LSR7 Board of Education Meeting - 04/15/21

001is we will call the regular april meeting to order here and if i could get everybody to stand for the pledge of allegiance please all right uh welcome everybody who is in the room this is our first meeting of the school year where it has been essentially open to first come first serve so welcome to everybody who is in attendance tonight and to everybody watching online thank you for joining us as well or if you watch it later appreciate you being engaged with the district 1.04 uh adoption of the of the agenda so i'll take a motion on that from one of the members please i move to adopt the agenda as presented motion in a second to adopt the agenda is there any discussion all those in favor please raise your hand and say

002aye hi all those opposed motion carries unanimously uh point 2.01 this will be our board priorities uh quarterly update dr buck we have three people coming up to present and they feel like they show you the same uh and new things at the same time um so but they're excited to share where we are some of it may be repeat so i think believe it or not is it going to be dr barger you're first doing board priority one on our equity plan good evening and we certainly want to look at our board priority and holistic look which is meeting each student where they are by utilizing an equity lens and decisions action practices and resource support we break that board priority down when we look at our equity plan which is guided by six

003goals these are the same six goals we've looked at in terms of each of our updates and typically we look specifically at each of the six goals with each update today in particular i'm going to highlight two of these areas because to be honest it is the two areas in which uh we have done the most work recently and the two areas in which we are forecasting work to continue and potentially have some board information feedback and or action potentially as it relates to them so those two areas are the areas of governance and leadership and the area professional learning and development so working backwards which is not the way i typically do we usually would start with one and go to two but the number one has a lengthier presentation and number two is

004simply an update when we look at equity plan goal two as it relates to professional development this week eec returns to do the in-person just school sessions that had been postponed to spring during covet of 19. if you covered 19 if you uh recall we had five four day sessions scheduled and actually originally it had been six and then we postponed it once and then we postponed it again and every time i was calling it easy i felt like i was calling to tell them that we were postponing and we were hoping that we were going to get to it so we have been able to as a result of vaccines scheduling and and being back in session organized that there are five of the sessions happening between april 12th and june 30th and then

005eec and i arranged that we would have one carryover session based on this year's contract into next year's year as a result of essentially running out of time to be able to get that into our schedule we have also um began looking towards a comprehensive equity plan as we move forward that you will see a shift and not a plan but a pd plan you will see a shift in the thinking of that pd from some of the pull apart stance and strategy work that we have been doing to a larger focus on the concepts of dignity and belonging we have started some of that work this fall with the work of john cronople and floyd cobb and the dignity and belonging text and we will continue to utilize pd focus really anchored to those

006dignity and belonging pieces as they relate to equity in our district that plan is currently being developed we're working with a number of resources and vendors and it will include some whole group professional development but i'm most excited that it will also include school-based action research around the individual equity topics in which we will have school teams that are going to be working on equity issues specific to their schools under a coaching framework so again almost just a little bit of a tease or preview if you have a trailer for next month because we're going to get some of that in more detail and the plan is to bring that comprehensive professional development plan with contract approval at the may board of education meeting when we go to equity plan goal one this is that

007governance and leadership piece and really the equity plan goal one calls for essentially a board policy as it relates to equity and it's interesting that we've sort of come to this through a path that was not my original path to this but i think may actually end up getting us there so as opposed to starting a board equity design team my original line of thinking was much more in line with equity plan two which was professional development learning targets so that we knew what our staff was going to be taught and expected to know as a result of professional development as the team began to look through that our district team which includes diversity team members it includes administrators from various buildings and levels we began to look at multiple frameworks trying to identify what

008our learning targets might be to support professional development and we ended up really anchoring ourselves after many many reviews to the bell framework in which that's been shared um you know links to that has been shared with the board and we know that the bell framework has a lot in it and it's not just one of those let's just adopt it because it has commitments it has action steps it has actions that we would or programs that you would maybe consider implementing and so we know it's not a full adoption but we did feel as a team that it was a nice anchoring spot to start talking about what our staff may want to actually know and be able to do but then really what that shifted into thinking is really is that less about

009our learning targets and does it more become about work that is commitments and or belief statements that we would commit to or establish as a district potentially board approved as it relates to equity so we had a very clear delineation that when we say we believe in equity or that we are committed to equity we had identifiable equity commitments or belief statements that we could quantify and attach to largely anchored to something that we know is well vetted through something like the bell framework again adopted to the degree that we need to make it our own um and so it's interesting that the shift that started in action plan two really sort of led to us that potentially that would then begin to fold what would be our equity policy we did take a look

010at a number of equity policies with our building principles with our parent and community leadership team and they range from everything from very msba like top policies to one locally and kansas city missouri is much more a statement of commitments and so whether this becomes policy or not that's conversation that we can have towards work session and moving forward we do feel like this work that started out from a professional development standpoint may actually feed into this action plan one in terms of governance so really the focus of equity has been really anchored to that one and two in the most recent time frame i will also say that i am thrilled that shelly sanders who is coming into the new role is co-facilitating april 30th with us and is really actually to be fair

011i think she's mostly facilitating and i'm co-facilitating with her as we begin to allow her to get to know that team and help guide that work so that we have that consistency of flow into our next set of leadership for that particular position so with that open to questions as it relates to board policy one or i would be happy to pass it to dr kephart for board policy too any questions before we move on i do okay board member fritchey um dr berger when you say comprehensive or whole group pd what does that i mean in professional development terms what what do you mean by that the whole school district every teacher every i mean who exactly okay so i think that's an excellent plan and i think um the comprehensive pd plan um

012i think maybe my modifier of comprehensive is modifying the word plan more so than modifying the pd help meaning that we'll have a comprehensive plan for pd however but i do think to your question when we are not operating from a standpoint of needing to pull a group of individuals out for professional development whether that's at 20 at a time or a hundred at a time right you know there's capacity at that right we're pulling students out of classrooms to do the work and then only those that get pulled out get the access to the professional learning what the proposed model is we're going to bring it forward to you really is much more of a pushing into the school space and so there will be a leadership team that probably does have some pull

013out some in-depth training but then with some coaching that leadership team at the building and when i say leadership i mean organizational instructional leader but also teacher leadership team so whatever the team just or the school determines as the correct team in order to be able to reach and push and touch and help grow the entire staff at that school in a way that we should be able to reach much more by pushing in than our capacity to pull out allows for i like it thank you board member campbell i do i kind of want to tag on to board member for g's question so when we talk about that that accountability though would still roll up through the administrative absolutely yes and the consistency across the schools there would be that accountability as well

014absolutely that coaching comes centralized back and i think the other place that that accountability if you will is measured is that um also a little bit of our preview as we look forward to our new comprehensive school improvement plan and the alignment components that one of the things that dr kephart dr andrews dr shelton and i are working on are ensuring that our building improvement plans are aligned to that csip which also means that there'll be a very tangible place in which equity is is specifically outlined with an accountability measure in each of our building improvement plans great thank you board member alan ah dr barger just quickly when you mention at the school level again i guess really in the same theme is this is this some modification by by you the team is

015it interactive with dr um dr phil and dr billy first name basis i guess but you know i mean is it eec driven hour driven a a melded sort of and you mentioned a couple of of individuals names who you said you've done with some work around so i'm just trying to get a feel if we're doing some nice individualized work coached by eec or not or you know what i mean so this work would involve a shift in the potential of an additional vendor that would come in and would be supplementing this particular work doctor john cronople and dr floyd cobb would be facilitating and leading that portion of the work with some alignment and extension we know we have at least one just schools carryover for next year and that there may be

016some supplemental work as well but essentially it would be a marriage of two different approaches through two different vendors to support two different needs and the why the y really came multiple in multiple levels we know that we are at the point of having had deep conversations about stance and strategy but we also know that our principals in our schools are wanting very much to see that strategy then move into very tangible coachable action steps that may be school specific and may touch all of their staff and student and in in doing our work we felt like the marriage of these two may be the way to kind of edge edge ourselves into that uh school action-based work as opposed to some of that self-reflection work excellent and i know i did not ask that

