001it's my honor and privilege to serve as the superintendent of limburg schools i want to thank our candidates this evening for providing us some time to get to know them better as well as to why each of them are running for the board of education being a board member can be a really rewarding experience also at times it can be a thankless experience as well lots of hours time commitment it's a voluntary position so i just want to thank the four of them for being willing to serve our amazing students our wonderful teachers and staff our great parents our community as a whole so just thank you guys for willing to serve and with that i want to thank the league of women voters for hosting tonight's event and with that i am going to
002turn it over to kathleen farrell for i believe some further instruction so again thank you all for attending i'm going to stand up can everybody hear me in the back all right thank you dr lake good evening and then and before we start uh i'd like to just mark the event tonight because we have the privilege of gathering to talk about our children to talk about our district and i'd like to have a moment of silence for the people of ukraine they do not have that privilege right now and i think that's important for us to remember as we engage this evening so just one moment of silence okay i want to thank the district and particularly uh andrea hosenfeld and beth johnson and dr lake for making this happen and this forum is being
003live streamed on the district's youtube channel so you can look at that and it'll stay up so you can look at it later and send it to your friends and family my name is kathleen farrell of the st louis league and i'm going to be your moderator this evening and i want to thank the candidates for participating you're going to have the privilege of electing two candidates for two three-year terms to serve on the board of education here they are up here in the order as they appear on the ballot mr david randleman ms jennifer miller ms kerry clay and ms julia voss the league believes that one of the best ways for voters to learn about people seeking election is to hear candidates speak in an unrehearsed kind of manner and to answer your
004questions not my questions your questions in a public forum now they're going to give their opening statements in that order as they appear on the ballot and then for the closing statements we're going to start with ms vos and go this way and then what we're going to do so those are going to be two minute statements and we have a fine time keeper over there miss margaret gray who takes no nonsense and she's going to give them fair warning and then what we're going to do is give each candidate an opportunity in one minute to answer each question and what i'm going to do is keep rotating down so that the next you know everybody takes turns being first and last in in between if there is a question that is addressed to a
005particular candidate what i've done is i've tweaked that question a little bit so that all the candidates can answer because every candidate has a right to answer every question now here's your job and i think you've already done a fine job of it and i know you'll continue to do it this is the pile of questions that i received from the district over 120 of them okay in addition to that you have the opportunity to come up with new questions tonight and again the questions that are posed to these candidates are not the league's questions or the district's questions they're your questions and so what we're going to do is to try to answer as many as we can you're going to think about some things and so when you're done if you need another
006card raise your hand our volunteers if you could raise your hands back there they're looking all around and as soon as you need another card or if you have a card that's ready to pick up they're going to come get it now they've got a list of questions that i've tried to pull from here so that we're not going to have any repeat questions okay but lots of times when you listen to people speak you think of something else and so i want to get as much of that in here as possible you can audio tape this or videotape it as you want and i in the league in good faith am trying to represent as many as i think the pressing issues that you all are concerned with are okay anybody have any questions
007about that all right with that in mind then we are going to begin with opening statements and mr randleman i think you're first thank you um so yes my name is david randleman i immigrated here with my family about 10 years ago originally from israel i was born in jerusalem we have four children in the district two in high school and two in concord elementary i work as a computer architect a cloud computing architect sorry and um i've been a director of i.t in my past and system engineering along with financial operations when we moved here we hand picked lindbergh schools because of its reputation of being a top school district and because of the teachers and the great el program i'm very thankful for being here um you know my children have flourished here
008uh and from no english at all they are not now top students in the district as far as involvement in the community i participate in the dei committee i try to bring in an immigrant perspective i support other programs like the forte ptg i have a business and financial background especially specialize in optimization and large organizations and i have a real estate business we are fully invested here in lindbergh schools and i really couldn't see my children going anywhere else as far as reasons for running um as mentioned uh i really appreciate what lindbergh schools has done for us and i want to give something back to the community i also have some concerns over the academics recently uh with about 50 of our third and fourth graders being below proficiency levels and math and
009about 35 percent in ela and i know we don't teach to the test anymore but i still have concerns about um not meeting the missouri state standard proficiency um beyond that i want to time is up mr random okay sorry thank you okay if we could hold applause i forgot to say that do we get to the end and then we'll have a rousing one how about that okay mrs miller well thank you to the league for running in the district for hosting and for everyone here tonight and watching at home i'm jennifer miller i am currently on the board and i'm running for re-election my husband and i bought our first home together in limburg 17 years ago and we have two children in the district a fifth grader at concord and a seventh
010grader at sparing i'm a former special education teacher and i currently work with very young children with disabilities and developmental delays and so i know how important it is for children to get access to the programs they need to succeed i'm running again because i want to make sure we continue our work that the board has prioritized based on feedback we have received from the community these past four years i believe in looking at the whole picture and i will work towards structured literacy rigorous challenging instruction for all students continued safety and security oversight transparency and open two-way communication with the community i want to make sure that we continue to be fiscally responsible we continue to have good relationship with our teachers and staff and that we prioritize instruction and programs that benefit all
011students and we need to place value on the things that matter most our students and the learning that takes place in our classrooms every day originally when i ran for the board i wanted to work towards our growing student enrollment developing a strategic plan and repairing relationships with staff while including the community and setting priorities for the district we have done many of those things our high school is addressing our incoming high school enrollment and we will have a new permanent home for the gifted center to alleviate space at our middle schools and elementary school we have developed the strategic plan and we have a master facility plan now which was created based on feedback from the community we have implemented a tuition-free full-day kindergarten and facilitated healthy relationships with our staff and we are
012a destination district for both students families and teachers so when i say i will work on something i mean it thank you thank you miss clay i'm carrie clay and i am so excited to be here in person for this event tonight i would like to thank the league of women voters in the district for making this forum possible i'm a 37-year resident of the district i'm a proud lindbergh flyer myself i attended long elementary school sperry middle school and graduated from lindbergh high school in my professional life i was a cpa and worked in public accounting in the audit practice at pwc i currently love being a stay-at-home mom to my 16 year old and 10 year old boys my husband and i decided to move to limburg for one reason and that was
013for the schools i wanted my kids to be lindbergh flyers just like me i was very involved as a parent in the schools i was on a ptg board uh lead ptg projects uh was a scout leader a parent volunteer a sports coach team manager for sports um and about three years ago my involvement in the district began to look a little bit different when my youngest son was diagnosed with dyslexia we were not able to get the support that he needed at lindbergh schools so my husband and i made the difficult decision to move him to a school that was equipped to handle his needs after that we looked at my older son's education and realized that he was experiencing gaps too and we also made another difficult decision to move him outside the
014district as well those are the key factors driving my reason for running i am concerned about the direction that the district that i love so much is headed and my primary goal if elected to the board will be to return academic excellence okay thank you ms voss hello thanks to everybody for coming out tonight my name is julia voss i moved to the district eight years ago from south city with my husband we have three children in the district i have two at sappington and one at truman and we moved here because my husband is a lindbergh grad and he wanted his children to have the the great education that he had so we moved here and we started it long and then moved over into the these other schools when the redistricting happened i'm
