murdoch first of all be reporting for the lee summit educational foundation this month the foundation awarded 63 500 in scholarships to 50 high school seniors in may uh there are still a few more scholarships yet to be awarded so that's great we enjoyed doing that uh the foundations also awarded 57
067peak grants across the district totaling over 000 to our teachers so they have that to look forward to using in their classrooms next year more than 270 volunteer hours were given to read and rank those peak grant and scholarship applications so we have a tremendous amount of volunteers who have helped us out in our community and some of those are our former grads who came in and helped us read and so we really thank all of our volunteers who helped lead summit educational foundation accomplish its mission for our school district thank you in i was had the pleasure of attending the just schools training on april the 28th and 29th with a group of about 20 lee summit r7 employees and i must say that i found that training to be very good and it
068was very valuable lots of good insights in that training and i just really enjoyed being able to do that with our teachers and other school personnel in in that setting so thank you very much for letting me attend that um other events that this month of course included the groundbreaking and the really cool thinking about the groundbreaking at least i'm in high school on may the 5th every single board member was there and every single board member got a shovel this time it wasn't pandemic time one person got a shovel and the next time another person we all got shovels to dig in the dirt and it was great to see that whole line of administrators and everyone being able to dig in that line of dirt in front of lee's summon high school and
069of course lisa in high school is always going to have a place in my heart because i'm a grad then also the excellence in teaching awards have already been mentioned in the teacher of the year announcement that was super exciting and man longview mansion was beautiful that day out on in the garden and all the families who got to see their loved ones be honored with those excellence in teaching awards i don't think you could have asked for a better event that was just so well done the same for our retirement reception this week i think it's the best one we've ever had over at mic on the patio and all the retirees seem to be having a fantastic job in our nutrition our fun time with their friends and family and nutrition services catered
070and poppy's ice cream truck you couldn't beat it it was just great good job you guys um and of course i think we're all looking forward to graduations for our three big high schools lisaman highly summit wesley summit north this saturday and then um summit ridge academy on monday which is always a lot of fun love summer ridge academy so lots of great things going on in may thank you board member fritchey uh board member allen uh thank you president murdoch and a few things um in attendance i do regret and i couldn't um i couldn't attend tuesday for a couple of family obligations so that was a drag but um got to prepare for uh my mom moving up here so there you go um i was fortunate enough last year and this year
071to participate in the teacher of the year interviews and some of the selection committee through the the some lisa chamber education committee and and such and um 200 we had 268 nominees for the year and our group was asked to uh i think laura the the total pages were about 800 some odd pages of information that was submitted uh to us for review the interviews were fantastic and to each of the candidates and each of the nominees i mean the the passion and drive and dedication to this district and to the students and families is unbelievable and and just the the conversations with educators is just it's fantastic and just thank you for all the hard hard hard work through the last year or years i attended a portion of the day with the lee
072summit chamber leadership class in jefferson city i got there when they were able to have madison's cafe italian food and central dairy ice cream and here's some of the legislators namely uh senator sirpoy spoke and um it's good to interact with him and as i told him at the time we may not always agree on all of the substantive issues but he does listen his door is open he's had very good conversation with dr buck and so i appreciate his dedication as well as our other state legislators in that same vein government relations committee was april 23rd matt baird does a great job with that group and again we have an opportunity to interact with our local city officials the mayor city manager and state and quite frankly national representatives as well we have a
073senator graves representative there quite often um governor's representative is there quite often so it's just a it's just a really good strong tie through all of our partnerships in this city um groundbreaking ceremony at least in high school is fantastic the regional meeting i'm glad you mentioned that um dr hedrick because i think that msba meeting and being able to attend it as a group was really good although this video we each had breakout sessions which allowed us to drill down um quite a bit and understand the commonality between districts that were not alone in the stress levels this tension um and the successes and then lastly yesterday um dr miller and i were able to attend uh dr emily miller and i were able to attend the lscdc luncheon where they spotlighted the the
074development east of city hall green street and douglas and a discussion of the farmers market performing space some amazing amazing visionary opportunities there downtown which just supplants why the city is successful and being a strong partner in the city as a district is really fortunate and fantastic so thank you thank you board member allen board member sparks well first i want to say since she was not there mike i think the ladies voted me best dress on tuesday but uh just a few things i um was able to meet with all of the leadership here in this building you all were great i appreciate you taking the time to explain to me what you do there were some things i already knew there was things that i learned also the tour dr miller and dr
075buck also gave me a tour of the building that was great to see and to meet all of the staff here so i want to say thank you from my heart also i was able to have a new board member orientation with our board leadership and also dr buck and so that was great so i thank president murdoch and also vice president marshall for that opportunity just to kind of and then also i was also along with my other board members was able to do the lsr7 groundbreaking that was a great experience um the teacher of the year so just couple quick facts real quick miss madrano is my daughter's online teacher and let me tell you she has she is just fantastic she's great and so i am just happy that she was the
