001[Music] agenda this evening remove the board approve the agenda as presented second sandra when you're ready scott yes andy yes kim marie yes aj yes drew yes angie yes nick yes motion carries and 2.03 honoring excellence this evening dallas good evening um we have three um video segments we want to show three segments uh for our recognition this month uh we shared a few weeks ago that we had two uh national merit finance semi-finalists that we wanted to recognize tonight that would be andrew bowles from liberty high school and nathaniel paul a senior from liberty north high school i presented them a certificate last week they wanted to share a few remarks as well or at least i twisted their arm a little bit maybe to share those remarks and then i also connected with
002brenda wiederholtz who was recently named the missouri 2021-22 counselor of the year big deal with liberty high school so rob if we could first share that clip [Music] uh definitely really exciting i know that um kind of a long process to kind of get the award and i knew that i had a chance uh early on after the ps8c but it's it was awesome to get the recommendation obviously it's a huge achievement yeah it's definitely a great honor i had a lot of a lot of people cheering me on like my family especially and i'm just glad to have been recognized glad that i was able to achieve this yep thanks to the board i really appreciate the honor it's great um to be recognized obviously great achievement and it's always fun in school is
003able to kind of say congratulations and see the honor be recognized well it is definitely quite an honor and i was very shocked because i am surrounded by excellence every day here at liberty high school i have an amazing counseling and social work team and also i get to work with amazing counselors at liberty north and the academy so it's just it's quite a humbling experience just because i work with amazing people every day and to be to receive this award was just quite a life event there's no doubt about that sure i was very surprised i um because i started the morning out with the meeting with dr wickham and i really thought it was a real meeting but it was not um so i was just um i was kind of at a
004loss for words and i had people afterwards say brenda that's the only time i think i've ever seen you at a loss for words so i was just very just very amazed that they would pick me because i just know that there's so many good counselors out there and they do counselors are just such an intricate part of being just making our schools run and i just hope that everybody realizes how important a school counselor is in liberty public schools in the coming weeks we wanted to make a point to um highlight and showcase some of our staff throughout the district certified staff support staff i connected with dr vogeler a few weeks ago and uh we thought we would start with a pretty special honeycomb young man over at epic elementary garrett brown he
005is the art specialist and arts integration coach and i think we we highlighted him a couple years ago as part of a soar award and he deserves that and some garrett is amazing and we're looking forward to sharing his story with the community and we're going to share it with you here this evening i am a liberty guy um i went to school here k-12 i feel like i got the best liberty experience i could have and i tell students all the time i used to be like you uh i was one of these kids in the seats you know struggling to pay attention just like you and now i get to teach you i get to instruct and share what i've learned the kind of daily affirmations and encouragements that a student can get
006inspired me to maybe think that i could do that in the future and give back in some way [Music] i joke with my boss that i get paid to play you know i get to experiment i get to iterate and come up with new innovative ways to keep kids engaged whether that's a video or a new app or something that kind of tickles my own curiosity i get to tap into that in the classroom and so i'm having fun the kids are having fun and i just enjoy that my job has that element to it not everyone gets to do that [Music] liberty public schools has an amazing culture and i feel like the leadership really listens to teachers and if you're willing to step forward and kind of put ideas out there someone's going
007to catch it and listen and really give it a good look i really feel that i can speak to the administrators and the director's level that i really can't speak to dr tucker that these are not kind of iron-clad barriers between myself as a classroom teacher and the people above me that there's a really good culture of communication i don't feel shut down very often i feel like i can approach the leaders around me and i feel invited to be a leader with them i feel like they really want innovation on every level of the school district to be clear i believe in art for art's sake and the arts and crafts segment of art education but here in liberty we need to be progressive the students are they're consuming youtube they're watching things on
008their devices all the time we need to be able to compete with the things that are grabbing their attention at home and sometimes even in class and so it has to be exciting has to be fun it has to pick their curiosity and for me that's green screen video editing teaching them skills they can take into future careers looking at augmented reality looking at virtual reality looking at animation these are all things that they're consuming with what they watch on their tvs on their devices and they need to learn the building blocks to make those things and i just really appreciate that i can be curious and excited the kids can be curious and excited and it just makes for a better educational experience i'm excited about the future with liberty public schools i am
009not going anywhere and uh hope to be here for a long long time so uh yeah garrett enjoyed visiting with him i told him as i was walking i wish i would have had him as an art teacher so several weeks and months breaking news as we shared this afternoon is about three hours ago we had big news out of springfield and that is bailey burkett with the team trophy today um bailey became the first ever golfer state champion at liberty north high school just like i say about three hours ago and i just happened to reach out and i got connected with bailey through her father on the zoo and we thought we would we didn't want to wait a month to recognize bailey and i told her that there may be a special
010recognition for her at the board meeting tonight so rob if you could share we just i thought i'd put together about a one-minute clip of my conversation um i don't know if it's all set yet i'm excited happy um i was uh bombarded by waters walking off the green so by my teammates so that was fun um but no it was super exciting too yeah um i i made some classes i don't know normally do so that was a big like super confidence booster for that and then uh maybe just wrap up by um kind of sharing uh with not only our board but everyone back here in liberty that's they're already just so excited for you seeing all these comments pouring in on our on our social media and and could you just uh
011share a few a few thoughts with them oh um thank you um it's really great i've had a lot of people reach out to me already so um i'm super grateful for everyone and just a big thank you so bailey burkett i also do want to make mention uh you saw the second place team trophy there um other team members were avery michelson who finished up a great career at liberty north as a senior and then juniors kate braden and emmy grayton led them to a resounding second place finish today so with that that ends my duties with honoring x-men so turn it over to mr bartlow and i'm going to record this for bailey and she's on the road by the way the interview we conducted they were at a fast food restaurant well
012dallas thank you bro this is great honoring excellence tonight lots of good things happening in the district as traditionally we do for state champions we like to give a standing ovation so bailey this is for you a great effort [Music] so before we go into public comment i do have quite a few cards here today we will likely uh truncate uh this evening based on the number uh i would ask as we always do do not repeat what somebody else has said prior to you a person's addressing the board ask to keep your remarks concise to the point each speaker shall be limited to the three minutes person or persons may speak only once at the meeting and concerns brought forward during public comment may be addressed by the superintendent or appropriate staff members usually