015running because i think that the school sets the tone for the community and i want our community to be one that values support for all levels of learning support for teachers and a respectful dialogue among its members and i think there's a lot of ways that lindbergh is doing really well in all three of these values and we're going to talk about some areas tonight with all the questions i'm sure where there's room for improvement because there's always room for improvement i think that my background makes me especially well suited to help move those improvements forward i am an attorney i have been um with greenspun or hamburg gale for about 20 years now i started as an anti-trust litigator which is just as boring as it sounds and the firm after about i think
016seven maybe 10 years asked me to take a leadership role over seeing a department that oversees the electronic evidence the handling of electronic evidence in lawsuits so i run a department that has lawyers and technical people in it and in that role i am responsible for budgeting hr issues strategic plans attorney education and i still practice as an attorney um every once in a while in between all those other things i'm trained to consider all sides of every issue every time and listen to what people are saying and i think that that will help me make good decisions if i'm elected to the board on april 5th okay thank you very much and so we're going to start with the questions now and we're going to start with you ms miller on the first question
017and there were a number of people who talked about um educational excellence and their concerns about that so let's start with this question how should educational excellence achievement and gaps be defined is it math scores a couple of people tonight have talked about their concerns about stem education and gaps there but how do you measure these things all right thank you um we've had a lot of discussions recently about map in our district and a lot of changes that we have made so that we are making sure we're teaching priority standards that are aligned with missouri learning standards and developing proficiency sales so we can measure that progress that each student is making we are also using a nationally norm test called nwea to ensure that each student is making growth not only once a
018year that test is given three times a year to give that and we also use fastbridge to ensure that our younger elementary students are moving out of that at risk category and into proficiency and higher thank you okay thank you miss clay we uh in order to evaluate our academic excellence uh we need to look at a lot of things one of those things being the map testing map testing is the only test that is standardized across the state so it is really our only true measure of how we are comparing to other schools in the state of missouri we also need to use the internal tests that jen mentioned nwea fastbridge and other assessments that our teachers give we need to look at our act sat scores and another concept that i would like
019to pursue if elected to the board is taking a look at students like five years out after graduation and seeing where they're at i think that would be a really interesting indicator um to see you know how our students are really performing in the real world okay thank you ms voss i think all the tests that they have talked about obviously are ways to measure people but or measure how the students are succeeding i think that there are other ways to look at it too though just the offerings of the district how many advanced courses are offered how many courses are offered for students who don't want to go to college because we need to make sure that every student can succeed with whatever path they want and if they don't want to go to
020college we have to prepare them for what's next after that so i think we need to make sure we're looking at everybody who's on every end of of the spectrum i also think we should look at things like extracurriculars one of the strongest things this district has going for it is its music programs they're amazing they are truly amazing the strings program is great and i've heard the band is great too but i'm not in that so i can't speak to it personally these are things that teach children cooperation and dedication and not giving up when something is hard because the violin is hard so i think that we need to also look at all the offerings the district has thank you mr randleman thank you i think um the math tests are the only
021ones that the only test that gives an objective view on where we are we're supposed to teach the children according to the missouri state standard i realize it's not ideal and i realize that we as a district don't want to test the children uh prepare the children for the test but i still expect as mentioned a proficiency level and i i also think the other tests that were mentioned the fast track fast bridge sorry and um the nwea are good teacher benchmarks to see where we're at from the goal we we placed in on the year thank you okay thank you very much miss clay we're going to start with you this time with the question and we're staying on the same topic because people had a lot of questions about the standings of limburg
022and here's one that appeared about five or six times that i saw uh here's the statement and i cannot attest to the truthfulness of the statement so i'm going to read you what i read lindbergh has fallen in the rankings from number one in 2015 to number 76 today uh i saw different numbers these are the numbers i saw the most okay question is why and we're going to start with you miss clay i think a big reason for our academic decline is our literacy program our literacy rates in our district are not good depending on the grade level that you look at we're somewhere between 35 to 40 percent of our students struggling to read and obviously if you're struggling to read that is really going to affect how you perform in all of
023your other classes i also believe we need to bring a focus back to our foundational academic skills like grammar handwriting spelling vocabulary also we need to bring math intervention back into our schools that was removed and we no longer have additional support for elementary students that are struggling in math i believe we need to make sure we have classes in place to challenge our students that need an extra challenge and thank you ms voss i think we need to start with whether that 76 is really a true number and i do not believe that it is and desi does not believe that it is desi said when they released those scores that it would be a gross misuse of the data to compare this to prior years and one if it had a whole list
024of factors that you know many schools may have faced what lindbergh faced was 20 of the kids didn't take the test when twenty percent of your student body isn't included in the number it's invalid so we that number is not a true ranking it's not where lindbergh stands um but i do think that there are a lot of improvements to be made to improve academics and i agree with the literacy program being one of them i have three children two of them needed reading intervention that shouldn't happen so we need to fix the elementary literacy program to be more structured to have more phonics to be more cohesive and if we can do that since a lot of things stem from your ability to read then everything should from there move forward okay thank you
025mr randleman thank you um and sorry i was kind of focused on something else do you mind repeating the question again um it is lindbergh has fallen in the rankings uh from number one in 2015 to number 76 um how come okay so for i i will say that i don't believe it's just the school's fault there's no question that uh the pandemic played into this as well and there are a lot of factors i believe it's a combination of uh in in but if we look at 2019 for example we were i believe 34th place so we were already dropping even before the pandemic it has to do with removing the framework of support for the children uh the math interventions uh and and more recently the challenge classes um and you know i
026think the the literacy programs and and and math programs need to be improved so okay thank you ms miller you have the last word on this one so when we look at our map scores we also need to look at what has changed over the past few years we no longer teach through the tests as david mentioned earlier and i think kerry did too we no longer receive pre-released test questions prior to administering the test we are undoing a lot of things that truly were not good for students interventions were specif were given to students who are you know within five points of moving into the proficient category instead of students who are further away from that category and needed the intervention more the district is trying very hard to make sure that all students
027are meeting our priority standards and moving through the grades as they move through i'm sorry as they move through the grades that they are moving higher along into proficiency so we have recently added some phonics and phonemic awareness in our elementary schools and yes we need to move towards more of that structured literacy which we are working towards and hope to implement in a year and again in math interventions we need to make sure we are doing that as well thank you okay thank you this vos you're first this time staying on the same topic i had four questions in that big pile that said you know if we looked at other districts who were highly ranked i and what happened during the coven period they didn't fall down nearly as much as lindbergh did
028why do you think that's so if you think it's true and what are we doing now to address that gap i think that it's true for some districts and not for others if you look at the data some other districts did fall and others didn't but one thing about that i mentioned earlier that 20 that didn't take the test there was a lot of mixed messaging from desi about whether we were going to have to take the test and so the message out to the families was that we don't think you're going to have to come to take this test then right at the minute last minute oh wait yes you are no you aren't yes you are and lindbergh didn't go out and really push it for people to come in and so there
