LPS Board of Education Meeting - 16 Nov 2021

001so good evening let's start tonight with the pledge of allegiance i moved the board approved the agenda as presented second standard you were ready andy yes yes aj yes drew yes angie yes nick yes motion carries and moving into honoring excellence good evening everyone we start honoring excellence tonight with a couple of virtual presentations actually a couple of virtual features that we wanted to highlight some of you may have been able to see last week we had news from the volleyball team at liberty north high school as we had our first ever evelyn gates award winner and that being addison beagle senior at liberty north that is the best high school volleyball player in the kansas city metro so a huge honor for her we were there we had the announcement and then we had

002a chance to catch up with addison just [Music] it yesterday [Applause] um it's a huge honor just to be nominated with these amazing group of girls that i've played with and against for as long as i've known um i am it's such a testament to the program because john has created and the work my teammates have put in to make a name for ourselves liberty north is such a family um and i'm so happy i got to be a part of it yeah it was um i'm super happy like liberty the community that liberty and liberty public schools has is just amazing like we have that big rivalry between liberty and liberty north but in the end um it's just truly amazing for our athletes here amazing for their athletes at liberty yeah it's just

003it's a huge support system all around and what made that uh morning even more special as you see thanks for sharing that brian is the fact that we also had liberty high school junior ashley mullen as one of the four finalists in the metro so liberty public schools with two of the four best volleyball players in all of the kansas city metro that's missouri and kansas so congratulations to ashley we have a connection with her force jill her mom is the principal at south valley middle school so let's give ashley a big round of applause for those young ladies i saw addison yesterday and she signed her letter of intent to play volleyball at drake and ashley a junior has already committed to ucla so very very impressive young lady so kudos to them uh

004also tell you what any time that i need to to get a smile and get a a push of positivity you just need to go over to the early childhood center last week corey thomason and i headed over there to give everyone an update of the happenings that truly a gem in lps so brian if you can roll that at the early childhood center we believe that children learn best through play we offer opportunities for them to experience lots of different materials and resources build kind of their understanding of the world around them so our classrooms are language rich vocabulary rich opportunities for them to explore to interact with people and places and things so that they can build an understanding of how to to make sense of the world as they develop i've worked

005at the early childhood center for over 12 years now and i've watched it grow i've watched it change something that has remained throughout these years is a sense of team so we really believe that our instructional teams work together to support the needs of all children lots of different learning activities are offered throughout the day including large group opportunities like story time small group opportunities like you're seeing in the back where we're working on fine motor or working on specific skill development and develop those skills of negotiating problem solving trying things trying them again taking risks failing but i think it's easy to have a narrow perspective of what happens here but i think if i was going to help somebody understand what we do here it's really it's laying the foundation for our little

006people to grow skill after skill after skill also at the early childhood center we believe that children need lots of opportunities to experience their world in different ways so our playground wraps around our whole facility children have opportunities to move their bodies in lots of different ways and also to practice those skills of interacting with one another negotiating rules problem solving taking turns again all of those great learner dispositions that will help them be successful as learners the rest of their career pre-academics is a part of it but it's about developing the whole person the relationships empathy character it's really much bigger than just learning your abcs and your colors and one two threes as you can see the early childhood center is a great place for learning every day we're so grateful to our

007community for the ability to have a facility such as this to serve early learners and their families we are always looking for opportunities to enhance our programs and to be able to fold in services for even more families in the community [Music] so before that interview dr burke said i can't do this i can't i said i talked her into it and i just shared this with her earlier today and she was amazed at how she did i i gave her a thumbs up so that wraps it up tonight um again the hashtag we've been using really since the the start of of the pandemic is you know hashtag share the good lps and as you can see the good is there and we will continue to do that so that concludes honoring excellence for

008tonight all right to begin our public comment this evening i'd like to thank all of us uh all of you who have joined us uh in person this evening for a monthly business meeting i want to take a moment to remind each of our visitors that we do have a mass requirement within our district buildings including this building and as you entered i know each of you agreed to wear a mask and if you need to decide to remove your mask we just ask that you leave the building to do so uh if you're not wearing a mask in the audience we'll give you a reminder and then potentially need to ask you to leave if you choose not to wear it going forward board of education has a long history welcoming constituents certainly within

009our district to share opinions and concerns with us through public comment we acknowledge that there are diverse opinions within our community we make decisions as we make decisions that affect our students teachers support staff parents other community members however we expect a certain level of decorum during our meetings especially during public comment and while each of us in this room and online may not agree with everything that someone says they are here with a specific need and are seeking to have their voice heard and if there are outbursts that occur to create an atmosphere of hostility we as a board may seek to restrict or end public comment in addition continued disruption of our meeting by any individual may result in their dismissal from the meeting we don't use public comment as a time for

010board members to converse or dialogue with speakers at the podium and while we don't interact directly within this meeting know that we are taking notes and we follow up with the public speakers after our meeting if they've requested a follow-up and as our speakers approach the podium this evening i'll remind them that people addressing the board will be asked not to repeat what someone before has said persons wishing to address any subject concerning liberty public schools and or education may do so at the podium and persons addressing the border has to keep the remarks concise and to the point each speaker will be limited to three minutes you'll see the timer up on the screen a person or persons may speak only once at the meeting and concerns brought forward during public comment may be

011addressed by the superintendent or appropriate staff members typically within a week so with that said we'll start with daniel currents good evening my name is dan currents i moved to the school district in 2006 i spent 11 years in the school district head threesome graduate from liberty high school in 2017 moved to central missouri to care for eligible parents and in 2018 found myself on the school board at eldon r1 school district became president in 2020 at an opportune time uh obviously as you all are well aware of the decisions that had to be made through 2020 and i just wanted to share with you a little bit of my experience different part of the state obviously but as a school board representative i can empathize with uh the decision process you have to go

012through so we were see we had students seated in summer school in 2020 no masks um we worked with the county to find acceptable guidelines that we would they would find acceptable and that's what we chose to do summer school went great we started august in the same with the same policy basically mirrored we had instituted more obviously for buzzing and things but we use the same policy in or going into the fall and like you contact tracy start to become an issue it really rose going into october by early november it was really high and i called as president of school board i called for a vote in november of whether we should add masks as a requirement and so we heard public comment we i called for the vote the vote i voted

013in favor of masks along with one other person five voted against it in december our numbers of contact tracing were down as low as they'd ever been and i returned to the december meeting and said i'll never ring the vote again because had my position passed we would all congratulate ourselves and said that mass work as turned out mass had nothing to do with the numbers going down and i think that's pretty consistent with what we see across the country and really around the world too you know so we returned uh after my parents passing we chose to return back to liberty school system this summer so that my daughter who's in eighth grade could finish school in every school system and i would just encourage you to consider position on mass the data does

014not support lockdowns it doesn't support vaccine mandates it has not supported mass mandates of having any attributable change to what the way the peaks the waves come and go with cobit and i would just encourage you to continue to consider that to make emacs optional and allow the parents to make the decision what's best for their children thank you thank you mr curtis jane boswell good evening i'm jane boswell and i want to before anything else thank all of you so much for the incredible job you've been doing particularly during some tough times i taught for 30 some years and tonight i just want to briefly talk about this whole discussion of cpr and the curriculum and race relations because i'm gonna i'm just gonna speak to my own individual experience i taught american history

015and i taught the civil war and uh i never held back ever not even a little bit and we talked truthfully even to the 10 year olds in fifth grade about what slavery was like about what redlining was like about all of those different things about the absolute debacle after the civil war with supposed reconstruction so i'm just saying that in that i was extremely truthful in all of that time never had a parent complain not once never had a child come to me saying i feel bad because i'm white and we did this stuff never it was never an indication of that what i did know was that students of color needed to hear that i i get really frustrated hearing people talk about i don't want my child to feel bad well you

016know it is beholden upon us to think about all the kids we can't just protect the white kids we have to think in terms of the psychology the mental health with all of the students and the children of color absolutely need to know why it may be that some people are not doing as well and that is because the systematic program that has been in place since the founding and before you know back in 1617 so i want to make that point that as a teacher it was really important to get that out and i never had any kickback i want to give you one little example of why this is good good for white kids too when kids know that they can be part of a solution that is so empowering and one year

017teaching fifth grade at alexander donovan i had this wonderful little girl white white as can be but as we were doing our civil war program she came to me ahead of the time and said i want to take up a collection to stop slavery and they did and she felt very empowered that's what we can do and i hope you'll take that into consideration thank you very much thank you miss boswell carol maconson i am grateful to live and have worked in a district where the school board adopts and implements effective policies where the administrative team supports instruction guided by policy and library media specialists follow policy and selecting resources to meet curricular and student needs i offer my gratitude gratitude to our school board our administrative team and the educators for creating this learning