013within the week and we will start off first with karen rogers good evening my name is karen rogers and i live in the district with my husband and two children who attend lps middle and elementary school i'm also a co-founder of liberty parents for public schools a facebook page and community of over 1 000 wps parents community members and stakeholders during public comment at last month's board meeting our co-founder beth pharr who's here tonight presented you a petition signed by 863 lps parents grandparents community members and stakeholders the petition stated that we support the district's reliance on recommendations from the cdc and area public health departments for reducing the transmission of cobin 19 in our schools this new parent group and the petition show there is strong support for the district's masking requirements and other
014mitigation protocols we are so heartened by the overwhelmingly positive response that we have received from this group and for the petition many of our supporters who could not be here tonight due to parent-teacher conferences or other conflicts have sent email messages to you regarding their support for continued masking requirements looking at tonight's agenda i know you have much to do and this issue has consumed a significant amount of your time in recent meetings i'm here to reiterate our strong support for continuing the masking requirements until national and local public health agencies reach consensus that there is no longer a need for maximum requirements on schools teen vaccination rates remain low in the metro area and especially the northland the delta variant has impacted children and teens more severely and they can and do die and
015suffer complications from contracting probit 19 including children in our district those of us with kids age 5 to 11 are anxiously awaiting news of a possible emergency use authorization for them to receive the vaccine however we're not there yet and it will take time once approved to roll it out no we recognize this mr president would you direct this the audience to not have outbursts or else i will be making motion to suspend public comment immediately this is not going to turn into the health department direction to the audience to suspend comment be respectful to those speaking on either side of the issue please thank you however we're not there yet and it will take time once approved to roll it out we recognize this is a fluid situation and public health recommendations may change
016over the next several months thank you for continuing to prioritize the health and safety of our kids in the entire lps community [Music] good evening my name is beth farr i have two children enrolled in lps and am the other co-founder of liberty parents for public schools that karen rogers had just mentioned in addition to our support of the current mass requirement our group also looks for opportunities to show appreciation and spread kindness to different departments around our school district i am very proud to say that earlier this month we successfully completed our first lps acts of kindness project the nutritional services staff has been dealing with an unprecedented situation over the past 18 months they've been going above and beyond to make sure our children are taken care of so we wanted to thank
017them for all of their continued efforts earlier this month we had over 30 volunteers from our group handwrite notes of support and gratitude to the cafeteria staff of every school in our district we are very thankful for all of their hard work and dedication and to our children and wanted to let them know that they are very much appreciated moving forward the liberty parents group plans to do more kindness projects throughout the district to show support and appreciation for all of those people who help our children thrive during their years with lps i look forward to sharing our upcoming act of kindness success stories with all of you as we navigate the remainder of this school year together thank you for your time thank you mr uh next mr james does grice no longer make
018manifest tyranny in america i asked this because for over a year i've seen jeremy in my hometown for every year now the school's activists found this dictators forcing mother was over in the face of all the children going through its schools this is not some sort of safety measure as well as some refuse to say reality's masks do nothing we also know that children are essentially no risk from this virus so we can establish these masks are obvious enough to protect children or virus as per my earlier point we seem to have watched our ability to expose tyranny in america and i think this is tyranny playing on something nothing justifies this child abuse and if asked not only now but in the long term what does this do to the small children that are
019forced to go through an eight-hour day they filthy brag with their faces always like these kids not just if faces with adults what would be of these kids in 10 years they still be starved by the abuse of the very people that are supposed to protect them from however that is not just restricted to the children of the royal graves when did the staff stopped costing me simply because i do not want to breathe with filthy rag a hundred students used to be harassed by the staff in the hallways for creating fresh air the entire same policy is designed to force compliance to the young children where they are still going within two and to continue to reinforce this attitude of compliance if the children continue to grow up this military edicts must be removed
020from posthaste insanity restored to our schools in the place of insane paranoia over what is for most people a mild so just as a recap we have heard a pro mask we've had a anti-mask and we've heard from liberty parents group back to kindness project again not needing to repeat those particular subjects but mr david gobin is up next i currently have three kids that are going to republic schools and i understand the beginning that we didn't know uh anything about covenant and we wanted to protect our kids however now we have over a year worth of data and we know how it affects kids who know who's susceptible to disease and luckily we know that the kids are at very little danger from both according to the cdc there have been 513 deaths involving
021children for kids 0 to 17 years old that equates to about 7 and 1 million to put that into perspective during the same time period for the same age group there has been 1018 deaths involving pneumonia or about 14 and 1 million twice as many the cdc even states that for children the flu is more dangerous than coded during the 2018 and 2019 flu season which was pretty mild there were 370 372 children that died from the flu now it's only over the course of a few months versus 19 months that we have so far with coco in fact unvaccinated children are less likely to be hospitalized or diet concocted than fully vaccinated 40 year olds as for mass unfortunately we don't have many studies even though we should have there are two two large
022studies that i know of one that's in bangladesh and when it's in georgia the bangladesh study took place from november 2020 until april 2021 and included 600 villages and 342 126 adults that were divided into three groups one no mask one with clock masks and one with surgical masks there was no difference in effectiveness between the cloth mask group and the no mask group the surgical mask group saw only about a 10 effectiveness and that was not and was not significantly effective for users that were under 40 years old it really only helped for people who are older older than 40 years old the georgia study was conducted by the cdc in november 2020 to december 2020 and including 169 schools and more than 90 000 elementary school students the study determined that there was
023no significant difference between schools with mandated mass for kids and those without a mandate the only mitigation measures that showed any significant difference was ventilation and teacher masking on the other hand the american academy of pediatrics was not able to produce any evidence for its recommendation for students to wear masks the cdc only replied to inquiry with the reason that children younger than 12 years old couldn't get vaccinated but they could not provide evidence or studies to show that students should wear masks many countries know this and they don't mask children the uk ireland sweden norway denmark finland france the netherlands switzerland and italy don't mandate mass for for their kids there has been no evidence and more outbreaks there the world health organization suggests not masking kids due to potential academics and social harms
