001[Music] so the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all right moving on to 2.02 approval of the agenda i move the board approve the agenda as presented second have my cheat sheet because i have already changed things aj yes david yes angie yes scott yeah andy yes nick yes kim marie yes motion carries and next item 2.03 approval of april 6 minutes i moved the board approved the april 6 2021 board session minutes board study session minutes aj yes david yes angie yes scott yes andy yes nick yes kim marie yes motion carries all right moving on to 2.04 outgoing board member recognition okay and so tonight is a night that we say goodbye to david and i have
002comments prepared that i am going to work hard to get through bear with me bear with me so i first had an opportunity to sit down with david for coffee when he was running for the board and when i arrived he was reading the biography of steve jobs and something that steve jobs said is innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower so david brought his own brand of innovative thinking to his board work and one of the things i've most appreciated about his time on the board is his ability to look at situations from a different perspective and to offer unique viewpoints and solutions in a way that challenged all of us to think differently in that first meeting david also told me he wanted to contribute to our planning around student growth and
003facilities and he said he thought of it like a growing family who needed more rooms and beds while still sticking to a budget and over the last nine years david has been instrumental in his analysis of our financial situation asking questions and offering insights especially when we consider debt refinancing options that have improved our financial situation his contributions have helped our school family shape the right-sized house so school board work done well requires servant leadership and i am so grateful that david chose to offer his talents and wisdom to serve our district and our community and i offer him my sincerest thanks and wish him every happiness in everything his future brings thank you all right and so someone less teary is welcome to also control your comments thank you kimray i've told david this
004many times i've david and i served as president and vice president for a few years together and went through a couple of superintendent changes in those roles and i will tell you that i really respect the people that run for board and come in and do this work and david's one of those people that i always when we have an issue before us i'm always thinking i wonder what david's thinking and he brings a fresh approach to a lot of things he makes me think differently at times and for that i'm truly appreciative so thank you thank you david i think you have something in terms of a moral care character and confidence that really centers you and so that allows you to think outside the box uh you're not already in the position of
005prejudging you're really trying to keep an open mind and i think that's what brings clarity to what you share with us and uh we had an opportunity to the most time i spent with you you're driving back to lake wolves and uh we truly had a generous conversation and sharing about ideas and i really came to know you as a really quality person so i thank you for what you've brought to this board thank you i think anyone that has ridden with david on that trip to the lake of the ozarks and back could probably say the same thing as far as i know it was of course and i know steve anderson is smiling behind his mask because they're incredibly rich thoughtful conversations and so something that i'll always appreciate if david has with
006every board member is his thought partnership and that was a little bit of a challenge for me transitioning seven years ago because he was flooding me with ideas and i walked away from one of our first conversations thinking my to-do list has just grown immensely so david i don't know i don't know if you remember this but he circled back around a couple days later and said you know when i'm talking with you i'm just kind of thinking out loud with you and i think thank god we really do appreciate your wisdom your insight your thought partnership on behalf of kids on behalf of our staff our entire community and it doesn't necessarily just lean into one topic or one area it's not just finance it's facilities it's instruction it's innovation it's community partnerships it's
007how to navigate a pandemic you're kind of a renaissance man um and and so we will greatly miss you but you're not too far away if we need to reach out we know that so thank you for your years of service thank you jeremy thank you yeah i gotta understand that there's a filter that needs to be applied you were a quick study my turn um i look around this room and see this talent and think of all the important work to be done um and part of me wants to cede my three minutes back to the president um or should i say the president who swore she wouldn't be president president that's right apparently she's just modeling a growth mindset for us anyway as you know i can't leave without comments and i want
008to say a few things as i watch drew bring fresh life and ideas to the board conversations i want to thank each of the board members you have engaged with energy and care we've worked together on a wide range of topics and i'm always impressed with the collaborative way that you all lead each bringing an important perspective not giving up your position but finding common ground that serves our community thanks for having me be a part of the team i clearly remember jeremy's interview maybe not word for word kim murray but i clearly remember his interview back when he didn't wear a mask everywhere he said he wasn't one to jump on educational fads and boy is that the case but look how much has been done since you arrived evolving how our technology is
009used in the right ways major construction projects leadership team changes advancing pilot programs not just one not just two but throughout the district in our buildings restructuring debt to avoid additional tax increases and minimize the long-term costs to taxpayers strategic planning dignity and belonging and next year in the high schools the flexible zero to eight schedule or whatever it's called personalized learning thrive lps53.org listening more listening ever keeping the focus on the learners thank you of course that kind of list isn't the work of one person but comes through the cooperative team and the dac and each school or program you guys are moving a ton of freight and in some odd way this covid thing seems to have clarified and supercharged your efforts when there are presentations from the leadership team it is always
010encouraging to me to see how many topics involve a tag team approach clearly there's deep trust and respect um but there's an al also an appetite for lively debate on the path to better things this is your this year has been really really hard on the front lines of any organization from the bus to lunch to buildings to classrooms to nursing and more wow i applaud the the adaptability of everyone on the front lines it has been hard but i know that you love the young people and are energized by their growth thank you for modeling the characteristics we want to see emerge during these formative years and speaking of formative years having a kindergartener in my household for several months has been a poignant reminder of how incredibly important this work is my parting
011wish for us all is that the successes of the past decade provide sure footing the current moment provides a sense of humanity and the curious class of 2033 energizes us all to double down on meaningful relevant experiences that prepare our kids and yes grandkids to thrive thank you all um it's paper and the paperweight experience liberty public schools thank you i appreciate it thank you enjoy your evening that's right i think i have dinner on that note we move on to 3.01 administration of the open office i think sandra is going to take care of that portion of the agenda so we will follow her leave and support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of missouri constitution of the state of the word and that i will faithfully and
012impartially discharge [Music] district council of clay state of missouri missouri yes so then moving on to our agenda under 3.02 as a result of each april election this time of year we typically take the time to reorganize in respects to our officer roles that being a president and vice president you will recall about a year ago we tabled this piece and then kind of revisited it in the month of june i believe it was and appreciate andy and his service as president this year kim murray is president so the next order of business is 3.02 election of president of the board of education so to follow our our game plan here the floor is now formally open for nominations for president do we have nominations for the position of liberty public schools board of education
013presidents i nominate nick bartlow okay nick bartlow has been nominated for president do we have any additional nominations not hearing any additional nominations nominations then are ceased is there a motion to elect nick bartlow as president by acclamation so moved do we have a second second okay you got that sandra as far as first and seconded sandra would you call the role please aj yes kim marie yes angie yes scott yes andy jeff drew yes nick epstein nation carries congratulations uh mr bart club we'll now open the floor then for nominations for vice president as it relates to item 3.03 and similarly do we have a motion for any considerations to be nominated as vice president or any names for consideration i nominate angie reed angie reed has been nominated for vice president do we
014have any additional nominations from the board having received no additional nominations nominations then are ceased is there a motion to elect angie reed as vice president by acclamation so moved moved by mr rothman do we have a second second second by mr marriott sander would you call the role please aj yes kim marie yes angie yesterday scott yes andy yes drew nick yes congratulations to mrs reed and i will now turn the meeting over to president bartlow thank you uh 3.04 the appointment of our msba delegate and an alternative we have any recommendations who did it last year was that you angie you know previously angie was the delegate and then i think mr bird was the alternate you guys want that again here we can put it however anybody wants i moved the board
015appoint angie reed as the msba delegate and a.g burton sandra okay aj kim marie yes angie can i abstain okay scott yes andy yes drew yes nick yes motion still carries wonderful uh 3.05 appointing the board treasurer do we need an ultimate or is that just a given an alternate for the treasurer dang this is gonna be tough i move the board appoint cindy sullivan as treasurer of the board of education sandra a.j yes kim marine yes angie yes scott yes andy yes drew yes nick yes and finally within board reorganization the appointment of board secretary if i move the board appoint sandra cockrum as board of education secretary second standard discussion aj yes kim marie yes angie absolutely yes andy yes drew yes nick yes awesome all right let's move into recognition starting with
0164.01 honoring excellence dallas yes good evening i'd like to welcome mr marriott and also thank you for having me tonight i have no script and no certificates because we're going all virtual this month had a chance the last a couple weeks to get out and recognize a couple of state champions championship teams and also some big news with fine arts that we'll introduce you to so rob if you want to go ahead and play our feature tonight we have so many more great achievements to recognize this month as part of honoring excellence in april so let's get started the dominance on the mat continued on saturday march 13th as the liberty high school wrestling team rolled to their second consecutive missouri class four team state championship to go with the team state title the jays
