001the murder schools board of education meeting number 1547 is now called to order uh this is a reminder that limber schools currently requires face coverings for all individuals that are in attendance this evening dr lake do we have any changes to the agenda we do not thank you i have a motion to approve the agenda as presented so moved motion by matt second second second by megan all in favor aye aye aye close motion carries okay now we will do the pledge of allegiance um i'd like to invite our long elementary students abby and charlotte i believe to come forward and lead us if you would like and you can come as well stand if you're able again [Music] thank you guys all right so now we will go to our special recognitions with long
002elementary so i'd like like to invite dr phillips to come up thank you mr shamia thank you board of education and dr lake for giving long the opportunity to recognize some amazing people this evening first i would like to ask mrs levine to come up here sarah levine is our library media specialist and i just want to say a few words about her she is our teacher of the year this year mrs levine has served as long's library media specialist the past three years in spite of a pandemic countless restrictions and obstacles these past few years have imposed on all of us in education i am in awe of what mrs levine has not only brought to long elementary but to the entire limburg school district instead of using these three years to hold back
003and just make it through mrs levine has taken quite the opposite approach she is using innovation and passion to bring about love for learning for her students and her colleagues she creates a learning environment that is both safe and conducive to learning she makes checking out books even more accessible to students through canvas and last year during our personally delivering books to all classrooms as well as making them available to all of our art students she uses her experience for bringing a formal former classroom teacher and can make those connections in her lessons so that students may use what they have learned while in the library back in the classroom we are so honored to have mrs levine as part of our long family and proud of all she has accomplished in her short time
004at long elementary sarah congratulations well deserved what we have for you is a certificate here and a gift certificate to our online spirit store so you can get some lemberg gear there you go congratulations and now dr mack is going to introduce our support person of the year hello i would like to introduce our support staff of the year mrs emily lee emily would you please stand up emily wears many hats at long elementary and does it all with a smile she is one of the first people you see when you enter along and embodies every quality that we want our students and families to practice she is kind accepting and passionate about making an impact in the lives of others in these unpredictable times emily continues to serve as a beacon of light at
005long elementary congratulations emily you are so deserving of this honor emily congratulations and again we have a certificate here and then we also have a gift certificate to our online store so congratulations all right now i am very honored to introduce miss charlotte wegman if you'd like to come up here please all right charlotte is a fifth grade student at long elementary and i'm going to read a few words that her teacher mr clark wrote about her charlotte has made an excellent transition to fifth grade her growth mindset helps her achieve ambitious goals and amit helps her see new goals she can set for herself charlotte perseveres and even thrives in the face of adversity her willingness to make a mistake reflect on it and grow from it allows her to build on her relative
006strengths which further drives her motivation to remain a lifelong learner charlotte is a kind impatient friend whose calm demeanor makes her an excellent teammate in a group project thank you charlotte for being an exemplary member of our classroom community charlotte congratulations we have a certificate with your name on it so that's for you and then we have a t-shirt for you as well so congratulations well deserved thank you awesome congratulations all right now dr matt is going to introduce another student all right miss abby come on up here so i would like to introduce miss abby cato a fourth grader at long i have had the pleasure of knowing abby and watching her grow since she was in kindergarten last year is when we saw a true difference in abby as we watched her tackle
007third grade virtually abby's teacher wrote abby has the true gift of making our classroom feel like a family and not like we were so far away abby visited many teachers classrooms via zoom and even had teachers come in ours for push and support and somehow abby managed her schedule better than better than i could the format and expectations were demanding and sometimes seemed ever-changing but what stood out about abby was that she never gave up on herself even if there were bad days hard days days where more energy was needed to complete a task than the energy she had she found a way to push herself through abby's huge heart made it one of the most memorable years for me i could only hope that this virtual year would be one to remember and when
008i started the school year back in person this year it all felt right when the first person to come visit me was abby i mean you're so so proud of you happy congratulations here's a certificate with your name on it as well and then here is a t-shirt so congratulations all right thank you dr phillips and dr mack and everyone from long elementary it's one of the better parts of the meeting here to recognize our students in our various schools so congratulations to all you guys that were recognized tonight students teachers and everyone now i will mercifully take a short break so all of you that came for that part of the meeting you're welcome to stay don't get me wrong but we'll give you a moment to leave and enjoy the rest of your