076nominee for the teacher of the year but the winner the teacher of the year mr matt good he was my debate teacher at raytown south and so it was a win-win and then also um for the retiring um teachers and staff um it was also great to see the longevity of them wanting to be here and to serve this community um and it is i'm looking forward to being part of being able to see more to come through this community and to be able to serve our students and our staff and then last but not least i like to be a man of my word and so there was a young man when i was running my campaign that i told him if i was elected the first time that i get the opportunity to
077sit here i would say his name and so i want to say hey samuel i made it samuel you're now famous man you're famous vice president marshall thank you president murdoch well i guess one of the perks of being second to last is that everyone's already covered everywhere that i've been so i have nothing to report because it's already been reported on so thank you that is one of the perks actually so um so for me just just a couple of quick things here um with board member allen i did participate in teacher of the year and i do uh doing that selection i think we could have a competition between the peak grant readers and the teacher of the year readers because it's it was extensive but thank you uh laura for everything that
078you did for that that was really really well organized and it was super fun to be a part of so thank you i really do appreciate that congratulations to all of the teachers of the year including uh mr good um the last thing he to not um uh repeat everything that everybody else is saying dr buck and i did meet with uh mayor baird and the city manager steve arbo on april the 23rd to talk through um multiple issues actually that the school district and city have a vested interest in and it's been really good over these last few months to have continued communication between the city and our board leadership and dr buck it's really really been nice to have that kind of collaborative spirit that's going right now and so i think mayor
079baird would echo that sentiment as well it's been really good working with them and i look forward to more of those kinds of meetings coming up as more projects continue to go forward so that's kind of where i'm at on that so that's it okay we're going to move on to item 6.01 this is where we are in our finance committee report and i believe i heard it's dr hedrick tonight yes i drew the shark straw tonight our finance committee did meet yesterday morning we talked about various contracts and i'll mention them briefly in the next couple of minutes first of all we reviewed the list of all the contracts that are 15 000 or less we reviewed the contracts that will be proposed to be awarded for middle school yearbooks and the reason the
080the buildings would request the three vendors was that it makes them easier on the back end of them for all of their past work experience with those particular vendors and of pricing and that kind of thing we reviewed with dr barger the core collaborative contract which is for phase two of our equity work towards our goals two and four which would be providing professional development to the school-based teams of each school we reviewed with the next four of these we reviewed with kyle guerrell in terms of different types of contracts the first one was for to replace a failed theater lighting system at least summit north high school the next contract was with car roofing and sheet metal and this would be to add life really extend the life of the roof sections that's on
081summit lakes middle school and the gym roof at meadowlane elementary kyle mentioned by doing this work uh which i think was about 140 000. i don't have that number right in front of me but i think that's was the number it would uh delay us needing to spend about a half a million dollars to replace those roofs so i think it's a good investment of and a good solution by our facilities to apartment to extend the life of those roofs at those locations we also discussed the uh contract for um additional lighting to brighten the corridors at least i'm at north high school and that contract is being recommended to voss lighting and then the last contract we talked about was for shindel pest services which is uh to meet our board policy requirement of
082an integrated pest management system and that those services are provided on a kind of an as needed basis as they evaluate where we might have potential problems at various locations we also um other items related to facilities we reviewed the bond report we talked through two change orders uh for lease summit well it's actually on the middle school project number four but the the two change orders we talked about were for uh related to lisaman high school softball baseball complex and the first one had to do with um work on the batting cage the purchase of the actual batting cages and they found through working with mccown gordon that actually they had another vendor they could purchase the batting cages from at a reduced price and so it's being removed from one contract and adding
083adding to another which again thank our facilities department for thinking through and processing through that to save the district money the other contract is to involves branding at the on the artificial softball turf and baseball turf fields and that would be actually four different spots on those fields that would have branding put on them for if that contract is approved we also talked about these two are kind of related in terms of changes on middle school site number four middle school for again um it's a fairly involved from kyle's conversation with us of all these changes needed because of the public sewer interceptor improvements that need to be made at that site and um that's what the contract for dlr is to approve the uh the their services for that and then the other one
084would be to approve the actual gmp for actually completing the work we did talk about the impact on the budget over the overall project budget which we think is about a million dollar ad there but it would still be is considered to be under budget by about three million dollars when all said and done and the other thing is even though there will be some extensive sewer uh work done there they feel like they can still get that uh done and to meet our original timeline on that project so that was a very positive as well other than that the other rest of our meeting had to do with all finance items the transfer of funds which we normally do every month to cover our expenditures in the special revenue fund we reviewed the investments
085we looked at the current fund balance on the revenue and expense report and then we also talked through the uh phase one salary teamly summit recommendations that are part of our agenda this evening and with that unless there's any questions i'm going to make the motion to approve the transfer of two million four hundred eighty six thousand three hundred fifty six dollars and seventy cents from the general fund of the special revenue fund we have a motion and a second for six point zero two the transfer of funds is there any discussion on this motion seeing none all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye all those opposed motion carries unanimously i will also move to approve the treasurer's report and payment of the bills motion in a second for 6.03