017brought back to liberty four actual state championships those placing first included wintry williams iii kyle dutton cage linger and christopher coates in all lhs claimed an unprecedented 12 state medals we had a great season it's kind of crazy with with all the equipment restrictions and we completely had to change our schedule around and just kind of redo some things but our kids are really resilient and they battle through everything and i'm just very proud of them how they responded how they finished the year i want to thank our school district and uh especially liberty high school like without the support of our school and of our district you know we would be able to do the things that we do so i'm very thankful for everybody the state championship trophies continued coming back to liberty
018this time to liberty north high school as the eagle varsity cheer program placed first in the 5a small performance division hosted virtually by the missouri cheerleading coaches association it became the first team stake title won by the eagle chair program and recently presenting these ladies with honoring excellence recognition excitement was certainly in the air so it was really exciting the routine that we ended up submitting was the one that all of our parents came to watch and we hadn't hit it like that before and so it was really exciting to have everybody in front of us and that was the time that we did it the best and then the awards were virtual but it was really exciting as soon as we saw a second that we knew that we won and everybody kind of
019went crazy um we really appreciate the support from all of liberty even our friends over at liberty high school have reached out and been great but we really appreciate all that we have here at north and what our district provides us and what is now quickly becoming an annual spring event earlier this month liberty public schools and more specifically the lps fine arts department was named as a best community for music education by the namm foundation this honor is presented to a select group of districts from around the nation who display outstanding commitment to music education and all you need to do is take a look around our district to see for yourself the excellence that is lps fine arts and why this recognition has been awarded to lps for consecutive years spanning nearly a
020decade yeah so uh when we got the award for the nine years i think it's nine years now that we've got it uh i've been here for five of that and it's just been an incredible experience i work at both the elementary and high school and so i get to see kind of both ends of that and just being able to see from kindergarten all the way up to seniors like the the teachers working with the kids and how much passion inspiration they're able to provide for the fine arts and how much dedication that they have it's a it's a pretty cool experience to be able to have and to be able to work with as well and like i've got all these wonderful jumps behind me my first year we're like the kind of
021needs of drums we've always had the support whenever we need something that we could have to continue building what we have for our vision for the fine arts just being able to get kids passionate excited and loving music so that it can carry on with that somehow in some capacity for us and that's a look at our honoring excellence recipients for april 20th 2021. so with that that's honoring excellence for this month awesome well as is tradition state championship recognition we do with a standing ovation all right moving on to 4.02 public comment i have not seen any blue cards make their way here sandra have you seen any no okay seeing none we can move on to consent agenda our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure robert's rules provide for a consent agenda listing several
022items for approval of the board by a single motion documentation concerning these items have 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 i move the boarded up consent agenda items 5.01 through 5.05 second andre angie yes scott yes andy yes kim marie yes aj yes nick yes drew yes motion carries and moving into reports from the administration starting with innovation and learning yeah first off we'll turn it over to dr westfall and dr moore thank you and good evening uh we appreciate the opportunity to share information with you on behalf of the department of innovation and learning and we want to start this evening with a few date reminders um
023for some events that we have upcoming in the next couple of weeks the first date we're looking forward to sharing is this thursday april 22nd as the lps dyslexia and reading task force force is hosting a dyslexia information night at liberty high school performing arts center from 5 to 6 30. the goal of the community and parent meeting is to share the progress liberty public schools has made since missouri passed the dyslexia legislation back in 2017-18 school year the dyslexia team includes our district reading specialists and across liberty literacy or the all 53 coordinators the district dyslexia specialists and dr jessica meisenheimer and myself our first dyslexia information night was actually held on august 1 2018 so this is our second one and we're excited to have about 30 families join us the second important
024date is the senior avid graduation that's at liberty north high school for the avid seniors as they reflect on the experiences and embark on their college and career pathways the graduation ceremony is scheduled for april 28th at liberty north high school and from 8 30 to 10 o'clock am and the third event which is on the very same date um is the liberty high school performance center will be we will be celebrating the fourth seal of by literacy award ceremony and that will take place from 6 to 7 pm this year we have 49 graduates who earned the seal with one student earning the distinguished seal and 34 earning the global seal a few other notables dr moore and i would like to share tonight include drawing your attention to our two department program evaluations
025we first want to thank our student services department and director rebecca bressman who submitted her annual report in the new format for you to review in addition dr jessica meisenheimer has submitted her update on gifted and talented programming in her annual report which is specifically cited on page 12. we also want to draw your attention to the summer school update submitted by christopher hand the summer school team has been hard at work enrolling students which as of today is 4504 so we are up to our forecast student enrollment with still a little bit of time to go at this time we're closely monitoring that increase to appropriately align staffing and facilities in addition letters uh for teacher placement were sent out last week with the deadline of this wednesday to accept the positions offered so
026we're well on our way of putting together our summer instructional team and working with human resources and kelly services to fill all of our needed positions and just a quick reminder the summer school session will be in school from june 3rd to june 30th with both in-person and virtual options for all interested students two last quick reminders uh one is as of this morning we had 398 new kindergarten students who have enrolled for the 21 22 school year next year's enrollment for all the rest of the grades 1 through 12 opens on may 1st and then the district real world learning initiative also known as network 53 has enjoyed remarkable growth as we celebrate the end of our second year of the program in the first year of the program we had 16 high school
027interns just to let you know this coming fall we are slated to have 168 interns so a huge uh thanks to director colleen jones and the two network 53 navigators tim anderson and dustin sawlers for all their effort on this initiative and that concludes our report questions of dr westfall or doctor moore we expected kindergartners to be at this point i thought it'd be a little higher than that our classes are typically right i mean about 500 600 right so it's low for now but still early yeah okay i would just like to say thank you to both um rebecca and jessica i i really enjoy reading those first couple of pages that they write in their own in their own way and and it gives you a little you know information gives you a
028little back story um but but it's very personal in how they do that and i appreciate that the rest of the report is also good but i personally like the front part thank you appreciate that is kelly services a result are using more staff and kelly services that are typical and our teachers somewhat exhausted i think our teachers are definitely a bit tired and um our numbers are a little lower than we would like to have at this point but we do have a good dr voglar we do have a good crew right like the last we've heard we have 46 registered services so that's a pretty significant number that can either fill in and take positions and or set for us so that's a pretty good i mean that's enough so that's higher than
029it has been though since kelly took over um for some reason there's two topics one being the summer school staffing i think is your question the staffing tools are sub fill rates generally so we utilize kelly in both respects so yeah we are really closely monitoring sizes i mean we have a nice spreadsheet that tells us exactly where we are right now our staffing sits it with our class sizes between 21 and we have one that's sitting at 32 so we'll adjust that one with a new buyer but we're keeping very close tabs and still monitoring the coded spacing so that's still in play for the summer but um i mean we met today about it and i feel very comfortable with where we are we're sitting at 87 still even with just using the
030kelly services staffing we could feel that but we're still waiting for a few years to see so to either if a kelly services individual is filling a teaching position do they have teaching certification or they're just kelly employees they do have teaching certification appropriately certified to fill this law okay right yeah so kelly services is functioning as a placement service when they're providing a teacher for summer school and they're a substitute service in terms of daily subs to cover when people are absent so we prioritize staffing with our teachers that want to do summer school and then when the need exceeds the supply of our teachers that want to do it then we lean on kelly services to provide temporary staff so they become a placement service thank you for that clarification it makes much
031more sense i was concerned a little bit yeah i think we feel like he feels very comfortable in a good spot with uh with where we are in respective past years right so and our numbers are i mean we're in great shape in respect to enrollment like we were not so sure how that was going to go just because it closed but our schools are doing a really good job of helping parents see that students if they need some learning catch up you know or they want some extra help they're encouraging them to enroll and get that support over the summer and i think that's going to make a huge difference for us in the fall so that's kind of nice and that's happening thank you to to add to that in terms of our
032current enrollment for summer school and talking with other districts across the northland just earlier today and kind of getting a lay of the land and how they're staffing summer school and what their enrollment looks like we are close to our comparable enrollment from prior summer schools whereas other districts are really struggling where they may be at a you know a quarter or a third of what their typical summer school enrollment looks like so it's not to say that you know it's it's different here or there other than the fact that our team has been working at this quite a bit since really the start of the semester so thank you to christopher and the entire team for working on that so with a little bit more time to go so other questions of dr westfall