009evening i'm on board with that it's a good idea good try yeah okay we'll move now to 5.0 which is resolutions we do have two resolutions uh this evening uh the first one was recognizing national school counseling week which is february 7th through 11th just take a minute to thank all of our counselors and all our schools they do tremendous work um with the students and and everything they do with them in the community so just take a second i know everyone up here appreciates the work that they do uh the counselors in our schools uh the next one is a resolution honoring lindbergh schools for as a top district by st louis community college and i know dr sparks is going to tell us a little bit about that yeah i'm excited to share
010this news with our board and our community back in 2018 legislation passed that allowed for what we refer to as core 42 to happen which essentially says that there are 42 courses that are accessible to high school students that are fully transferable as they stand to any missouri state institution so what this meant was any course that we offered that fell under the core 42 umbrella would allow students to have a one-to-one transfer to post-secondary education if they attended a missouri school in 2019 we formed a very specific partnership with st louis community college to really expand our programming we did this around dual credit offerings dual credit offerings are when our own teachers are teaching the courses but they are using curriculum that is aligned with what would be taught at st louis community
011college and then students can earn college credit for those courses additionally we partnered with the early college program which allows for our juniors and our seniors to have a full-time experience on merrimack's campus in order to earn credits that are their dual credits students are simultaneously working towards their high school diploma as well as the potential of their associate's degree at the same time so some great partnerships have happened over the past few years with regard to that and that officially started in the 1920 school year with our students participating in those programs and then last year in the 2021 the 2020 2021 school year we had the opportunity to continue expanding those programs and opportunities for our our students to participate and a month ago st louis community college recognized school districts for that
012participation and we were um awarded with five different awards for our participation we are top five in st louis city and county region for the most early college students the most students per dual credit section and the most dual credit offerings on top of that we are first in the amount of students who are taking dual credit courses overall in the city and the county so we have more students than any other district in the city in the county who have access dual credit offerings in the 20 20 21 school year additionally as a result of all of these programs our families have saved over nine hundred thousand dollars in college costs that is the top school district savings in all of the county in the city so when we looked at the total aggregate
013um as a as a region there was about five million dollars in savings we are almost one million of that with with our lindbergh family so definitely something worth celebrating and something that we are really proud to share with the community absolutely thank you and i think uh dr amy mead is here there she is and so i get this i get this right he's going to come out for a photo so i get this right uh dean of arts and communications at the community college at merrimack so we just want to express our gratitude for these tremendous opportunities you're giving for students and uh i mean and the cost savings for families and this this program is phenomenal thank you yeah thank you i do just quickly want to give a um public acknowledgement
014with for teaching and learning and especially dr zagora she's taken this on and really built this program with dr sparks and so this opportunity for our kids and the dollars that saves our families on tuition you know just a quick story about our early to college kid we brought them in they we had a conversation with them and one of them shared with us that i went there my for one year so i would only have to pay three years of out-of-state tuition so give getting those opportunities for our kids and so i just want to publicly say thank you for your hard work so we're gonna get a quick picture we'll put you in the middle and ronnie and i will be on each side all right now this is the point we would
015normally move to citizen comments regarding agenda items we have none tonight on agenda items we do have a few on non-agent items so we'll get to those a little later in the meeting uh so that moves to 7.0 which is communications oh i'm sorry yeah i missed that part of it so do i have a motion to approve the resolutions as presented so moved second motion by jen second by christy all in favor aye opposed motion carries thank you um so go to communications so the secretary okay calendar of events january 24th is our next technology board advisory meeting and january 28th there is no school and listen clearly through pre-k through five so middle school and high school will be in attendance is we have one day a year where it's off and the
016elementaries are out and middle school and high school are in and it's january 28th the virtual parent speaker series will be held february 1st and i think that's about kindergarten is that correct we just had kindergarten oh sorry this last week but the recording is live for those who missed it okay good so watch for that on february 1st february 7th through 11th is national school counselors week february 10th is student life board advisory and the 15th there's finance and another personal parent speaker series and on february 17th we're back together for another board of education meeting very good thank you thank you um 7.02 this is where we have a report of meetings so if there's any community meetings district meetings other sort of meetings uh that pertain to your work here or the