018environment library media specialists do not take selection of library materials lightly collection development is complicated they have studied resources policies and practices for an entire semester in order to obtain certification they value the tenants of students right to read and intellectual freedom the first principle learn is that professional expertise must override personal bias they work hours selecting the highest quality materials to support curricula and meet the needs of students whose ages learning styles interests sexual identities and maturity levels vary in particular building high school collections is difficult as they must be robust and varied to meet the needs of this diverse student population and support the breadth of high school curriculum the selection process involves creating files and books video and digital resources periodicals and others for possible purchase this is done by reading print

019and online reviewing sources such as book list school library journal publishers weekly and purpose reviews in addition possible selections are collected from textbooks conferences other professional award reading lists and workshops finally decisions are made and resources are ordered i understand that the district currently has one title that has entered a carefully delineated review process following policies despite what the press reports i understand that this book has not been pulled from the shelves of either high school despite social media claims the title is only available at the district's high schools during the 40 years i worked in liberty public school libraries i saw this review process worked again and again with differing but fair results that were all student centered my hope is that is that this title will get a fair review and that the

020outcome will be accepted for the sake of our students my greatest desire for our students was voiced by hermione granger in the book harry potter and the chamber of secrets when in doubt go to the library may our libraries be places where students will be accepted unconditionally and their needs will be met i thank you thank you ms makinson beth fahr good evening my name is beth farr i have two children enrolled in lps and i'm also a co-founder of the liberty parents for public schools grassroots organization to start i want to acknowledge a group of people here with me tonight can you raise your hands these lp4ps supporters represent parents families and community members from our school district who are here to support you though we may not always be as loud as others

021we are strong lps advocates we are aware of the negativity some people are promoting and we will not idly stand by and watch that negativity impact the school board and district we are so very proud of my primary message tonight is supporting the continuation of masks in the classroom i have statements from two group administrators on this topic ashley bro a family nurse practitioner at megan hammond a pediatric nurse who has worked with cancer patients for over a decade first ashley statement with the level of transmission we have in our area continuing to mask is what makes sense infections are again climbing with a noted increase among children and a widely predicted surge in the coming months there continues to be outbreaks and clusters of cases in schools that are not masking locally kansas recently

022shared statewide data on schools that have mass mandates versus schools who do not it is clear that the schools without masks are indeed having more cases right now we do not have enough children vaccinated to justify not wearing masks cdc guidance that was updated november 9th still recommends a layered mitigation approach even when considering vaccine ability for the 5 to 11 age group now megan's statement i cannot express enough the importance of protecting our most vulnerable populations children with cancer immune disorders and other vulnerable diseases can and do go to school children with parents with cancer and immune disorders also go to school they must be considered indoor masking decisions to those that oppose masks wearing mask wearing and saying their freedoms and their children's emotional health should take precedence over the protection for our

023community what about the emotional health of the children who come to school to learn but want to keep their families safe or the child with cancer who still wishes to live a normal life and go to school what about their freedom to learn and grow in a safe atmosphere we are just starting to have the chance to vaccinate our children ages 5 to 11. the ones who have already started the vaccination process have four to five weeks before they are protected children who start the process later will not be fully vaccinated until after winter break and into the new year to assume that we can take away masks prior to all children having the opportunity to get fully vaccinated is irresponsible and frankly deadly we are so close but that does not mean we should

024jump ahead of this and act in haste and reverse the hard work we've done in keeping our children and community safe i thank you for your time karen botts hello i am karen butts i have four children here in liberty one has already graduated one is going to liberty north another is at south valley and lastly my eight-year-old is at ridgeview i am also a member of liberty parents for public schools in addition to our activism we also organize acts of kindness for those who tirelessly work every day to teach support and care for our children throughout the liberty public school district our second project this school year we decided to show our support and appreciation for the district's librarians and library staff in a two-part project chosen by our kindness committee we ask parents

025and community members to send thank-you notes to district librarians to express our gratitude for all they do to enrich our children's lives then we also ask parents to submit words describing their students library staff we took those words and created a wordle a piece of art made up of descriptive words that were submitted cute right we are in the process of printing and copying and delivering them to each school library in the district as a token of appreciation in addition to our kindness projects we have also started a new series called fast facts about lps we have decided to start spreading factual information about lps and the school board by creating simple infographics that give the top three to five facts that people should know about a variety of topics our first two topics have

026included slowboard members and the cures act thank you mr spots matt sammick hi there my name is matt sammick i have one child in this district and i would like to give a quick message uh in the encouragement of honest and serious and sincere cooperation with and in support of our public schools i'd like to supply some context on claims that were made at the last board meeting and supply some overall context for background activities around our school community the books that were brought up at the last meeting we're making the rounds in local online right-wing social media groups weeks in advance of our meeting and several of these groups are notable for their anti-public school rhetoric and far-right event i find it doubtful that these specific books were discovered by accident since then those

027same social media groups have been looking for more material they could potentially object to mostly books by or about bipac and lgbtqia authors or subjects many of these books have been available in the library for years a similar scene played out in at least one other local district and in both cases the board meeting's online screen was edited and shared on social media by the north comparative association as an attack on our board our school and our community the northern parrot association for those of you don't know is a non-profit corporation created this year by a former republican state representative who's also representing the npa in their lawsuit against required masking in our district and is led by a list of local like right-wing political operatives and advocates objectives to available material required masking and

028the effort to force the label of critical race theory on district programs or each their own each issue but they're also part of a larger effort to encourage distrust and anger towards public schools to reduce the support of public schools in favor of school choice a movement that wants to weaken community-based public schools in favor of the ability to funnel taxpayer funding to private schools that are not held accountable for their practices or programs agencies like missouri proper the shoney institute and the northland parent association work behind the scenes on these efforts in both obvious and subversive ways the one-sided community listening session sponsored by missouri prosper here in liberty last summer being one example in each of these cases the objection doesn't need to be unified it just needs to be mad all of

029this flies in the face of our unity as a community because that's what we are and the functioning community considers a range of voices we need as many people as possible to be part of this conversation that it must be a give and take which is not what we have seen i resent the claim that these objections are speaking for the parents of this community or that they're acting in the best interests of our children i'm a member of the community and a parent and their claim that their legal action to suppress required masking in our community schools is on my behalf their claim or their censorship efforts are done on my behalf that their campaign against diversity equity and inclusion efforts that have been going on in this district for over five years and

030against the idea of social emotional learning a program that has directly benefited my family is done on my behalf the claim that medical recklessness censorship and knee-jerk fear-mongering represents my interests and those of the thousands of children and families in this district is insulting i encourage people to not allow themselves to be distracted by the rage and fear language of those who want to dominate not cooperate for our community's best interests and efforts and instead of instead extend a hand to those who would participate in our educational community honestly civilly and in good faith tammy mcqueen hi my name is tammy mcqueen i'm actually third generation to graduate from liberty high school and i currently have two children at liberty north high school and as parents we're here to support our kids through difficult times

031i know a lot of people feel the math put undue stress on some kids but isn't this a learning opportunity for us to help them through i would much rather have my kids face tough times now when i can help direct them support them and be them be there for them to face a tough situation for the first time after they have left home or out of on their own for the first time as the parent of a high-risk child i would like to thank the district for all the mitigation measures that you've put into place and to keep our kids safe at this point my daughter will actually be eligible for her booster december 4th which makes me a little bit nervous coming up to the holidays and knowing that the mass mandate might

032be dropped we were asked at the beginning of the school year to make a decision for the semester we are locked into that decision and asked that the district honor that and leave mass in place until all kids who wish to be fully vaccinated can be thank you mr queen dan dan richardson thank you i'm dan richardson and my wife and i have four kids in the district from high school to middle school to elementary school our twins actually went to the early bird lending learning center so we've been the beneficiaries of what i'm sure are millions of little decisions on this board makes all the time and i would like to to thank you for that um for those efforts tonight i want to voice my support for teachers and administrators and i assume

033what you're doing now is what i tell my kids to do all the time evaluate things and sometimes the hard decisions um the right decisions aren't only the hard hard decisions right um we tell my kids when they're dealing with conflict that sometimes you have to make the right decision even if it's hard and i ask you guys to do the same and look to science and not necessarily anecdotes for those evaluations because i i don't know if masks are the most effective way but i assume i hope that this board would look to epidemiologists from institutions and institutions of our government to determine what mass looked like what vaccinations look like and not be led by politics and um vitriol in them and then actual things my son will come home and tell me

034he got an argument with a friend and i will tell him well what what is both sides of the story he's venomous and angry at me for not assuming what he says is true um so the anecdotes he tells me aren't always the truth there's always two sides of the story and i ask him sometimes to make decisions that are based on things that are hard for him look deeper at the issues and think of other things so i assume and i hope that the goals whether it be critical race theory or library books or masks driven i assume this board is driven by the goal to teach our kids in a full and wholesome way to keep them safe keep teachers safe keep the administration safe and i think i would trust that you're