033or dr moore okay thank you both thanks dr westfall moving into 6.02 the equity report dr dixon seahorn on her way to the podium to provide her report this evening greetings to everyone so good to be here with you this evening to share uh our report for the office of equity i wanted to really just highlight two of uh five areas with regards to the strategic plan that fall under our oversight that first area being strategic plan number four which is about equitable access and opportunity we are in the process right now of uh having the second round of equity action plan conversations they're really just progress updates with all of our school leaders and directors and the conversations are just again very rich and wanted to really call your attention to the top four
034areas uh around which those conversations are being held um as you can see in the report 35 of the ugly action plans addressed professional learning and as i was looking at the data more deeply i was able to see that all of our middle schools all of our high school leaders have focused in on this area which i think is amazing as well as our operations department and some of our elementary schools with respect to the sense of belonging or culture building we see that it's a number of elementary schools that have that focus as well as our assessment department as you know the assessment department is heavily involved dr dr mr christopher hand is heavily involved with those of us that are part of the focus through planning committee so it just makes sense
035that that's part of equity action planning for his department another category representing about 13 of those equity action plans address social emotional learning mtss which is our multi-tiered system so supports and even our dei data that we are now deriving from panorama and so again that's really the remaining elementary school leaders that have that focus and then we have another 13 again just looking at those top four categories um that really constitute about 80 percent of equity action plans we have departments within the innovation and learning division that are looking at equitable access to educational opportunities such as college careers like community partnerships data services special education services and special programs so just wanted to highlight that for you as we're in our second round we'll have one more round that will occur in june
036and those will serve as really reflection opportunities looking at the whole year and thinking about where we need to focus our energy and efforts for the upcoming school year another aspect of plan number four is really about the dei book talks you will see in uh your your report that there are some personal reflections that i included this time i know i've been talking about the di book talk series sharing with you that it's been impactful it's informed professional practice but i thought why not just share some of the reflections from the participants from both semesters you know we featured four texts and one stood out for me and that the participants shared that reading the book listening and sharing with my colleagues brought to light many issues and challenges which i will now carefully
037navigate hearing other experiences caused me to pause and reflect in my everyday practice in order to better identify inequities and that that really just resounded with me because one of the things that i have challenged every uh leader school leader district leader is that this work of equity is not it doesn't rest solely on the shoulders of the person who's serving in the office of equity right we all are equity leaders and so that just stood out for me and i wanted to share that with you uh as well another uh focus area for our discussion this evening is strategic plan number seven and there are you know currently two audits uh that are underway in particular one of them being the equity audit for those of us that are participating in the equity and
038schools cohort which again is sponsored by the kauffman foundation and it's facilitated by beloved community and i just wanted to revisit with you kind of our final scores if you will from that equity audit as you know uh from our prior discussion there are three strands there's a diversity strand an equity strand and an inclusion strand i wanted to also reiterate that we as the cohort along with cabinet members we participated in this audit by way of a self-assessment so it's not that beloved community came in and told us hey here's where you are you know get it fixed that's not what happened we really had very in-depth um very deep conversations around those nearly 200 question items and as you recall it took us about six hours to get through this over two two
039different days two different sessions so when we look at the diversity score again we see that we fall in the developing category that's okay not a bad place to start i wanted to bring your attention to the four substandards that make up that diversity score there's awareness and as we were completing that we were thinking about who outside the community is aware of our existence there's application who's applying themselves to be a part of the organization again thinking about all the stakeholders that we serve within the organization selection who are the individuals that are selected and are they a representative sample of the community and then lastly within this particular strand participation who then actually accepts the offer of the invitation to be a part of the larger lps community when we think about our
040findings from there we see that now is the time for us to strategize our diverse talent implementation and analysis throughout the entire organization as well as time to establish policies protocols and practices that will help us as an organization deliver more consistent results and analysis of our equity commitment when we go to inclusion that's the one category where again we self-assess it's the lowest score that we have uh it falls in the emerging category again not a bad place to start you know we start where we are but we don't stay there and uh there were four substandards on that language again we think about how inclusive are we in our modes of communication uh with the community at large secondly shared voice and shared power is about who's given shared voice and shared power
041and we rated ourselves as 61 there which is a pretty pretty high score for us coming out the gate in this work the third question was around belonging the larger question there was really do people the various stakeholders that make up our organization do people feel like they belong and uh we were being honest with ourselves when we uh scored uh at 36 and then cultural relevance is around how do we celebrate and communicate in a culturally relevant relative way across the organization so we see that while we do have some written inclusion expectations and some leadership teams do excel at inclusionary practices then now we've got to codify shared goals across the organization for inclusion and identify frequency of advisory practices an advisory in the sense of who are we bringing to the table
042to engage in shared voice and shared power across the organization and having higher levels of engagement and participation and then the last area uh the equity score is at 58 this was our highest against self-assessed score it looked at audits and access assignment advancement you see with advancement that was really our highest score and it technically falls in the expanding category when you look at the larger rating scale there uh that's really about how do we support career moves throughout the organization what falls in there as well as pd and mentoring and compensation structure so we were able to assess that we're doing pretty well in that area there's always room to grow but this is again a good place for us to be at this time financial 69 and then performance outcomes asking questions
043around what are those metrics that define our success so again 58 is developing we see that next steps in this area would be to codify equity practices building clear equity on-ramps as new people come into the organization in leadership and management and then we need to begin institutionalizing disaggregated data analysis like that needs to become a regular part of what we do to achieve our equity goals across all functions in the organization so i know that that was a lot to share but i just wanted to kind of revisit that um so that we can kind of better understand what that data means and one last area i wanted to focus on it still falls under strategic plan number seven that's the curriculum audit we currently have our team of elementary and secondary teachers remember
044we shared with you there was about 32 folks 16 elementary 16 at the secondary level at the elementary level and secondary level as we look at our standards with respect to the curriculum we're actually teaching now for the rest of this month we're evaluating basically the extent that standards perpetuate and foster linguistic literate and cultural pluralism by sustaining in-group and cross-group cultural practices with respect to curricular materials focused at the elementary level they're evaluating the extent that curriculum materials minimize unpleasant facts and events in history by possibly ignoring prejudice racism discrimination exploitation oppression sexism and inner group conflict so that's the thing that they're looking at and at the secondary level with the curricular focus they're evaluating the extent that curricular standards completely or relatively exclude groups by way of illustrations depictions cultural histories community
045practices and cultural repertoire so that's a lot uh to evaluate but again they're looking at what they're teaching now through the lens of the equity audit tool that we have provided to us by midwestern plains equity assistance center we're going to reconvene mid-may discuss our findings based on the review of the curriculum and then begin thinking about what are our reflections on that and then talk about what might be recommendations for replicating this process to scale across the organization again this is not work that happens overnight but we have to start where we are in order to ultimately get where we envision our sales point as an organization so that would be my uh fast and furious report to share with you this evening and i'll entertain any questions at this time questions of dr
046dickson seahorn very fast very furious very passionate thank you plenty to look at within the report this evening the other piece to that fast forward as we finalize with our stakeholder group the equity cohort experience we anticipate that culminating in recommendations to inform our strategic plan pull forward with the board as well as continue to move this work forward as a district so appreciate dr dickson seahorn's leadership and nathan marie serves in that capacity as well as well as some of our administrators and community members so thank you dr dixon c thank you so much thank you moving into 6.03 the finance report ms sullivan we will welcome her to the podium she's busy this spring as far as budget development and monitoring what's going on at the local state and federal levels so thank
047you and good evening i just have a couple of quick things to share with you in addition to my report um state payment comes tomorrow we found out today that it will be at 100 percent of the state attitude target so we're very happy to report field to be able to report that to you and that means through the end of the year that we will receive the amount of funding that we were hoping we would receive when all of this started a year ago so good news on that front i also wanted to let you know that last week on friday we did issue a rfp for banking services statutorily the district is required to do that at least every five years that crept up really quickly i didn't realize it had been five