017question ahead of time nor did i let you know i was going to ask that question so i apologize for sort of putting you on the spot but i also know that you are uh invested deeply and emotionally and a product of product of the least i'm at school so i know you're going to like move this properly and directly and and realistically and having been part of the conversation of just schools on monday tuesday wednesday of this week um that that came up in some of the conversation and dr hunsberger and billy mayo had said hey i think we may see another consultant we may tremendous i mean welcoming uh broader discussion a lot more folks i think that's some of the in hesitation i had had originally was 26 people at a time

018is going to take a long time to get there so we had 26 on monday tuesday wednesday but it's nice to know that in the buildings we'll see and have a lot more discussion broader discussion and dialogue so thank you for the work thank you i would say probably we'll be down a little we had originally touted close to 400 based on some you know covet i want to stay in my classroom sort of feedback if i was and i'm kind of ballparking it here i would say we'll probably be closer to a baby 300 or 325 who will have experience the just school session but what that really does is it creates a nice critical mass in our schools and then allows for the more push and to have some really strong support who've

019also gone through that pull-out program as well board member hedrick thank you um just a quick question and it kind of tags along board member campbells but the first thing i would say is that i'm super happy to see that we're taking this to the building level because i think research would tell us that's the most effective way to an immediate way to address the needs of the students in those in those buildings so i appreciate that very much but where i'm a little concerned is the consistency piece versus how do you then have the consistency but then also allow those buildings to meet the individual needs of the students in their building which to me weighs more heavily on being what we're what our goal should be yeah absolutely i think that it starts

020by those leadership teams coming together for some co-learning and we're talking about consistency of language we're talking about consistency of understanding what the difference between inclusion and access belonging and dignity some of those common terminologies so that we have consistence of terms language and structure moving back into the space or framework moving back into those schools and then there are coaches who are [Music] vendor-based coaches who are you know well-versed in that language that can work collaboratively and and really the intention is principal leadership team based on the the training that we all just went through how do we execute this or or how do we provide some systemic change or action-based research change in your space that you feel is necessary and is appropriate in your space and that may differ a little but

021it's going to be anchored to that same consistent framework and language and then those coaches feed that information back up to us any other questions for board priority one all right thank you very much dr barber dr kephart am i going backwards you did a little bit there you go all right all right thank you very much for having me up here to talk about board priority number two i have brought the first time that we presented it was a whole lot of uh word information written text then it was a whole lot of data the next time so i figured this time you needed a little bit of board priority too in pictures so as we talk about increasing the achievement of every child through a focus on innovative practices student well-being and enhanced

022accessibility to educational opportunities just a reminder that we frame that in our ntss academic framework so i'll talk through each of those frameworks and a few pictures and items that we have been working on since the last time we were up here presenting first is student-centered teaching and learning and a couple of these pictures the first picture is a fourth grader at richardson and as you know from early in the fall our teachers have been doing some work with greg tang and from a national scope if you had followed twitter at all our teachers have actually been having instruction in their classroom by greg so greg has been coming in from in a zoom perspective and teaching some of our classes our teachers have been in many of his sessions learning from him and this

023happens to be a fourth grader they had they did a contest with greg tang and she won the prize for the contest and so he has sent her her own gift but that was to highlight some of the work our teachers are doing with greg next is one of our teachers that is working with our smart technology our interactive white boards each of our buildings have one interactive smart technology and connecting that with the high engagement it connects with our student devices as well and so we are looking at expanding the use but the teachers that are piloting those are blown away by the high levels of engagement that they are able to have with their students so we're excited to to engage in more opportunities with those smart technology pieces as we continue with

024student-centered teaching and learning that first picture is of some client-based project work and this happens to be a classroom at highland park i'm sorry at hawthorne hill and they are working with the happy dog company and they are working to determine how the happy dog company can come back to its current clients that it lost during some of kovid so true client-based projects as we talk about that at the elementary level and the next picture is of lee's summit high school and our choir our choir students these are practicing these are students practicing for the first choir concert so it's exciting to be able to see as you drove in the parking lot today it's exciting to be able to see our extracurricular our co-curricular and the activities of engagement for our students so just

025a few pictures to be able to highlight somewhat getting back to that assemblance of normal for our students as well and then the last for student-centered teaching and learning is what is continuing to grow our teachers and this is a screenshot of some blended learning work that our itss are continuing to have in training in conversations in working with our our teachers they also have events such as an open mic night to be able to support that continued use of blended learning and of virtual instruction through schoology and through other resources also and then the next is some work that is occurring right now you will hear from both dr shelton and dr andrews next month on the specifics of summer school but we are right in the middle of summer school development and happy

026to be able to say we're shifting summer school just a little bit and that shift at an elementary level has some enrichment but also has some recovery so half day enrichment half day recovery for students that qualify based on some needs that they have in some struggling areas we're also excited to increase some of our students that are currently in sips small group classes we're going to be doing some virtual sips throughout the summer to be able to support some of our struggling readers that are making having success in sips and we want to continue that over the summer i am also pleased to say that dr andrews is working with his summer school team to increase summer school opportunities for our middle school students in areas where there may be some recovery needs so

027much more to come from them next month but wanted to tease and highlight that information as we move on to board priority two with inclusive and collaborative environments it is always nice to be able to see our students continuing at lunch we're continuing to work on social distancing and continuing to have mask wearing and continuing to focus on how do we keep our students healthy happy and learning in our school so nice chance for some of our students and then the next picture is one of our library media specialists as we talk about inclusive collaborative environments that includes the finding and expanding of resources so she's actually looking at adding resources to the library both from a student reading and also from a teacher reading to support a wider variety of choices for our students

028our next pictures the the first picture is some training that our teachers have been having the first is with marty hewitt we love having marty and her staff in our buildings to talk about this the grace and the accountability but also how to support students in the needs that they have and so this is marty working with a small group of teachers and then continuing with as you heard from dr barger continuing with our just schools training as well next for board priority two is data informed decision making and problem solving the first is a student we are in the midst of panorama survey time so this is a student actually taking our panorama survey that window is open this spring for quite a while so as that data comes back at the end of

029the year we will make sure to share and then last is a picture showing some database decision making over the march 12th professional development day we had quite a few teachers that that self-selected additional training in nwea both at the elementary and the middle school level so we are excited to continue that training for our teachers as they use that data to drive individualized instruction in their classrooms and this is to be able to highlight this is what's happening in our schools right now so we are in the midst of map testing we are in the midst of eoc testing we are in the midst of panorama survey window and nwea so it's going to be a busy end of the school year but all critical data as we continue to make decisions with students

030in mind and as we from a systems level from a building level and from an individualized classroom and student level be able to help support our students in the growth that they have i'm excited to say the next four wednesdays we are welcoming our online students back into our schools to be able to test them in either map for those grade levels or with our high schools for eoc testing so kudos to our elementary online principals to our middle school and our high school principals and all our testing coordinators because this is an effort that we have not had before our elementary students will be going to the middle school feeder that they would be attending and they will be testing in that wednesday middle school feeder so we are excited to have them back

031we have several that are using our transportation we offer transportation so keith and his team have been wonderful to plan that and lori and nutrition services we will be feeding all of our students breakfast and lunch when they are here to test on those wednesdays last in our group is engage leadership of course with our principles as we continue to work with our principals it is now about welcoming our students back and it's about continuing to help so one is highland park and welcoming our students back into the classroom and the next is some of our middle school folks that are helping to do a food drive for students and hopefully our meetings will not look like the zoom squares much longer but we are continuing to have zoom meetings and google meets meetings for

032both our many of our staff meetings but also at a district level for our lead learners and our systems alignment meetings recently lead learners we had katie martin who is a national guru in reimagining education she actually joined us for lead learners for about 45 minutes and talked about how we can take what we have learned from covet instructionally and how we can grow and reimagine what education should look like and then for systems alignment last week we talked about the comprehensive school improvement plan with our building and district leaders and also gave them an opportunity to look at the equity learning targets and on the other side this is summit lakes middle school talking about grace and gateway behaviors so those continual learning opportunities that our principals are providing in instructional leadership with our

033teachers and i can't leave you without talking about our instructional focus with portrait of graduate diploma plus and our instructional framework and i will send it on to katie well unless people have questions for you oh yes and you're absolutely i'm sorry see i was gonna i was scooting away yes unless there are questions uh board member campbell i just saw the light go on so i was just like don't go anywhere don't leave don't leave i just have a quick question and mainly for all the folks watching i just want to kind of ask you to talk through what a couple of these items are so blended learning sips n-w-e-a-n-w-e-a-yeah and panorama can you just do maybe a one or two sentence overview of what those items are absolutely so you may have to