035making those decisions based on science and reason in those schools and i assume you are and i assume you don't have some motivation to do ill to my kids or to cover the bottom of their faces for some nefarious reason i assume you're doing it in an effort to make them safe make the learning environment safe make lots of people have access to the learning environment in a safe and productive way and i ask you to continue that research and looking to science and experts to gather the notion gather the opinions you need and the research you need to apply to our situation in liberty despite what might be some very allowed and vitriolic people who might tell you otherwise based on their experiences thank you thank you mr richardson david gopin good evening i

036have three kids that are in the liberty school district last month i spoke at the school board meeting about the efficacy of mass and mass mandates especially as it relates to children i was told by others in the public that i don't care about kids or their safety as a foster parent this is far from the truth tonight i'm going to start off with a story last monday i talked my 11 year old daughter off at school she was feeling fine her stomach started hurting towards the end of the day she was sent to the nurse's office the nurse checked her out and took her temperature and she was fine since it was late today and there were no other sentence she sent her back to her class a few minutes later after my daughter

037returned to her class she started throwing up because of her mask vomit went up her nose and down her shirt she took her mask off to start cleaning herself up instead of her instead of helping my daughter her teacher insisted that she put her spare masks on while my daughter's face was still covered in vomit she felt compelled by her teacher to do this my daughter was forced to put a mask on while her face was covered in vomit and was not able to clean herself off first we are teaching our kids that it is better to wear a mask while covered in vomit than to take the time to clean herself off that a disease that is according to the cdc less harmful than than the seasonal flu for them to be stopped with

038masks does that sound right to you i care about kids i care about their mental social emotional psychological health along with their physical health i can see that forcing kids to wear masks which is only done in schools at this point pretty much is more harmful to them than covid ireland's department of health has stated that masks may exacerbate anxiety or breathing difficulties for some students that children compensate by breathing through their mouths and that chronic and prolonged mouth breathing can alter facial development it is well documented that children do not breathe because adenoids block their nasal airways can develop deformity and elongated face facial expressions are integral to human connection particularly for young children who are only learning how to signal fear confusion and happiness covering a child's face mutes their nonverbal forms of

039communication and can result in robotic and devotionless interactions anxiety and depression seeing people speak is a building block of phonetic development it is especially important for children with disabilities such as hearing impairment in quote mass mandates themselves don't work we have data all over the world showing coveted spikes in states and countries with and without mass mandate and there is zero correlation that's why the governor of colorado a democrat recently said he wasn't going to implement a mass mandate because colorado which not have a mass mandate and new mexico which did had no desirable difference in rates of coven we elected you to lead us not to just do what the clay county health department says which just does what the cdc says we have the data i'm just asking you to look at the

040data and all of the benefits and drawbacks of the math mandate and make your own decision we should be able to ask you how you came to that conclusion and you should be able to tell us rather than passing the left other school districts in the state as well as in the metro have ceased mass mandates including blue springs the leaders that we expected you to be and james price downstairs sophie mccroskey [Music] liberty north high school and i would like to discuss the issue of removing books from our library but from a different perspective obviously so i think that it's important to think about the way that this is going to affect students not just the people that work at schools and then the parents because the students are going to be the ones

041reading these books this is a issue that directly affects the students if parents find something that's like not morally correct to them then that's great don't have your kid read it if your kid doesn't find something morally correct that's great the kid doesn't have to read it but that doesn't mean that your morals apply directly to other students by taking away books that other students want to read that's completely unfair to the rights of other students because i believe that i have the right to read something that interests me even if it doesn't interest other people it goes against against their beliefs me and my little poppy here we're like we're bookworms we do enjoy reading and i think that it's really unfair that because somebody disagrees with the context of the book we don't

042get to read that's just not right i understand that public libraries have access to these books and sometimes they have access to books that liberty public schools don't have but a lot of the time students don't have access to public libraries they can't get there so it's important that the places that they have access to have the things that they need to access i believe they are all downstairs okay so how do we need to handle this so if someone would be willing we are at capacity in our room to be able to switch out and allow those who ask to speak to also come and speak okay so we have five individuals downstairs fire code says we're at capacity in here if there is an individual or individuals willing to give up their seat

043or spot in this room i don't even know if it's a seat we can allow them to come and out for a speak mr president james price is here now okay so if we want to go ahead sure james price has the um board forgotten that they are elected to serve the public and i went here last month and felt the district was on the wrong track turns out today had gone off the radios this is a school district that forces masks on children harvard's pornographic hooks and is quickly following many agendas of the land while schools in blue springs fort osage and grand valley drop their mass mandates this school continues with the same hypocrisy of kansas city forcing it on children but not only this can only be for one thing forcing control

044over children to make sure that they stay with the agenda however this is done under the guise of disease but according to the cdc ages 5-11 has caused the deaths of 94 children in january of last year to october 16th of this year this has to be filtered out for false positives and things that were presumed to be covered it has become plain and simple that this district is only interested in implementing caring for children in order to force them into compliance for the rest of their lives thank you thank you mr price leah de garno yes thank you hi my name is leah degarmo i'm a senior at liberty north high school and to be honest i just came here because i my friends and i wanted to see how the meetings worked so

045we've never been here before and i didn't really have anything prepared but after being here i would just like to express my disappointment and lack of student representation here i mean everyone here seems to have you know children in the district their parents or their they've taught here but i don't really besides you know my friends i haven't really heard from any students and i don't i haven't heard of any students like getting their voices heard by the school district in particular and i just think that the school districts do a better job about making sure that the students opinions are heard and not just their parents and i especially think that people outside of our district and people who aren't part of our community shouldn't have you know let their voices be heard more

046than a student's voice and i think that maybe we should try and you know get surveys sent out to students and see what they think about you know mass mandates rather than just parents or books in the library or just anything in general because we're the ones who are going to school every single day not anyone else we're the ones who are experiencing every single thing that goes on that's all thank you stephanie gordon stephanie again i'm back i don't care what other people say make it optional it's old it's ridiculous i'm tired of calling you they're my kids i should decide you guys are being psychopaths at this point i told my son who is a liberty north student that he couldn't come tonight because i wasn't going to speak but i'm not one

047who can keep my mouth shut so here i am um am i allowed to speak on two things as long as i keep it within three minutes yes i am the mother of four children in the district i have a junior at liberty north an 8th grader at heritage and i have a fourth grader and a second grader at franklin elementary it occurs to me as i've listened to these issues and people downstairs spouting back and forth that they all are the same thing which is about control and lord howdy we would all love to be able to control this situation which has been completely out of control over the last 18 months for all of us so the first thing i'd like to say is thank you so much liberty school board lps district

048all of the people who have worked so hard to make incredibly difficult decisions during an incredibly difficult time i have never been more proud to be a liberty resident than in the last 18 months i have family that lives all over the city and we have fared so well here in liberty but a part of all of this is yes our right to speak but also our decision in a democracy to give up control so when we voted for all of you we gave up that control and i would like to say i respect your authority in this situation and i think that is what it comes down to for me is to respect the authority of those in charge to make the decisions so in this i have respected a couple of things number

049one one speaker earlier talked about the process for choosing books in our library right and i'll just write i'll read you guys what i wrote off facebook when i found out about last month's meeting oh psy seriously they obviously didn't read fahrenheit 451 which is also in the library at liberty north i know because my son brought it home to read for fun this year along with deliverance and catcher in the rye and several other books which i'm sure have been considered inappropriate reading at one time or another if they're so concerned about it here's my suggestion of how to deal with it step one read said book after your child does step two think about what you read i know that's the hard part step three discuss it together step four accept that your

050high schoolers are not children anymore and are growing up in a different world than you did one in which those books reflect our children are all living in a world that none of us expected none of us wanted to live in and we still don't want to live in it truth is though i firmly believe that vaccines and masks are the way to get us out of this so i encourage you again with all these other speakers to please cautiously consider your authority use it wisely my young children have gotten their step their first vaccine they're excited about that they can't get their second ones until december 2nd and they are almost the first people in town who got their vaccines thank you miss ritter so thank you hey guys i know a few guys

051in here um i didn't get my three minutes last time so probably gonna take six unfortunately i'm a graduate of liberty high school back in the anderson days when the school board did what was right wasn't afraid to stand up to the 10 vocal minority and would listen to the 90 civil majority who wanted to educate their kids currently i have three dollars in the lps system i've already had one step that i graduated they've not been able to see the inside of their classrooms in two years do you realize inmates in the federal prison system have better access than we do to our own kids and when i came here the last school were winning i was absolutely appalled to see that the number one teacher in our district and everything else was a

052it was an art teacher at the elementary level here and everything that was going on they were teaching green screens i don't think we need to teach influencers in the elementary school i think we need to teach kids core values and a little bit more of that in the past i've talked to you dr tucker had multiple meetings with you about ap classes and need for weighted schools and after my daughter did not get a curator scholarship initially until we talked to them about having that and you said that things probably need to change on that and things need to change with the technical school and having more options for kids and everything else we are now five six years down the road and nothing's changed i have buddies that are boilermakers anesthesiologists they all