024for children and may lack a clear benefit as for reasons not mandate master children they need to see faces to understand social cues and learn to read emotions kids who especially with speech delays need to see faces to learn how to form their own when speaking when alice reached their his classroom children need to need the reinforcement from other teachers and peers which do not occur when everyone is wearing masks my son's speech therapist even says that masks are keeping kids with speech issues from progressing my son was making good progress until the school shut down his progress has been severely hampered by the masks thank you uh william crawford i would ask mr crawford if your comments are about anti-masks uh to refrain from those comments we've heard several from those too from those
025yeah good evening my name is william crawford uh former student of liberty graduated class of 15 did four years of marine corps i'm currently in school right now for biomedical engineering and what i'm noticing is that a lot of my peers are behind me uh i did a research paper this spring the united states is trailing the majority of other countries in the nation and i have to wonder why that is i think a lot of us do the fact that we don't have the standardized curriculum i've spoken with several of my friends who either are educators whose parents are educators and they say that largely educators have input as to what needs to be taught in schools and seeing the emphasis that was put on art classes i have to assume that that's part
026of the problem students shouldn't be taught things like that we need to be focused on the core things necessary for academic progress how many people in this room right now can raise their hand and say that they were greatly benefited by their elementary school art class uh we need to be focused on the things that are going to set them up for success be it in college or any other field that they go with when i was in school with big emphasis was put on college i didn't pay attention to it because i was going to school third i was going to three four that's what my director was going to be that's where my career path plan so i had to learn all that on my own after the fact of the matter is
027that there aren't going to be that many students that are interested to be graphic designers we still need doctors we still need lawyers we still need architects and all of those degree programs have prerequisites they all have material that isn't centered around the flashy stuff it's not centered around building computer programs i have kids that are in my calculus 2 class right now that are struggling with high school algebra i don't know what district they came from and i'm sorry that i can't help them but we can't help our district so please i'm asking you guys to have a little bit more of a heavy-handed influence with the teachers emphasis what they decide what they're teaching for all the parents in the room you guys can be involved too speak with your uh talk to
028the teachers talk to the school board that's all it takes is somebody to make an effort once again i'm glenn crawford thank you up next alex george again mr george if it's anti-masking i'd ask you to hold your comments good evening guys a lot of stuff i was saying got covered but also uh i know some of the hesitancy is a lot of schools of ours are in the kansas city uh area instead of in liberty i don't understand why if if their kids see you get to pick where you live so if you pick liberty and you're in liberty you should follow the liberty rules i mean quinn lucas isn't by mayor he's kid's cities he's not liberty so that that's an excuse that doesn't really fly because you should be able to segregate
029that if your school is in kansas city hey you chose to live there you kind of just got to ride that out and those are big liberty there's not a massive day here people are going out i mean they can see the chiefs games and every other college football where they're rushing the stadium they're rushing the field and dude there's thousands upon thousands of people on top of each other and we haven't had any spikes since football season started so the mass thing it's ran its course it's about time to go ahead and get rid of it and let these kids be able to see each other's faces it really is there's no evidence all it is is you guys now deciding to put rules on kids because but do your husbands and wives not
030let you make rules at home because we're in america we get to choose what our kids do they're my kids not yours you guys take great care of them while they're in school and i appreciate that but also i also know that if i'm missing seeing people smile back at me my kids are missing it too and young kids that's when they're developing facial recognition and all that stuff and you guys are hindering that so you guys want to cause more involved than good all right again reminders not to repeat what others have said previously natalie shull next you said you're trump hating some speakers um what we don't want is repeats of what others have said and commented on oh so everybody will have a chance to see the blue hearts blue cards everybody
031can speak it was my understanding that your job was to be a liaison between the district and the community your elected step policy that has the interests of your students staff and parents in mind i was off on that it's evident that the only thing that you're concerned about is the millions of dollars you're receiving from cover relief money and pushing dei as hard as you can to groom the parents who are minors i remind you to accept face masks as the new normal and pornographic material as acceptable to have in your school library so i started hearing from people that said that these books were in the libraries and they were saying how inappropriate it was i said there's no way these books are in the library it cannot be that bad so i
032started browsing through these books when somebody checked them out and um they're disgusting they are disgusting they're born in rapid and they're in our children's library in the library of liberty and liberty north checked out we have them it's filled so this school board is not only pro mask but pro-quarantining healthy children your pro-pornographic material in a library no doubt soon you're going to probably require students to get injected with something that's not even a vaccination that is killing people including teenagers and we're the domestic terrorists let's think about that i get refuge in my bible so i'm going to read second period to you just as both prophets rose up in the past among god's people false teachers will rise up in the future among you they will slip in with their destructive opinions
033they'll deny the very master who bought their freedom and dooming themselves to destruction swiftly but not before they attract others by their immoral behavior because of them and their ways others will criticize and condemn the path of truth that we walk as disreputable these false teachers will follow their greed and exploit you with their fabrications but be assured that their judgment was pronounced long ago and their destruction does not sleep i am praying for all of you thank you hello most of the things i was going to talk about tonight have already been discussed but there's just a few more we chose liberty schools to pay liberty taxes we the parents can determine when our children are sick and keep them home this has been going long enough that most of us can see it
034isn't about health we have skewed numbers test recalls for false positives and if you die with copin it still counts as a copic death even though it's not the next group they want to vaccinate our children 5 to 11 that will not happen in our home the children who get the virus recover and build their natural immunity california is pushing for the vaccine in public schools and the protests are happening if we wait for the government to tell us the pandemic is over it will never happen there is too much money in control with this virus according to education week by associated press lps is to receive three million seven hundred and forty three thousand nine hundred and sixty four dollars roughly 297.54 per student is government funding taken away if we don't follow the