048years but we did send that out to 10 local banks and so we will have a recommendation to you either in may or june of our next depository services so i wanted to get that on your radar as dr tucker indicated work continues on the 2022 budget and later this evening we will talk about the expenditure budget not yet but anyway we'll go through some of that and we continually are refining that and we'll then next month bring to you a preview of the budget document and the preliminary budget so in addition to my report and what i've shared with you tonight i would be happy to answer any questions you might have any questions of cindy thank you thank you cindy all right 6.04 the operations reports turn it over to mr anderson thank
049you uh just a few items i'd like to highlight in addition to the report that's loaded up tonight um first of all we did receive notice today from the usda that they are going to extend the nutrition waiver through the entire school year upcoming school year so that's great news of course and so we will certainly it'll help us as part of our planning because it affects much of the work that we have fusion radio for the school year um also wanted to draw attention that you'll see here uh in it started last month in earnest and will continue this month and then next month as well a lot of the bid activity that's coming through mostly under consent agenda is related to our capital planning process and so if you see things in there
050and have any questions feel free to give me a call but all that is embedded in that capital plan that we brought forward here a month or two ago and then two other items i'd like to just draw real brief attention to it's in very early stages but we're working on a couple projects that will likely be in front of you here in the next uh within the next month uh part of it has one of the projects has to do with an issue that we've been kind of watching over time and that's some of the um capacity concerns we have at shore creek elementary and so there are some undeveloped almost entirely undeveloped uh areas in in around the kelly brook uh this zoning area and so we're looking at what it might take
051to to kind of do a spot somewhat strategic uh rezone of an area in that area like i said it's almost entirely undeveloped so more information to come but just want to let you know that that's something that we're starting to take a look at and then also we're looking um and again this is in the very early stages we're looking at making some very slight adjustments to our start and end times beginning next year and there's quite a bit of work to be done there but we'll just be getting that that work um but we'll have that uh in front of you here in the coming months or so i just want to put that on your radar uh again much much work and uh with that i'd be happy to take any questions
052i don't have any questions but i do have a comment um just to your note here that the lps rapid testing clinic will remain open through summer school yes um unfortunately we had an opportunity to use that yet again today and my family's had to use it a couple of times um and i cannot tell you how slick that process is and how helpful it was to be able to pick up my child and almost immediately go get a test so thank you for your work great the great team over there health services has stacked that up and has been working really well yeah thank you for that i'm going to spring one on you mr anderson so the school cafe that we've used with nutrition services what's kind of been the feedback from the
053internal group working okay some opportunities how they feel and that's that's moving we've had some challenges and we've made some tweaks uh and we continue to monitor that closely and you're kind of restricted in all that we can do there yeah i think it works pretty effectively like when you look at it across the system but we still in fact we just here i think two or three months ago made a series of tweaks into how that worked uh and especially because it does relate into how if meals are free and how we best use that to plan for um being prepared for for the students that that's an important part of it so i think all in all pretty pretty good but there's certainly work to be done cool any other questions for mr
054anderson thank you all right 6.05 human resources report dr vogelar turn it over to him you for the opportunity to uh give an update on the workings of the human resources department we've uploaded a report and on there i'd like to just highlight three things and answer any questions that you have afterward i want to draw your attention to the progress being made with the grow your own teacher program first the scholarship program thank you to mr d rose krantz and dr andrea dixon seahorn in a committee steering committee folks who are hard at work at identifying scholarship recipients this year next week april 30th are going to be holding interviews for finalists our hope is to have names of individuals that we can introduce to you in the may board meeting that will represent
055this year's class in the grow your own teacher program as you know that program is designed to incentivize among students of color who are interested in careers in education and provide a financial loan forgiveness program for them to go study get their degree and come back and teach in the liberty school district so thank you again board of education for your support of that program the other thing i want to draw your attention to with regard to grow your own is the partnership we have with teach kansas city and the kauffman foundation we survey students every year this year we expanded those surveys down to eighth grade thank you to dr moore and the work that she does in partnership with building principals and counselors to get that out to students this is very important
056information for us more than two thousand students grades eight through filled out the survey and i've highlighted in the report some of the things that we got back from from those results specifically 25 percent that's more than 500 students indicated that they definitely want are seriously considering or are somewhat interested in becoming a teacher these more than 500 students we have a plan to follow up with them partner with them and their parents fanning the flames of this interest in education in the hopes that they would then choose to major in that when they go to college this also involves partnerships with over 20 area colleges and universities departments of education many of whom are wanting to scholarship significantly students we all recognize as part of this this partnership the importance of affecting positively the
057teacher pipeline and the direction that that our profession is taking in terms of interest among graduating seniors to go into education and so scholarship money is available in some cases full ride scholarships are available to students and so this partnership can can be significantly important to students and their families in this decision another item that really caught my attention uh out of out of that 25 if you disaggregate those numbers regarding students of color the percentage of students sharing the same level of interest is a little bit higher 26 so we're seeing just significant interest among our students and i'm looking forward to how uh disaggregating that data identifying those students and partnering with our high school teachers in the eip program and and the work that we're doing to with the micro school credentialing
058concept with education will pay off for those students the final thing i want to draw your attention to is with regard to department updates the certificated recruiting update we have 55 separations among our certificated personnel that need to be backfilled prior to the start of the 21-22 school year we filled 62 percent of those vacant positions to date so 21 positions were working to fill of course a lot of that spiked up when contracts went out uh employees that were maybe contemplating resigning get their resignation letters in following that 15-day window for signing contracts so we're getting an uptick in notifications but 55 separations is still significantly less than what we typically see new higher induction classes tend to run around anywhere from 80 to 100 teachers a year so we expect that that number
059to move a little bit more before the end of the school year as we continue to work to fill those vacant positions just as a reminder as a school district you know we see typically around seven percent turnover in our classroom teacher ranks uh that's significantly less than the national average of about 15 16 among greater kansas city area suburban school districts seven percent is is even significantly less than typical so we do enjoy um and i say enjoy it really is quite an honor to work in a in a district with the kind of climate and culture that that incentivizes this staying power among our certificated staff uh teachers that that stay engaged in the classroom and working with kids is good for for students it's good for education and i'm delighted to be
060a part of a district culture that creates that kind of environment people want to stay so with that i'll answer any questions that you have obviously there's other information included in the report so if you have any questions i'll take that questions of dr vogeler thank you thank you bob all right into 6.06 the superintendent's report this evening yeah thank you just a couple items to add to my report that is uploaded in board docs this evening um appreciate mr ackerman and his help in facilitating our spring state of the district updates for our liberty public schools employees we generally kind of take the show on the road in visiting each of our campuses and departments to be able to relay both a video message in advance but then opportunity to offer up time for
061question and answer we've had several of those question and answer series over the course of this year so this time around looked a little bit different and we decided to engage cabinet in this year's state of the district presentation and so we had a week-long series monday through friday in which we each take took turns uh providing a quick update to our liberty public schools team so we appreciate all of our cabinet's help along with mr ackerman and facilitating that state of the district update it's hard to believe but this week is our last coffee with the community and we're going to kill two birds with one stone so to speak and leverage the state of the district presentations and convey that out to our community as well so that will be uh pushed out
062to our entire liberty community as far as our our district final coffee with the community event so be on the lookout for that the other piece i wanted to share is just some work happening at the state level in collaboration with the department of elementary and secondary education as we've shared before we are part of the commissioner's education policy committee and this is really a strategic planning arm of the department of elementary and secondary education facilitated in part with the hunt institute along with several other groups but that work had been happening prior to the pandemic of course the pandemic had you know kind of derailed things for a little bit but is picked back up in the month of march and so we had two convenings of that committee which then culminated in a
063report and findings that were shared with the state board of education earlier this month and so in a retreat setting the commissioner and her team shared some of the recommendations that came out of that education policy committee namely there are four areas that they're looking at incorporating into their strategic plan and areas of focus looking forward that is emphasis on early learning of which we've already seen the establishment of the office of early learning which is up and running just now going on a couple of weeks the second area of focus is educator workforce which we know the department has been working on as well over the last several years in terms of trying to atta attract and retain high quality staff in and around teacher certified areas as well as support staff areas third