053make the same i think you've got to give kids more options in these schools not everybody's cut out for a four-year higher education and then we started looking at what the district's doing now and instead this worst choose the pandering to the 10 percent the don't pay taxes and start a chief equity officer when that salary could have gone to teach these quality teachers and these fields that are needed toward the end of my uh toward the end of my step-daughter's tenure here at lps we had to endure a boy dressing as a girl using a boy dressing as a girl using the girl's bathroom and i wasn't told about that until she graduated i plead here today that my fifth grader is not going to have to experience anything like that going forward and

054they're not going to be asked i pray my kids are not going to have to be asked pronouns or about unicorns or anything else they're not going to have co-ed locker rooms and bathrooms going forward i don't want to sit back as joe paterno did and just watch as this happens to my kids i would like something better than that um i would my very edge kid person i feel my i have a master's economics my wife has a doctorate and superintendency i feel like we should be the moral barometers of our kids not the lps and i plead you to say that way getting to the chief equity officer over here dr seahor i hope that we are not getting any kind of weakness test or any awareness test or teachers are doing anything

055like that and i pray that i see that you have a great company over here that you give speeches for i pray that you're not using liberty school district to use the data from here to spread that and out outside anywhere else in any of these meetings and speeches that you're giving and using that i find that the insider almost insider trading to a point another subject i had was with dr vogel over here you informed me that we have a lot of minorities thank you mr rash that's your three minutes appreciate it that's it that's it three minutes moving into our consent agenda our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure robert's rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion documentation concerning these items has been

056provided to all board members and the public in advance to assure extensive and thorough review items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member i have a motion for approval and move the board approved consent agenda items 4.01 through second sandra when you're ready andy yes marie yes aj yes drew yes angie yes nick yes motion carries and moving into reports from the administration starting with innovation and learning we will welcome dr moore the podium to provide a report on our innovation and learning department thank you good evening we have two annual reports for you this evening special programs and special services we appreciate you taking the time to review the work from dr meisenheimer and dr cook in these also included in the board report is the percentages

057for parent teacher conferences as is typical our elementary participation was very high high school numbers were much lower and keeping in mind that this was via zoom we are going to be talking at our next principal meeting in two weeks about how to increase engagement at the secondary level with parent-teacher conferences we were hoping a few years ago we talked about doing a showcase that obviously hasn't been something we've done for the last year and a half but we will revisit that summer school planning is underway we are currently in the process of accepting applications for leadership positions and we'll then move to filling teacher position soon fall panorama data has also been shared with schools and they are preparing to go through this with staff we found some areas to celebrate and we found

058some areas for us to focus on so we wanted to share that student engagement at the elementary level was higher than the national average while sense of belonging is still something to work on at the secondary level while students did not show a decrease in school climate from last spring there was a slight decrease in teacher perception of climate from the spring of 2021. however compared nationally it is in the 50th percentile um teachers continue to feel well respected by their colleagues we will continue to have conversations with building leaders about how to create a sense of community and then finally wanted to say the ed micro school had its first student showcase last week and we had 500 visitors to that showcase if you didn't have a chance to visit the student showcase global

059challenges with an emphasis on our water supply i was personally blown away by the depth of knowledge that was shared by these students it was incredible and then just today we were asked to share our story about edge and our by design program with area educators at an upcoming hoffmann and getting smart presentation but that will take any questions i would just like to reiterate what you said those students at the edge showcase were amazing and the amount of thought that they put into that and how they are trying to solve come up with solutions be part of the solution was very impressive so i'm glad it was so well attended it was really i mean i could have been there for the day and still not seen everything absolutely and learn a lot about

060what you need to change about your daily habits that was the tough part that was hard other questions of dr moore dr westfall thank you thank into you equity report next dr dixon seahorn will welcome you up to the podium for the office of equity good evening so good to be here with you on today i'm going to only address one uh aspect of my report because i think it's probably the thing we've been kind of building up to this point and that would be the equity action plan that i've been talking about in terms of the planning that has been underway up to this point and now we are in goal mode in terms of implementation whether it's the leaders uh in their various teams directors uh and the departments that they represent uh

061we are now putting equity into action this is as you know our second year of faculty action planning and so i wanted to just bring your attention to the different categories that are represented um in terms of all of the plans uh that have been developed so they're a total of 31 plans across the organization 19 of those come from schools and 12 of those from departments and within the different categories that we have there are three so plans fall under the category of professional learning that's about 61 percent of plans uh or classroom and school community that's about 23 percent of plans and then family and community representing about 16 of those plans so you see some of the uh themes that keep coming out from those plans that i have mentioned in this

062report and then also i've shared with you the various schools or departments that have that as a focused area so whether it's professional learning an emphasis on equity within the classroom or school our emphasis on equity uh and with respect to families and the community at large so just wanted to share that as a highlight for you on this evening and i'll take any questions if you haven't yeah and dr dixon seahorn those equity uh plans those were determined those focus areas were determined by those buildings and organizations right they made that decision this is where they wanted to focus based on feedback internally absolutely so we had our first round of plans last school year those really were kind of a natural progression from the equity talks that we had as i transitioned into

063my role and then this year it's kind of like 0.2 so some plans have a similar focus area and then they just added on some additional pieces and others have started compressed with something branded so yes the focus area came from the respective school leader and their teams or the directors or in some cases cabinet members that oversee various departments yeah thank you dr cena i see me really being put on the bone some really some detail i've got a lot more reading to do but what i've read so far i'm deeply impressed yes and that's again thanks to our dlt members and just uh deeper thinking about what it really means to put equity into action and so this is really the hard work and the hard work that i talked about in my

064first year of my role as equity officer so we're seeing it in action i just want to reiterate looking looking through all the plans it's exciting to see this step right where we're actually setting those plans and those goals and how we're going to do it and um so that represents a lot of hard work from you and your office and so i just want to say thank you thank you i just had a similar comment i read through all of them and i'll probably go back and read them again i thought it was interesting how um there was such a different flavor for each school and how they were approaching the issues it was illuminating to see the different things that they're working on and i just appreciated how much of a focus there

065was on belonging and um and that being the core of what we were trying to accomplish with equity it really came through absolutely that that ribbon of belonging is really interesting all throughout the planet other questions for dr dixon seaworn thank you so much thank you giving it a 5.0 3d finance report we'll turn it over to miss cindy sullivan we're going to hear a little bit more from finance later on as we hear from our auditor but we'll turn it into the podium over to you thank you good evening in addition to my report i wanted to provide a couple of other updates to you we haven't talked recently about our sr3 funds i wanted to let you know that the district's compliance plan and the budget have been approved by deci we have

066not been able to request any funds however yet since they have not been appropriated by the missouri legislature we received an email today that indicated the governor and key legislative leaders are aware that there is a march 24 2022 deadline for the appropriation in order to award those funds and that they are making plans to get that done so and that's where we stand with our sr3 as a reminder the districts will receive approximately 2.3 million dollars in sr-3 funds so i wanted to give you that update also the state adequacy target which as you know is the basis for the state foundation formula funding that the district receives which is a very large percentage of our revenue is recalculated every two years this was a recalculation year and i did want to let you

067know that the funding level will remain at 63.75 for weighted average daily attendance for fy 23 and 24 so that source of revenue is flat and is dependent upon growth or decline in enrollment and or withholding so it will change according to that but that is news that is helpful for us as we project our budgets going forward so i wanted to update you on that as dr tucker um indicated a little later this evening you will be hearing from brian beckhoff from westbrook for our audit presentation and with that presentation pending your approval of that audit we have wrapped up fy21 all final expenditure reports and state reporting and federal reporting has been submitted and approved so we're looking forward to putting that one away and finally last night the audit finance committee met

068with brian as well and did receive that audit report they were very happy with it had good conversation with him and met and decided to accept that they also did not have anything else to pass along to you and with that i would be happy to answer any questions you might have no questions just appreciation for your team and everything you guys do i know from an audit standpoint that's a lot of time and thanks to the audit finance committee for spending their time to review it as well so on my team in the business services department deserve a tremendous amount of thanks for the success of that audit and of course the audit finance committee every month look at all of our financial reports and are to be thanked for that service as well

069because that provides a lot of assurance to you i believe um thank you thank you the 504 the operations report mr anderson we'll turn it over to you good evening um just a few items i wanted to highlight out of the operations report um and a couple things that weren't in there the first thing is just to update a few on kind of uh some of the recruitment retention hiring challenges that we've had over the past many months and just you know one of the things that we had talked about is really trying to short some of our processes and i've been really pleased working very closely with dr voglar christopher on his team and then several members of our team have come up with a plan to really kind of holistically look at kind