086the treasurer's report and payment of the bills any discussion on this item all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye all those opposed motion carries unanimously 6.04 is the salary phase one adjustment recommendation by team lee summit um so we would take a motion on that item i move that the board of education approved the team lease summit phase one recommendation for eligible employees for the 2021-22 school year and approve and issue new contracts and compensation summaries second motion in a second to approve 6.04 the phase one adjustment recommendations uh by team lee summit so we'll now have a discussion on that particular item looks like board member hedrick oh i'm sorry board member campbell i'm sorry sorry about that yeah she went to the wrong number see so really it's
087no one we're just not going to recognize anybody go ahead boardroom campbell i um i just wanted to say thank you i appreciated the finance team as well as um all the folks that contributed to this on the longer range look at the impact of what this is because as we discussed um you know it's not just a one-year impact it is a future forward impact as well and so having these numbers and be able being able to see what that impact is over the long term i think was really beneficial and helpful thank you board member campbell are you good board member patrick okay any other comments or questions regarding the phase one okay um so we have a motion and a second we will go ahead and take a vote all those in
088favor please raise your hand and say i i all those opposed okay motion carries six zero to one abstention okay we are gonna move on to item seven um these are our consent agenda items tonight so we will take a motion on these items as well please i move to approve the consent agenda items as presented motion in a second for item 7.01 all the way through 7.20 is there any discussion or questions related to any of these items i have one and maybe you talked about it in the finance committee the lighting situation at least summit north do we anticipate that that's going to be necessary at other buildings of similar age or is that something that is more strictly to the summit north and i'm sorry kyle and you sat in the middle
089too i mean you need to i'll be glad to provide some information we do have a plan and our retrofitting existing led lights across the district we're doing one to two buildings a year with our internal staff lee summit north has a situation where there's no current lights in place and so it's a little bit different and that they've had a long-standing issue with low lighting levels so these fixtures will um will dramatically improve the the environment and will this be done before the fall it'll be done before school starts excellent any other questions or comments board member for ritchie yeah just a question um on the 7.07 the board of equalization rep representatives the administration is recommending gary fruits as our district representative in robland as our district's alternate representative jackson county board of
090equalization um have these gentlemen served in that capacity for some time yes gary fruits has represented the district for a number of years rob lund was just added last year as the alternate okay thank you i thought i thought mr fruits had been in that position for a while thank you board member sparks sorry i didn't want you to sit down uh how was that what was the process of choosing those individuals well again representative fruits has been on there for several years to serve on the board of equalization both both of those members have commercial real estate experience and so that was part of the selection process just reaching out to members of our business roundtable understanding that who has that type of experience can that can give meaningful input on valuations good question
091uh any other questions or comments okay thanks dr miller appreciate it all right so we have a motion in a second for all the items on our consent agenda all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye all those opposed motion carries unanimously uh we are moving on to item eight so we have a couple of different items that we are going to be doing um items for decision on 8.01 is our middle school uh gmp or guaranteed maximum price amendment so if we could have a motion on that item please i moved that the board approved the guaranteed maximum price amendment number four to macau and gordon construction as detailed in the attachment motion and a second to approve 8.01 is there any questions or comments related to 8.01 okay all
092those in favor please raise your hand and say hi all those opposed motion carries unanimously 8.02 this is our change order number two for lee's summit high school and it is related to the branding of the artificial turf field so we would take a motion on 8.02 i'd like to make a motion that the board approved change order number two with atg sports industries increasing their contract amount by 43 400 second motion in a second for 8.02 we'll take questions and discussion board member hedrick yeah i've reviewed this and we talked about it um yesterday in finance as well but i have real concerns about this change order and due to the amount of money that we're spending i do not believe that's a prudent use of our resources given the fact there will be
093other opportunities for signage at that location identifying the complex and that that's going to be an ongoing expense because whenever the turf's replaced all of that has to be redone so i do not support that item okay thanks for your comment uh board member fritzy um i had a question on that too because um and it caused me to do a little research on my own i googled our other high school baseball and softball fields to see what they looked like and of course they're not turf so because they're not turf they don't get their name or their mascots on their actual fields and like you said dr hedrick they do have signage in other ways but um i was just i mean i would love for all of our schools to be able to
094be proud and have that signage but um to me it's kind of an equity issue too board member campbell i think i'd like to ask dr miller kyle um we did talk about as a part of this discussion um that that there is common um signage like this with the football fields am i remembering that correctly and is can we talk a little bit about that thank you kathy if i could just make sure that i understand your question you asked about signage at the football fields right um this this item that we have up for um decision is so this is branding that will be like right on the field that shows that it's lee's summit high school and is this similar to the branding that we have at the three football stadiums yes
095we've been working with gould evans on our athletics project that is being performed by monarch all three athletic directors and principals have worked through branding opportunities related to signage paint different opportunities at each one of the three campuses and so those will be coming also so back to the question about the other um baseball fields that probably will be a future item that we'll discuss as well no i think when she's asking there is a logo in the middle of the football field in all three football stadiums right and there is since our other baseball softball fields are natural grass we would not have plans to paint logos on the natural grass fields at our other campuses but on the football stadiums where they do have the turf that is there right they do have