029actually was a fear that in when when school started again in the fall that the district would have to retake the test because there weren't enough high enough uh i think it's 80 or 85 percent has to take it um for desi to be happy but it turned out that desi met the goal overall for the state so lindbergh didn't have to and so the districts that were better at not better but more diligent about getting their kids in to make them take the test they did better and we could have been more diligent about it but at the same time it's a pandemic and people are scared to come in so i really thank you for the district for doing that okay mr random one you're going to be first this time we're going
030to change topics uh but i had a number of questions about i'll need to answer that question oh i'm sorry ms voss was the first i'm sorry for me is it my turn to answer then oh yes yes it is all right so yes it is see i told you i told you this is what you get by inviting an old lady mr randleman thank you all right um well i think in this last year we've introduced a lot of changes into the school uh we've added uh social social emotional uh learning we we've added a lot of pilots uh there's been a lot of changes and i think that's been a contributing factor to our more dramatic drop in the rankings compared to other school districts okay thank you very much and i was
031so sad on you answering this one first so you're first this time oh you haven't gosh i really am screwing up ms miller i'm ready about the next question yes ms miller okay so last school year we had 30 percent of our students in our virtual programming in addition to that we also offered a partial in-person partial virtual programming with what many districts around us were not able to do so i do think that plays a role in our our state scores and our map scores um you know we had virtual kids come into our school and take this test they came to buildings that were not their original school building it was the first time they had been in a school building in over a year and they took the test in a shorter
032amount of time than what we have previously allotted for map testing so i do think that plays a role into the ability of children to perform well on a test thank you okay thank you miss clay um i i don't think we can discount last year's map scores because only because 22 percent of our students did not take the test um those students most likely were in in the range you know high performers students that were struggling so i think we need to consider them and as far as the decline goes i think things are just really starting to catch up with us you know we have not been on the right track for a while and i think it's starting to to show in our numbers so i think we've just been snowballing and
033we were on the decline before the pandemic hit and the pandemic exacerbated it and um now we're at the position where we're at okay thank you very much now mr randleman um a number of people had concerns about special education programs and i'm going to try to capture those in two questions the first question is what specific changes do you think should be made to the special school district here to improve their performance well i've i've received some feedback from uh parents that are in the dis in the ssd and um i've heard concerns about lindbergh taking over lindbergh schools taking over the kind of the ssd program to be honest it's still an area i'd like to research and get more feedback so you know i don't want to draw conclusions before i've researched
034it more okay ms miller um yes so i do think it is important that we develop procedures in conjunction with ssd that can be followed from building to buildings so that what's happening in one building is happening in another building and those same programs are being offered even to lindbergh students that are being offered in kirkwood or other districts we need to make sure like we have evidence-based practices that our ssd teachers are being able to go to trainings and professional learning and you know best practices and that those are they're given the time to implement those within our buildings thank you thank you ms clay um i believe that the district plays a key role in this program and the ssd program and we need our district to be advocates for the students receiving
035ssd services we need to make sure our students are receiving the best possible ssd services for example students in limburg are not able to get wilson tutoring which is is a literacy program that's available but meanwhile students in nextdoor kirkwood are able to get that through ssd so we need to be better advocates for our students um in that regard uh as jen mentioned we need to make sure we need to have a set program that's followed for ssd for evaluations and things that's the same across all schools it's easier to get ssd services in some schools than other schools it shouldn't be that way um and uh i think i'll stop there okay ms voss it's my understanding and i i also think you know i haven't had to use these services myself so
036i i'm going from what i've talked to people on and it's my understanding from talking to people that it's not lindbergh teachers who are are the problem they're doing everything they can to help these kids get help and that it's really the special school district is where people feel that that the communication breaks down and i don't want to blame special school district because i haven't talked specifically with them yet if i was a board member i would but i think that maybe there needs to be a little more accountability on their end because bloomberg's the one who's accountable for these kids on all sorts of testing and i don't know exactly where special school district comes in and gets any kind of accountability for what's happening and so i think that's what i would
037like to explore a little bit more okay we're going to start with you this time ms miller and staying on the subject of special education what is one group of students who require special education that you're most concerned about like is there one group of students that needs an initiative right away and what would that be in other words have you identified have you thought about one group that you have a lot of students who are experiencing that challenge and what would you do about it so obviously i think all of our students should be getting the services they need and have access to those programs but in regards to this specific question that yes our reading and writing students who have reading and writing disabilities diagnosed within our district really you know i am
038concerned it's touched my family and it's hard to make sure that your child is getting the best program and the services they're supposed to be getting and i have a background in special education yet it's still sometimes an adversarial conversation or an adversarial iep meeting and that's not fair to our students it's not fair to our families and it's something i think needs to be worked on thank you okay ms clay as uh jen mentioned we of course want to make sure all of our students are getting the services and supports that they need um but students with dyslexia and are very close to my heart because i have a child with dyslexia i have advocated in this district for years to get the support i have come and spoke at board meetings and the
039advocacy of parents in this district has fallen on deaf ears it's really sad that these kids are not able to get the support they need it's the reason why we had to leave the district and we need to do better for these students and we can ms voss i would agree that if we have children who can't read they're not going to be able to succeed in school and so if we can't get special school district services for them then maybe there are other things lindbergh can do like getting more reading specialists to come in and help at least maybe in the interim because emerging from the pandemic is going to be so hard there's going to be learning loss and so if i were elected to the board i think that would be one
040thing i would push for if we have if we can make it work with the budget is getting more reading specialists at every school so that kids who are on the borderline and maybe can't quite get an uh special school district services then lindbergh can provide it for them and that i think that would go a long way to helping some of these problems too thank you mr randleman thank you obviously i'm concerned and for all children and i want to see make sure we're taking care of everyone but i will say that i've seen for several years now uh parents come up and talk about dyslexia as a as a concern board meeting after board meeting and i know that in lindbergh about 30 over 30 percent um are have uh issues in that
041field whereas in the population it's it's one out of uh um it's one-fifth so um yeah that is a concern for me too i i agree with what carrie said thank you okay thank you very much miss clay you're gonna be first this time i'm gonna switch topics here i had a lot of questions about uh concerns about what was going on at the elementary level that affected middle school levels so here's the question i tried to put together do you believe that flaws in the elementary curriculum have caused deficits in our middle schoolers if so what are they and what should we pursue yes i do believe that what is going on in our elementary schools is affecting the performance of our middle schoolers they are not entering middle school prepared i had a
042conversation when i was out canvassing with a mom who said her sixth grader just had to write her first paragraph all by herself and the mom said to the teacher that's great that she's doing it but i don't think she will get the capitalization or punctuation right so we need to really focus on those basics in elementary school reading writing math vocabulary grammar spelling all of that need we need to have solid foundation and we also need to make sure that we have a good connect between the teachers in elementary and the teachers in middle school so that the teachers in elementary are ensuring that the kids are ready to meet the expectations of middle school when they get there thank you ms voss i'll agree that that vertical um meeting with between the teachers
043hadn't been happening as much and that would be an excellent way to make sure that when the kids go into sixth grade that they have gotten the the skills that the teachers want them to have um i think with the middle school right now there's a really good opportunity with the uh with the way they redid it there's a huge block time now they have and they could really use that time for more tutoring for individualized tutoring and for maybe some more push and help there because they have they have this huge amount of time for flex time now on on the longer days and i think better use of that time i know it's the first year that they've done it and so maybe it's not quite as structured as it should have been