064category that being school redesign and trying to reimagine what school could look like and so we appreciate the department having that conversation is what innovation might look like across the entire state of missouri and then the last category would be learning attainment specifically related to what we've experienced over the pandemic but then it also bleeds into rethinking assessment as well as rethinking accountability and accreditation and so we appreciate the department having the conversation being at the table so to speak to share our perspective and experiences here in liberty the other thing i would add to that is we are uniquely situated in the kansas city area as many of our regional districts border kansas or in missouri so we're actually going to be having a joint conversation with the missouri commissioner and the kansas commissioner
065on april 27th and really focusing on some of these pieces and what that can look like for both states sharing the progress that's been happening in respect to liberty public schools sharing some of the work that we've been doing around competency-based education and so we'll report back on the progress of those regional conversations in collaboration with both commissioners the other thing that i would add is that we've been working also at the federal level with the u.s department of education and the office of education technology as it relates to federal funding associated to the covet 19 pandemic as you're aware we are now approaching round three of esser funding couple that with kind of the president's emphasis on infrastructure and a jobs plan that will likely develop and so really trying to keep apprised of
066what's coming at us from the federal level and how we might be able to utilize those added resources through esser and allocate them accordingly within our district but then also at the federal level on the jobs plan piece there may be some opportunities for us to move forward with facility improvements capital improvements as more specifics are kind of unfold at that federal level the last thing that i would say is we just have a few weeks left of the legislative session here in missouri that is slated to end on may 14th we're continuing to watch bills that are progressing we anticipate it to be fast and furious as well in jefferson city so be on the lookout for notices to contact our legislators in and around how things might impact us here in liberty public
067schools with that said would open it up for any questions the board may have of me this evening the transition into four days has gone well yes as far as we've heard in checking in with buildings and talking with staff and students dr moore if you want to add anything on that from your perspective we put we put our city on notice and law enforcement that you might see an uptick in traffic around high schools or middle schools and adjusting to pick up and drop off time which has certainly been the case the other thing that i would add as far as a companion piece having our sites set on the fall you know what a five-day return would look like and so all all steam ahead as far as planning for that but then
068kind of what we've learned over the pandemic you always have to have contingency plans so hopefully we don't need that but nonetheless we're going to be planning for a variety of scenarios in that respect as well are you looking ahead to think about virtual school next year is it a possibility is this still an option so we are and so prior to the pandemic we had expanded our virtual school options um in terms of course offerings and access particularly at the high school level through the pandemic experience we've seen that demand increase both at the high school the middle level and the elementary level so then what does it look like for next year and that's continuing to offer that k-12 there's a missouri statute of which you have to meet certain provisions to be
069able to continue to offer that as a district we are going to offer that for those families who that solution may work best that might be a full-time experience for middle level or high school students or elementary school students but it also may be a per course experience or need needs based at the high school level in particular and so i know dr westfall and dr moore both have kind of tag team that space in terms of trying to plan what the supply demand might look like for next year and so as more of that is shored up we'll certainly bring that forward and keep the board informed so great question any other questions thank you all right yes no thank you and everybody for the reports moving into unfinished business let's start with 7.01
070the board policy revisions got a couple of new ones for adoption we do uh this evening have three items for your consideration i k c i k f a d f and the titles are listed there as well and then the companion administrative procedures attributed to adf in respect to district wellness program so those are presented for your consideration any conversation or questions so glad we're not required to serve fluid milk i didn't hear that what did you say the fluid milk change in the nutrition just an policy change i moved the board adopt policies ikc ikf and adf sandra angie yes scott yes andy yes kim marie yes aj yes nick yes drew yes motion carries the moving into 7.02 another look here at the compensation plan for 21 22. so yeah as you
071mentioned this is another look or the second read for your consideration you have a variety of documents that are associated that have been uploaded to board docs would draw your attention specifically to the memorandums that we shared with you back in march 23rd or so just to kind of give you a recap of our conversation and what to anticipate for fy22 as we look at the totality of the recommendations i want to start by thanking team liberty as we do for the omen's share of this work in and around struggling with you know what our revenue is going to look like what can we do what is health insurance going to look like and so forth as it relates to meeting the needs of our students so thank you to them to bob to cindy
072and others that are part of those conversations as well as our board representation in that work to recap the estimated expenditures there are really four key areas the first of which is to be able to fund all salary schedules both vertically and horizontally to the tune of one million seven hundred thirty five thousand forty eight dollars the second piece is continuing to phase in the third year of a four year phase in with seabiz attributed to some of our salary study work and and preps that were created for the classified schedule that value is totally 292 647 dollars the third area is minor to the tune of one thousand six hundred and twenty three dollars which is a hold harmless provision uh for those employees who have been uh kind of who had lost that
073one-time fifteen hundred dollar enhancement on the certificated schedule from fy 2019 and then lastly we were looking at restructuring the administrator travel stipend and replacing it with a required off-site or after hours work piece that is attributed to zero as it relates to these costs for a total estimated cost to the salary recommendations for fy22 at a value of two million twenty nine thousand three hundred and eighteen dollars what follows in that memorandum is a deeper explanation of each of those recommendations just to get the board up to speed on but that's what we wanted to present to you this evening is a follow-up from our march conversation and would certainly ask dr vogelar and miss sullivan if there's anything that they would also like to highlight to this evening's recommendation anything to add bob
074or cindy nothing here okay any questions from board members regarding the compensation plan adopt the 2021 2022 salary recommendations and compensation plans as presented second sandra angie yes scott yes andy yes kim marie yes aj yes nick yes drew yes motion carries moving into new business hitting 801 facility master planning first item under new business as we welcome mr nelson to the podium is to kind of reacquaint ourselves with alison miller after having gone through an architect selecture selection process we shared that with you earlier this spring back in our april study session we kind of teed up the facility master planning work that we'll be reconvening this in part is a complement to some prior work that had been done as it relates to our demographic study and that reset but then also our
075deeper conversation with debt management as it relates to how we are positioned for future considerations of no tax increase bond issues um so this is a companion piece to that work that had begun previously so we're going to turn it over to mr nelson and i appreciate him being here this evening and look forward to partnering with you on that next iteration of facility master planning well thank you dr tucker good evening everybody it's great to be back to see all your faces in person be able to talk about the next round of the slogan master planning it's been a little while since we've all been able to get together the last round of master plan blue we started way back in 2016. so it's been a little bit of time since we've been through
076this process so i want to just kind of refresh for everyone kind of what that looks like but first i wanted to remind everyone that when you work with hollis and miller we have one big belief and that is co-creation and that is that our design experts work with your experts here at the district to make sure that we come up with the best solutions so lots of engagement and the master playing process looks no different than that this is the side there you go okay first you gotta learn how to use them all right so the facility master plan process is five steps and we'll just walk through kind of each step um tonight and answer any questions that you might have but as with any process we want to start with step one
077and that is just a game plan and that is to talk about what do we need to do with this facility master planning process what are our big goals you know what do we need to accomplish who are we going to talk to who we're going to integrate with and how are we going to share it back out with with the community and so we have a standard stakeholder engagement process that we're going to customize here in this game planning process working with you all to decide who are those stakeholders typically we have the four groups we have your administration team your community team your staff and your students that know those buildings very well and then those specific patrons those patrons that are in those buildings that work really closely with with the staff
078and students and so during game planning we're going to figure out which of those stakeholders we want to make sure that we talk to and put them into the plan so that we make sure that we share the process with them as well and get their input we also know that with kobe 19 and pandemic that the planning process is probably going to look different this time around at least in some areas and so our office has been working with some online engagement tools virtual tools one of them just on the screen is that slido.com that's one way we've used a way to engage people without being face to face without talking close to close but still be able to get their input in a very quick interactive sort of way and there are a
079few other tools that we've used as well so we'll be looking at those options on how to engage the community in your groups in those large group settings as well so that's the just the game plan that's the first thing we're going to do just figure out exactly where we need to go so then when we really start to get into step two which we call data collection this is where historically the brunt of the work is done to understand what the district has to work with we want to know like where we're at before we know where we're going one of the great things about having been involved in your previous master plan is that we have that baseline already set we we have a place to start from we're not starting from scratch