017work in the community or district now's the time anybody has anything i know it's been a little slow probably this last month but been slow and zooming or moving right yeah all right so we'll move to 7.03 which is announcements we have three announcements and i don't know if you have those or you'd like me to do those you don't have them so that the answer is that right there so first the the announcement of the board of education candidates so filing did officially close december 28th of 2021 at 5 pm uh there were four candidates that filed for the two three-year terms the names that will appear on the ballot are as follows uh david randleman jennifer miller carrie clay and julia voss so those are the four candidates for the two open three-year
018terms next is the announcement of the board of education candidate forum that forum will be held on march 14th at 6 30 pm that's where those candidates will have an opportunity to share their views with the community and the alls community will also have an opportunity to submit questions for that forum that's going to be held at person in the central office and also right here in this location and it will also be streamed on the district's youtube channel as well lastly and very importantly lindbergh leaders nominations for 2022. i know this is a big deal for beth here and all of us actually but any community member you want to nominate individually for this distinguished award you can do that now through january 28th is that correct that's that's correct through next friday and
019you can nominate individuals on our website so if you go under our website we have a link there okay uh please do that if anybody you feel is deserving please nominate them through the website thank you beth all right back to you uh madam secretary for the agenda items as we talked about our next board of education meeting will be february 17th at 7 pm and the agenda is tentative but will include business items human resource report financial report consent items communication plan report and migratory student program evaluation thank you all right thank you we have no member appointments this evening so we'll move to the msba report for january so colin hello everyone and welcome to the missouri school boards association's board report for the month of january we thank you for the opportunity
020to share some news and information during a few minutes of your board meeting we begin with a look at the food supply chain crisis that continues to plague school food service programs in missouri and throughout the nation due largely to staffing shortages a number of food distributors have reduced or eliminated service to school districts this year significantly impacting the availability of food items the situation is resulting in smaller menus and fewer food options for students jenna knuth is the director of food and nutrition services for the north kansas city school district and a board member of the missouri school nutrition association she says the food shortages that began last year are continuing this year a lot of those manufacturers just stopped producing their k-12 line some ramped back up this year some are saying they
021can't because of labor so there are a lot of shorts that are going into the distributor and they can't even get what they need to serve us on top of their labor issues on top of our labor issues knuth says in addition to supply chain problems the cost of food that is available to school districts has risen by 15 percent or more a recent survey by the national school nutrition association found 75 percent of school meal programs cite higher costs as a significant challenge the survey says only about half of school meal programs nationwide found increases in the reimbursement rate from the u.s department of agriculture to be sufficient to cover those increased costs knuth says the food shortage issue is a complicated one that is not likely to improve much in the near future
022when we can't get something from one of the distributors we try to get it from another distributor or we try to get a direct ship from the manufacturer um so that means that their um the previous sales that they have to us fluctuate substantially and so the manufacturer doesn't know who to send our products to um right but we have to try to get that food anyway um so it's it's just it's a little bit of a mess and we're definitely looking forward to when things calm down knuth says fortunately the federal government has given schools some flexibility for school meal patterns that dictate what meals must contain and how they must be delivered she adds the food supply challenges are coming at a time when school food service programs are facing staffing problems of
023their own the recent school shooting in michigan that left four students dead has once again brought focus to the issue of providing our students and staff with a safe learning environment the founder of a group called safe and sound schools michelle gay addressed the issue of school safety at the recent safe schools and colleges forum sponsored by msba's center for education safety she lost her daughter on december 14 2012 in the sandy hook school tragedy gay told the audience it's essential that schools adopt a comprehensive approach to school safety one that includes mental and behavioral health resources and programs our school counselors our school psychs our sel programs health and wellness very much at the forefront right now right our school nursing programs school-based health clinics making sure that kids are coming to school with
024full bellies and that we are reducing stress as much as we possibly can the physical safety and security obviously based on my story you know what a priority that is for us culture climate and community that includes everybody that brings everybody in and ensures that whoever you are whatever your experiences are you at least feel safe here in this building you're all welcome here leadership law and policy the guiding principles of any school safety program and of course the last cornerstone operations and emergency management where a lot of that day-to-day drilling training all of those procedures and plans fall the safe and sound schools organization advocates for and provides research-based education tool and resources to ensure the safest possible learning environment for children and educators the 2022 regular session of the missouri legislature convenes this