044it could be and i think that there's a real opportunity for helping the students using that time thank you mr randleman yeah it's interesting that um us parents who have been here in the district for a while and have teacher students that went through elementary that say 10 years ago can tell the difference our children for example really did well and now the the first ones and now the the more recent ones are having problems with uh grammar reading and writing um we i also feel that the again the math intervention which was really important and um yeah i guess that's that's really about it okay miss miller so i think this question is kind of getting towards asking about our reading and our writing instructional resources at the elementary level and our district has
045said like we need to do a better job here and that is why we are you know we implement integrity um at the elementary level and we move towards more phonics instruction and we absolutely need to finish our literacy pilots um we need to make sure we're using fidelity to find those to find which one will work the best and we need to move that program move to a program that is better aligned and focuses on phonics phonemic awareness vocabulary building and grammar and i do believe too we need to make sure that our fifth and sixth grade teachers are able to meet and do that vertical teaming so that our incoming fifth graders are prepared and that the six the our fifth grade teachers know what our sixth grade teachers are looking for when
046our fifth graders walk into that building thank you okay thank you very much ms voss we're going to start with you and we are entering into the territory of understanding and talking about two things uh diversity equity and inclusion and something called critical race theory so i've put together a number of questions that address those topics let's start with the first one and ms vos you're going to be first do you believe that the concepts of diversity equity and inclusion should be incorporated into the curriculum across the board why or why not i think they should it's really important to make sure that every student feels that they belong here but i think that what you have to do first is level set on what you mean by diversity equity and inclusion and i'll probably
047gonna head to the next question but critical race theory two those phrases have taken on a meaning that i don't think that they actually initially started as you know critical race theory started as a graduate level political viewpoint and it has seeped its way down into our vernacular and i don't think it means the same thing to me when i say yes i believe this i just mean every student should walk into the room and feel like they belong there and that the teacher and their friends are going to feel that that that they have value and that their story has value and it could be you know it doesn't have to be a minority it could be you know one kid who's had a different life experience thank you and then let me just
048clarify we're going to do um diversity equity and inclusion first and then we're going to move into critical race series so everybody's going to have time to talk about all of this fair enough so uh mr randleman yeah so i joined the uh di committee because um i i wanted i had concerns about what was happening as an immigrant here on someone who was accepted in the district i was very concerned when i saw the district sending teachers to the eec the educational equity consultants where racism was redefined and and and pitted as oppressors versus oppressed and here's the bottom line the way i feel it's it's very important that we accept and everyone uh but you also have to have a framework that brings us together and that is the american uh framework right
049that is where we live that where we all have the same rights and if we don't have that it's gonna be very hard for us to have that diversity within it thank you okay ms miller um so a couple things the state of missouri does require the district to have an equity plan um so that's one reason why we have it but yes i want every student to come to school feel like they belong and feel like they are included we want them to come to school and learn in a place where they know they are valued where they feel heard and i also would like to address you know some of the training our teachers have done after we had two cohorts go through that training the district kind of reevaluated and said this
050is not the direction we want our district going in regards to this and we need to look at other resources and so we made that shift thank you okay thank you miss clay i absolutely think that we must make sure all students feel like they belong at lindbergh schools no matter where they come from or what their background or situation is i am very concerned about our current uh dei program when i look at our map testing results i noticed that for math only 11 percent of our black students are proficient and only 35 of them are proficient in ela and i find that very concerning i think we need to make sure that our efforts are data driven and that we are really with our programs in that area we are really achieving the
051results that we're trying to achieve which is to make everyone feel belong like they belong and to make sure that everyone is successful in academics okay thank you very much we're going to start with you this time mr randleman and there was a pattern in the questions that i saw and and the pattern was this a number of people were saying that they believed that the inclusion of diversity equity and inclusion subjects in the curriculum took away from what we consider to be traditional academic subjects and so i wanted to sort of get at this cause and effect because it was in so many of your questions and so here's the question i came up with do discussions of diversity equity and inclusion conducted by educational professionals having been discussed with the district about what
052the children need harm children and i guess when i say harm children i'm looking at two things that were in your questions one of them was taking away from the traditional academic subjects the other one was a number of you talked about not wanting children to think as if they were you use the language oppressors divisive etc etc so my question is if they're conducted by educational professionals in a way that the district has discussed do they harm children if you believe they do cite evidence of that and it could be emotional harm it could be traditional academic kinds of things etc is that fair summary you get to start with that one mr randleman thank you well this one's been close to my heart um because you know again as immigrants uh we noticed
053and our children reported to us that they were being taught through a narrative history through a narrative so for example they learned that the constitution was mainly there to perpetuate white people and oppress minorities and uh that that's that's not the case that that's not how it was but what it started doing is it was starting to reflect on the children it's they started looking at themselves and saying well wait a minute um you know i'm how does that affect me and and they had to choose well i you know i'm an immigrant but am i do i fall in that category of an oppressor and and the children had a lot of discussions on this and i think that's the problem i want to bring objective history i want to bring it factually i
054want the children's freedom of conscience to be what determines uh how they view that history and not through narrative okay uh ms miller and again you know part of the question was about you know sight evidence of that so ms miller so i i don't think that we should ever take away from our academics and that standard that we want our students to reach you know if we're teaching you know equity diversity inclusion those things should be embedded throughout our day they should kind of be natural parts of the discussion and obviously within the classroom you're going to have students you know write a paper do a project that kind of brings up issues that maybe aren't in the curriculum aren't in the teacher's lesson plan but are going to have to be addressed and
055we have to give room to our professionals to do the job that they're trained to do thank you okay thank you miss clay um you know i really hope our current board has examined all of the data surrounding the dei programs that they're they're using all of our decisions really need to be data driven we need to make sure that they're really accomplishing what we're setting out to accomplish i think as i said before making sure all students are included and feel welcome at school is extremely important i think modeling behaviors is a great way to do that i think we also need to work directly with families who have a child that may be struggling in that area to identify issues and work towards solutions that make those children who are not feeling included
056feel more included okay thank you ms voss i'll answer it in parts first i don't think it's taking away from academics for two reasons one because most of the the character lessons that they have are done during a like a class meeting time or in a very short amount of time that's that's not really designated already for strict um academic speaking anyway you know part of being an a teacher is bonding with your students and having these meetings so they're embedded into that for another reason if you look at the the books that the kids read i'm going to use sixth grade as an example they end up with a wide variety of books that they get to choose from and then they have book club and they're all sorts of different protagonists and so
057the classroom discussion is from a whole bunch of different protagonists point of view and that is one way to just bring it in and have critical thinking and analytical thinking about these different experiences and that's inclusion and equity and diversity it's it's critical thinking about that um about not wanting him to think it's divisive i think we should teach our children history and it's not always pretty okay thank you very much ms miller you're gonna be first this time and there were a lot of questions about quote unquote critical race theory and my question putting all of them together is do you believe that it is included in the curriculum at lindbergh if so where and to what effect so we'll start with you ms miller i do not believe that critical race theory is