070of shoring some of those areas up and and had some conversations yet this week uh and really feel like we're on the right path so i think that was the last big leg of that school at least initially to kind of help us move forward with i think more streamlined uh hiring practices also two items somewhat related both nutrition services and purchasing nutrition services this was on consent they did we did find some food procurement supply chain kind of rectifying some of the holes that are in our program we have four vendors that we just entered into relationship with that's taking the place of the one vendor that we had previously and that really takes care of about 90 of the product that we have been procuring previously so again special uh thanks to the

071folks in nutrition services for creativity kind of taking that approach and again having four vendors better situations that have some redundancy in our purchases i think we're better off going forward and also with purchasing this has mentioned the report we're really seeing some especially with respect to commodities some back backing up in the supply chain that's obviously in the news we're seeing some cross uptick as well so just to make sure that you were aware that that is indeed affecting our operation uh last uh facility master planning i won't speak much of that uh since uh kevin nelson allison miller will be here briefly but just again that process continues to move forward uh he'll do a really good job here a little bit giving you an overview of kind of this conclusion of the

072third phase of that that that project and that would that would be happy with any questions i don't have any questions i have a just a quick comment i was excited about the upgrade and security lighting at the dac yes we don't have a problem at night anymore with upgraded cameras as well okay great good to know okay thank you mr anderson into 505 the human resources report dr bucklar welcome to the podium thank you very much for the opportunity to share an update with regard to the human resources department as far as our strategic plan goes i want to focus on the grow your own programs we are well into our marketing phase for the grow your own for the students of color scholarship that's off and running and i'm very pleased with the

073work that he rose fans and the rest of the steering committee is doing to lead that effort on the administrator's side of grow your own we've revamped as you know the administrator leadership academy our next leadership academy session is coming up in a couple of days and for that session our members of this cohort will have a chance to hear from a representative sample of principals in terms of what they need in their leadership teams give them a chance to hear directly from them and ask questions about things that those teachers can be doing as they lead in their schools to prepare them for those opportunities so special thank you to those principals who are willing to come in give reflective thought to what it means to lead a school in partnership with the leadership

074team surrounding them so it should be a good session coming up in a couple of days with regard to other aspects of the update obviously our enrollment our health insurance enrollment was a big part of our fall work i want to thank christelle morgan and rebecca fischer who's our wellness coordinator as well as julie childs who was one of our benefit specialists as they led the charge in equipping our employees to make their selections on the healthcare plan for time year 22 which starts january 1st they personally led 25 information sessions to help equip our employees in their work and i'm very pleased to say that that as a result of that we've received very favorable feedback from our employees at enrollment we did see an uptick of about three percent increase in the two

075fully paid medical plans for the school district which we anticipated that um a decrease of about five percent in our bio medical plans and about a one percent update and those who are waiving insurance all together as a district we were hoping to see our employees take advantage of the high deductible health care plan and they certainly have done that so we're pleased with those results as well there's other information in the report if you have any questions i'll be glad to answer that that's a summary of the hr question productive overlay sub full rates are they getting any better uh no they're not getting team liberty and of course we are going to be talking about a proposal that i know angie reed who sat in on the team liberty meeting had a chance

076to see him full we'll talk about that in new business as we address that i will say if there is good news in that our staff at the buildings are administrators counselors librarians they've been dealing with that it's a heavy load to carry and they have been shoring up the gap i think in a tremendous fashion should be congratulated and thanked for that the feedback i am getting from kelly services subs as they sub in our buildings is that they do feel welcomed one of the things our buildings are doing a very good job of is welcoming them into the fold thanking them for their service helping them you know feel appreciated and praised for the work that they're doing and that does go a long way in the feedback that we get from the

077kelly services so they want to sub in buildings that really value their presence so we'll get there a multi-pronged approach is is certainly the answer so thank you for bringing that up thank you all right thank you thanks dr voglar to 5.06 the superintendent's report a few items that i wanted to draw your attention to from my report the first of which is that we've incorporated into our strategic plan this year an intentional effort to communicate information to our stakeholders around the graduate profile the vivid vision as well as our strategic plan and over the course of the fall semester we have been busy socializing and conveying that information to a variety of groups whether it's information relate in zoom calls to our pta council or other formal presentations like our chamber of commerce a

078variety of civic groups coffee with the community events and so forth so we will continue to do that in addition to that i appreciate mr ackerman assisting in the development of a district at a glance item we've seen this before this is a revision and has a lot of statistical data on the front end that we often are asked about from enrollment to composition of student demographics within our districts fun facts we have 62 different languages represented in liberty public schools people often don't realize that in the varying countries that they represent in service to children in addition graduation rate those individuals going on to a two-year four-year institution some budget information is contained in that as well on the reverse side of this includes a lot of real world learning experiences and opportunities that

079are afforded to our students whether it's from our career centers both at excelsior springs career center northland career center programs like northland caps network 53 as we are trying to grow internship opportunities and provide access to every single one of our students prior to graduation around areas that they're interested and passionate about whether it's going straight into the world of work through a vocational experience or going on to a two-year four-year institution or enlisting in the armed services a lot of great information here so i appreciate dallas for working to get this revised and updated all of that being said our graduate profile our vivid vision our strategic plan and this document are all posted onto our district's website for our community to look at and review certainly we have other items that can be

080passed out at a variety of gatherings in the event that people need those materials we also wanted to highlight our continued transition with the department of elementary and secondary education in our m-sip review process we're currently approaching the msip6 iteration which is the missouri school improvement program in december you'll hear more information as data is released that then will inform our lps scorecard but we're going to begin sharing more information with you about mc6 there are a couple of items that i wanted to mention specifically the categories that are contained within m76 and those areas that districts will be held accountable for the first category is leadership followed by effective teaching and learning collaborative climate and culture database decision making and then alignment of standards curriculum and assessment there's also a portion within that last

081category around equity and access and so in a lot of areas we're well ahead uh based on the work that we've done in our district and our strategic plan there are some areas that we'll need to further study and see how we can ensure that as a district and as our schools we are meeting those accountability metrics as mc6 continues to roll out just as a reminder early december we're going to have an accreditation visit from cognia former formerly advanced ed our current advanced at accreditation runs through the end of this academic year june 22 and so we look forward to sharing and highlighting spotlighting the work within our district as well as providing community members opportunity to participate in that review so we're working in that process appreciate dr westfall for leading all of

082our leaders our district leadership team our principals and directors in compiling all of the information that's involved in that cogni accreditation visit so we look forward to sharing more with you in the coming weeks another notable item for the beginning of december december 1st is pre-filing of legislation within the missouri legislature so we'll begin seeing a lot of bills pertaining to education that'll begin to be filed in addition we start thinking about our legislative priorities at that point in time that then culminate in that approval or consideration for approval in january and then that information is shared with our respective legislators in jefferson city that represent us the last thing i wanted to share is i appreciate our community's participation in a couple of key events over the course of the last several weeks one

083of which is our facility master planning sessions we held a couple of those as well as some student level sessions so i appreciate hollis and miller doing that work on behalf of informing our planning criteria in addition we held our fall diversity equity inclusion committee meeting last week had a good presentation there on the work that we're doing in our district but then also look forward to convening that group later in the spring semester so with that said would certainly open it up for any questions the board may have of me this evening any questions for dr tucker i think just a question just i want to clarify what you said about the msip accreditation process um that we're talking about alignment of standards curriculum and assessment that is including an equity focus this year

084so the work that we're already doing in the future is required by the state or some some level of that work is required by the state going forward that's correct so it feeds into himself six and so then you can take that section and kind of look through all of the requirements and it ranges from access to high quality staff across all districts in the state of missouri to access to opportunities looking at demographic data and how academic outcomes kind of correlate or impacted by some predictability so yeah there's a lot of layers within that portion that we'll certainly want to look at so at a future time with the board probably a study session be able to unpack those categories just for our awareness but then also our ability to communicate that throughout our

085system because it impacts schools impacts departmental areas and operations but then certainly for just a broader community awareness okay all right no further questions moving into unfinished business starting with 6.01 board policy revisions uh we do have a policy that we're presenting to you this evening on second read we had an opportunity to look at this earlier and the quick version of that is that it aligns our policy to some current revisions within statute as it relates to board candidacy and filing timelines so we present that to you this evening for your consideration any questions with that particular update of policy i move the board adult policy bbb on second read second sandra when you're ready andy yes kim marie yes aj yes drew yes angie yes nick yes motion carries and in the 6.02

086here in the classified schedule talking about transportation and school-age child care yes as we've shared with you before and it's no secret and that this impacts really every sector across the country and as we think about shortage of staff vacancies that exist turnover and the like transportation and school aged care are constantly areas of focus for our human resources department as well as our operations team in ensuring we have quality staff in both of those roles or those categories so we wanted to approach the board with a recommendation in terms of trying to solve some of those hiring and vacancy issues that we face particularly in these two areas but then also as we look at other areas we will bring those forward for recommendations or for your consideration as well dr vogellar you want