035rules are we in it for the money when will this end thank you rusty sid um my name is rusty i do live in liberty kansas city we moved down here roughly 10 years ago we chose this district because of schools they were good we had high hopes and that was all before covington since coven it's opened i think a lot of parents eyes as to what really goes on behind the scenes at our schools um teaching the transgender the black lives matter pornography in the schools i mean i was really disappointed that our eighth grade or middle school kid came home and in the yearbook it said black lives matter this is a peaceful protest and they propagated it in in the yearbook um that should not be the case black lives matter is
036not peaceful protest let's just get that straight um i'm also the one that had emailed dr tucker about the eric schmitt letter that was received and his response was additionally you had asked about the reference to the kansas city health department this was only mentioned in response to advice from eric smith that was ordered in your previous email the clay county public health center school guidelines recommend math to be worn in schools and that is the guidance we are following so my question back to you is if that's who you're recommending the guidance you're following and they only recommend math why did my kids still have to go to school on a daily basis with a diaper over their face full of germs that is your own words right there so i like the response
037in my email as to why if we are only recommended from the clay county health department my kids are still in math that is all this pam newton hello um my husband and i have been parents of kids in the liberty public school system for over 20 years now and i have loved each and every school our kids attended with a specific emphasis on lewis and clark for four years i chaired the teacher appreciation week there and i put my heart and soul into making sure the staff and the teachers felt the love from all of us parents some of the teachers in this community left an indelible mark on our sons that they'll take with them into adulthood but today i don't recognize this school system today we have a daughter who's a sophomore
038at liberty north she's an avid grader sometimes finishing a book in two days recently she pulled two books from the shelves of the library that were beyond shocking the words on the pages of these books would have most adults arrested for sharing pornography if caught distributing them to kids and yet these are free to check out for students within the school district let me read you an excerpt i was extremely nervous he said this is a fear as with most things that you were doing for the first time but this was my ass i was struggling to imagine someone inside me and he was large but i was going to try i had previously talked someone who clearly enjoyed it but he had been enjoying anal sex before i ever came along he knew what
039to expect i didn't as an avid porn watcher the only thing i knew about anal sex previously was that it was painful or at least played up as such on cameras nervous and drunk i listened and got on my stomach he got on top and slowly inserted himself into me it was the worst pain i think i'd ever felt in my life then he added more lube and tried again which felt better but not much he began his stroking motion and eventually i felt a mixture of playing pleasure with pain i'm just going to stop there because it's so foul but my question to you is this who is ordering and approving these books yeah at our liberty schools are you okay with this would you let your children be reading this in the living
040room by the fireplace tonight while we're all sitting around trying to have family time is that okay um i'm furious i'm curious if this would be an issue for our local authorities um to review this and get involved because this is approved reading in our schools what is next what is okay with you amen yes angie yes kim marie yes he said yes scott yes yes aj yes i should keep your parents are upset on this and you silence us wow dude yes i mean and you're telling us we act like children this is a pretty childish thing to do you just spoke for 30 minutes you don't like what we're talking about so hey we're going to cut out other questions about a couple different things please [Music] so [Music] major roberts rules provide
041for consent's agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion documentation concerning these items has been provided to all board members and the public in advance to assure an extensive and thorough review items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member approved consent agenda items 3.01 through 3.07 second sandra when you're ready scott yes andy yes kim marie yes aj yes drew yes angie yes nick yes mission cares into reports from the administration first off under 4.01 is our innovation and learning report so we'll turn it over to doctors westfall and dr moore [Music] good evening receiving the first items i would like to bring to your attention tonight are the five annual reports that we submitted to this evening these reports are updated throughout
042the year but each one has been prepared for tonight as an update from the ones that we started last year they include from assessment evaluation and testing for from director mr hand one from fine arts from director aaron money and assistant director matthew allison also in my group is the one from library media services from director andrea and then one from special programs from dr eisenheimer and then finally rounding out the group of five uh the one for curriculum instructional professional learning so i know they are um quite a bit to read but the best part is that the updates at the very end of it will be able to tell you two other areas that i'd like to draw your attention to from our enrichment and learning uh board report this month i just
043wanted to draw out from the department of college and career readiness the information from colleen jones that the future friday career stuff series is up and running and the first session on business management and technology for high school students will be has just finished and we have our next session on medical and healthcare on november 5th at uh liberty north at nine o'clock so if any of you were able to join what happened we also had over 100 students who were invited to attend a professional skills conference at williamspool on october 6th they participated in breakout sessions such as preparing for college building linkedin profiles creating personal brands mock tours mock interviews internship panels etc and they were provided the sessions were provided by college personnel and college students this was the culmination of was
044the presentation from the marketing director from the chiefs about the importance of networks and internships and so the kids really loved it and we were excited to have it finally a few exciting announcements from our department of fine arts started the concert season and the middle school plays are in full swing going well both lhs and lfnhs marching bands took first place at their field show competitions at civilians and we jumped north on october and then last but not least liberty high school chamber orchestra and the warren hills troublemakers were selected to perform at the state music convention on january 8th 28th on the 2022 market thank you any questions of dr westfall or dr moore under the innovation i i would just like to send a shout out to colleen jones who is out
045there marketing her group at every opportunity possible she even did it with the elementary kids at the character trade collection this week it was amazing one of her interns was there and um it was great to see that program in progress okay thank you dr westfall uh next report then is under 4.02 and that's the office of equity and we'll welcome dr dixon seahorn to the podium good evening to the board of directors for the sake of brevity i just wanted to just uh highlight a couple of things in our report um our equity action planning sessions have gone very well with not only school leaders of this case but directors school leaders have completed their plans and so they are in implementation things at this point directors will have through the end of this