080so our goal will be to look at that information and update it but not start from scratch but what that does allow us to do is spend a little bit more time on some new activities this time around and one of them will be curriculum discovery process michelle shavey is an educational planner and a partner hollis miller she'll help lead us through that process to really understand what's education look like in the future in liberty where do we want to go with it and then how does the facility master plan help support that so that's one thing you want to spend some time in data collection really understanding and learning part of that process as we change is the change process and michelle will also help us work through that is if we want to
081go somewhere different sometimes we have to kind of grieve the things that we used to do to be able to set us up for that new journey going forward and so that's kind of part of that exercise that michelle will work with the team on and then we have those other pieces of that data collection phase we have the capacity analysis again we have what we did last time so we're going to go through and update those ask the questions we need to make sure that they're current compare those with your updated demographer report to really see where that's at we have the old facility assessments that we did before again we're going to update those we still plan to get out to the buildings to talk to the principals talk to facilities to really
082understand what the current needs are with the buildings and then this is a um up there just if we ever need it um hall someone provides a site acquisition evaluation if that's part of the plan we can do that as well going forward so step three is planning criteria and last time when we did planning criteria we spent quite a bit of time discussing really what are those priorities that we want for the district and planning criteria is that set of objective statements that really say what does any plan any project that we do as part of the facility master plan need to make sure it addresses so often it covers any of these topics on the screen and could cover many more but those things we want to make sure we don't want to
083forget i always point out like safety and security is kind of one of those that we think that's a no-brainer but often if we don't say it we don't say it out loud we might miss it and all the other things that we're talking about all the other parties we're talking about so we want to make sure that we write down really what are the top priorities for any plan in liberty and put those down because it is different from district to district and we want that to be custom for for liberty so then step four is explore options so we've figured out where we are we figured out kind of where we want to go we've talked about what our priorities are so we get to step four and that's really where we start
084exploring options any ideas that we have we want to make sure we put those to test if you will and so in the 2016 time frame we had our railroad track diagram that really focused on that capacity you know if and when those students come whether we need to start planning for new facilities we had our feeder diagram and we looked at the capacity of the buildings and how are we really supporting that projected student enrollment for the entire district looking at the demand for a report that may not be a huge focus this time around is those capacities we'll still update this to make sure that we have that as part of the master plan but we also may be able to look at more specific type projects as part of the facility master
085plan this is just an example of the 800s project over liberty high school we may be able to look at some of those other things as well as part of that facility master plan another thing that we'll probably be able to explore and expect to spend some time discussing is just sustainability and efficiency of the district so any piece any project any planning that we do how are we improving the sustainability how are we finding ways to be more efficient as we go forward with any plan and then finally adopt the best plan this is just we've narrowed it down to probably two maybe three plans through the explore option phase and this is where we really picked that final one that we want to proceed with and then we get out and share it
086with the community and the stakeholders and help them understand what's in the plan maybe what's not in the plan and why and and how that's going to influence influence us going forward so the best plan may look like a series of documents like you see on the screen it may look a little bit different again through game planning we're going to really decide kind of what are our goals facility master plan really where do we want to focus on but it will include all the data collection those facility assessments the planning criteria showing what our priorities are the updated feeder diagrams and railroad track diagrams and potentially some some master plan project concepts as well so quick five-step um kind of update on what that looks like any questions on what the process might include
087or how we go forward from here what's the projections as far as uh timing for each step um so it kind of depends on that first game plan step that we need to go through as far as who all do we need to talk to and how many groups so usually this plan takes about six to eight months typically so when we get through step one where we really decide who we're talking to and how that's going to work and we lay out all the meetings then we'll really be able to kind of pin down what that timeline looks like so kickoff is right around the corner yes okay that was my question so in the next month i think that that's what we're anticipating we wanted to take the month of april and just
088do an introduction for the board and some level setting so we did that at our study session and again this evening going a little bit deeper on those different components keep in mind there's the demographic piece but then there's also that debt management piece but then there's the facilities master planning piece and we want to go a little bit deeper with the ward probably in a study session environment or in our junior retreat but that's really where we kind of see ourselves starting this process in terms of the steps that kevin's laid out for us this evening so as far as step one is there anything from the last go around that looking back you would consider doing differently uh well certainly we're gonna do the the discovery the curriculum discovery piece we're also going
089to do a shred on sustainability those are two things we didn't necessarily do last time that we're going to do differently to kind of pull in some new ideas look at some new direction that'll be something for sure we're doing differently we're going to need to look at the community engagement a little bit and make sure that we understand that strategy how that works you know last time we had a huge series of community forums where we pulled everyone into a gym and we all got together and we presented and talked that may or may not be appropriate throughout this entire process so we'll be talking about different ways to engage folks as well and kevin just to confirm curriculum discovery great new opportunity is the partner that kind of leads that i'm assuming that
090they engage the right people here at the district right to make sure that that process is and that their goals and objectives are included within that right yeah absolutely that's michelle's focus is she's a certified educational planner she'll help lead us through that process but she's always there as a resource she is a design resource on every project so she reviews every project that comes to the office she provides feedback to the team she's there as a resource to you all and anyone else as needed but yeah she'll certainly stay engaged great i do have one other just thought and kevin feel free to weigh in but in what will in what way will we approach this differently um through the lens of equity this year i think that that's a great question and i
091i think we don't necessarily i don't know we can answer that this evening the question was how do we approach that through an equity lens as it relates to differently than what we did previously i think some of those pieces naturally come up through our strategic plan our vision that then informs the process but part of it is that curricular piece the real world learning piece as we saw in a previous slide how do we ensure access and opportunity for all is really the question and so certainly school facilities design has a role to play i don't know if you want to add to that kevin um or if we want to just put a placeholder on that and keep that front and center from that equity lens as we have these conversations yeah i
092think we'll certainly want to dive into that particularly during the the planning criteria piece where we're really discussing you know what does that mean for liberty and how do we want to engage um it's definitely a top priority to talk about yeah and even in the game planning piece where we talk about who we're talking to right providing that equitable opportunity for input on the plan and to hear about the plan understand the plan will be a priority good question you heard steve anderson mentioning about chill creek capacity how would you weigh into that or at all would you we certainly will take that into consideration as we look at those capacity pieces we do analysis of each building based on how educational you guys use the building to understand how many students it can
093support we can help look at if there's potential for additions or expansions we did that last time kind of looking at even an available site around the buildings union creek's one that's tough because we've already added on to it quite a bit that you know as large as that enrollment is you've got pickup and drop-off issues and number of buses and and that you know that site may be getting to be quite a challenge if it needs to to grow in capacity and i know it's one on top of steve's list to really look at and see how we can address some of those needs particularly through this um thank you anything to add mr anderson anything else but with for mr nelson before we move on first of many engagement opportunities with kevin and
094his team so thank you to hollis miller absolutely thank you guys we're happy to be back thanks for being here tonight 8.02 moving into the preliminary expenditure budget update we as we transition to this next presentation just a quick recap of our approach over these last several years as it relates to the budget prep process in the spring semester and really spending time looking at revenues expenditures revenues in march expenditures in april a draft budget for the board's consideration in the month of may and then finally our adoption of the budget our final budget adoption in the month of june so we're going to turn it over to cindy for the next piece of that puzzle thank you dr tucker tonight the best way to look at the expenditure budget is by object code so
095what you have on this slide represents on the far right hand column the preliminary budget for all areas so this is total budget and it's 173 million 706 and 706 thousand five hundred and eighty nine dollars um you can see with the past four years included that the total budget is quite up and down and as we go through each one of these areas i'll explain a little more why this happens but you'll primarily see it's in the areas of capital outlay and long and short-term debt where the biggest fluctuation occurs and that's due to general obligation debt refinancing and lease purchase refinancing and issuance of bonds so that's where most of the difference occurs you will see salaries and benefits purchase services and supplies from year to year typically result in a steady increase