034remind me of them as i go across so i'll start the first one so blended learning as we talk blended learning that's taking both our in-person instruction and taking our virtual instruction and ensuring that teachers have the tools that they need and continue to grow their toolbox to ensure that students in both of those environments are being successful and engaged our blended learning includes online virtual work while students are in person next was sips i think okay so sips is our elementary um it has added to collaborative classrooms but sips is our added tier two resource to be able to support phonics instruction for our students so this is the first year that we have had sips k through k through six so we are excited to be able to continue that focus on phonics

035that we have not had before next was nwea so nwea this is our first year to have grades second through eighth algebra and some of our reading courses at the high school nwea measures academic growth and it measures academic growth in math and reading and individualized where individual skills are that students have based on that adaptive test that they online test that they take and then your next was panorama so panorama is a survey again that we started last year but panorama we have two surveys from panorama one is a social emotional learning survey the other is a dei diversity inclusion and equity survey that our students take sel the social emotional is three times a year dei is twice a year great thank you did i get all of them yup thank you other

036questions for dr kephart board member marshall thank you dr hepford i have a quick question in regards to the testing that's currently going on are there any considerations or what are the considerations being done for those students of the muslim faith who are practicing ramadan during the testing so if we are if it is a an in-person student what we are able to do is work with families and change testing dates and do makeup testing we're also doing that for our online students so our online students have the opportunity to choose to join us or not to choose to join us so some we have about 400 elementary students out of about 700 that are joining us so several are not any other questions i have one for you that's just going to be in

037terms of all of the different things that have gone on this year from a virtual platform throughout all of our buildings for lack of a better term what kind of after-action look are we going to do at all of these practices for what is good what went bad and then what we could keep into the future um into the next or upcoming school years how we can incorporate some of those things that we would like to hold on to so great question and i think you somewhat read my mind on what will be in board report for next week so we have spent some time as an instructional operations team we did that in december and january and actually did an after action review based on exactly what you said from an instructional standpoint what

038do we want to keep what do we want to extend and where were some areas of problems that we had and then we broke that up into structure perception instruction and technology so you will be able to see all of that information coming back of with iot and then two months ago during lead learners we did the same thing with our principals and so that that exact same structure was followed and the information coming out from lead learners will be shared with you we also asked that question of our parents implementation team so it's not as in-depth as the other two that you will see but it does provide some of our parent feedback from that implementation team and all you will receive all of that appreciate that very much uh board member allen thank

039you president murdoch um dr kephart his questions kim sparked me back to this slide that has the all the testing pieces on it the missouri department of education panorama nwea is that always so concentrated in the year and i thought that was the case it is anything that we can control is it is that best practice i just don't know no that that's a great question and we spend a lot of instructional time talking about that too that's why our windows are so very large and it really depends the the map window in the eoc window is nothing that we can control from a standpoint of the state gives us this much of a window we tighten it just a little bit so we can make sure that we have time for students to have

040makeup tests if they need to other than that we want for panorama and nwea we want to be able to provide those as much at the end of the year with with as much learning and culture building work as we can and panorama does not the survey does not take very long so many schools are providing the survey after a student gets done with an eoc or with a map test so some of it is in conjunction and some of it is separate most schools are doing map testing first and then doing nwea at the end so they we extended the window and schools could make that determination around that time knowing that they're knowing that there was a lot okay i know map is pretty much where it is i mean we're sort of

041handed that to say get it done i didn't know about the other two and i know panorama we can completely schedule but you do really want that toward the end of the year for for the for the rear view view right right and both for panorama and nwea we have to remember that they are nationally normed as well so there is a national window that we want to it's still very large but we want to fit in that national window so we can make some comparisons to school districts that are like ours and schools that are like ours yeah fair thanks and mike i'll add to that the deci did uh shorten the testing time by 25 so kids have 25 less uh time on testing is what they're telling us and they also lowered

042the number of kids that you have to have before it was always you had to have at least 95 of your kids who were eligible to take the test to take the test they lowered it to 85 percent and they gave us permission to go into the fall and the reason they did that while we're 15 of our kids online some schools are of their kids online and not every kid not every kid or family wants to bring their online kid in yet so um so even if we don't get 85 percent of our kids we can test some kids in the fall as well board member doane all right um dr buck you sparked a question of mine when you say it's um 25 less will that go back next year do you think

043or they haven't said so but that would be my assumption and so far they have to do it in person they they don't have a way of of giving the map test online at home yet all right thank you any other questions for dr kephart thank you very much we will move on to board priority three good evening it's my pleasure to present on board priority number three strengthen communication that builds engagement collaboration and confidence with both internal and external district stakeholders so for every board priority update so far this year i've stood before you and given you sort of a comprehensive rundown of communication processes that we've implemented due to the pandemic and so i'm pleased to share that this is the first board priorities update where i do not have any new processes

044to report so you know our numbers are down in our community our processes are working so our communication around kovid was primarily around some positive news which was our plans to vaccinate our staff and so we've been celebrating the fact that our amazing nursing team our health clerks our staff volunteers have vaccinated roughly 600 people as of today and so we were celebrating that through social media and content but also building websites and sending direct communications about our plans issuing faqs making sure our families understood that we'd be having ami days to support these staff clinics primarily through a new vaccine website but also our direct communications this process allowed us to focus on sharing information about other topics this spring so we have some new web pages that we have been promoting and also

045some revamping of current websites so we haven't really our equity page has existed in some fashion since 2018 but we've been reorganizing and revamping it to be able to show some incremental pros uh progress we felt like the periodic updates on the plans that we were presenting at board meetings were great but people needed to be able to see some of the incremental work under each of the six subheads and goals of that plan we have created a new one-stop web one-stop shop website for our bond project this is different than the website we talked about at the last work session about sharing information about updates on our middle school transition this is really a place where you can go for all the construction updates on our various bond projects so it's been fun being

046able to create content for that website of course i've talked about the staff vaccine page we've also been promoting a virtual calm space on our home page that was built from front by our counseling team for our students parents and teachers around promoting wellness and of course we've also been promoting our real world learning initiatives that shannon booth has been telling you about in the past couple of weeks we're continuing to provide updates on strategic initiatives we had a real world learning update and an equity plan update in our february issue of our schools and half have also been continuing to use our new um and burgeoning podcast platform to delve into topics that are a little more complicated and nuanced and maybe don't lend themselves to emails or social media so well so i

047thank dr miller and steve williams and dr buck for their participation our latest podcast about covid and our budget and so folks who are interested in listening to that can find it on our facebook but they can also find it through whatever platform they use to listen to podcasts spotify apple et cetera i wanted to just focus a little bit on community engagement and highlight the following district committees that have all been formed this year around either strategic planning our middle school transition work or equity and student support so these are all committees that have formed to promote various initiatives that are supporting student wellness student academics and certainly some of our bond a bond adjacent projects in the district and so i won't read them all but wanted to highlight that these are all

048ways that staff and students and parents are able to participate in our processes to that vein we've also had additional ways that our community can get involved we recently held a virtual legislative forum for the first time trying to do a virtual version of the legislative breakfast that we hold annually for our business roundtable and our citizens advisory committee as well as the board and some student representatives so we're very grateful to representative engel for attendance at that event we also have incorporated a survey an online submission process that closed this sunday for our upcoming naming committee work we'll be naming the the new fourth middle school so stay tuned on updates from that team of course our boundary study will involve surveys and community engagement events the team met this for the first time

049this monday and talked about their plans for communication we're also working on the pr side on the new website that will help people keep people informed about the various tasks of the committees associated with our middle school transition and of course our community stakeholders would have taken our csip survey in december that survey data was utilized in the formation of our csip priorities currently that plan is in the process where our district action teams are creating our district teams are creating action plans associated with those priorities and as you know you'll see that plan in may and june i just wanted to briefly talk about two priorities that the public relations team will be working on in terms of potentially in terms of community engagement and making sure we're ensuring community trust we'll be aligning