046month to work on their plans i'm going to present with them and they'll turn those in by the end of the month and then the last phase of this planning part would be with departments and so that would be hr and operations coming up next week and so finally then we'll be able to give you a highly review what those plans are about so that you can move things out of work and can follow your director at your leisure the other thing i wanted to highlight is around our belonging work and as you know at the board governance level we've already had the opportunity with dr clay cobb to uh for take a professional learning session we will have another one of the november for our fourth step session and then in december uh either
047dr floyd cobb or john pineapple will be with us with our district leadership team but in the interim i remember last friday we didn't walk upon our dlt district leadership team book talk series and we're going to take eight weeks for those that have volunteered to be a part of this building to just really delve into the contents of the book that should really wrap our minds around what it really means to create a sense of learning for staff for students and families and they'll take that work back to their teams so that we can be more diligent about um creating that sense of belonging so just wanted to highlight that as embarking on professional learning um at the upper levels of the organization excuse me right now starting with leadership which is very very
048important so those are the highlights from uh entertainment no questions one of the parents who was a part of the focus group follow-up that you all did through the process reached out and said they appreciated the sharing and the continued engagement so i just want to say kudos for that thank you thank you so much for that other questions of dr dickson seahorn thank you 4.03 then our finance report we will welcome up mrs sullivan thank you dr tucker and good evening we have one donation to recognize this evening that's a monetary donation in the amount of 1598.33 [Music] that was made to the district by mcdonald's great plains business unit from the fries for school supplies fundraiser down front so we would like to thank them for that donation to our district um i
049would like to highlight in my report that in the financials this month we have the first of our typically um larger budget amendments which included an adjustment to local revenue due to changes in the levy that we had at the levitary last month and then we did complete employee cost projections to true up for changes in hiring that were made before or after we did the budget because of things changing and anything unknown at that point so those were presented to you this evening and next month i anticipate some adjustments due to the submission of the september student account and the truing up of the dressy formula foundation formula due to all districts submitting that september account so more to look forward that month next month and the afc audit and finance committee reviewed documents
050and had a few questions for me but nothing of note to pass on to you next month the audit and finance committee will meet with the auditor to receive the financial statements on monday then on tuesday of november at that board meeting the auditor will be here to present those financial statements to you the results of our financial audit so we'll look forward to that next month that's all i wanted to highlight for you tonight unless you have any other questions for me questions for finance okay thank you thank you next then 4.04 under our operations report mr anderson [Music] thank you uh just a few things that i'd like to outline or highlight from our report uh first i just want to recognize nutrition services uh they were notified about a week or so
051ago that the usda has through the state of missouri honored them with the school lunch champion for the state for the year uh which was really kind of uh anticipated and and in the conversation that followed a lot of it had to do with how we kind of managed through the pandemic and are still keeping those five daniel kids going so i just really wanted to call them out in support of that that department i also wanted to highlight uh we've talked often during this time of code um just how the other all the departments are kind of heat cranking at their work and specifically health services highlighted a few things that they've done this past month and just really quickly hosting immunization clinics for required vaccines and some of the high schools uh allowing
052or providing for non-invasive physicals uh for for some of the kids at some of the elementary again with parents involvement clay county health center working with us on some dental screenings and then also the eye care for kids program which is providing vision screening and again that's all of our health services staff cooperating coordinating with those groups and just wanted to kind of share that with you all tonight two more points capital planning efforts are well underway we're engaging all the buildings and departments in terms of what their needs are anticipate during the next couple months we'll be working through a lot of that and then bring it to you uh in early 22 with what what that next program will look like as we roll into the summer of 22. um and last last
053but not least is just a quick update on our nutrition services program uh we have as we've kept you up to speed have been able to kind of satisfy the demands of the program have had to be fairly creative uh we're renting space to store uh frozen items uh we've bought a vehicle uh we're using our staff we're bringing in staff to help kind of transport that that's an interim measure uh and that will carry us forward uh for as long as we need it but we are also engaging our architects to look at building on a freezer facility at the existing support services building has been meeting with them today so we'll continue to keep you updated on that with that if you happen to take any questions of operations no questions not a
054surprise though that nutrition services got people i mean they do a great job and we know they have and great to see that recognition for the team for sure thank you mr anderson 4.05 human resources dr vogelar thank you i appreciate the opportunity to speak on behalf of the human resources department we've got a report uploaded i'll take any questions on on any of the content there but i want to highlight a couple things uh one of the the things i want to highlight i did mention in the retreat on october 5th but i wanted to pull it into this update formally and comment uh here tonight in the board meeting as well uh as you know liberty north high school senior athlete cochran is doing an internship with rebecca fisher who is our wellness
055coordinator and uh if you ever wonder if these student internships are engaging in fake work or real work it very much is real work ashland cochran has developed the 30 days of gratitude aligned with research that says that when we learn to focus on gratitude we find ourselves healthier and more well emotionally socially and she built a 30 days of gratitude we're going to roll out to all employees in november so we're very proud of her in the uv as well she's doing real work significant work that will touch the lives of all of our employees in the month of november uh obviously the work that we're doing uh aligned with our strategic goals and wellness um uh roll out every month so uh september wrapped up the take charge of your health and october's
056wellness program is a campaign on mental health observance since the month of october is world mental health day as well we're very proud of the work that ashland is doing as part of her internship with regards to the grow your own program i want to talk about the administrators program our leadership academy because i did invite heather buchman who's assistant principal virtue elementary school to have the night with our teacher leaders who are participating they have 12 teacher leaders participating in our leadership academy and the revision of the scope and sequence of leadership academy really has put an emphasis on having current assistant principals spend time with these emerging leaders to allow them to see what it's like to transition from classroom teacher into leadership role specifically in liberty the topic that heather buckman led