087to walk us through this this evening yeah so these changes uh thank you dr tucker are were exactly driven by the data from our applicant pool and our turnover rates and it was part of the multi-pronged approach that uh steve anderson has already mentioned to address some of the recruitment retention issues that we have any questions and when do you plan to put this in place if we approve it we are ready to put it in place tomorrow start the day okay you can't do it tonight just checking i move can i go i move the board dot the revised 2021-2022 classified salary schedule second second for mrs graham uh sandra whatever yes kim marie yes aj yes drew yes angie yes nick yes motion carries and it is 6.03 looking at some secondary course

088proposals yeah the second item there 6.03 the secondary course proposal is something that we have seen previously i wanted to turn it over to innovation and learning to kind of give us an update on those course proposals thank you so the chaos 2 class is there for second read and that is a continuation of a course that you had approved last year chaos one and so this is the second part for students to continue to get certification and for us to develop an emerging technology pathway for students interested in that line of study as well there are there are four courses specific to edge micro school that are there for first read and i just wanted to share a little bit global creations is looking at the world of art through a cultural lens and

089how to use art for voice of change global math will allow learners to investigate and explore mathematical topics global literature will provide students windows into other cultures from around the world and global leadership will be a dual credit offering that will offer students insight into the nature and scope of what it means to be a global leader in the 21st century and so obviously you see a trend there we're trying to make classes specific to edge with that global theme as you read through those and look at them this month i would just like to say thank you to serena comedia's emily bryant and aniola ajahi who wrote all four of those proposals to submit to you tonight and to be clear for those watching uh chaos stands for computer hardware and operating system correct

090yeah thank you i think the kids just take it so they can say i'm taking chaos part two or two i move the board approve the chaos two course proposal second sandra when you're ready andy yes kim marie yes aj yes drew yes angie yes nick yes motion carries all right into new business starting out with the 2021 audit reports so as cindy mentioned we have um our auditors here this evening brian heck off and we're going to let cindy start this item and then turn it over to brian for his report um thank you dr tucker and brian eckhoff is here with us he is the lead of the team that was spent the better part of the week in september with us he's a partner with westbrook and company and as much as

091anyone can enjoy the audit process we do enjoy a good working relationship with brian and his team so i will turn it over to him to present the audit findings to you tonight good evening i'm brian eckhoff the audit was a little different this year given the focus situation we had a different mentality on auditing attendance kind of had some different steps this year additional items that we had to actually look at in federal program side of things you guys usually have two major programs this year with the amount of federal dollars that came out you had three major programs so you can ask the staff they were very very ready for us to be gone we went through a lot of information and pulled a significant amount of information this year so fabulous job

092by the staff they did a phenomenal job so we're going to do a brief overview of the financial segments um if you have questions as i'm going through it don't hesitate to stop me and we can address it as we're going if i can get this side button there we go okay um so page two at the top of the page is the opinion paragraph and you will see that it says the financial statements were presented fairly so this is a clean audit opinion or a good audit report so exactly what you want to see in your financial statements page 13 is the statement of activities it's kind of a different financial statement because azure expenditures down the left-hand side offset by revenue in the middle of the page to show you a net cost

093of that function or activity down the right-hand column we usually highlight food service community services here um you can see food service on the far right-hand side the cost of doing business for food service this year was 538 000 and that's actually less than last year last year we're about 599 000. 100 free this year was part of the attribution of that being less this year and then your community services was about 755 000. this is your balance sheet you see as of june 30th we had just under 63 million dollars in assets made up between the free funds the special revenue fund is your teacher's fund and standard practice in school districts is to take that to a zero balance and at the bottom of the page are the fund balances those are allocated

094between various types in your general fund you have non-spendable which is your scholarship proceeds those are just sitting in there to approve interest and then pay out which is the 871 dollars that will be future paid out scholarships the assigned portion of 1.6 million is for student activities these are clubs organizations athletics things like that that balance tracks from year to year and then their food service you still have the balance in food service and bessie requires you to track that as you continue to lose on food service that balance will go away and you will no longer have that balance and then the remaining balance in your general fund is always shown as unassigned that's used for day-to-day operations for the school district debt service balance is always restricted for debt service and we

095bought 15.5 million capital projects we had some capital projects going on as at the end of the year the 697 000 is projects that you guys had approved prior to june 30 but hadn't been paid out yet and then the 4.9 is the remaining balance in that fund this is a statement of revenues and expenditures and changes of fund balance down in the red box you can see the change in fund balance this year with a decrease in front balance of 928 000 however if you look your general fund had an increase of 527 000 so your operating fund actually was pretty flat for the year uh capital projects fund is where you have your significant decrease that you're spending those bond proceeds and doing your long range plan and things like that it went

096down 7.5 almost 7.6 million so we're spending those amounts on buildings and assets and your debt service fund increased this year and you'll see the debt service payments coming up we've got a couple of years of pooling things coming up so you'll see that balance drill to cover those payments this is your summary of debt as of june 30th we had about 151 million dollars in outstanding debt for the district with 9.4 due in the current year you can see here's your payments on those bonds in 2027 we've got a balloon payment coming so you'll see your your debt service account will be prepared for that based on your levy just standard payments for everything else and these are your lease participation certificates through 2034 all the payments just standard annual payments there nobody payments

097are going to bring your attention um this is a required footnote we'll highlight it um the information in it basically there are tax abatements in your district that uh total up to the tune of almost 13 million dollars however you did receive in lieu of payments of about 7.5 million in total so i mean if you add those two paragraphs together you'll come with a vote with that total for both of those and the city of liberty and city of kansas city both this is a five-year comparison of your revenues it doesn't appear like much but if you look the federal revenue actually went up this year one percent which doesn't look like that much but when you look up above your federal revenues went from 6.7 million to 9.1 million so we did have

098a little over two million dollars more worth of federal revenues that's why we had to do the additional auditing additional program this year so in total your revenues were 180 million as opposed to 171 million last year this is a five-year comparison of expenditures you can see it appears your expenditures went down however if you look at the capital outlay line it was 37 million last year it's only 15 million this year so if you look at your actual operating expenses operating expenses for the district were up this year salaries and benefits are 79 of your overall expenditures it's hovered right around that 77 80 based on by the district so five year comparison for reserve ratio as well as average daily attendance your reserve ratio this year is 28.38 consider that a healthy financially

099stable school district and your average daily attendance was just a hair over twelve thousand i've experienced this in almost every single district i've audited it due to the kobit situation and virtual and things like that and cuts to summer school we've got a decrease in average daily attendance so something to keep an eye on going forward while we're here we look at missouri laws compliance with statutes regulations if we come across anything that has been provided to jesse that needs corrections or anything like that bring up your attention and you can see on page 41 it says that they were fairly stated so this is another clean opinion or good audit report and we're actually required to put a page in the audit that says none when there are no state findings we also look

100at internal control we don't give an opinion on internal control however we come across items while we're doing our analysis of internal control we bring it to your attention and we actually revisited internal control this year with people working virtually we've seen where districts have kind of changed internal controls not knowing it because we had virtual employees and things like that i'm happy to report we didn't know any deficiencies in your internal control this year the last report is on uniform guidance federal programs so this is your federal expenditures and this report as well is clean good opinion exactly what you want to see so unmodified means clean report a good opinion no deficiencies no material weaknesses and then you come on down and you can see that we audited special education cluster the coronavirus

101relief fund and the education stabilization fund so those are the three major programs where we spent the majority of our time and then the very bottom one oddity qualified as a low risk you can not qualify as a low risk because you have cash basis financial statements when they wrote uniform guidance they wrote for accrual basis financial statements so 99 of school districts in the state of missouri are cash basis so you'll never qualify as a low risk just know that it means that we have to audit a higher percentage of your federal program don't change your financial status through a cruel basis just know that we will be able to do more always normally in your packet is the required communications that's where we have journal entries disagreements with administration things like that um

102it's in that report and then also any smaller immaterial recommendations that we've come across while we're here and as you can see that report is one there's no journal entries which is very unusual this year with all the federal dollars nine out of ten districts i audit we have journal entries just because of how federal dollars have been allocated and recorded i'm happy to report we did not have any journal entries here this year so staff did a phenomenal job questions of brian while we have him here this evening one question i wondered as far as what questions did you receive from the audit and finance committee meeting last night um so they actually had us do a little extra testing on disbursements this year on some duplicate addresses and things like that so cindy

103and i actually got to sit down and do some investigative work on duplicate addresses and duplicate ownership of entities things like that i'm happy to report and everything came back and was able to be explained or identified so that was the main one that we did outside of that it was your standard every year questions of quantum committees okay anything else for brian okay thank you we appreciate you being here this year thank you so much i also want to extend it uh gratitude and appreciation for those that serve on the audit and finance committee that work closely with ms sullivan as well as denise aldridge and navigating that every single year with our entire business business services department so thank you to them as well and thank you again to business services and everybody