096locations thanks for clarifying that i thought i was straight on that board member sparks turn your mic on please thank you how long do we think that it'll last before it would have to be replaced or should i say how often would we replace the turf that's a good question um you know uv degradation and and use are are the two factors that age turf i can tell you that we we chose a nylon product because of its uv resistance um and it's also a very tough fiber we looked at belton's field in our research last year that was nine years old and frankly i thought it still looked brand new i was very impressed and they they put a nylon product in also the polyethylene fibers are similar to what we have now we
097got 10 years out of them and frankly they didn't look good after about eight so we really feel like we could probably get you know at least maybe 12 years out of our baseball fields but it's it's just up to use yeah thank you any other questions other questions just a comment i'll just say um i think marketing and branding is it is important i also think for our students i think they enjoy it i think it makes them feel proud about what they're doing uh so i actually support it board member fridgey well i i just like i as i'm reading the item i see that the that it would be paid out of existing bond the existing bond budget therefore we do have money within our bond budget for this item so it's
098not a matter of not having the money i was i was just what's what's the most compelling reasons why we should do this i guess i'd like to just hear a little bit more on who's going to champion this cause can i offer something because that's actually where my comment was going to be going is you know i do support this item um for lots of reasons not only as having been a high school staff member and a coach it helps your program just flat out secondly lee summit high school hasn't had a baseball or softball field for however long to be ever able to call home so let's let's give them something to actually call home um with this field it comes out of the bond dollars so we're not spending any extra dollars
099on it it's got a long shelf life and by the way i think we probably could the only thing i would suggest is the next time that we go out for a turf bid that the logo become a part of the turf bid so that we're not actually doing it secondly because i don't think it would have been an issue had it come all together that's just that's my opinion but i do think it's important and for the summit high school i don't think it's a knock to lee summit north or lee summit west or anything like that so um i fully support this one okay you convinced i me i'm not trying to get you hey you go do whatever you want any other questions or comments related to this particular item okay um
100so all those in favor of 8.02 please raise your hand and say aye aye all those opposed okay motion carries six to one 8.03 this is our two non-allocated library media specialist positions and i think i'm going to let dr buck kind of address this one since this was kind of one of those late ads yeah so it came to my attention uh that we are below minimum standards on deci now they are guidelines they're not requirements but i don't know about you i don't like being below minimum standards so this 1.2 fte uh would bring us up to uh standards at elementary's obviously you know a year away from sixth grade going to middle school so we'll reallocate staff but we'll need people when we reallocate staff anyways the point two might be a
101challenge if there's a retiree that wants to work one day a week that's one day a week point two is um so uh that might be a challenge but we're gonna give it a go and hopefully uh people out there are listening if you're a retired librarian welcome work one day a week we'd like to see your application okay this is this is 8.03 so we'll go and take a motion and then we can have discussion or questions i move that the board of education approved the non-allocated request for 1.2 fte library media specialists for the 2021-22 school year to meet the desi minimum standards second motion in a second do we have questions or comments related to this particular item dr buck i have one um you know we mentioned that we're going to
102have to already move people coming next year with sixth graders going to the middle schools do we anticipate that that minimum standard would actually increase like for example that we would actually need 1.5 or 1.8 or whatever that standard may be as we would make that move for middle school kids didn't maybe need another library person too early to tell because it depends on what the boundary team a does and then b remember we're down about one percent a little over one percent enrollment this year uh but eight percent down in kindergarten so it all depends if those people who put off kindergarten this year because of the pandemic come back next year or not so i don't have a crystal ball maybe that's a fair answer that's a very answer any other questions or
103comments related to 8.03 i had a quick one yeah sure go for it oh i'm sorry i didn't see you all right you can ignore it did you cover it with tape just so it's always dark i did last meeting i just hadn't along that same line are we working to project how many folks we want or need or whatever i mean i've read this twice or the email twice three times thinking okay 1.2 is meeting the minimum guidelines so i see minimum guidelines and i'm thinking that's unacceptable where we ultimately should be far above guidelines given that librarian media is a need in every school and we are stretched thin at that position already so where are we in 2023 2024 i mean again you kind of answered that already but so i'll add
104that uh mc6 guidelines are kicking in effect soon and counselors uh ftes for a minimum go up and so that's a big piece of it and then we already have a a starting point working document that dr andrew's been working on with dr delsim about what we'll need when we move to the fourth middle school opening but then part of that's going to really depend on after the enrollment is done for boundary change so that really that work starts really in october of this fall that's a good question though because i mean that there will be it'll be all kinds of positions that we'll have to be trying to kind of think ahead about any other questions or comments on 8.03 okay all those in favor please raise your hand and say hi hi all
105those opposed motion carries unanimously we are going to go to item nine at point zero one which is we have two presentations tonight so nine point zero one is our early education center and extended school year and parents as teachers annual program evaluation and i see carey beam is coming up here and i just have to i'm going to do this i'm going off script i'm sorry because my son enjoyed great beginnings and so and i know that you are retiring this year and so now publicly even though i got to it on tuesday night thank you very much thanks all right we will turn it over yes yes i i'm going to i'm going to because absolutely all right sorry i'm done you really don't want this but okay um so some of you