058in our curriculum our curriculum aligns with the missouri learning standards um okay it's pretty short but i don't think it is thanks got it miss clay um i know the district's stance is that critical race theory is not taught in our schools um but as uh the board does not approve uh very detailed curriculums that have to be followed by our teachers and the teachers are given a lot of leeway in the classrooms i can't say with certainty if it is or is not included unfortunately i can't be in every classroom uh every day so i'm not sure if it's in there ms voss it's not in there because we don't have graduate student legal scholars in our classrooms we have kids who are learning history and critical race theory is a very defined term
059or concept at that high level when you're talking about history sometimes it's not pretty and you have to have some hard discussions with the kids they need to understand what happened and they can evaluate what may be what the what the effect on what happened is today that doesn't mean that teachers are trying to make white children feel bad because they're not they are trying to teach history and let our children learn what happened and learn from it and learn to be better for it so i don't think it's taught in the schools because it's just not what people think it is when they hear the term okay mr randleman thank you well critical race theory isn't a curriculum and it isn't something that uh is a subject matter it's a lens it's a way
060to interpret things and um you know if i tell a story and i tell it through a very specific perspective that story is going to take on a completely different meaning and that's what's happening in our school district and the contempt for our country uh is is in my opinion coming from this from from this perspective if you look about if you look at the children who don't want to stand for the flag anymore and i i respect that that's their right but we should be proud of our of our nation we should look at the hear the history and every single fact but uh it needs to be objective and allow the narrative and to be narrative free so that the students can decide that's the critical thinking that we should all have thank
061you okay we're going to start with ms clay this time a related question exactly what would be your role on the school board engaging in a quote-unquote inappropriate material or book complaint um i i know our district is currently working on revising its library policies and unfortunately we don't quite know what those are but you know right now and as i believe probably will be the case going forward the board will be there to if books are appealed they will be there to vote and decide whether or not they will remain in the library with or without restrictions okay ms voss the the role of the board member is to follow the policies and if the the policies are there's a committee to to hear it and if the committee could i the committee gives
062back a recommendation the parent can either take it or not and if they appeal it that's when the board gets involved and so at that point i'd read the book and see if i thought it violated any policies and if it doesn't violate any policies it stays in okay mr randleman thank you well i would hope to see books that are first of all have educational value but even if there are books that have concerns i think this is easy to solve we need to properly catalog these books and we need to allow for parents to categorically opt out from having their children access it either through the library or at checkout in order to do that we have we have to have a you know a proper placing of these books and right now
063they're randomly placed in different areas and there's no parental boundaries of place at all so as a as a board member if elected i would hope to have those boundaries in place and that way parents that do want their children to have access to certain books can do so and and those parents who have concerns can have the confidence that their children will be protected from it ms miller yes so as a board member we need to ensure that our policies are being followed and as carrie mentioned you know those policies have been discussed for months in our teaching and learning board advisory with committee are i'm sorry with community members and we had a first reading of those policies at our february board meeting last month our parents have the right to challenge books
064and a committee should be formed to review those concerns and challenges and if appeal then the board would vote on to remove or not remove or keep the book with restriction i you know our parents have the ability to have their children to limit access and opt out for their children and i believe that's important but i think it's also important to ensure that other children do have access to the book if their parents want that thank you okay we're going to start with you this time on ms voss or excuse me miss clay you answered you were first last time ms voss okay a related question and lots of you you gave me some homework to do last week i needed to learn about a living curriculum because so many of you talked about
065it and it seemed to be talked about in two different ways one of them was a constantly changing kind of curriculum that was one way it was used the other way was to have a set of sort of required texts in english classes were the ones where people's examples came through the most and then there were other texts that were included uh that people were concerned about um there that they included certain kinds of topics that they found to be problematic and in some ways offensive like rape like child abuse like violence um so the question is um what do you think a living curriculum is because we want folks to know that you know and secondly what action do you think it should be taken if you think some action should be taken about
066it so i think a living curriculum is one that has guidelines that are set to the missouri standards but that gives the teachers room to choose a different particular material if that need arises in their class in their professional judgment and i think we need to give our teachers the room to make that professional judgment i think parents have the ability to talk to their children and see what they're learning or call the teacher and say what's my what's on my kids plate today or you know this week and if there is something that the parent doesn't like they can talk to the teacher about it and i'm sure that the teachers will work with them to come up with another option but the teachers need to be given the room to do the job
067that we've hired them to do mr randleman thank you the problem with the living curriculum is that it opens the door not always good or bad but it opens the door to move away from the board-approved curriculum and even if it meets missouri state standards i see it as a lack of transparency with the parents the parents send their children based on what the curriculum is what they know to be the curriculum it's it's published on lindbergh's website and in practice they can't always track and know what's being taught and that catches parents off guard and i would say that in my opinion delivering curriculum needs to go away thank you ms miller so when the district refers to living curriculum they're talking about high school classes that are added in between curriculum cycles and
068this is done when you know their student interest in certain paths and certain classes like we have a drone class now um and so the board does approve those when they approve the high school course catalog and syllabus are developed to be given to families and the student in the future we can absolutely make amendments to our curriculum where we're not voting on an entire english curriculum per se but we are this new class is being added so we can vote on this um but let's be clear curriculum is different than instructional resources when we're talking about books in a classroom or worksheets or assignments and lesson plans those are instructional resources and those by board policy are chosen by instructional professionals whether it be a teacher or a library media specialist or whatnot so
069i think it's important to know that when a novel is different than one year to the next it's because it's an instructional resource and not curriculum thank you ms clay i think the issue here is let's make sure that all the curriculums are approved by the school board um and the board really needs to dig in to them and see what's in there that's a board member's duty in my opinion and i don't think we've been doing the board our current board has been doing that enough once the board establishes the curriculum and uh you know the books like jen said have been set the teachers can teach the curriculum through whatever vehicle they want to teach it through but they need to follow the curriculum we also need to make sure the curriculum is
070very transparent parents should know exactly what it is we cannot rely on asking our kids what they're learning in school i have an elementary school kid he usually doesn't know he comes home and says he has no idea you know you guys know how it is they don't know and then i have a teenager and they don't want to talk to you about it so we cannot rely on our kids to tell us what's going on okay mr randleman you get to be first this time um the difference between curriculum and teaching approaches particular materials in class lesson plans etc etc is something that was asked a lot about in some ways i got the sense sometimes folks don't quite understand the difference but to represent your questions what role should the school board have
071in overseeing particular lesson plans book or article choices with teachers should the school board be telling teachers how to carry out their lesson plans thank you well i think if it's a well-structured curriculum there will be a good foundation of the lesson plan to build off of obviously there's a flexibility and some freedom for the teachers to bring in uh additional examples or things that will help contribute to that lesson plan within the class so you know if it's uh in biology bringing in samples or or additional material to show things i think that's teachers obviously need that flexibility but again a well-structured structured curriculum uh will give also a good lesson plan that the teacher can build a foundation from thank you ms miller so no i do not think the board should be