057our cohort through was on work-life balance it is quite an adjustment for anyone to experience work-life balance but it's especially uh challenging when you go from mastering work-life balance as a teacher into a leadership role and you discover you've got to remaster it all all over again so i appreciate heather brockman and the work that she did to step out as a leader to help cultivate that leadership mindset with our emerging leaders leadership academy uh and then finally i want to draw that obviously tonight you'll be voting on the insurance renewal as a result of that vote we will open our enrollment for all employees october 27th through november 9th and uh many members of my hr team are led by uh christo morgan uh jessica fischer who i mentioned and julie giles will also
058go on starting on october 20th tomorrow to really lead the campaign of making sure that all of our employees are very well equipped on what their options are so that during the open enrollment window they are most important to make decisions that are in the best interest of themselves and their families so with that i'll take any questions that you have on anything in the report in addition to what was highlighted here tonight i just have a quick question how impacted and this is probably for you and innovations um how impacted is our professional development with the limited subs that we're experiencing well as far as the impact goes i'll let dr westfall speak to impact but she has been uh you know a very good partner with us in recognizing that uh right now
059it is difficult with the unpredictability of the need for employees to be out covered leave of course mandates a time out even if recovery from covet is in a matter of a day or two uh there's a quarantine period uh that when when there are uh that's very taxing on our subsystem and then you just have the overall labor market that affects people who want to do any job including being subs and so that does have an impact as a result we are trying to keep our demand as low as possible to ensure that when people are out of the classroom we're able to have subs to cover that part of that partnership is dr westfall holding back or limiting or getting creative on how she administers professional development so that professional learning can continue
060while minimizing the full day requirements for subs to accomplish that i mentioned in the report dr westfall included a portion in there that kind of talked about some of that creativity taking advantage of earlier this wednesday so you can do some things after hours on saturdays but i'll let you add to that if you want to about him because i mean there's having this problem with that once we're delaying um but we're getting to a point now when december comes and we need training that you know we have order dealing that we have i mean we have a lot of things that we've been building on pbl that our teachers are asking for so we're scheduling it coming up we're waiting to see how it flows hopefully the decision that state made today will help
061us a little bit as that goes along but um right now and so the other part that's really hard is we can schedule it but if they don't kill the teachers so then we end up with this whole meeting schedule and somebody's secured and then half people can't come and sell it's just it's just like we're trying i mean we are we dr vogel our email text messages or emails us both every day with what our status is so that we can kind of keep track of what it looks like some of the dynamics of that statistically is it's the night before entries and the morning of the entries for absences that are the hardest to fill and most likely to go unfilled not professional development requests those get filled but in a situation where
062a classroom position that didn't get filled because they got called off in the morning sometimes principals have to you know make an executive decision to pull the sub off of the pd assigned teacher to put it in the unfilled urgent need because they can call the teacher out of pd to come back and cover the classroom so that's that's the dynamic of it the professional development uh absences tend by and large to have 100 percent fill rate is those morning of and those night ones that go under it so it's a very fluid the situation are being really good troopers about this they're doing after school and weekends when things are really like are met for example are not the patrons like they're just doing it after school or weekends right now to try to
063get that in before and it's the thank you anything else for dr gogular thank you my report this evening is uploaded as well but just to kind of highlight a couple of items that it contains first i want to thank everyone for a successful first quarter and that goes from the classroom and our students our teachers staff the building level our principals administrators certainly our parents entire community the staff within the dac but then also our board of education when we started the school year we held two goals front and center the first goal was to keep everyone safe and healthy the second was to remain open five days a week fully in person for those choosing that option as well as a virtual school choice and staying open as long as we possibly could
064so we've made it to the end of the four the first quarter i know that there are meaningful conversations happening this week with our parents and our teachers in and around the success the concerns the opportunities that our children possess pre-k through grades 12 so we certainly want to express our appreciation to really our entire liberty public schools community so thank you on behalf of myself as well as the district in addition a couple of items to share we are in the process of finalizing our strategic plan as we've talked all along and are wanting to bring that forward at our november study session to share those areas that we can celebrate those additions and then really codify that as we move forward into the remainder of this year on november 9th an opportunity to
065engage those that will attend our liberty education foundation community breakfast we'll hear from the district as far as our district update centered in and around the graduate profile the visit vision as well as the strategic plan that speaks to both the academic as well as those essential skills and dispositions that we desire for all of our students in liberty public schools department of elementary and secondary education continues to be in a process of releasing data tied to end-of-year exams as far as our end of course exams at the secondary level as well as map assessments at the earlier grades some of that remains embargoed until early december which has delayed our lps scorecard slightly and so as we continue to gather those pieces to fulfill and complete the scorecard that will be brought to you
066sometime in early december we're also working pretty quickly on developing a badging process through partnership with the kaufman foundation in an effort to ensure that even starting with a class of 22 that our seniors that graduate with a market value asset be it an internship an externship opportunity accumulating nine hours of dual credit or an entrepreneurial experience a client based project there's even a category of kind of build your own real world learning experience as students wrap those experiences up this year we want to recognize them and honor them in attaining a badge for that market value asset so we're working in collaboration with the kauffman foundation to be able to put in a badging system that hopefully can then be recognized across our entire region but then also utilized by other school districts across
067the kansas city area both on the missouri side as well as on the kansas side we're also in the process of working with the department of elementary and secondary education around ncip6 we provided some timelines and information on the rollout of the next m6 cycle and what that might look like as well as a window of providing feedback right now so we've already started to provide feedback on behalf of liberty public schools uh in and around m6 and what that might look like and around accreditation and accountability as a reminder we have a couple of facility master planning engagement meetings coming up on october 26th and october 27th and we'll be pushing that information out and circulating that we sent that out earlier but we'll continue to push that as we approach those dates the