096due to enrollment enrollment changes and the cost of supplies and goods and services and people so what we'll do next will break down each one of those areas to talk about what's changing and why they're changing as we walk through the expenditure projections so each one of these slides you'll see a 10-year history and where the current topic falls in relation to percentage of total budget as well as a few highlights as to what's changing so employee salaries as you know is the biggest piece of our total budget it's approximately 54 of the annual budget and 61 of the operating budget this is an increase this year of 2.4 percent and that just represents steps in horizontal vertical movement on the salary schedule and new staffing so that what is what accounts for most of
097that increase there you also will want to note that certificated salaries account for 71 of our salary budget so teacher people are our biggest expenditure on salary side and that the district does pay for well that's next slide but i'll tell you about the benefit piece that we pay for all staff as well and also as i walk through this if you have any questions on what i'm talking about please don't hesitate to stop me and ask at that time so i can answer your questions as we go through the next piece is employee benefits and it's about 17 of the total budget and 19 of the operating budget we are planning on a 3.15 increase in employee benefits this year most of that is due to the increase that is anticipated for health insurance
098and we are thinking that we're going to see about an eight percent increase in health insurance half of that increase will be recognized the next year because we already know since we're on a calendar year for our benefits piece we know what the first half of the year is because that's the same thing we're experiencing right now so come january one we anticipate around a four percent increase in the cost of health dental and vision insurance we do have a preliminary benefits meeting with holmes murphy on may 4th but what they're telling us is that we will have an increase so we will have more to come on that and as i indicated in the earlier slide the district does contribute 14 and a half percent of certificated salaries and 6.86 of classified salaries to
099retirement on their behalf that has not changed for some years and there's no indication that that will be going up anytime soon but that's always something we want to be cognizant of when we plan for salary and benefits because that's a good chunk of money as well that goes out on behalf of our employees you'll note that combined salary and benefits are 80 percent of our operating budget and 71 of the total budget purchase services these are things that we pay for for someone to come in and do contracts for professional development student transportation that we are not able to do inside property casualty insurance things that we buy of this nature we are anticipating an 11.3 percent increase in this level of expenditure this is primarily due to professional development we are going to
100hopefully next year be able to get back into what we're used to with professional development most of our professional development this year was virtual in-house or limited and we just did not spend that budget that we originally anticipated spending this year so we have ramped that back up and we'll get back to the level of pd that we are used to and that's where the biggest bulk of the purchase services expenditure increase comes from supplies and materials is about eight percent of our total budget nine percent of the operating budget and this is actually uh budgeted to decrease by 1.1 percent and that is totally due to covet expenditures we know we had a lot as you've seen in my reports each month of code expenditures that right now we do not anticipate having that
101level of expenditure so we actually think this will be an area that we do decrease this year for budgeting the biggest supply material budgets come out of buildings and departments and for them we did use as a starting off point the fy20 budget we kind of pushed fy21 aside because there's no historical value in looking at what we did in fy 21 as far as the starting point on how to budget for this coming year then we're going to move on to capital outlay so capital outlay is approximately two percent of our proposed annual budget and it's going to decrease 81.5 and that is totally due to the 2018 bond projects which are wrapping up at the end of this year and you will see a wide berth of expenditures on that graph there noting
102that the uptick biggest expenditures occurred in fy 20 when we were at the height of the building projects for the fy 20 bond projects so we are keeping capital other capital expenditures pretty much limited to summer capital improvement plans this year just in light of what we don't know what will happen as far as the budget picture and the finance picture of the state goes and with the american jobs plan as dr tucker indicated earlier there is a potential allocation there to assist with some infrastructure needs that the district might have so if we can wait that out for this year to see what might come our way then we can spend those dollars and keep the other dollars in operating for instruction and student needs and staffing so we'll see how that plans out
103but we are taking a slow year this year for capital expenditures and then debts is our final category and it's about nine percent of our proposed annual budget and it will decrease by fifteen and a half percent and that's due to tech lease payments being lower and just our go bond payments are less this year debt is prescribed by amortization schedules so there's not a lot of change unless we choose to pay off bonds or leases and so it's pretty consistent unless you refund which you see that large year there where we refunded and turned around a lot of money in debt so those are the anticipated expenditure categories and this is just the recap of what you saw all together again different way to look at it you can see the consistent growth in
104most of our operating expenses and we can see that here i took out the capital and the debt so you can see just as what what is happening with operating so you can see consistently um in the first three years we had about a five five and a half percent increase from year to year then for fy21 it was down to a 1.7 percent increase just because of coded having half the students here at the secondary level for half the time and half the transportation needs and half the nutrition services needs really enabled us to take that budget down i anticipate a 3.1 percent increase in the coming year but once the end of this year is flushed out i really believe that that will become more of a five percent increase as well that's
105pretty much the historical trend that we run five percent increase in operating costs per year and finally this is just a picture of the operating expenditures by object which you can see we've had pretty steady student growth and a pretty steady increase in our operating expenditures across the district so we're right in line with where we've been historically and anticipate that that will serve us well again next year i've also included in board docs a preliminary expenditure document that goes just a little bit deeper into the detail of the category so that you can see a little more where things are changing i also wanted to express my appreciation to every budget manager and their admin assistant in light of tomorrow being admin assistance day we appreciate them they do a majority of the work
106in addition to the budget managers but they really did a great job getting things back to us this year and we had a pretty seamless budget season this year so i i'm really appreciative of all of their hard work as well as the people in the back office here at the dac without them all of this could be done so that's what we're looking forward to for the expenditure document we have some things that we don't have property casualty insurance we have an estimated increase employee cost projections won't be done until may so we'll have a better picture of what that really looks like after the hiring season is almost complete it's better to use that estimate and put in final numbers when we know better what that picture is going to be like in
107if we are off by our hiring up or down one way or the other so with that that's where we think we'll be and i would be happy to answer any questions that you might have any questions of cindy this evening so next month we'll have a preliminary budget document for you budget in its complete form um we'll tell you what has changed since we had these last two presentations and what we don't have that we're still anticipating getting more information on thank you cindy yeah thank you and thanks to the team uh up next 8.03 the fairview new hope cemeteries memorial yeah so under new businesses this evening tucker uh i wanna still ask to step out okay i think it's gonna be a discussion about this sure i'm a member of the ccaa
108okay thanks aj um so under 8.03 this evening we have presented to you for first read a project a partnership opportunity with fairview and new hope cemeteries memorial some of you might be familiar with this under the umbrella or title of liberty african american legacy memorial so if you're not familiar with it you could visit libertylegacymemorial.org so we were approached by a couple of members in our community about a partnership opportunity to consider whether or not the district would partner in and around two specific benches to be placed at this memorial site within fairview and new hope cemetery specifically attributed to that african-american memorial i believe they're in excess of 700 unmarked graves that are contained of former african-american slaves that were interred at the cemetery and so they've had a huge project to kind
109of undertake you know how many are there how many are buried to be able to archive it and tell this story and so i know mr anderson has worked closely with community partners in that respect so i wanted to turn it over to him to give a little bit of back story and what's presented to you this evening again for first read and be able to take some time to process solicit your feedback between now and the month of may if this is something that we want to consider as a school district so we'll turn it over to mr anderson yes thank you um and you laid some good foundation there to what how this started and how we got to this point uh it really was just approached by members of the board as
110they're trying to begin the process of raising funds for this project as a quick aside they have been engaged with with some of the faculty over at epic elementary and have a relationship build built with them already and they do intend to kind of work this project into their curriculum there already is some activity between franklin and the cemetery and some some history walking tours that they do so this is somewhat kind of related to some of what we've done in the past uh and so there is there is a nexus there to to uh to epic um when we were first approached with this you know it's a very unique uh very unique request but the motivation was really to try to drive some some energy into the project um and so the the
111first thing we did is just to see if it was something that would be appropriate for the district to do and so we conferred with tom capps obviously just to make sure if this was something that could be entertained he confirmed that it was appropriate to do so we also looked at board policy and all of our purchasing procedures to make sure that everything was consistent with if we didn't before that we could do so i should step back one of the other motivations of the ask was to utilize the district's purchasing co-op power uh to purchase the benches that that they were kind of have been identified to to be part of that project and uh so that was the one of the other motivations to reach out to the district i'd also say