050our communications plans to the upcoming csip and also tonight we're presenting a proposal to you to invest in new district websites to support communication ada compliance and access to public information as always just wanted to give you a comparison of what we are we are reporting out in terms of content uh these five priorities or key messages are associated with our current csip so as you know as of next year we will potentially have new focus areas that we will be centering our content around giving you an update on storytelling we went inside lsr7 classrooms as we focused on how lsr7 was recognizing black history month and women's history month we have a pretty cool new middle school video update on the progress at the bond site hopefully everyone got our new our schools issue

051focused on student voice in the mail in the last couple of weeks and of course we continue our learning for life video celebrations and so that really concludes my presentation you know our content i always like to end on a content note lately it's been focusing on gratitude as you can see before you this is a post we did to celebrate our vaccine clinics these are the faces of the nurses and health clerks and volunteers who helped administer vaccines for our staff who were interested and not surprisingly it had the highest engagement on social media for the past couple of months so if you have any questions i'm happy to answer them anybody have any questions for katie first off thank you appreciate it any questions for katie okay i have two for you then

052so um number one is i think it would be i think it'd be cool to share out how many of our staff members actually did participate dr buck in the vaccine in terms of what the health department told you i think that would be cool so the health department on tuesday both kansas city and jackson county as well as jackson county itself asked about what percent of our staff all the districts are in a call we said we have documented up to 85 percent we think it's obviously well over 90 because it's not required you tell us and both kansas city health department and the county of jackson county both laughed and celebrated saying that's by far the highest of any entity they've dealt with so far so kudos to our staff on and that

053are in the room and on the screen for not only making them happen but also participating is a real source of celebration that we as a district made it to herd humanity so that was one thing um and then the and thank you for sharing that um the other one is you mentioned about having the legislative breakfast um virtually that we did before um and i'm not sure if dr buck has mentioned to you we okay well then i'm going to surprise her then um we there's some discussion about trying to plan one in the fall to catch them before the legislative session actually starts for mass participation and to address a lot of the issues you know that we end up um talking about as the legislative session actually proceeds and so um just

054something extra to put on your plate um you know uh so i think that would be cool and i think it could get a lot of participation so just something to kind of keep on your radar i think that's a great idea i'm okay with that surprise all right excellent uh board member ritchie i just wanted to also say kudos to our health services staff and in addition to them we had many other district employees volunteer to staff at the pavilion and get those shots done i had both of mine done there and it was welcoming it was efficient it was friendly i mean everyone was wonderful i mean there wasn't a smoother operation i don't think that could be had and each one of those people and they were all standing there eagerly waiting

055for you with smiles on their faces to shoot your arm but oh my goodness and then and then people had fun in the wait time for the 15 minutes i mean they had a socially distanced but it was you know all of these teachers in there and they were just having a good old time just talking to one another and and all that so it's just i mean i just thank you dr buck thank you health services and our whole district for doing such a fantastic job of organizing this so that our teachers and our staff members can get in school board members everybody could get vaccinated because we truly do have a higher safety in those numbers and just so thankful and thank you for publicizing it katie any other questions or comments for

056katie okay thank you very much we appreciate it we will um move on here to 4.01 which is our comments from the public um and so we do have three people who are going to be speaking tonight and i will ask board member hedrick to go through our um policy for that please the agenda for each regular meeting of the board will include a designated time for comments from the public the purpose of this item is to permit members of the public to speak within the time limitations on matters included in the current agenda the board of education may also elect to offer a time for comments from the public during board work sessions workshops excuse me citizens desiring to address the board during comments from the public will advise the superintendent or the president

057am i reading the right thing doesn't say i don't have the rest of that um okay well um i will go on go off the cuff if you need to because you probably know it oh goodness a time allocation not to exceed 20 minutes at the meeting will be provided for comments for the public um and we will keep track of that time and then we ask that you um i think re help me over here be respectful in your comments and avoid identifying or addressing either any uh person individually that 30 minutes per person thank you so we have we thank you i'm sorry that the other portion wasn't there so like this doesn't look like um we have three we have three public speakers tonight so the first speaker is timothy smith and

058then dana tiller will be second good evening i'm timothy smith concerned citizen children learn more from what you are than what you teach w.b du bois lsr7 school district has existed for 72 years and in this time period america has seen nato founded the korean and vietnam wars the first hydrogen bomb the dawn of dna brown v board of education rosa parks refused to stand and dr king willing to die for freedom's cause we have witnessed the berlin wall built and destroyed a man walk on the moon jfk assassinated black citizens finally get the right to vote and bloody sunday in selma alabama we have endured an almost two decade long war in iraq and afghanistan the impeachments of two american presidents 30 years apart roe v wade the oklahoma city bombing 911 we have

059seen the rise of the personal computer the hiv aids epidemic hip-hop music become the soundtrack for a generation the birth of the internet the challenger explode off the coast of florida hurricane katrina in the great recession amazon become a global giant google become a verb and facebook dominate our social lives in the election of the first black president but in all this time with all of these monumental events of war and scientific breakthrough natural disasters and political corruption the ballooning of american wealth lost and gained again we have not seen until just last year an african-american elected to the lee summit school board we have yet to see a black board member occupy a leadership position on the board tonight we have the opportunity to push our community forward and demonstrate to our children that

060our collective differences represent a community benefit and not a detriment it is time to diversify board leadership 72 years have come and gone in the lee summit school district and waiting one more year just won't do with malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as god gives us to see the right let us drive on to finish the work we are in abraham lincoln let us drive on to finish the equity work began in this school district so every child has a chance to realize their highest aspirations representation matters i encourage all those viewing at home to use the hashtag representation matters lsr7 to make your community aware of this very important vote this evening thank you thank you mr smith dana tiller and then the third speaker will be

061corey mcdonald all right good evening superintendent buck the summit school board and members of the community my name is dana tiller and along with my husband we are racing three kids in the lee summit school district my family is part of suburban balance and i would like to first congratulate roderick sparks and ryan murdock on their school board election wins like so many other families in our community our family was hopeful about the passing of the lsr7 equity plan and we look forward to its full implementation regarding goal number six develop and monitor a system to recruit retain and promote a diverse diverse workforce within the district increased staff diversity representative the student population i want to share my story as a community member educator and applicant in the lee summit school district i have

062applied to the school district several times during my career as an educator only to never receive an interview i have applied for teaching positions and administrative positions each time to receive the there were many uh qualified applicants and the selection for interviews was difficult email the idea that there just aren't many diverse candidates is a myth and simply isn't true my story is very similar to many educators of color who have applied and been denied by the lee summit school district regarding goal number four student-centered support and programming through rigorous iq testing and recommendations my sons were part of the gifted and talented program in our previous school district only to be told they didn't qualify for the gifted and talented program in the lee's summit school district recorded regarding the equity forum hosted by

063suburban balance on january 25th i know this was a few months ago but i have to say how excited i was to see such a great representation from my children's school district while viewing the forum my excitement diminished and became disappointed disappointed because our district the district with the most representation the district with an equity plan the district with community members who want to help have the least to say at an equity forum as a parent and educator of color the little that was said began to become just words with no meaning behind them hearing the word hearing the same words repeatedly with little action to support the belief it seemed disingenuous and like it was just something to check off the list finally representation matters in the areas of leadership too i was recently

064told the story of how a local school district had to diversify school leadership in order to diversify staff diversity and school leadership begins with diversity and leadership amongst the lsr7 school board i like to convey my support for ryan burdock and megan marshall for board president and vice president achieving equity benefits all students and something that cannot wait another minute thank you for your time thank you our third and final speaker is corey mcdonald good evening congratulations to the new elected board members my name is corey mcdonald i'm a resident of lee's summit for over 20 years i currently have two children in the district one who graduated last year i'm a pastor in this community and i work with several non-profit organizations i also work with the eastern jackson county youth court and i

065am and i've owned two businesses in this community i am the founder of community solutions focus group as well it's time for lsr7 to start focusing on education not to color someone's skin it's time to put all energy at closing the achievement gap it was recently stated by the board president at an election forum that the number one priority at least summit r7 is diversity although our students are falling further and further behind there was a fifteen percent drop in all district third grade reading scores between 2016 and 2019 and one would have to assume that the 15 is more likely to increase due to online schooling the last year and a half today i became aware that the lee summit north counseling department would like to offer additional opportunity to participate in professional development