072telling teachers how to teach as i already mentioned teachers are trained experts in education and they should be developing their lesson plans and choosing their resources you know they're professionals they need to be able to do their job and board members are not all educational experts our board needs to be able to communicate what our community values and provide that oversight that missouri learning standards are being met within our curriculums and that teachers are using their lessons and resources to meet those standards and curriculums thank you thank you ms clay um i i think this really depends on the curriculum that is being used for example the literacy curriculums that curriculum that hopefully our district implements is going to be very structured and it's going to be very important that it's taught with fidelity and
073it's it may not allow for as much much flexibility as teachers have been used to in the past and you know if that's what's best for our students then that's what we need to do i think teachers having autonomy is very important i don't think we should tell them what their lesson plans need to be or review them or anything like that but yeah in some cases it is going to be very structured and uh you know we need to make sure if that's the way the program is laid out that it it's followed thank you ms voss i think the board should set the goals and the values for what the what the materials will be but at the end of the day you have a teacher and then you have the department heads
074and then you have a principal and then you have everybody in central office who are all educational professionals and any issue in a particular lesson should work its way up through that chain so that the people who are trained in education can figure out what the best course forward is if it makes it to the board then yes we get involved and and figure it out but i think that there's a structure in place for lesson plans to be handled that doesn't involve the board in most cases okay thank you we're going to start with you this time ms miller and while we're talking about teachers there were eight questions that began with the premise that teacher morale is low if that's true what is the one step you would take one initiative you would
075take to improve that morale from the perspective of a board member what would you do um i to my knowledge our teaching staff does not have low morale we have worked on this diligently for the past four years our negotiation cycles with our teachers are incredibly short in comparison to what they used to be prior to 2018 one year was one meeting and they were finished and then they had a 99 ratification of the agreement this year they just had a ratification agreement at 98 and i believe it was a three-year salary and language agreement that is fabulous for our district and just shows that our teachers and our administration and our board are working well together thank you thank you miss clay um i'm i'm going to agree with jen in saying that our
076teacher retention rates in our district are very high i mean we only had about a five percent turnover last year and hopefully that is an indicator that teacher morale is high but i can tell you one thing that i would do to improve it if it is in fact low is to take some of the things that teachers are responsible for off their plate they have to wear so many different hats they have to be teacher they have to be psychologists they have to be behavioral expert they have to deal with parents way too many things we need to remove some of that from the teachers so they can focus on teaching okay thank you ms voss if i thought teacher morale was low i would call somebody and ask them is teacher morale low
077let's talk to the teachers let's hear what they have to say because in lindbergh the teacher morale morale isn't low to my knowledge it is in other parts of the country it's it's as low as it's ever been in other parts of the country but in limburg they're happy and i think it's because the board listens the administration listens and you need to be listening to to understand if there's a problem to begin with and i don't think there is okay thank you mr randleman thank you um i agree with my fellow candidates here and board member um i will take the opportunity though to say uh thank you to our teachers and that i really appreciate all the hard work that you do and and getting us through this covet cycle and going back
078to in person learning so quick and dealing with that so i just want to show that appreciation thank you okay we're going to start with you this time miss clay do you believe that issues of quote unquote this is the language of your questions gender fluidity should be introduced to students in school if so at what level uh i think lindbergh has done a very good job of trying to make all students feel included we obviously can still continue to work on that so no matter what a student's gender is or i identity is uh we need to work and make sure that those students uh feel included and there may be times when those conversations do come up in a classroom and uh you know i think we just need to be open and
079and address those issues but should that be included in our curriculum you know i don't i don't think so okay thank you ms voss the cdc has reported that of lgbtq students 23 of them have tried to commit suicide in the past year and that's an astounding statistic and i think we should all pay attention to that because it's heartbreaking and for these students to feel that that is the only option they have i think we can do them some good by saying we see you and we know you're here and you know we welcome you and we can do that a lot of ways we can do that by having books available we can have that um you know books books in the library that represent those views we can have teachers who fall
080into these categories so that they see that that you can be a productive member of society look it doesn't have to end this way and i do believe that it belongs in a health classroom to a certain extent because that is where it would come up and if it comes up it will come up in classroom discussions with books and things too and i think it's appropriate to discuss it thank you mr randleman thank you um there are many reasons why children go through these different identity questions and i don't think the school has the capability of always knowing what's going through a child's mind i would hope that the identity issue is something between the child and their parents as far as having an acceptable place for all of course i i want that
081that's what the school is all about but i don't think the the school should delve into a child's identity that is sacred i think professionals professional psychologists and the parents should be the ones that that deal with this thank you okay thank you ms miller so i would like to echo what some of our candidates said about we need to make sure we include all of our students and whatnot um you know we need to make sure that our students see themselves reflected in the books that are available to be read as well as other students being able to read about things you know viewpoints they're unaware of they need to see others experiences as well and so when it comes up i do think it needs to be addressed you know this is everyday
082live experience for some of our students and we need to honor each of our students thank you okay thank you tough questions huh everybody ready to take a deep breath a little bit different kind of question three people said different start times for different schools is a real pain in the neck okay trying to get my elementary school students there by nine then i try to go to i try to go to the high school at a different time and i almost get run over um could we work this out in some different kind of way what are your thoughts on that so we're going to start with you this time ms vos there is a committee that is looking at that and i know they just changed the times and the one thing that
083i personally don't like i don't like how the middle school has to go to the high school to pick them up because then the kids end up riding the bus for like i don't know 45 minutes to get a 10-minute ride home so i think there's definitely more room to improve on this and see what other options there are out there uh the committee will look at all of this and hopefully make some good recommendations after talking to some other districts and experts who've looked at this issue okay thank you mr randleman yeah i'm kind of on a similar opinion um you know it really comes down to the data do different hours have an effect on how how well someone is focused on the teaching that day um you know i'd rather just look
084at the data but as a parent who has kids both in high school and elementary i mean we manage it's okay okay mrs miller um i agree man it does kind of suck in the morning when you're trying to get kids to different schools at different levels um i i think the biggest thing here is you know we've been very careful about the amount of money we spent on our busing the state does not reimburse 100 percent of busing it's a very minimal number of what they reimburse in comparison to what they're supposed to reimburse but we need to make sure that you know transportation and the money spent on transportation isn't making us make instructional choices we need to make sure our instructional choices drive what our buses and transportation are doing so that
085might mean we need to prioritize spending a little bit more money on transportation so that we can have three routes instead of only two routes and that kids don't have to sit on the bus for half an hour in a different school's parking lot thank you okay ms clay i agree with a lot of what ms miller said the the transportation situation is very much driven by the cost of transportation so that's going to play a big factor unfortunately it has to when we look into um you know new schedules or offering uh i mean it would be amazing if all the schools could start at the same time that would be amazing but you know really would be a budget question to see if that would be in the budget and then also to