104that's great stuff uh moving into long-range planning criteria now mr president yes we do have them sorry my bad i moved the board adopt the 2020 2020-2021 annual audit second okay andy yes kim marie yes aj yes drew yes angie yes nick yes just so excited now so long range planning is something we've talked about as we've reconvened this process and so appreciate working with hollis and miller and their team as we've mentioned you've seen the planning criteria previously as we walked through that with you we did that a while back and then we're going for a second round of feedback and so we wanted to turn it over to kevin nelson from hollis and miller to walk us through that and where we're at tonight well thank you guys for having me good to

105see you all and try to give you a brief update on where everything has landed as of recent um so again process update we're going to share a little bit of that community input feedback and then also spend most of our time just kind of reviewing those planning criteria where those have landed so again you guys are familiar with the five steps we are wrapping up step two at about the same time we're wrapping up step three just kind of the way that that worked out um but we'll share some of the information so again we did a bunch of different um starting back beginning of the summer you guys saw this last time i was here we did lots of interviews and surveys and walked the buildings looked at the buildings but since then

106since i've been here last we did have parent community surveys also as part of that community interest sessions that dr pepper mentioned a little bit ago as well as our student engagement sessions so we had student engagement sessions at warren hills heritage and then both high schools and so those were a lot of fun to be able to work with the students and kind of engage with them and get their feedback as well and we'll share a little bit more of that here as we go forward but just very quickly just to kind of summarize we have a sheet on just what the staff kind of told us through their survey and just some strengths you know teachers administration staff those were some of the things that they mentioned focus on that sort of student

107learning was also listed as a strength as well as our athletic and our finance programs at the same time we have strengths we always ask opportunities and so that survey showed us that you know focus on that student mental health as well as the student teacher um excuse me the the quality of our facilities those things were all pieces for the opportunities that they have listed when we look at the community patron survey just to kind of compare to what the staff was telling us again we had underneath our strengths we had the student teachers and administrators on top of that list we had communication from the district as well as quality of our facilities listed as strengths from those patrons that took the survey again we had about 1500 over 1500 people take that

108survey so we felt like we had good participation in that as well when we look at the opportunities again very consistent on the focus on student mental health and that student teacher ratio so this summary starts to tell the story of what we learned from the students and so we asked each age group of similar questions but also a little bit different um the older students we had them tell us similar questions to what we heard from staffing and community members and that was tell us about the strengths those students also told us teachers administrators and staff as well as sharing the athletic and fine arts and the variety of programs offered has strengths the district from that student perspective and then some opportunities you see their focus on student learning again variety of programs

109and was also for some listed as an opportunity as well as focus on student mental health as we engage with the students in person we did hear a lot of discussion about mental health which was interesting to hear the students talk about that in front of their peers now the pictures that you see around the edge were part of another activity that we did with them where we kind of asked them you know what do you prefer as far as space to focus or collaborate or whatever and we got to hear comments from each side you know some chose one picture over the other and we got to hear kind of why and understand that you know our focus is always a variety of learning spaces every student learns differently and so we need to

110support that and that really helped reinforce for us that that's true through their comments you know some kids like the vibrant active environment while others would say not for me i need to be able to focus and be productive in a more quiet calming space so those are all good good things to hear from the students and get their perspective for the process all right so now let's spend some time if i can get the thing to keep going on tonight's um planning picture i wanted to give you guys a handout because there's a lot of them they're so hard to read on the screen so you saw the majority of these last time we had 21 blacks this time we threw our community engagement and our input thank you we've narrowed it down and

111we've revised a few so we'll kind of walk through what those changes are but we're down to 20. kevin thank you for the large papers and large prints just in case anybody else does too perfect all right so let's kind of dive into what we saw change so from what you guys saw last time we are going to look at kind of these ones as far as changes so and then there was comments and discussion around school size just to kind of help um share the story we asked everyone in the community meetings as well as those that took the online survey to rate each criteria as far as whether they strongly agreed all the way to they strongly disagree and then each one had a comment box so they could kind of elaborate where

112they could suggest revisions or changes or other things to the language and then on the in-person sessions we had pretty good discussion around the way they score things after they have the opportunity to kind of review and score so you see on this page the welcoming safe secure environments the design with belonging in mind investing in existing facilities in our financial schools all scored really high the most everyone most strongly agrees with those and then the ones that were a little more questioned were the operational effectiveness collaborative professional learning space future school size and student teacher ratio that doesn't necessarily mean they disagree with those it just means they have maybe some questions or wanted to consider some of the language some examples of some of the comments that we got are here on the

113screen you know the top one talks about being inclusive to all students means offering options for reasonable size schools so this one is talking about the size of the school as a consideration the second one also as well talks about size of school and the third one here students need opportunities for smaller school settings to promote mental health and emotional learning as well as the basics of education that one you could consider maybe school size or even student-teacher ratio on that comment there and then the last one is really supporting support for our staff as well all in all we had about 15 open-ended responses to question or criteria 13 and 14 and those are the ones around the future school size and the desired student-teacher ratio and they talked a lot about the you

114know concern a little bit over shill creek's size as well as high school enrollment was referenced so also the concerns as we get into the detail so just to kind of start we're going to look at number two which was the design of belonging we had some conversation in the community meetings that just was unsure about some of the language specifically to where it referenced cultural aspects of messaging and so we worked to kind of revise that criteria to read with intentionality create visually appealing areas that foster a sense of belonging for our all staff students and families that represent the many ways we connect and belong in our school communities so again we felt like that still meant the intent of the design with belonging in mind but maybe remove any unclear language that

115was perceived in the in the community so that's the one minor revision we made to that one the next one sustainability and learning environments so this one the way it was read the first time i think it was unclear and we had said something about social responsibility community interests and it became a little bit concerned that that might be perceived as political statements or something within within the community meeting and so certainly not our intent with that criteria and that's why those meetings are so helpful for us to understand how different groups might perceive the language so that we can edit it meet the intent of the criteria as it was meant so sustainable in learning environments is all about the built environment and how it can support um teaching and learning as well as

116be good environmental sewers and be very responsible for those resources that the district is using so we could change the language just a little bit on this one to make sure that we focus on really the intent of the criteria and that is resources and sustainability now future school size and design we did not change this criteria but we didn't want to talk about it just because it did come up a lot in the community meetings and it's important for us to continue to remind everyone that this is meant for future facility planning so i think it's easy for some of us to look at this criteria and say well show creepy is larger than that and so we've got an issue but again this is our way of saying going forward we want to

117have this criteria for future school design it doesn't mean that we're going to go back and retroactively change our existing inventory if you will of schools and square footages we want to use what we have efficiently but then going forward we would follow this criteria so that one does stay the same just wanted to kind of talk through that one and then this last one that we are suggesting is about the student teacher ratios now you'll see the verbiage on the bottom was how we proposed initially and it's the same language from previous years the language on the top is the suggested change so you'll see at early childhood that those ratio ranges because it's always going to be a range like students don't come in perfect batches when they show up at the door

118so we have to be able to accommodate a range and so at pre-k or early childhood that range is staying the same 10-1 to 17-1 now at um through k-1-2 um is that my warning i'll hurry alone at pay one through two we do see a little bit of a change and this is a new response to the community input that we've received some of this even the staff surveys and those so you'll see from before we were 25 to 28 we're now looking at 22 to 25 again at that range you'll also see that the groupings are broken down just a little bit differently so that next layer is three through four where before we went three through five so kind of breaking that down just a little bit more so three through four

119would be 25 to 27 5 through 8 would be looking at 25 to 30 and then finally at our high school level our nine through 12 we would be at that event 28 to 33 so again bringing those down just a little bit to help respond to the community input that we receive i had yeah earlier we talked about m6 and some of those operations standards that are now included within m6 last week we were comparing the two so the planning criteria with what's now within m76 and so you see that reflected in item 13 as well so it's a little change from what we've done previously and to kevin's point earlier on the previous planning criteria while that's looking at future facilities in this instance we would plan for this across all campuses as

120we think about staffing a little bit differently and really minimizing some of those class sizes so i appreciate you updating it this way absolutely so that is the last of the revisions that we want to kind of talk through with you if you guys have any other questions on the criteria i think kevin we're always interested from a student standpoint i appreciate you all focusing on getting them engaged um and obviously we've got the the numbers here of kind of how they responded anything surprise you coming out of that conversation that you just weren't quite prepared for yeah you know i was sharing with a few a few administrators who one thing that i thought was the most surprising probably just eye opening for me was the amount of students that were very comfortable speaking

121about mental health or anxiety or where they felt comfortable um i just had an experience a sixth grader happy to talk about his anxiety in front of his peers in a class of 30 and i thought that was really you know really awesome to see students feel comfortable to share openly and i thought made me feel good about the information we got from them because they were it felt so honest and in the moment so i thought that was really cool and shocked me if you a little bit and then the amount of students even in our kindergarten even in our fifth grade in the elementary class the amount of students that picked the quieter calmer classroom picture over the active one and when we asked them why they're like i need to be productive