066related to race and becoming an anti-racist educator using dr dina simmons article how to be an anti-racist educator is this where our tax dollars is going shouldn't we fire racist why are our tax dollars being spent to rehabilitate races this whole crt debate came from the acknowledgment that there is an achievement gap in our district we were told that the gap was a result of not having enough people of color employed by the district we were told that buying into crt would be the way to close the achievement gap we hired a company whose ceo actually stated in a border education meeting and i quote it would be disingenuous to say eec's program will close the achievement gap yet we hired eec anyway under the premise of closing the gap my question to each of

067you is where are the measurements where's where's the measurables where's the data that shows this program works academically october 2021 will be three years with eec and to my knowledge to date there's no such data what we have seen though is a result of activism lots of dollars spent in the dividing of our community by calling our district and our community racist including suggestions that you're if you're white then you're racist that's ridiculous i participated in csip this year and during one of our meetings i asked the question what have been what has been done to close the achievement gap and i was told nothing had been done to close the achievement gap yet diversity is our number one priority in our district diversity is important and it's needed but it should not be the

068number one priority of any school district the number one priority over district should always be education education is and should always be colorblind every organization is a reflection of our leader of their leadership our district is failing our students because our district has not properly prioritized the needs of the district and students as a black parent who grew up in the inner city and had have had to fight for everything i've achieved i could care less the color skin of a person who's teaching my child would i like more people of color higher than lsr7 absolutely i would but education must come first moving forward my friends at community solutions focus group and i will be here at every board meeting asking for data and measurables as they relate to closing the achievement gap okay

069we expect to hear a plan to improve math and reading proficiency mr mcdonald i am going to cut you off i'm sorry our taxpayers parents and residents of this community we have the responsibility of holding each of you accountable for moving our district forward at this point education should not be out of order education should be the number one priority of our district not the color of someone's skin thank you thank you okay we are thank you for our public speakers we are going to move on to item 6.01 which is our finance committee report excuse me sorry our five board reports and meetings attended my apologies we will start on the far side here so we'll start with board member marshall please thank you president murdoch i attended two meetings since our last board

070meeting the first one of which was the government relations meeting that was held friday march 26th with the lee's summit chamber this meeting was primarily focused on the the question on the ballot about transferring the debt service fund to the general fund which we all know was passed in the election there is a lot more website information on the city's website that will help explain what that all means and why it's being transferred we went on to talk about the current bills that are pushing through the house and the senate of course as i say in every board meeting you can access that information with three clicks by going to google googling msba and then advocating for public education and there will have all of the bills that impact public education and how you can

071contact your specific representative and your your neighbor's representative who is not yours to let them know how you feel about the specific legislation we went on to talk about parks and rec information via parks and rec administrator joe snook he gave an update about some of the parks that will be opening in the spring and summer and they have a illustrated magazine that should be coming out to all the residents that gets more information on the things they've done to improve our already wonderful parks and rec the next meeting that i attended via zoom of course was through lee summit cares and lee summit cares is currently offering quite a bit of webinars and conferences around mental health and positive parenting practices some of them majority of them are free so you can go to

072lee summit care's website and get more information about that so you can sign up and you can attend those meetings that they have one last thing that i would like to mention for those of you who don't know those of us up here that are wearing purple today is purple up which is appreciation of military kids which if you don't know i hold that near and dear to my heart so just really briefly i would just like to share something the term military brat is a badge of pride worn by generations of kids who've traveled the world with their parents moving into adulthood with the knowledge that they have the strength to handle anything military children deal with separations deployments frequent moves and even their parents injuries both seen and unseen as part of the

073life they were born into or entered with their families their strength and resilience and inspiration especially this year as many of them are facing new learning from home adventures extended separations from a parent through the delayed through deployments and their pcs processes i just wanted to share real quick that i've seen this up close and personal and while i know the sacrifices that i've made serving our country for 20 years that doesn't hold a candle to what i've seen in my own children as many of you know i have four children and they have been to as many schools school districts that i can't even count and i can't even imagine the load they've had to carry through deployments and the absence of their mother not being home um three of them are now grown

074and are doing very well and when i say that the military gives you a different perspective on life and the world and the things you can accomplish it does tremendous things for a child to get out and see the world and live amongst different cultures and different schools and experience so many different things so to all the military brats that we have in our district i just want to say that i see you i appreciate you and continue doing anything that you want to do because you can and your parents deserve you too thank you thank you very much board member marshall uh board member alan excuse me yes ms marshall mentioned the government relations committee so and did a good job in summarizing that piece i had a report at that meeting for our

075board and uh my computer will malfunction so i wrote a two-page piece of things i was going to say which may have been more effective i'm not sure in the legislative forum that was discussed earlier and carrie engel attended and it was really quite fabulous because we had some real good opportunity to dive in deeply with representative engel and she took um all questions and all comers and really does well and i appreciate the time that she puts in and all of the other legislators as well one of the things that i did report out on march 26 the government relations is that i do believe even though we may be diametrically opposed on a number of issues with our legislators they in in our districts tend to listen and be present and have a

076door open to conversation which may not have always been the case and i will tell you that i've had multiple legislators tell me face to face that they appreciate our leadership and dr buck uh specifically and mentioned they've had some good interactive conversations with him so that goes a long long way and that experience matters um as in work session as all of us were april 8th and then t teamly summoned i just couldn't get enough of the building and school district on on on april 8th so team lee summit was from eight to four and uh that was moderated this year with judy sclare stein who has a proposal and for next year's team lee summit work but this year's work was um i think i said every time i'm in the meeting was

077very uh gritty very tough at times uh well uh well discussed and um well well researched uh it was good work so looking forward to next year and then past three days yeah past three days april 12th 13th or 12th 13th and 14th uh participated in just schools uh with eec over at mic for a couple of days and then at meadow lane on wednesday and both dr billy mays and phil hunsberger led that discussion and thoroughly enjoyed it thank you thank you board member allen board member campbell i attended the finance committee meeting yesterday with board member hedrick and we'll be talking a little bit more about that in a few minutes here i attended the insurance committee meeting that sarah mcmillan facilitated and shared with the insurance committee all of the work that

078had been done in preparation of the rfp process and so i just want to share again and highlight every building has a representative on that insurance committee so if you're watching and you're part of our staff here if you haven't gotten an update or from that meeting sure look for your representative and look for look to discuss that because we are going into that rfp process that will be evaluating the insurance that we look for for next year and i just appreciate the hard work that sarah has done in preparing this information and sharing it out with those committee members to then share it out with their their building folks so um excited to participate in that meeting and continue to learn even more about our process here in ensuring all of our staff for

079lsr7 also the policy committee meeting overviewing and highlighting the work from that team as well they've really finalized around the process of being a part of the ongoing annual review of msba policy updates that come to the district and then also in preparation for an upcoming board meeting the the presentation preparation for that um i also participated in the legislative forum and board member marshall i really appreciate your highlighting um the purple because that was very exciting linda thank you for highlighting that for all of us um so that we could participate as well um appreciate your service appreciate the service of all of your family and and your children as well so that's it for me thank you board member campbell board member hedrick i also attended the policy board policy committee and i

080don't have any other additional comments i think board member campbell covered that well i attended the legislative forum but then also on monday i virtually attended the msba legislative forum and really i just want to note a couple of items for the rest of the board dr buck was in attendance at that and i believe some other board members were there too but a couple of things i thought were really kind of struck me uh is pretty important um the deci commissioner talked about the need for the map testing i know it gets a lot of kind of a bad rap but i think one of the things she said really kind of resonated with me about from a state perspective they utilize the map test to really identify where kids are and what their

081needs are and so i think when you think about it in those terms it puts a little bit different perspective on it and she said while we as local districts may know where our kids are from a state level they do not know where all of our state kids are and that's really kind of their responsibility so i just wanted to share that with you and that um she also indicated help correct me if i'm wrong dr buck that the map data will not be used um in our m-sip accountability standards this year is that correct so i thought that was important also we also had representatives from the st louis public schools and kansas city public schools shared their reality as it relates to charter schools which i was very impressed by both of