068last thing i would say is that as we ready for the spring legislative session in missouri as we share every year december 1st is the filing window as far as pre-filing of legislation and so we'll begin kind of working toward that and development of our legislative priorities so we'll be bringing that forward over the course of the next several weeks and certainly solicit input from the board of education in preparation for the spring legislative session with that said would certainly open it up for any questions that you all may have of me this evening yeah the embargoing of the data by the state that's traditional right that typically happens correct and it's a kind of a gradual release i think the most important piece to make note of is that student level information has been
069shared with families and so if your child participated in map map assessments last spring they should have information that has hit mailboxes to be able to provide awareness around how students performed as of last spring so that's the critical piece some of the more aggregate pieces as far as district performance and comparison data is still forthcoming so okay all right no more questions there moving into unfinished business starting with 5.01 our policy revisions so these are brought to you this evening um a second time you saw them earlier in september and so we have policies a c a h d k and e b a b presented to you this evening for your consideration any comments discussion on these if not entertain a motion and move the board adopt policies a c a h d
070k e b a b second sandra are you ready scott yes andy yes kim marie yes aj yes drew yes angie yes nick yes mission carries into 5.02 our legal services agreements so this is brought to you this evening as well for second viewing and consideration as you'll recall we provided an update earlier in the summer that we would be letting out an rfp for our various packages around legal services that are provided to the district so this evening we're bringing that back forward to you and just a quick recap in terms of our recommended organization to move forward with on the special education related legal services presenting to you this evening is glenn mundorf the second area we're presenting to you under human resources and labor-related legal services is the law firm of touah
071keaney cooper mohan and jack staff and then in respect to the district's general counsel and legal services recommendation of withers brandt igo and mullin x anything else to add mr anderson yeah i would just point out that what's unique maybe this go around is we have set the sunset on this on these three current agreements to june 30 of 23 and that was primarily to get on cycle with the rest of our kind of decisions and around contracts and relationships questions discussion on this the board approved legal circus legal services agreements with the firms of gwen mundorf llc tooth keaney cooper mohan and jack staff pc and withersprant igo and mullanex second sandra when you're ready scott yes andy yes kim marie yes aj yes drew abstain angie yes nick yes motion carries and into
072the final unfinished business the 22 insurance renewal recommendation we shared this recommendation with you back in september and appreciate our broker holmes murphy walking us through the renewal in terms of its details also want to reiterate our thanks to team liberty and the work that they do at the start of every school year and looking at our overall insurance and benefits packages just a very quick recap as a summary initially when we put this out to market we were looking at about 11.1 percent above existing premium for blue cross and blue shield renewal after negotiations with the help of homes murphy we're able to whittle that down to approximately 4.5 percent of an increase and so the overall dollar amount of premiums associated with health dental and vision coverage equates to six hundred and fifty
073seven thousand two hundred and forty six dollars or the equivalent of a four point four percent increase to our 2021 premiums in total that includes life voluntary life short-term disability long-term disability flexible spending accounts vision insurance dental insurance medical employee assistance program are the items that round out that insurance and benefits package so to speak so with that dr volvo or anything to add as far as addition this evening thank you for uh for including team liberty that's a process i know cindy and i uh really get the privilege of seeing the inner workings of that and i've never really i've never seen a more collaborative single-mindedness emerged from a committee that i've worked with in team liberty so dr pepper said thank you to them i think i thank them as well it is
074a testament to i think the way our district is decidedly transparent and collaborative and cooperative and the byproduct of that are recommendations that dr tucker can bring forward with that amendment so thank you would present that to you for your consideration questions comments on the renewal unless the board approved the employee insurance program and agreements as presented second sandra when you're ready scott yes andy yes kim marie yes aj yes drew yes angie yes nick yes motion carries into new business looking at the early notification incentive program to begin 6.01 we will turn it over to dr vogellar to walk us through that thank you very much so we uh we're in our sixth year really of uh tracking the success of an early notification program three years ago we made a decision to increase
075the amount of that incentive from five hundred dollars to two and a half percent of base salary to a cap of 2500 that may sound like quite a jump over the previous but it has produced a significant amount of uh communication between our employees who know they're going to retire and uh the school system so that we can move more quickly on back filling positions and in our labor market that's truly a crucial thing i know i've given information on just how much the district is able to save by that early notification even though we're spending a little more money to get that early notification but this is really just a renewal of the exact same plan that we've done for the last three years with the january 10th deadline instead of a january 15th
076deadline and that's just to accommodate getting everything ready for the board report in january what's been the participation rate uh recently doctor so from a participation standpoint so last year we had uh 21 individuals take advantage of it the year before that it was 23 year before that it was 22 so right around in that area but i think the significant cause for savings is that the the bulk of those individuals are teachers who are retiring or certificated staff who are retiring and uh in the salaries that we are able to recruit because of that early notification results in a pretty significant savings and then the time saved in backfilling those positions the hiring season for educators really launches in january february and much of the best talent gets snatched up before the march board
077meeting even occurs so the early notification really allows us to take advantage of that any other questions um dr vogler if the the number six word says if the employee returns to the district does that include if they're a high need or a 550 yeah not necessarily so the the main purpose of that provision in there is we don't want someone to disclose a retirement with the intent of coming back and uh and there's psrs and peers rules that govern that as well and so that really just allows us to declare that we are working with psrs and peers and our retiring employee to make sure that we're in compliance with that thank you is the 550 the number always they can work yeah that refers to a rule that caps a person receiving benefits
078from psrs to 550 hours of work within a year uh that's been lifted due to covid as you know it's it's not in place right now that was extended through december 31st but that's typically what that rule refers to and that's on the certificated side that rule does not apply to people working in a classified role any other questions comments i move the board approve the 2021-2022 early notification incentive program sandra when you're written yes andy yes kim marie yes aj yes drew yes angie yes nick yes mission cruise the 6.02 the classified schedule on transportation and school-age child care this is another item that we've been updating you along the way as far as possible solutions in and around some of our staffing challenges i wanted to turn it over to dr voglar as