106have heard this for many years and some of you are very new to this so i'm just a little bit about early education so everything under kindergarten in lee's summit i am carrie bain this is jeannie cook she is our assistant principal currently and i am so very happy to say that she will be our leader for next year so we are super happy about that [Applause] so the different programs that we run we have parents as teachers that is the program that every family that lives in lsr7 is eligible to participate in it's prenatal through kindergarten some of our students that don't go to kindergarten can stay in parents as teachers so we think that's a bonus for those families that's kind of new maybe three years early head start is a qualifying program
107that is a birth to three and it's an in-home program much like parents as teachers much more intense it's a weekly visit in the home for about an hour and a half we have early childhood special education we have title one preschool head start preschool which is three to five year olds in a preschool and then we have speech improvement services so that we can serve children who do not qualify because the state changed their qualifications for speech for three and four-year-olds and we found a way to do it we'd actually been doing it for many years we just have to do it a lot more now because they don't they don't qualify for an ip but we know they need that help so we have a way to do that called speech improvement services
108just like the district does so so on the left of this screen are the seven pillars of beliefs of great beginnings i will say a big shout out to dr daniels he helped he has helped us this is new for this end of this year we've been working all year actually like a year and a half because of coven to get beliefs in place new mission new uh new vision the whole thing is all there ready for you but we've got this part to share with you now and we'll share the rest of it next year families that we serve this year i will tell you our families were down parents as teachers always has a very long wait list but it's really hard to do with those online visits with families and have them
109want to participate we still had great participation we just didn't we don't have the wait list that we've had before um early head start was great uh early childhood special education really no changes title title preschool was down a little bit because we were not able to screen in person when we went into shutdown in march through may so that really affected our incoming numbers for this year we have been screening online so that helped a little bit um head start preschool same as always and speech improvement probably about the same as always so just to kind of tie what we're doing to the district we looked at the destination 2021 we really looked at the personalization of learning experiences that create student ownership of learning this is something we've been diving into for probably
110yeah a couple of years it's called the project approach it is very similar to something you're familiar with for that elementary group and high school group but we have the pre-k version and it's really based on what students want to learn about and they help drive and we help them learn to be investigators because to be learners for the rest of your life you really have to understand and own how to be an investigator and we want to drive that curiosity in them so our goal was for all classrooms to participate in a minimum of two student-led projects as outlined in young investigators so did we have success not this year we were in shutdown part of the year and it was just a tough year did we have some really amazing projects happen yes
111and did we have projects happen at home while we were virtual yes which was awesome because our parents got to do them and they became a family project instead of a school family project so very cool lots of success didn't quite hit our goal but we'll work on it next year so this is just a little bit about project approach this was actually a home project he his interest is in dinosaurs and so that teacher really helped this is an online student has really helped that family understand how to ask the questions really building all of the inquiry into that family's home and so that family got to participate in a project and took pictures and sent them in to the teacher there's also a link on that slide if you want to learn more
112about project approach there's a link there that you can go and do that so finance we are unique in the way that we are funded so we have parents as teachers that comes in mostly from the state but this district has always been fabulous about supporting our parents as teachers program we're very proud of that fact we have one of the larger appearances teachers programs in the state of missouri so and that's much thanks to this district we also have used some of our title 1 funds to provide some in-home services to at-risk families so that's been super helpful too to really build that parent education piece up ecse is a completely reimbursed program so all of our early childhood special education students get their services one year and we bill for them the following
113year so a kind of a unique way to do it but that's the way that goes that is fully funded um title we have title that we serve three classrooms with title um but that includes staffing materials supplies transportation all kinds of things we have an early head start budget and a head start budget those are federal grants but they are ran through the mid-america regional council mark downtown kansas city and we are one of the recipients of a partnership with them so another youth unique thing about early education that you may not know is that we have an advisory committee we have about 22 people including four staff members on our advisory committee their parents a board member who started before he was a board member partners in education instead of doing the person
114ed as it's traditionally been done laura and i have worked really hard to make this a very functional piece at this level and they really are on our advisory board we also have retired educators from the district so we have a really well-rounded advisory team and they help us they help us create our parent surveys they help us read our parent survey results they help give us ideas about resources for families they really help us problem solve and that's what we want we want that stakeholder information so that we're doing what's appropriate for our group of lsr7 kiddos they also volunteered at school events but they didn't get to do that this year but that's the fun part so we do have our three parent surveys linked there i'm not going to go through all
115of them because i know i'm supposed to keep this moving um what i will tell you is we've never had as many parent surveys turned in as we did this year which is super interesting to us and they were very good so take a look but super it really showed how connected our staff and parents were able to be even in and out of the classroom so very interesting strength and celebrations um i took this one from genie i was like can i do those drinks strong connections between staff and families like we talked about innovative partnering by staff and families we really had teachers tell us especially classroom teachers they've never been able to really connect as deeply as they were able to when we were virtual and so they really saw a lot