082those presentations they made but a couple of things they indicated you know again you know in my mind i hadn't really thought about it in this way but they talked about how charter schools impact the entire school community how students are not always impacted positively due to the lack of coordination so that there may be students who don't have access to programs that they really want or need and then the last thing they emphasized was the significant millions of dollars actually of taxpayer dollars are being wasted by duplication of programs that they offer at the public schools and also at charter schools like transportation is a big one of those uh and so i i again uh in both of those districts have data that supports uh the information that they've provided and and dr

083buck has shared some of that with us and and he has that information that he can provide to the full board if they want it and then i did also attend the finance committee meeting yes was yesterday today is thursday okay and then the last thing is really to express my deep appreciation to my fellow board members dr buck and especially miss linda ismert for your support and grace that you've shown to me the past few months while i was out of state dealing with a family member's estate so i really appreciate that thank you very much board member hedrick board member for ritchie thank you president murdoch um first all of a report on the lee summit educational foundation the foundation is facilitating a five thousand dollar grant to the nursing program at summit

084technology academy and that is from the family and friends of betty eubanks in honor of the celebration of her 90th birthday i don't know if you know who betty eubanks is she's a former nurse but her husband was dr eubanks who was a very well-known pediatrician out of the raytown clinic years ago and took care of many many babies in our area and then the allocations committee is currently finalizing recommendations for our peak grant recipients that's our teachers who have applied for grants for their classrooms and for our scholarship recipients of which we've had many many applications from our students this year for those scholarships so the rounding up readers and they'll be reading those scholarships and then awarding those a more detailed report will be provided next month from lscf the other committee that

085i'm honest the csip committee and of course those meetings have concluded for the year for the for the larger team because this was a huge year for csip and rewriting our csip for the coming years and the new plan will be coming to the board in the near future thank you dr kephart um march 19th also attended the legislative forum uh sponsored by the district online again kudos to representative engel from lee's summit couldn't ask for a better representative she was awesome march 23rd was my pleasure to join board member doane in a visit to longview elementary school it was i think was the last school visit for our board members of the of this year since we we started our school visits and it was wonderful the administration uh gave us a fantastic tour

086and if julie wants to add to that with her report i'll let her do that but really a super visit um and then of course april 9th ryan and i met with dr buck on our leadership team meeting so it was a good month thank you thank you board member fritzy i hope you said hi to my boys while you were in school there so um i'm actually going to go here first and be very very brief we uh all attended like most people the different legislative forums the board leadership meeting i participated in the insurance meeting with board member campbell um and then the only thing that i'm just going to highlight as the unique thing is board member marshall and i were able to attend sunset valley and woodland elementary the day after

087uh last month's board meeting and had a really really good walk through at both of those buildings including a parent zooming in to read to one of the classes which is one of those things i'd love to see us keep by the way because when you can't get out of work to come and do some of those activities i thought that that was um a thing that we absolutely could be able to keep and then we also were able to visit with the staff in the medically fragile program at sunset valley which also was really really good and i appreciate them welcoming us into that area for that visit so very very good visits that we had together so thank you for joining me on those that was really good last but not least is

088board member doane and we saved her for last because this will be her last board meeting tonight so thank you you're welcome first of all thank you megan for your service i couldn't find purple but i got magenta and i have found this mask though but i do appreciate your service that is really cool 20 years did you start when you were 10 yeah gotcha i got your back sister all right um teamly summit as mike mentioned we had our last meeting of the school year and the one thing he didn't mention um we broke down the issue issues that surfaced during the surveys and we went through each one of them and then we sent them on to this team in here or teamly summit to to just address those issues and then i

089just wanted to say thanks to that team teamly summit is a hard-working collaborative team so that's very cool lee summit cares is in the middle of selecting a new director and we will have final interviews on monday and then just some last shout outs i'm going to do this without crying i swear thank you to my family and friends i know i'm a lucky girl with the support i have i have some family here and i have some waiting for me a little bit a couple blocks down that way linda you are a gem both personally and professionally i want to thank you for all you do i will always i i will walk back just like i always do put my laptop in your locker for six years she has shared her locker with

090my laptop so um tomorrow you can chuck it and whatever you want to do with that so but thank you for sharing that i'm excited for the future dr buck dr miller and the rest of the team here i know that you will continue to challenge the district i also know you will work for all our students so very excited about that to this team up here please continue to work on team building we have come a long way in the last 10 months and all i can hope is that you keep working on that continue to embrace all of our differences i'm not the only one who notices how well we get along up here i've had other community members talk to me and tell me about that so that it made made my

091heart jump um and as my mom would say and yes family i'm going here they're all looking she's they're like yep she's going there well you know if we were all the same it'd be a dull dull world and i totally think she's right i've heard that my whole life so as much as work as we do up here we are truly insignificant and the people who are significant are in our classrooms and in our buildings so before i get off my soapbox i have one thing to say lee summit is a great community thank you ryan for the time absolutely and i think uh dr buck we have a quick little uh presentation yes so as you know julie's been on the board for six years she also served as president from 19 and

09220. she has a lot of talents she bleeds black and gold she's at least somewhat high grad and she does a lot in the community for a lot of different people outside of the school board but i know your talents and your time have been wonderful i thank you uh and don't be a stranger but to give you a gift of your uh to make sure that you knew you gave us a lot of time enjoy your thursday time back with this clock on a plaque so thank you julie thank you very much for your service we appreciate it um item six is gonna be our finance uh committee report um who's giving that today so board member campbell you are up great thank you um we met yesterday we went through uh the contracts

093um fifteen thousand dollars and less list we also discussed the care here renewal and kel care care here is the health and wellness center that our staff here at lsr7 utilize that contract expires at the end of july and so this is up for renewal and approval this evening i will share a couple of things that were shared by dr miller and by sarah there's no mark up on the pass-through costs and what that means is a lot of the costs that they encounter with band-aids and things like that they don't then pass on to the district but highlighting especially that they provide all of these services that we put into the rfp and they did that they did that at the lowest cost so it is the the vendor of choice and the recommendation

094also the benefit of staying with care here is that there's no disruption to the personal care that many of our lsr7 staff members enjoy also in surveying and discussing the care that our staff receive they've gotten very high marks and so the our staff is very well satisfied with the care that they get at care here um this comes with a three-year agreement and then one-year extensions possible after that so that'll be one item that we're reviewing also we looked at the restatement of the cafeteria plan document and the reason for that restatement and the modifications made are around covid19 particularly allowing employees that are currently participating in dependent care fsa to increase their 2021 dependent care election amount and that was with the care act the federal legislation around that so our district is

095making those modifications and that again is for our review as katie mentioned in her update we also will be looking at final site that's a website services and products so they will host our website they will help develop our website working with us and then there is the opportunity for katie and her team to be able to do some modifications as well so they will do content we will do content they will do the hosting and kind of the infrastructure around that one item i will mention with that that was highlighted for us and i really appreciated was at the high school level we have students that are able to do real world learning and actually develop do the coding and manage those websites that will stay separate because final site wasn't able to offer

096the same opportunities that we provide our students with today so for the high school websites that'll stay separate for the district website and all elementary schools middle schools that will come under this final site agreement any questions around that because that is to me around our communication board priority three really exciting about communicating that information and getting in a format that's really easy for people to consume so exciting information on that so i didn't pause after i said any questions okay um there are no questions okay thank you thank you board member the next one i think is equally exciting so this has to do with the tire changer that they use in the transportation area this transportation this tire changer has reached end of life so we will be approving that and it's actually

097a provide a cost savings overall to the district as well in the purchasing area so around our paper products and dispensing systems we've been involved in a co-op but the the challenge was the co-op date for renewal is after the date that we need to renew this agreement so in looking at that carefully krista and her team evaluated and there's two companies that we'll go with around all of our paper products and dispenser needs we will have the opportunity in the future to consider an option to also then include and begin to participate in the co-op if it looks like that's a savings but this gets us to to be able to have everything in place for right now we also discussed with steve and his team um the auditors and they are recommending to

098go with kpm again steve shared and i didn't know this so we've used kpm for the past three years this will extend it for another three years and that was a change three years ago we had used another auditor prior to that so that was good information as well around the bond report kyle guerrell shared with us that at this point when we look at the bond funds and i appreciate so much dr miller and kyle guerrell the report that you do around the financials you make it so easy to understand project by project where all those dollars and cents are but at this point we have 171 and a half million dollars encumbered and that means allocated to those projects also then we have 52 and a half million that is not yet bid