086echo what david said um i think you know there have been studies that show that teenagers perform better a little bit later in the day and i know the new high school start time was meant to kind of align with that um but unfortunately those high schoolers are still getting on the bus at the same time as they were before so i don't really know that that really solved the problem okay we're going to start with you this time ms vos and here's the question do you support teachers or other school staff carrying arms on district property why or why not i think that the officer the resource officer should have should have arms that's his job he's trained to use them i do not think teachers should that is a disaster waiting to happen
087mr randleman i'm in similar opinion if it's a trained professional who's gone through uh a proper course and and you know that's something to be considered not not just any uh teacher carrying arms okay ms miller uh i would agree with what both candidates so far have said trained professionals our school resource officer officer yes i am okay with that i am not comfortable with you know arming all of our teachers thank you thank you ms clay i agree with what the other uh candidates have said uh it should be our trained professionals and our school resource officers and i'd also just like to give a thank you to all of those people for keeping our schools safe okay so we're going to start with you this time mr randleman a number of you online
088wrote questions about what you thought was a disproportionate amount of money spent on athletics sometimes you wrote about field improvements and facility improvements sometimes you talked about just how much emphasis there's placed the values that have been placed and three of you wrote specifically about football and saying you know it's way too much emphasis and it's dangerous that was the underlying premise of that question what do you think about all of this in terms of do we spend too much money and too much attention on athletics should we pay a little bit more attention to the safety of football why or why not well i kind of wish we had more athletics i think what brings a lot of us together in the school are sports i mean it's kind of what brings us um
089so i i'd like to see more of that um i'm not aware exactly of how much budget is put into it to be honest but uh um now i'm in favor of more of those activities ms miller um i agree that athletics is kind of that core especially at a high school level that you know core school spirit and i think in a one district i'm sorry a one high school district we really see that kind of trickle down through all levels of the building so you know i am in favor of our athletics um i don't think we spend that much too much money on our athletics i know that with the high school renovations more money has been spent on you know fields and we did at a gym that actually we weren't
090even planning to do the city i'm sorry the county required us to build a storm shelter so we turned it into usable space it was part of the code so that's all thank you okay miss clay those of you that know me no i love athletics um i'm an avid athlete myself my kids are very involved in athletics um i believe that some of the root of this question may be related to football maybe the turf field that was included in the prop r i feel like a lot of community members didn't know that was in there and then when they found out that was included in prop r uh they were upset um so i think you know that might have been a little bit of a transparency issue i think we need to
091be very transparent when it comes to what we're spending our money on i know the district just recently approved i think it was about 19 million dollars of certificates of participation part of that was for new tennis courts and i believe there were also some other athletic field improvements in that and that was outside of prop r that was on top um so i think you know there may be some concerns with the spending there we just need to be transparent hey ms voss um i think with uh with football with the question about it being too dangerous i think parents can make the decision as to whether they want their children to play the game so i wouldn't change anything on that in particular the month the money on sports needs to be divided
092not exactly equally but at least distributed somewhat fairly i happen to know that the girls field hockey team was playing without jerseys for a long time and it took a parent saying hey i'm over here where are the jerseys about 20 times before she finally got an answer so i think it's just taking a you know when when something is pointed out like that some inequality like that um just taking it to the right people and and making sure that we do give the the money to all groups not just focus it on one okay uh i believe we're going to start with you this time ms miller this is a very interesting question and it popped up twice so i gotta ask it um two question writers said charles lindbergh after whom this district
093is named history now tells us was a racist an anti-semite and aligned himself against the united states as effort to join in world war ii i'm reading your language um should the district reconsider its name because of this legacy yes or no why or why not start with you i don't think this is a question that is strictly up to the board this is a community decision and i believe input from the community should be sought if this is something our community wants to move forward with or not thank you ms clay uh yeah i'm going to agree with jen on that we would dig it input from the stakeholders to see if that was really something that the majority of the community was interested in doing before we pursued that avenue ms voss i
094have noticed that the district has taken his picture off of a lot of things and so i think that's probably appropriate um but i i agree with everybody else this is really hard and there's a lot of issues in this that you'd want to discuss you can't just say one person would be like yes i want to get rid of this no i don't i think we just really need to listen to everybody and have have a committee because you know there's got to be a committee for everything have a committee formed and talk to the community and really see if if this would be something that could be done finally you mr randleman thank you you know as a jewish person i'm saying this that i think we have to be very careful about
095taking a person's beliefs or our values and applying it as something that cancels their accomplishment when we look at lindbergh we're looking at the accomplishments that were done in flight and everything that he represented not what his personal beliefs are were and and the context of its time so i would urge to be cautioned on the cautious on that and you know we don't want to just erase our history because of that you'll find fault with everyone in history thank you okay thank you now i'm going to ask one last question but before i do there were a number of questions the answers to which i think belong in your closing statements so i'm going to give you a few examples what makes you best qualified to occupy one of these two seats what experience
096do you have that you think the district on the board of education really could use what quality do you have that will make you an effective leader what drives you what's your mission that you want to bring to this job that makes you a candidate that i should vote for in the election those kinds of questions and your experience i think belong answered in that final statement but here's the last question and i i want to sort of end on an up note i hope you know i didn't dodge any difficult topics tonight and that is what is best what is the one thing that you think is best about this district before we go to our closing statements and now let's see do i start with miss clay i think so uh this is
097a tough question because obviously there's so many things to love about lindbergh we have amazing amazing educators um i'm really personally excited about all the new programs at the high school the dual credit program uh the ap capstone program and the caps internship program i think we need to give our high schoolers as many different opportunities as possible and i also love the extracurriculars and clubs and sports at our schools the music program is one of the best in the country so lots of things to love about lindbergh okay thank you ms voss i really appreciate all the opportunities for everybody at the high school i think um that there's just so many different ways a student can go with so many different interests and i think the high school has done a wonderful job
098of meeting everybody where they are i think lindbergh's strongest asset though is the community i think that we have traditionally been drawn together and rallied around the the high school and you know the whole schools not just the high school but high schools where we all end up we all end up flyers at the high school and i i think that everybody feeling like they belong and that lindbergh means something that being a flyer means something it keeps bringing alum back to games and it brings us all together and all trying to work towards the same goal of making sure that we have students who are succeeding hey thank you mr randleman there are so many things that i love about lindbergh um you know from from the teachers i think that's the number one
099you know for us it was the ell and just uh how they took children who really didn't know much and and now they're excellent you know they're just doing great uh and i we personally really love the strings program um you know that's we've seen our our children develop and and and just become amazing so there's a lot of other stuff i mean i can't even number them all but i am truly thankful for for this district as a whole i know everyone is striving towards that excellence in education okay ms miller i feel like going last i just need to be like yes checked it out you could do that but um so some of the things i'm thinking of obviously our staff our teachers you know especially during covet they just really showed
100up and they were you know initiating new things for virtual learning on the fly and they did it very well and you know we have a highly invested community and i think as a district we really need to like use that to our advantage and help us you know continue to improve and move forward and like some of us some of you guys mentioned you know our programming at the high school and just that constant strive to do better thank you thank you all right now they're going to give their closing statements and then i have just a couple of quick announcements after that trying to give you hope okay um so we're going to start with you ms voss your closing statement okay i um i think one of the qualities that i have