079well as mr anderson to walk us through this thank you so we've talked a lot about a multi-pronged approach to address some of the labor concerns that we have uh transportation and kid zone are two areas where we have significant turnover and the applicant pool to backfill those positions are not as robust as it was prior to the labor market so transportation in the fy 21 saw 38 percent turnover rate that's now you know in the mid 40s uh high 40s in terms of turnover rate kidzone and fy21 had a 62 turnover rate now some of that is uh fairly common because you're hiring people who are either in high school or in college in in working an a.m or a pm shift and so there'll be some turnover that's just automatic there but the
080the key is the average number of openings at any given time three to seven on transportation when you're talking about bus routes that's pretty significant and anywhere from 7 to 15 within kit zone which is significant when you're serving kids and keeping those ratios under control typically any movements on salary schedules or changes in titles or things like that follows a cycle each march you get a recommendation that you vote on in april and then periodically we do compensation studies across the whole system but in situations where the data is driving a need to address an issue outside of that cycle we we let that happen because obviously there's a great need that's demonstrating that so the data is there in the in the retention and the recruitment uh statistics that's driving that change on
081the kidzone side it's mainly changes in titles and length of time and expectations to work both in am and pm shift as opposed to just an am shift so a lot of that's cosmetic there is some movement with like managers site directors the the people who are in the leadership position because there's a significant lag in that market on the transportation side it really is to address a lag in the market both of these movements that address lag in the market in the market don't solve the problem it's not intended to solve the problem but it is to match the market as much as possible or get close to closing that gap knowing that a full compensation study is going to come where a broader market research will point to recommendations through a third party
082on what to do with those particular positions over the long haul steve i don't know if you want to add anything to that thank you so again just for informational purposes this evening and then we'll bring that back forward for you so if you have questions or thoughts anything needing to be clarified please let us know and we'll provide that answer for you thank you yes so when approved dr vogel r if we prove this this would go into effect immediately and it would grandfatherater you know allow the others who are already hired for those positions to have that salary as well is that correct correct yeah that's a good question so it is designed to be a modification to the uh fy 22 schedules the current schedules that we're deploying and so incumbents will
083be affected by that immediately upon upon your vote okay great uh into 6.03 contracts and purchases we do have several that are provided to you this evening for consideration as part of the our emergency provision or board policy djf djf-1 so mr anderson is going to walk us through those yes thank you uh there's two two items that are under the emergency actions were related to nursing health health services staffing issues and challenges that we're facing um and this is really serving students needs uh that that come up from time to time so one was just an addendum to an existing contract and another was an actual agreement with with uh to provide nursing staff for some sped assignments we also had some plumbing issues we're brought in lexington plumbing to handle both water leak
084and early childhood and water leak at south valley middle school so you've received updates on all that work as they were currently last couple weeks the last item is a release agreement uh with allison miller our architects mr roy would outline on that there was work done here recently at liberty high school in the vestibule area that was not built as designed uh district staff club net expressed concerns uh even though we knew the design was was proper um and because there were some field adjustments made without proper vetting the architect agreed to essentially own the the change and and correction um so all that work has taken place uh we're satisfied with the work uh we paid for the work as it was taking place because that's how our contracts were and now hollis
085miller has agreed to pay for that out of their insurance to cover all of those costs this is a simple release agreement basically indicating that we will not uh um be able to go back to them on any other future concerns but we have um just against alex and staff to inspect we feel very comfortable with the work as it's been completed and would appreciate the approval of that on first stream tonight any questions or comments that means the board approved the agreements and services as listed second sandra when you're written scott yes andy yes kim marie yes aj yes drew yes angie yes nick yes motion carries into section 7 board of education starting with legislation and advocacy the msba conference is the first weekend of november there will be a delegate assembly and
086they will establish their platforms what they're going to look at for upcoming legislation so anyone is welcome to attend that there's only one voting member though from the district but if you're interested in hearing what their platform is um or their discussion about it please feel free to join they have food too always a good thing they have snacks thank you angie for continuing to represent us in that effort uh 7.02 board remarks updates anyone i would just like to say i am so excited that the character traits luncheon is back in person it is so nice to see small children being rewarded and for doing things in their classroom that has nothing to do with academics or sports they're just good people who make good choices and the stuff coming in from the community
087has really grown these guys took home a big shopping bag full of stuff um in the past it was like a piggy bank i mean it wasn't bad stuff it's just now they're taking out a bag they have a lot of community sponsors so thank you to the community for supporting that program for starters that's amazing thanks to the parents who work with their charming children and for the teachers who nominate them and the people who come it's just it's a very fun event to attend and be part of so i'm glad we're back in person i just wanted to add that um kind of getting getting back to in person i had the pleasure of attending the foundation liberty education foundation meeting last week and those events are going to be back in person
088this year and so just want to encourage people to get out there and and look at those and attend and support support all the good work that the foundation does the other thing i'll end with is i know none of us want to cut off public comment i know i don't but when we have people speaking and you've got other people in the audience that are chiming in and trying to talk over we're trying to disrupt like nick said earlier it's a business meeting and we have to suspend the grind at that point so i encourage people to come here and talk to us even when they disagree with me and don't like what i say i think that's important important part of the process but we we can only do it if we're all
089holding ourselves to uh the standard set forth by our policies here so agree moving to 7.03 looking at the upcoming meetings uh next one up is the study session on november 2nd early at 7 00 am and if there is nothing else i'll entertain you have one other item i do and that is just among the upcoming meetings and we've provided information in terms of the upcoming board candidate filing workshop yes starting that a little bit earlier we usually have that in december but that particular date i'm making sure i get it correct here november 16th 5 30 p.m prior to our regularly scheduled board meeting night that will take place in this room so anything else to add to that senior okay thank you appreciate that uh entertain you german i moved before to
090turn second sandra when you're ready scott yes andy yes kim marie yes aj drew yes angie yes nick yesterday [Music] you