116of benefit in that and we're hoping that we can really help those teachers grow those skills of building those family skills at home so very very cool thing that came out of something that really wasn't that great implemented research-based approach to social emotional needs i think a lot of you know that i am a huge conscious disciplined believer and our work for gosh eight plus years at this point in really implementing conscious discipline to a deep level really paid off for us because not only for the children but for the staff and the families as well project approach work was published oh i left my book back there we had one of our projects published in one of the latest books so that was really cool um we worked on lots of mask wearing with
117students because lots of people told us that wouldn't happen and quite shockingly really they they absolutely did and it was fantastic hosted virtual group connections this was also something we never would have tried we hosted a lot of group connections which are parent meetings we hosted a lot of the ones that were just for parent information children didn't need it wasn't a child event at 8 30 at night nine o'clock at night put kiddos to bed come to your zoom we saw people in their jammies they were on their couch they were in bed but they were learning they were learning and they were getting new parenting skills and they loved it and they came so we will not lose that we will continue that in many ways pat program continued through virtual only we
118have not sent our parent educators back into the home i will tell you this spring they are doing two outdoor home visits and those have gone very well so next year we're hoping we can just go right back to normal um pat youtube channel was launched we never thought we'd have a youtube channel but we did all of these great parent education events we recorded them with permission from parents who were on there and then we were able to put them out there on youtube so now parents lots of times in the middle of the night are watching videos on how to get my child to sleep because i can watch it at 1 o'clock in the morning because it's available to me so we really have learned a lot of things and we're super
119excited about that genie is going to pick it up yes ma'am oh two teachers of the year we needed to we didn't put that on there we were really embarrassed that we didn't do that we're like oh my gosh how do we forget that so that number one two special educators and number two to early educators so that is just something that i don't think we've ever seen not in my time here so that was super cool so thank you genie you're welcome turning it over okay so i'm kind of here hi i'm jeannie cook and i'm here to talk a little bit about where we're going next year so we've talked about where we how we've aligned to board priorities this year and we've talked a little bit about some of our celebrations and
120now i want to talk a little bit about what our plans are moving forward so first of all we've really tried to dive into creating some diverse engagement opportunities for our staff and our families so this year our parent educators really took a deep dive during their collaboration into studying different cultures so that when we go into their homes we're respectful of what that family's beliefs are when we walk in the door so we can be more open open-minded when we walk into that family and really respect what uh what we're walking into um so we took a little deeper dive we our library media specialist has also um did a bedtime routine um series of events virtual with our families and one of the bedtime stories really revolved around diversity and cultures and she
121shared those a book with families they snuggled up in bed they read that book out loud together virtually and then afterwards she sent the families a list of different books that they could check out so that they could really work on that culture and diversity within their own homes we will continue that work next year on the library media specialist kim ruiz and myself are going to kind of look at our library collection we're analyzing it we're trying to make sure that our books our toys and the supplies that our students have available to them are representative of all cultures and all races so that they can see themselves represented well so that's going to be one of our big goals as we move into the next year we also are working on our social
122emotional data so our little ones have big feelings and we know that and we also know that as our little ones move into kindergarten they still have very big feelings so we really feel responsible to make sure that we're giving our kids tools to really manage their feelings to identify and manage them and because we feel like that's a skill that they're going to use throughout their life but it's really going to help them as they move into elementary so our behavior team is kind of diving into social emotional data and we're really trying to identify gaps where we see maybe kids are missing skills so that we can get in to classrooms and really either work on those one-on-one or maybe work on them as a classroom and help build those skills so our
123team is going to be working on that this year we're also going to be really re-boosting re rebooting i guess our project approach work so where we had some great training two or three years ago coveted kind of stalled what we were able to do so we're really going to dive deep into that at the beginning of the year and then we'll provide that opportunity for our staff throughout the year to continue really embedding some projects into their classroom and that again align straight to your board priorities so we continue to do that work we also have really listened to our staff and what we're finding out this year is that a lot of our students our little ones that are coming in to us are missing or are really needing a lot of extra
124sensory help and it's really difficult for them to be able to be in a mind space to learn and so we're really working on analyzing what our kids need we call them learning to learn skills and so our team is kind of working together to find out what skills our kids need to be successful learners and then we're going to take that professional development into our teachers in the fall and at the beginning of the year and we're really going to help them develop their their tool belt um to to call it something simple a tool belt for for really meeting the sensory needs of our kids and supporting their their social emotional behaviors so that they can be in a good space that they are able to learn so we're going to be kind
125of um really diving into that at the beginning of the year so those will all be things that we'll talk about with our leadership team as we develop our own building improvement plan that will align again with board priorities lastly we want to talk a little bit about some changes that have happened at deci that really affect us at early childhood and that is they've developed a new department of childhood and that is something new um we're still monitoring the changes it's a fear it's in its early stages right now but we continue to monitor the changes they will affect both programs parents as teachers and great beginnings a lot of it really has to do with making sure that families get matched up with the resources that best fit what they need so whether