101that would make me really great on the board is that i pretty good at bringing people together i'm i've taken classes to be a certified mediator so i've learned how how to bring people together when there are differences of opinions but more importantly but what why i want to do this job i've been i've been dancing around education my entire life i was almost an education major cho psych instead in law school i was a ta about seven years out of law out of being practicing attorney i took an alternative certification uh to get certified through desi and i have that application filled out in a drawer with the 50 check because i want to be i wanted to be an english high school a high school english teacher and i didn't send it in
102because my firm gave me the opportunity to work three days a week and i had to sit down and think what's best for my family and i stayed with the firm at that point and so even now though at my law firm i've moved out of litigation into a role where part of my job is educating attorneys i have always had this drive to make sure that there's quality education and that people can learn everything they need to know to succeed and i feel like that maybe all of my experiences where i got so close to being a teacher but backed away maybe that led me to today so that i could be here in this role serving the education that way and i hope to get your vote on april 5th ms clay i
103would again like to end tonight's forum by talking about unity i think this really sets me apart from the other candidates it's been something i've really been working on and really have been talking to community members about we we are we are a divided district right now we really need to come together as a district i believe the tone of the district comes from the top and our board needs to set an example of of for unity when elected to the board i will work to unite our district i understand the need for compromise and am willing to listen to all opinions from all stakeholders and i'm willing to change my own opinion um you know we all have our own opinions but i think it's really important to be willing to listen to others
104and get all the input you can and all the data you can and if if you need to change your opinion i think it's important to be able to do that i think that's a sign of a real leader to admit when you were wrong and that you're willing to change and admit that you've made a mistake i will put students first when making all my decisions i'll be fiscally responsible to the taxpayers of our district and i will work for increased transparency and accountability i believe parents should be a partner in their child's education and that we need to listen and put great weight on parents concerns i'll strive to bring back academic excellence in our school district and i really hope you all vote for me on april 5th thank you thank you
105ms miller um so i'm the type of person that i you know i analyze data i think things through very thoroughly i reflect which sometimes i think is a weakness because i get in my own head and can't get past it but i will continue to seek continuous improvement for myself and for the district and be open to new ideas and listening my time on the board has given me the experience to continue to move our district forward and i believe my professional experience gives me that usable knowledge as well you know i am proud to be a part of limburg we are top district and other districts come to us and look to us as an example and you know the department of elementary and secondary education in missouri does as well so i
106just want to say that you know lindbergh is constantly researching evaluating and making changes when needed and looking ahead and planning for the education of students so that they are prepared for whatever future path they choose i've greatly enjoyed my time on the board and valued it i've learned a lot very like personally and professionally and i hope that on april 5th you will use one of your two votes to vote for jennifer miller thank you thank you finally mr randleman thank you by now you have heard many concerns addressed by the candidates you have also heard my thoughts on structured literacy and the importance of getting back to on the path of educational excellence this election is certainly one of the most important i can recall because it boils down to one very simple
107question and that is where do we draw the line between parents versus school responsibility the administration believes that is up to them to provide our children with what they deem as social emotional support principles empathy moral values intersectionality lenses and identity through books to read with topics such as gender and sexual orientation when you hear terms like teaching the whole student this is part of what that means let me tell you what will happen if we allow the administration to parent on these topics we will lose our diversity and instead we will raise a generation of children who will think in one way we will lose our unique individuality and freedom of conscience i know that the community loves lundberg schools and we wish to see them go back to focus on academics and be
108an excellent school district we have known them to be by focusing on the literacy focusing on math bringing back interventions for those students who struggle and making sure we maximize student potential by restoring challenge and honor classes i know we can get back to that place we need more diverse voices on the board we need more say as parents if you feel as i do that more transparency on what is being taught is required that boundaries are needed that it is for the parents to parent and for the district to teach then they ask for your vote because we need voices of the parents and community on the board for the future of our children and for that of our school district finally as an immigrant i would kindly like to end with wishes that
109god bless america and that i am grateful for you all listening and being here tonight thank you thank you let's give them all a round of applause it isn't easy is it it isn't easy okay thank you and again thank you for participating and participating seriously and thank you to all of you for making this a successful event i hope that you feel as if your concerns and questions have been respected and asked we got through a lot of things tonight you know it's possible to do this in a civil and thoughtful and constructive way it's possible to do it and we need to continue to do it at every level of government and community that we have thank you to our hosts for inviting us i think this is the first time the league
110has done a forum here we sure hope will be asked back and i want to thank the volunteers from the league if you'll just hold up your hands and if you found this forum to be useful and i hope you did think about joining us by becoming a member of the league this is what the league is working for and our country needs it desperately desperately at every level and so we've got material on that as we work at every level of government to make it better from registering voters to educating voters to trying to design discussion forums where we can have a civil serious discussion to all kinds of things now the polls are going to be open on april 5th from 6 a.m to 7 p.m i want everybody in this audience because
111you know sometimes municipal and local elections are low turnout elections i've looked at the numbers in this district so i want each of you to take responsibility for finding five people who are registered to vote it's too late to register now as of march the 9th and make sure they do it and they need not only to go to vote they need to know what they're doing and so we have some good resources for that if you want non-partisan and fair and balanced information go to something called vote411 we've got some stuff back there and you'll you'll see the voter's guide that comes out in paper and it comes out online you know who does that the league of women voters we do all of the content for six counties and the city of st
112louis so we have over 860 candidates over a hundred ballot issues this time around and we hope that you will do that it's going to be online in the next several days middle of uh you know probably by the weekend and uh it the st louis post dispatch also publishes it and we carry it to every library every community center that we can and so please encourage people to use that as a way to get information now some of the polling places have changed so not a lot of them and i didn't have time to look at yours but make sure you know what your polling place is you should get a postcard from your board of elections you can also look on the board of election site just type in your address and by
113the way i forgot to tell you that if you look at the voter's guide vote 411 what you do is you put in your address it pops up just your ballot everything that's on your ballot with information about the candidates and their answers to questions as well as ballot issues and we've got at least we have four charter amendments for the county that are really serious we try to explain them in real english and do the pros and cons of both so please look at those but find out where your polling place is on election day if you have any difficulties you can call the league of women voters you can look us up take our number back there you can call the board of elections we are also involved in something called the missouri
114voter protection group for the state of missouri so if you have any difficulty if they lost your registration or whatever it is and remember that the county now says that you can go to any polling place so i mentioned the other because people like to go to their own polling place but remember they got those new machines where you can go to any polling place and vote but if you have any difficulty with any of these things you call and there will be a sign outside your polling places that here's the number of the missouri voter protection we have lawyers and everybody lined up to help everybody to make sure that everybody votes on election day so i thank you very much and i'm sure the candidates will answer your questions thank you very much
115for asking us you