099or allocated and those are things about around the middle school renovations the existing middle schools that'll be renovated as well as the early childhood center work that we need to do so that was good information to see that checkpoint and to see as katie mentioned all of the progress that we are making around those bond projects it's just huge and really exciting um i think that's it from a bond report oh but wait there's more so um also we're looking at the partition partition replacement so toilet partitions that will be happening at several of our schools that need to be replaced a bid package and so we'll be approving that also at highland park elementary the intercom system is ready for replacement um out of out of date and out of early service around opportunities

100for that so we'll be approving that and then richardson elementary on their fire alarm system we'll be replacing that as well there is one change order that i'll highlight that is both security and athletics so um around some of the security that that's a change order definitely there is contingency money that will cover that within the security portion of that budget and then within the athletics there are some changes needed there as well it was really some of those items that you couldn't anticipate happening and that's exactly what contingency is for so that'll that'll cover those funds so any questions on those items okay then i'll move forward i moved to approve the transfer of funds so the transfer of 2 million 688 000 90 and 32 cents from the general fund to the special

101revenue fund second we have a motion and a second to move funds from the general fund to the special revenue fund is there any discussion on this particular motion okay see none uh mrs smart i think we'll go back to roll call votes for these right we don't have to but we can or i would i would like to go back to roll call votes okay for all the other items be glad to do that board member marshall aye board member allen board member campbell aye vice president ritchie aye board member hedrick board member doane president murdoch aye motion carries unanimously board member campbell um i move to approve the treasurer's report and the payment of the bills motion in a second to approve the treasurer's report in the payment of the bills is there

102any discussion on this item okay can we have a roll call vote please board member down board member hedrick vice president richie aye remember campbell remember allen board member marshall aye president murdoch aye motion carries unanimously thank you very much for your finance committee report um we'll move on to item seven which is our consent agenda for tonight so this contains 15 items and so we'll take a motion on that before any discussion please i move to approve the consent agenda items as presented second motion in a second for item 7.01 through 7.15 is there any questions or comments related to these items it's actually one of our shorter lists recently so okay uh mr smart we'll take a roll call vote please board member allen board member campbell vice president ritchie aye board member

103hedrick aye board member down board member marshall aye president murdoch aye motion carries unanimously and we will move on to item eight these are our three um issues tonight that need individual decisions item 8.01 is certifying the board of education director results from last week so we'll take a motion on that please i move that ryan mordock and roderick sparks are the elected members of the board of education second we have a motion and multiple seconds for 8.01 is there any discussion on this item okay mrs smart roll call vote please board member doane aye vice president richie aye remember allen board member hedrick board member campbell board member marshall aye president murdoch aye motion carries unanimously 8.02 this is our care here renewal that board member campbell just talked to us about and that

104was discussed at length in the finance committee so we'll take a motion on that item i move that the board approved the service agreement renewal with care here llc for health and wellness center administration services second motion and dueling seconds so um is there any discussion on the care here item or questions board member fritchey just a quick comment as board member campbell was explaining what care here does for our school district as a retiree of the school district retirees are also allowed to use the services of care here i don't know if everybody knows that if you're on the school district insurance and so i have used them several times and they are extremely efficient and friendly and just great for doing all kinds of services and and i'm so happy that we are

105able to continue our contract with care here any other comments or questions related to 8.02 mrs smart roll call vote please board member allen board member campbell did you say no no i said i oh thank you yes please board member down hi vice president ritchie hi board member hedrick hi remember marshall aye resident murdoch aye motion carries unanimously and we are at 8.03 which is our change order for the athletics uh we'll take a motion on that please i recommend the board approve change order number two for lee's summit r7 district athletics facilities project at a total cost of 107 0801.57 as detailed in the attachment second okay we have a motion and a second uh in terms of the change order for the athletics is there any questions or discussion around this particular

106item i do have one for uh kyle or whoever would like to to answer this one the in in the attachment that you gave us it the largest portion is of the camera system right that's coming that would be coming forward can you just give the background on on how this change came about because there wasn't a whole lot about when i actually had somebody ask me about this particular item and so i'm just curious in terms of um what kind of they were asking like what kind of cameras why we why the change order was necessary sure this is a part of the other bond project that retrofits for the microphone i think this mic is on he's gonna have to talk about her it's a part of the bond project to retrofit the

107rest of the district with the new cameras and so um we the the change order includes the pricing that runs conduit and power and wiring for both the camera systems and the access control systems this is in all three press boxes and then there's also some camera work around the the concession restroom buildings and ticket booths does that answer your question it it does and and i i had a discussion so i just wanted it to kind of be out there so that the person was able to hear it i appreciate it thank you any other questions or comments mr smirk we have a roll call vote on this one please board member campbell board member don aye vice president fritzi aye board member hedrick aye board member marshall aye remember alan president murdoch aye

108motion carries unanimously we do not have any uh presentations tonight under item nine and so we will move on to item 10 which is our written reports we have three written reports that were submitted to the board so if anybody has any comments or questions around those particular reports now's the time board member fritchey thank you this is regarding before and after school services annual program evaluation 11.01 first and foremost huge thank you to our bass staff for the services that they've provided during the past year to help our district try to maintain some stability for those families during these trying times it's no surprise that bass has had a rough year with covid and learning mode changes i see that the projected ending balance for this year is actually at a negative one million

109five hundred and sixty four thousand three hundred and twenty five dollars and it looks like the enrollment reduced by fifty percent or more during the past year um the report is thorough in providing the details but um can you help our patrons understand the factors that have resulted in that negative balance well miss fate's coming up here i want to share that when we uh had some virtual learning modes we opened up bass during the daytime at no charge to families who were in need so we had about 700 kids i believe it was at one point going during the day at no cost to the families but obviously we were current you take on costs by staffing it so good evening board i appreciate being able to be up here with you and answer

110some of those questions for the patrons that you're asking i would just like to start by saying we're getting ready to celebrate our 25th year and so going into our 25th year this is not where we thought we would be right it's also an honor to be able to say it's about my 32nd year in wow serving in before and after school services so again a year like none other right so what we understand is that the board approved this program to come into being 25 years ago and that was to be a self-funded program and so while we received federal and state funds in the early years to get us started along with our parent fees once we had launched into our beginning years those federal and state funds ended and we are fully

111funded by parent fees so when we were in march prior to the pandemic our reserves were at about 500 000 or over and that was a little lower than what we normally run but again for a business a small business you would understand why you would have a reserve for emergencies such as these however who would project a pandemic right so on into march and we're we're very thankful with the leadership of the the board in determining to keep all bass staff as well as district staff whole in our salaries while we were shut down right but being shut down that equates to about an average of 265 000 a month in revenue that we lose okay so while that was a loss we would continue to have the expense of payroll and that is

112about in the neighborhood of 200 a month okay so when you look at march april may and june you're getting up there near 900 000 plus right so as we approach um june we learned that we were going to be able to offer services to our families and that was definitely part of jackson county helping us get there as well as you guys and we appreciate that and i know the families do too so as we opened enrollment enrollment was down 50 percent or more and that is not unique to our district by any means that is across the state the nation so we're about par for the course as we know some families returned to the workforce and some work from home so child care needs did change so our enrollment's down even though

113enrollment is down we were not able to completely restaff in a way that keeps it at a one to fifteen ratio because of the expectations of the county we did need to meet certain expectation guidelines to open and serve safely the kids that were in our care so that was an increased cost in salary i would have to say at this time we have not been able to in a public way say thank you to so many people in the district that came alongside the students in k through sixth grade and helped them learn and be cared for during the day and this would be from many bus drivers many nutrition service staff many of our librarians health clerks even our principals our teachers counselors they were all chipping in and it was you know

114an eleven half an hour eleven and a half hour day endeavor every day so with that going on our enrollment was down but we were receiving some funds but from our parents or some fees but not our not our full fees that we would take in for a full day it was important that while their taxes are paying for their education we do not charge for services being rendered during the midday okay our fees only covered our care that was being offered from 6 30 to school start and then school end to 6 p.m so that took us through our summer months and then as we go into the school year again opened enrollment and we still see a 50 enrollment while we have many cost containment things going on it's just not enough to