126they're very intensive services or whether they're just more generalized services that will kind of that that office is kind of helping us figure out um how to best match families to what they really need so moving forward these are going to be our questions they're really based on what we just talked about these are the questions that are going to guide our work as we build our building improvement plan we're going to talk about again diversity social emotional we're going to talk a lot about project approach and we're going to continue to build those strategies for our young learners as they are ready to learn so these are our goals and action steps for next year so again dr daniel helped us write our new mission and vision so we really have our core beliefs
127we know where we believe in we know where we're headed this work is really going to help our our leadership team and our school really align what we believe in with what the board priorities are so that we at the pre-k level can support um the board and it seems kind of silly to think that the little three and four and five-year-olds could we could do that work but we truly truly believe that we can and we really believe that we have an important role to to support learning pre-k through 12 in the district okay that's about it our last slide is a little bit about um teamwork we really do believe in the value of teamwork we sit around and discuss kids that are really not making progress that things do on a daily
128basis we sit around and everybody brings their lunch and we have therapists and teachers and paras and all staff members just to discuss one child for an hour because we believe in them that much that we want to put as many brains around the table so we can support that whole child so that speaks a little bit to our beliefs too thank you appreciate both of you for that don't go anywhere in case anybody has any questions or comments board member alan well thank you for giving me all those years of being a partner in education and enjoying the board uh interaction and um i sincerely appreciate all you both have done and i'm sorry i'm emotional but um wow friend of mine 14 years ago 14 years ago said it best and he said
129one of your teachers saved his son's life that's all that needs to be said board member campbell how do i follow that remember you don't you just pause for just two years and i feel the same way i i think we we all agree that those educational opportunities for our earliest learners just set the stage so thank you so much for all the effort and work that you put in to every day those conversations to help each one of the students you know i had the opportunity this year to go and visit and it had been a number of years since i had been at great beginnings um as a parent and so it was really great to see the new facility and i say new you guys have been there for a number of
130years now but to see the teachers interacting with each other to see all the staff interacting with each other and those and the students there to just see the joy in all the students faces and i especially loved i know there was one um i think pera that was walking down the hall and was taking a young man to his next session and maybe his attention would like to go everywhere but she had bubbles to help him attend down to where he needed to go and i think that will just stay with me forever because some days we need our bubbles to get where we need to go so thank you i did want to ask one question um carrie you mentioned conscious discipline and can we share a little bit with what that is
131because that was really good learning for me to hear that term as well well i could i could talk about that for a couple of hours and everybody back here is like oh don't ask her that don't ask her um we really we have dove in for about eight years it is extremely complicated work it is very personal work it's really a change in your philosophy it's really understanding that when you see a human not just a child and they're in a matter of upset you have to figure out what part of their brain they're in and that's how you react to them and you also have to be conscious about how you are actually feeling and what emotional state are you in and then you learn some calming activities which is what we share
132with children there's also a huge component about creating a school family there's a fabulous if you ever want to see a video look up dj batiste he is a previous gang leader and he had conscious discipline only his senior year of high school and it completely changed his life and he does the best job talking i've gotten to hear it i have pictures with him um i'm a super fan so he really turned it around but so it's not just an early childhood thing it's truly a life thing and most of our staff would tell you it didn't just change what they do in classroom because they understand that behavior is just a missing skill we just need to work on that they don't get irritated about it there's if i tell you 15 times
133it doesn't matter i still haven't told you the right way i haven't shown you the right way we're going to try it again they do that but most of our staff will tell you it has truly changed how they function as a human being on earth so we really i mean we really believe in conscious discipline so thank you going through that and and just thank you for sharing that across your school that's fantastic okay i'm gonna pass the bubbles on down to board member sparks sometimes all you have to say is thank you thank you for your work board member hedrick you guys are fabulous um just thank you so much for your focus um energy and drive i've seen it firsthand and you guys do awesome work so thank you any other questions
134or comments i'm gonna be the only one who has an actual question come on now you mentioned that you weren't able to screen very much last spring going into this school year but we have picked that up again for this upcoming year do we anticipate then back to a waiting list for this upcoming school year that's certainly the hope so we did screen this year we figured out how to we bought a tool called the asq online asq i think threw that together super fast much like many people threw a lot of things together super fast and and our team came together and worked i had parent educators that worked hours and hours and hours on figuring out how to implement this how to get it to families so we did screen all this year
135not that spring from march to may we missed that we screened this year but it was all online and it was parents doing the screening so just a different it was a different venue we see really great things about that but we also missed really getting to get in there and meet that kiddo and see what their needs were so yes we are doing summer screenings in person at great beginnings so that we can really get back to see how families feel about that how to work how are we going to space out what's that going to look like so we're going to do a lot of practicing this summer with parents as teachers perfect thank you both very much oh board member sparks now that's a board member allen move you just did right