112that the actual specific benches are really modeled after the the contribution the work that was done at china slaughter uh reading park and so they're identical to those benches basically and that was kind of the idea is there's somewhat of a tie-in uh to this project knowing that the the district was involved in that work uh as part of the fundraising and some of the other associated costs before we handed that work over to the city so that was another part of the connection point so with that we've done the we've kind of looked it up i think right now each bench is a little right about fifteen hundred fifteen hundred dollars a bench uh our responsibility per the agreement that mr capps drafted would be simply the procurement and the and providing the benches
113and that would be the extent of the work and so that's how this has been laid out um and again very unique and unusual requests we don't do this very often it's appropriate for us to do so and thought it was just appropriate to bring it in front of you uh for consideration we did present much of this outline and it was april 2nd friday update so that a lot of this information first kind of found its way uh to the board in some of that about a paragraph back a couple weeks ago so just as that point of reference and with that i'd be uh happy to take any questions on this particular project again first read this evening and then bring that back for your consideration in the month of may certainly as
114you process if you have more questions beyond this evening would be glad to get you a response or an answer we did explore a couple of paths and opportunities whether it be through the district or through the education foundation and so we're still open to exploring those opportunities as well so any questions of steve regarding this item this evening so who what entity is in charge of fairview and new cemeteries as far as um maintenance so i believe that is currently being um kind of hashed out with with the city so the city is owner uh i think they're trying to use the china slaughter park model as being something that would hopefully kind of work as part of this so i know that's part of their conversation um and i'm not certain whether that's
115been worked out or not yet the potential though to relinquish the project eventually over to the city you know again i think that might be part of their goal i'm gonna get out i don't know how the maintenance side of that would work because right now it's on ground owned by the city i don't know if there's some type of lease arrangement easement uh i'm not sure how far along they are in that process of course if this were moving forward we would not exercise the procurement until it was clear that the project was was clearly you know in that the face of moving forward and steve that was the one question i had so this is this is property that's technically owned by the city of liberty at this point that is my understanding
116okay as tom looked into it appropriate kind of give me a little more definition of that it's just it's within our legal right their rights are nothing that would preclude the district from taking this this step okay any other questions this evening okay so again as you process if you have questions that we can help clarify please reach out let us know and we'll continue the conversation and circle back around on the topic in the month of may so thank you steve for that update and i guess if just between now and the next time when it comes back up for a second and for consideration if we could just give maybe a little more clarification on ownership maintaining um if there's any expectations on the part of the district to replace if they're damaged
117or destroyed and so forth certainly can we just put this as a bullet or an agenda item for the work session yes okay all right that concludes that item let me just agree we're gonna grab mr burt hey all right we'll move into 8.04 the contracts purchases and bids we do have a few items that are in front of you this evening for your consideration under our emergency purchases approval so we'll turn it over to mr anderson to walk us through those sure there's a handful here that are under the emergency provision that's the second tier here the first is actual consideration uh to be approved on first read this would be more of an expedited contract uh the request made from the innovation learning department uh to to expedite the review and not pull
118for two readings on this as you can see it's no cost to the district so it was our hope wishes to have that approved tonight and then the ones listed below um there are five items here uh and this would all be kind of under that emergency and expedited review process uh djf-1 just a couple items of fairly minor the first two one is food people llc which is a fine arts program to some programming that they do over at epic the next is with powerschool this was this is i think a very important uh step uh by our technology department to uh uh put a cloud hosted solution for for that that service um off-site um which is you know that's i think one of our last remaining pieces of major technology support systems
119that are not supported off-site and then the last two or last three items i should say are related to more true emergency kind of facilities uh repair items that have come up over the last couple weeks a failing elevator hms is a big deal yes well which one is it but i mean seriously if you have a child who needs the elevator there are portions of that there are three elevators and they don't all go to the same place the lights at lhs um were any of those new polls that were installed when it was because didn't it get like slightly reconfigured when we did some of the that's a good question i i'd have to double check that india i'm not sure if that if that was or not by um yeah i'd have
120to double check on that just didn't know if there's any warranty out there these are all pretty small there's nothing fifty thousand dollars or anything i move the board approve the emergency purchases and agreements is listed angie yes scott yes andy yes kim marie yes aj yes nick yes drew yes moving into board of education as dr tucker noted a horse race to the end of the legislative session anything to point out with regards to legislation and advocacy there's a couple of things and i haven't looked like in the last two days is the issue with um school board elections still on the hot trail of moving forward the last update i had heard was that was not progressing that would be good of course that that is subject to change and just kind of
121a general statement on the legislative session it's it's a little bit of you know which bills make its way forward um toward the finish line both in the house and the senate and then they somewhat morph into an omnibus bill and so then that's where all sorts of things get piled on and so that's really kind of what we're watching is which of those bills shape up to be the omnibus bills but then you have to pay very close attention to those to ensure you know we might like these pieces but these pieces might be problematic and then getting on the phone with legislators so that that's the art of compromise at the finish line in that regard and then the charter school piece continues to just move forward and after listening to comments from
122the legislative forum was that a week ago a week ago you know do not assume because we are liberty missouri that it will not happen here we have been reclassified at class one county yeah and that allows for for me it allows for more leniency for them to appear and one of the best places if you want to get educated in my opinion at least on the charter school issue is go to kansas city casey mo's school website they have massive amounts of documents there and they have been dealing with this for years and it is the amount of money that they lose every year with charter schools is astounding um transportation costs are not even 600 i don't even remember it was a huge number well just don't confuse class one county with charter
123necessarily and and the law has it's not a legal issue right it's not like this allowed something that's not there now right but it gives them a little bit more leeway was my understanding i think what you see is your metropolitan areas being more of that focus and so as as county designations change that's indicative of your size more than anything as it stands right now from that classification there are some financial implications as we set our tax rate moving forward and timelines and so forth that's really it as of right now we can talk more so we got into this quite a bit of county stuff so yeah i just don't want to throw that out there to think that we've got some kind of no no i think the the implication is it
124has more of a tendency to lean toward your heaviliest populated counties of which we're in that we're in that camp right so i think to angie's point as it relates to the kcps experience they have done a significant review of how they are impacted and admittedly there are some higher performing charters and some underperforming charters and therein lies part of the issue the other area that i would hone in on missouri's in missouri would be on the st louis side in terms of the st louis district the other piece that we can't negate is the charter virtual presence and the implication that that has on the state of missouri and really that's the proverbial camel's nose under the tent in terms of expanding virtual charter schools is really one piece of that puzzle as you
125think about charter school expansion so definitely something to watch as the next several weeks unfold angie just to echo some of the things about kansas city i mean when you're talking about talking points for speaking to these legislators and looking the accountability pieces and the the differential between how our districts are held accountable versus charters potentially but the number of facilities that are then being funded but this is the time of year um open enrollment some of the new uh ability to transfer to different districts those are all things that are kind of getting piled on and i'd say historically when they get piled onto those bills it's usually means that they're not not going to get past but it feels at times a little bit different this year so it's i think it's important
126to be vigilant yeah and when msba sends out those critical issue alert there's also places within their website where you can go for talking points since they are big on you know legislators do have a tendency to pay a little bit more attention to board members because they view usa as elected officials sometimes so or at least that's what they always tell us so i'd also like to just point out hb 952 which closed for public comment today which would prohibit certain types of curriculum particularly curriculum that focuses on race and diversity hopefully it's too late in the game for anything to happen with it but it's out there and obviously it's troubling on its own but the idea that then curriculum could be further could be further limited by the legislature is slippery slope
127what half bill is that again 9.52 uh anything else on nine zero one legislation luna nine zero two you'll note uh the msba region four meeting coming up may 6th definitely going to be a virtual meeting but if you want to attend uh i assume we have a way of signing up for that correct yes yeah i know angie has already signed up i believe and then i am signing up as well but if you're interested in participating in that please let sandra know so anything else on that note sandra yeah okay and then we will meet once again for study session on may 4th coming up any board of remarks as we close out tonight yes i'd just like to note for the record uh regarding this uh these benches and the piece i
128stepped out on i have not participated directly in any of the conversations with district officials it's a subcommittee that does operate under the umbrella of ccal but i have not been directly involved i've been informed about it but not directly involved in the conversation i just want to note that for the record thanks i would just say welcome to mr marriott glad to have you and your expertise and experience thank you i'm very excited to be here and want to thank david for all of his service and kind words and helping focus us on all on what's important yeah definitely all right nothing else 10.01 there you go you