115make up 85 of a budget and that's what payroll tends to be in a in a business like this so that's where we are at but good news is we started enrollment for the fall and that's normally what we do at this time and it's so encouraging to see that right now we have about 284 students enrolled for next year and historically that's higher than what it has been in previous years and what is that attributed to not sure you know maybe just families nervous they won't get a spot i'm not sure but so we're encouraged by that but every effort that we can put in place to stop that loss we are but i hope that that explains what what we're looking at and it's really the cost of payroll and not having the

116same amount of revenues coming in from our families thank you very much and rest assured we truly do appreciate you and each member of your staff please pass that on from us absolutely thank you any other questions i think you have one from board member campbell yeah first i do want to also come along line vice president fritzi and just say thanks thanks to all of our staff that help support your staff but you know as a working parent throughout my kids schooling i just so much appreciated all the flexibility that you did to provide as many people that kind of care as possible and to your point about helping with the online learning during the day and all of the extra things that your team did as well as all the other staff at

117the district i just want to say thank you the second question the next one is more of a question i think in our finance committee meeting it was mentioned that you and steve are looking at some grant opportunities can you share a little bit more about that it's not my exact forte when we start talking about the esser funds and things like that i don't know if steve's out there anywhere yep there you go okay so there there are some monies there being talked about through this crisis before and after school care across the nation has received a different level of attention because the gov the government has seen how important it is to have a place that is safe for children when parents aren't at school in a different light and so there's a

118lot of discussions going on amongst leaders in our field helping the government understand that need and so they're looking to allocate some of those funds to programs like ours and our state representatives have talked with our leaders here in our district and um asked you know what would what how could we best serve you how would this work what would be a easy way to get this money rolling in kind of and those are unofficial ways of how i describe it but there are some funds but it takes time and it could take two or three years before we realize what that's going to look like for us so we're watching and waiting and ready to jump when they say turn in your application so any other questions or comments either on bats or the

119other reports okay thank you very much we appreciate you being here tonight okay um we're moving on to item 11. essentially we are um adjourning this old board um signee die and so what's going to happen here um is this meeting is adjourned we are going to swear in the new um board members so uh we will do that first and then just for the audience's sake there will be about a five minute break or so before the reorganization meeting actually takes place so that mrs mark can get a couple of things set up so we'll do the oath first and then we will have a five minute break and then dr buck will call the next meeting to order thank you oh [Music] [Applause] um all right if you'll raise your hand and repeat

120after me i do solemnly swear that i will support that i will support the constitution of the united states the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of missouri and the constitution of the state of missouri and that i will faithfully and impartially faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of school director discharge the duties of school director nn4 the reorganized school district number seven and for the reorganized school district number seven of jackson county state of missouri of jackson county state of missouri to the best of my ability to the best of my ability according to law according to law [Applause] so that i look better than him history [Music] so thank you all right good evening we're going to start with the rest of our reorganization meetings so 1.01 call

121to order and adoption of agenda i will take a motion to adopt the agenda as presented i move to adopt the agenda as presented second we have a motion a second all in favor say aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously uh 1.02 before i do this part i'm going to go through a little script because we have uh it's lacking in board policy and in robert's rule of order as i found out um so i i visited with our board attorney to make sure we're doing this correctly and he's uh kind of worked the script up for me so first let me congratulate congratulate the new two board members who were just sworn in congratulations to both of you board policy bca requires that i act a temporary chairperson to conduct the election of board

122president and vice president but the policy does not spell out precisely how that is to be done nor does robert's rule of order so with that in mind we have the following procedures first we'll ask for nominations in a minute but not yet any board can nominate another board member or you can nominate yourself and nominations do not require a second only a nomination once a board member is nominated he or she is eligible for the office unless they decline said nomination once it appears that there will be no more nominations i'll ask is there any more nominations and if there are none then i will declare nominations closed at that point if we have more than one person running for an office i will ask that we have a time for each person to

123give two minutes if they wish to speak to their candidacy um we'll do the order by random drawer draw it says out of a jar but i see we have a lease summit mug over there linda would write your names down and she would pull them out and whatever order that is that would be the order of the vote too okay um we get to vote if again if there's more than one person we would do that at that time we'd vote on the first person before we get to the voting no people have questions after the candidate speak board members can ask questions as well to win you do have to have at least four board members say aye so we have to have the majority of the board not the highest vote so

124if you had three or four people running for an office we do have to have four say i for one person all right any questions on that again it's not in board policy so i just want to make sure i went through that so without further ado we are in item 1.02 election of board president so i will open nominations for the office of board president looking for more than zero i would i would gladly nominate ryan murdock as our board president second you know seconds needed i'm sorry it's good long as he doesn't decline okay other nominations hearing none i will ask that nominations be closed uh and now we will take a vote we only have one candidate for so don't have to do a draw and so all those in favor when

125you do so please raise your hand and keep it up long enough so if there's a account linda can see it all in favor of ryan murdoch as board president say aye and raise your hand hi opposed motion carries now we do the same thing for um i'll open nominations for the office of board vice president i would like to nominate megan marshall for vice president we have a nomination for board member marshall you accept thank you yes any other nominations i'd like to nominate kim fritchey miss ritchie do you accept i'd like to read a statement if i could on that would that be all right if you're declining i think you could otherwise we'd wait for the two minutes okay yes i would like to do that okay um i'd like to thank

126board member allen for the nomination appreciate that we've heard from about 15 patrons via email advocating for our students of color to see themselves on our board leadership positions and i understand this desire because we too strive to work at hiring more teachers and staff who our students can see as leaders and role models i would however assert that every board member is a duly elected leader and that leadership should come from each chair on the dyess we're here for our students our focus should be on them not ourselves this board has acted as one unit during this past year and we do not always have the same opinion on issues but we respectfully work through those issues and it's my hope and prayer that we will continue that spirit of collaboration in the coming

127year and listen to one another so that we can help make lsr7 its very best for our students our staff and our community it is with these thoughts in mind that i respectfully decline the nomination and ask that we support board member marshall for the vice president position this year thank you thank you any other nominations hearing none i moved to close nominations and again same thing uh megan marshall has been nominated for vice president all those in favor say aye and raise your hand please keep him up for a few seconds i opposed motion carries do we have an abstain okay i am i am also abstaining um but i do believe that ms marshall and i've had a very good relationship over this past year if nothing else good uh critical conversations and

128direct respect and dignity and i made that nomination because i've kind of come to the dance with a woman that i've known for many years with quite a bit of leadership and experience in this community and um very committed to this past 10 months of craziness i'll tell you and as somebody said a year like no other and i felt like the tandem that we had here brought us through some really rough waters and set the sails very very strongly so do not take an abstain vote as a no vote because i really appreciate you but i feel like i've come to the dance to prom with my date and i don't want to leave her with a whether with a yes or a no and i'd certainly as i seal most of my salutation

129off with carpe diem so seize the day and take it like i know that you're the strong woman you are so good kudos all right motion carries 502 and i will turn over the meeting rest of the meeting which has two more agenda items to president murdoch thank you dr buck you can stay there so um we have item 1.04 so we need to elect our secretary to make nominations for our secretary um and our treasurer at this particular time so if we could have a nomination for secretary and treasurer that would be great i moved the board reappoint linda ismert as secretary of the board of education reappoint steve williams as treasurer of the board of education reappoint hannah pruitt as assistant secretary and reappoint sharon smith as assistant treasurer okay we have a

130motion and we didn't but in this yeah it's okay so um for those four positions um is there anything is there any discussion or other nominations for those positions okay for the board all those in favor please raise your hand and say i i all those opposed that carried 7-0 mrs smart we have item 1.05 we need to approve our board meeting calendar for the upcoming school year the 2021-22 school year so we'll take a motion on that item too please i move that the board of education approved the 2021-22 meeting calendar as presented second motion in a second to approve the calendar for the upcoming school year is there any question or discussions on the upcoming calendar seeing none all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye all those opposed

131motion carries unanimously miss ismart and that is it for tonight this meeting is adjourned thank you everyone for being here