136there so i didn't cry [Laughter] so he's my buddy so with us meeting our capacity and obviously having a waiting list what is that process of picking the students that qualify so typically it's a wait list that just goes in order if we have a family though because when families enroll they can enroll in line which is something we've been doing for quite a few years they often enroll very late at night they mark on their what high needs they have so the more high needs you're definitely going to get bumped to the top of that list so that's typically how we do it great question any other questions or comments well i just i'm going to take a minute and i'm just going to say thank you it has truly been an honor to
137serve our littlest learners and their families it's been an honor to be the first person that gets to meet these families and work with these families and introduce them to the amazing work that's going to happen in lsr7 so we have never ever questioned the board's commitment the district's commitment to our programming and we thank you for that because that's not true everywhere but you are so good to our littlest learners so thank you [Applause] we're going to move on to 9.02 which is our mason elementary project update um where we're going to get to learn a little bit about what is happening with uh mason so i believe je dunn is here so molly thank you excellent it took me a while to find it on the list there i was just like there
138we go the button broken then oh there we go i'll get it eventually oh thank you wow it's really hard hi everybody my name is molly lyons i work for j.e dunn construction and i'm the project manager at mason elementary so i'm going to give you an update on our construction progress out there so we have a couple different things going on we've got an addition which is what you'll see in the green that's the circled area and then we've got three phases of renovations too so i'm going to take you through some pictures of the edition first here on the front we've got that east face of the edition we've got the brick installed we've got windows and then we've also got the forms for the site concrete at the front ramp so that's
139all front entry work in the courtyard which is the middle area we've got the brick and the windows finished again and then we've also installed the stamped concrete in the courtyard um so that's a really cool learning space it's gonna have some benches around it and we're getting all that landscaped now um proceeding around so we've got brick work all the way around all these pictures were taken about two weeks ago so it's a little bit more progressed now all the scaffolding has been taken down all the brick work is finished except for one little portion on the inside here we've got uh drywall and and sheetrock going on right now so this is a ramp from the new media center down into the 4th grade classrooms and collaboration center it'll be really cool feature
140with the clear story windows and display cases right there so this is a progress picture for you on the right here you can actually see framing for the cubbies uh in the media center there's going to be a lot of like hands-on areas where little students can kind of curl up and read their books in the media center so that's fun and then we've also been continuing with our drywall installation in the area too moving into our first phase of renovation that's the blue area we are in the middle of finishes here so like i said these pictures about two weeks old we've actually got carpet installed everywhere now we finished our casework installation ceiling grid ceiling tiles lights we're really finishing that up by next week because we've got some more work coming up
141this summer so um everything has been progressing really well in that renovation phase starting next week when school is finished we start a big renovation in the red area here that's the whole west wing of the building and so we will be tearing down walls opening up classrooms installing big glass sliding doors everywhere lots of new finishes everything gets paint and new carpet and it's going to be very exciting so we're really looking forward to doing that work this summer and then opening up the new building in august so we've also got some site work happening this summer lots of new landscaping parking lots it's gonna it's gonna look really really great when it's all finished here's kind of an advanced view of our site work we've got asphalt and a fire lane and plants
142and trees and just getting it all done so we'll be planting that towards the end of the year so it looks great for the first day of school and then the last item on my agenda here i'd like to invite the board out for a construction tour if you guys would like in august right before we get ready to open up for the first day of school we think it'd be fun to have you guys out we'll give you hard hats and you can come walk site with us and you can see what it looks like now in may remember these pictures and then in august it will look very very different so we'd love to have you guys all come out and see that i think that's the end of my presentation are there
143any questions about mason any questions or comments related to the mason edition board member fritchey yes um are there improvements to the cafeteria area the cafeteria yes there's all new flooring and some of the ramps go away if you're familiar with boston yeah those ramps get taken out and there's only one entrance and exit into the cafeteria now so he's going to get it it's going to get a face lift it'll be really nice and the two-story part the original old school that two-story part that's getting run out to yes so you're talking about the very south end of this red right yes yes so all those classrooms get renovated as well um and even the basement below too so wow i know that's gonna be that's the old old cafeteria it is it's the
144original building and i'm i'm very excited about what we're going to find i'm sure there'll be some surprises thank you board member marshall said clear that out before we get there so yeah we're trying sorry i put you on the spot there fabulous good thank you any other questions or comments thank you very much we appreciate you being here and waiting through the meeting appreciate it thank you okay we're gonna move on here to item 10 this is our written reports we have two uh this evening our federal programs um evaluation and then our bond budget uh update does anybody have any questions or comments related to the written reports no joke this is a first this is a first we've been together for four years this is a first now so no no it's
145okay all right i could say jennifer kephart yeah that is a big report and that is it's always a huge report and so thank you very much because that was very detailed thanks appreciate it just shows we get along we get along okay um so we uh we will adjourn this regular meeting and board members remember we need to reconvene upstairs thank you very much thank you all for being here you