122i need to focus and they were very driven you could see those driven students that were so focused and to have them come out and share that i thought was was really interesting versus you know i expect those to be like i like the bright colored one i like the fun one but it was it was really good input to hear from them those are probably the two things i would say stand up yeah thank you any other questions or anything else i can provide anything to add mr anderson no i appreciate the work and really i was i did some of the sessions with the students which was it was great and it was a great add to the process for sure um so the goal here tonight is to present this for for

123hopeful a vote tonight that allows it to kind of pivot that step four and again there's much more community engagement to follow but this is just we did this last time in 2017 we're just following that same process this is a great step kind of moving to the next are there questions or comments for kevin do you want a motion i'll take a motion if there's no questions i moved the board to prove the long-range planning criteria as presented second sandra when you're ready andy yes kim marie yes aj yes drew yes angie yes nick yes motion cares thank you mr nelson appreciate you guys we appreciate your time thank you uh in the 7403 the 2223 academic calendars so i want to start by thanking team liberty for their work on this each year

124they take pen to paper and work through a variety of options and scenarios as it relates to our academic calendar there's a companion piece is and that is with epic elementary and that their calendar is slightly different with an earlier start and a later finish so what you have this evening before you is a follow-up from our study session because we spent some time talking about this but this is presented to you for first read this evening and then we'll come back for action but some notable items to share with you regarding the overall liberty public school district calendar for 22 23 academic year our new teacher orientation would begin the week of august 11-15 the first day of school would be slated on august 24th fast forward to the end of the first semester

125on december 21st with our winter vacation being december 22nd through january 2nd teacher work day on january 3rd and then students resuming classes the next day other items to make note of is our spring break is currently slated for the week of march 20th through 24th with the last day of school being on may 25th that is for the overall liberty public schools academic calendar there are a lot of similarities to the epic calendar but two items to draw your attention to in service is uh the slated for august 2nd through august 9th with their first day of school being on august 10th and then their last day of school is mentioned they go a little bit deeper their tentatively scheduled last day of school is scheduled for june 9th so again those are presented

126to you this evening for first read if you have questions or items that we can help clarify please reach out to us and let us know anything you'd want to add dr vogel or as far as the work with team liberty just appreciation like you said thank you and i know uh team liberty and both dr vogel are work closely with area school districts because we do have a lot of common programming so we have to coordinate whether it's northland caps or career centers for those students that have their feet in two worlds the work in the district but then also some of those outlying programs that we we send our students to so again if you have questions or need anything clarified please reach out and let us know otherwise you'll see these for

127action at our next meeting all right i appreciate that in a 7.04 modifications to the overall compensation schedules so this is in line with what we shared about earlier as far as ensuring that we are staffed both quality and quantity and so i want to turn it over to dr vogler to walk us through this item this evening as well yes thank you very much so these are items not for action tonight but for first consideration we wanted to bring them to your attention as i mentioned earlier the topic came up about remunerating teachers that cover for unfilled absences we talked about this at length in team liberty and we've talked about this before after surveying area school districts several in fact it was 14 out of 16 school districts that replied to our survey

128indicated that they do pay teachers when teachers are asked to give up their personal plan time to cover an unfilled absence what that does is it pushes that personal plan time into the evenings and weekends because they still are accountable for that work they have to create papers and plan their lessons it just pushes it into evenings and weekends and so to remunerate them for taking that on the chin pushing that work into the evenings and weekends they pay a rate and so we calculated thank you to cindy sullivan who ran the calculations what a 20 per hour rate would cost the district of course that's offset by what we would be paying kelly services if kelly services were to pick up those absences and that offset was uh i don't know if you have

129the numbers from you was about 20 000 over what we would be spending if kelly services could pick up all of those absences we do have um an increase uptick in absences that are unfilled august of course is a short month but it's also a month where there's very few absences and so the unfilled rate was only nine in the month of august but unfilled absences increased to 105 in september uh to 132 in october and we've had 147 so far in november and november isn't quite finished so we average uh thanks to you know a good august and september we average anywhere from six to seven unfilled absences per day so it's not significantly it's not a significantly high number some days are higher than others but you're looking at remunerating teachers when they're

130called off of their their personal plan time or collaboration time to cover those unfilled absences and reduce the hardship that is placed on buildings by allowing a certificated uh teacher to be in front of students teaching those those classrooms which is a high priority to us all so that's for first consideration we've communicated with team liberty that you would be asked to evaluate that that need make a determination in december and then we have a plan in place to effectuate this change in the second semester should you choose to add that to the salary schedule the second item that's on there is with regard to registered behavior technicians we're kind of wrestling through what the actual title should be some school districts call these implementers some call them uh rbt aids there's different names so

131that part might change but the addition to the salary schedule would not these positions are are designed to implement bcba's behavior plans for students we have some situations where we need to have implementers that are trained and credentialed to implement with fidelity those behavior plans so that it frees up classroom teachers and other certificated personnel to teach the class with those behavior plans in place some of those implementers would be in special ed classrooms and others would be in regular ed classrooms because we do have situations where plans need to be implemented for regulated students because they either do not qualify for special services or they haven't yet qualified for special services so these implementers these registered behavior technicians would be a new position but we're seeing them come into play in several area school

132districts and and we are a school district that is in need of these roles as well thank you so again you'll see that at our next meeting in december so appreciate dr voglar and cindy and others for working on this as well okay can i ask a question so dr vogler how many rbts are we looking at hiring if we can do that yeah right now there would be five total and those are located in three school buildings so one three of them would go in one of our elementary schools connected to a special ed program and two of them would go into regular ed classrooms in two different elementary schools so five total okay question two before you hand off the microphone um is there a plan in play for elementary to be able

133to do the subbing i mean secondary i understand because they have more set schedules elementary seems to be a little bit more fluid as far as being able to pull people from to go and do that it is a little different because the master schedules are set up differently we don't have class periods and passing time at the secondary level so we would be evaluating how to implement that at the elementary level i don't have an answer yet some school districts that we surveyed do that when classrooms are split and and teachers take on an extra load because of an unfilled absence others would lean on other certificated personnel that do have a free window of time to come over and cover those unfilled absences so we'd work with elementary principles on how best to

134implement that at the elementary level thank you thank you all right in the 7.05 contracts purchases and bids we do have a few items under that and so we will turn that over to mr anderson to walk us through those items thank you uh there's two items one is uh just for first read consideration uh and we would plan on having a contract for you next month and the other is an emergency purchase that we'd ask for consideration uh confirmation tonight the first matter is construction management services so as is outlined in front of you that we put an rp out uh back in october and we received four proposals up for uh construction services we interviewed all four firms universal construction navigate building solutions now holds construction in new kirk novak the team reviewed

135the submittals and questions follow-up talked to references several references and the team was unanimous and coming down with the recommendation to go with newkirk novak which as you know would be a change to the program that has been in place for the last 12 years universal construction and again the details of the contract are still being kind of finalized that would be in front of you here in december uh i would be remiss if i did uh take a moment just to thank universal construction they've been they've been a great partner to the school district for 12 years now and just that you're all aware before universal the district had about a 12-year relationship with aci frank kaiser before that about a 12-year relationship with j.e dunn and so there's something there's kind of a

136natural kind of part of this uh process that change sometimes just it's time to change uh but again this is in no way reflective of concern that we had with universal it was newcar presented very well had great references and so that's the recommendation uh that you'll see next month um the second item was an emergency purchase that was made for repairs alexander donaton for the hvac system it's some community issues that took place just a few weeks ago and so that's in front of you for consideration for that any questions for mr anderson on the rfp issue have we had any dealings with new kirk novak in any capacity we have not directly worked with them before they have quite a bit several clients across the metro any districts yeah several districts they work

137in north kansas city they worked several down south johnson county i can provide that list to you but there's a pretty strong group of districts they work with very education focused i believe the board approved the emergency services of p1 group second sandra when you ready yes kim marie yes aj yes drew yes angie yes nick yes motion carries into section 8 board of education starting with legislation and advocacy if you are curious about the advocacy positions for missouri school boards association i would recommend that you go onto msba's site and look at the delegate handbook there were several pieces that they argued back and forth about but it does outline what they are looking to advocate for at the state level when that gets going in january bills get filed in what two weeks

138that's number one pre-filing so keep an eye on that should be interesting you angie appreciate you serving in that role fun and games uh moving into upcoming meetings uh please note uh board candidate filing opens uh december 7th uh bright and early at 8 right here at the district administration center is that right same day as our study session awesome and then closes before the end of the year december 28th at 5 pm so if you're interested in that you know what to do uh as we wrap up the end of the year two more meetings study session is sandra mentioned december 7th 7 a.m and then our regular board meeting on the 21st as we head into the holiday there at 7 00 p.m any border marks seeing none section nine i'll move uh

139i'll hear a motion for adjournment i move the board return second sandra when you're ready andy yes kim marie yes aj yes drew yes angie yes nick yes motion carries thank you thank you everyone [Music] you