025month and education bills are likely to be a major part of the legislative agenda this year msba's priority for the 2022 session of the general assembly includes legislation to ensure a safe education environment for all children funding to ensure adequate resources for all districts to meet state and federal standards opposition to legislation moving school board elections from april to november and requiring school board candidates to run as a member of a political party and legislation supporting the expansion of and access to high-capacity broadband internet services throughout missouri msba will keep you informed about legislative developments during the session through our weekly legislative voice newsletter our daily updates on twitter through critical issue alerts and through periodic webinars and don't forget to register for msba's legislative forum set for march 7th in jefferson city that's it
026for this month's edition of the msba board report thanks for allowing us to have some time at your board meeting and so long from columbia [Music] all right thank you colin move on to 8.0 which is special reports so we'll start with joao yes i had both my facility planning meeting this last week and also school finance which is prior to every board meeting but the work at the facility planning advisory group was really the meat of their role is at this time of year we all of the buildings have submitted their capital project requests which are improvements to their building a facility or large equipment they've submitted that on the timeline which was due december 15th all of those are prioritized and reviewed for work coming up this summer and it's not really just
027work this summer but if it's things that are costly or we know that we're going to need more time to do we're also building that future bond issue list you know our capital improvements are done primarily through bond issues if it's really expensive we don't use a lot have a lot of operating money to devote to capital projects so every year this just adds more to our bond issue future bond issue list so it keeps keeps everything on the table so that was done dr lake talked a little bit about prop r and some other initiatives that we're doing in the district the finance committee talked about tonight's board meeting we went in depth on some finance topics local tax revenue and state money and some of that information will be coming through to the
028board and to the public in the next few months is we end one budget year and get ready to start another all right thank you uh we'll go to dr mckinney for hr yeah the hr team met we um talked a little bit about um the current covid um you know trends and and how that's impacting uh staffing in our schools we also talked about the new uh dashboard format for giving daily snapshots of of the impact of covid and then we reviewed the monthly personnel report that was our all meeting thank you and dr spock for your trio i only have two tonight technology has not met since our last meeting uh student life did meet last week and we continued our review of social emotional screeners so we reviewed panorama the previous month
029we had reviewed satchel um page satchel pulse sorry um and we also went into conversation about the merit um and also the the consequences of potentially creating our own um screening tool and the consensus around that was that we should really look at things that are already vetted that have the research base behind it so we we went down that and opened that conversation but the group unanimously felt like it was not an appropriate next step for consideration the teaching and learning board advisory met on tuesday and we had teacher guests join us to give an overview of the elementary literacy pilots that are currently in play we have four programs for resources that are being piloted in primary and then two that are being um piloted in grades three through five one of those
030resources actually overlaps k5 but the other ones are are different programs between primary and elementary so our teachers are on in order to demonstrate and share kind of the the big ideas around what is provided and what their experiences so far have been as we shared with the the advisory this is the first step to the conversation just uh building a foundational knowledge of what are the programs that we are reviewing so that we can delve in deeper in conversations as we continue the work going into next year all right thank you so we'll move to 9.0 and this is the actions items by consent we have 9.01 to 9.11 wouldn't anyone like to remove any of these items for individual consideration hearing none do i have a motion approved consent items consent items 9.01
031to 9.11 noting there are none in 907 and 908. so moved second by jennifer and any questions or comments yes i i did and you know and brian this is regarding the green light plan and you know i didn't mean to yank this or anything pull it but just for the benefit of folks here at our public meeting would you mind just giving a real quick snapshot report on covet trends in the district in terms of staffing in terms of students and so forth sure well staffing has been impacted certainly by the omicron variant but we are seeing good trends uh in the most recent days and so um according to st louis county data the county positivity rate seems to have peaked about last thursday friday and then each day this week it's been
032incrementally coming back down um unfortunately we still are are are having a challenge with with having staff in the buildings and so we um are working through that but um the staff's been amazing people chipping in uh stepping up to do things outside of their comfort zone to cover for their colleagues pulling together to make sure we've got a safe environment for students and so it has been a challenge but we are making it work and our staff is doing great things in the buildings i visit the buildings often i know that everyone else here does too particularly dr lake and to see principals serving food in the cafeteria or a teacher sitting at the front desk to answer phones for an hour because someone's out is really pretty inspiring and so the staff's pulled
033together to keep things moving in the right direction the data also moving in the right direction so right now i'm i'm on that cautiously optimistic side of things but that's that's kind of my view okay thank you yeah because i i've been told that one of our uh medical advisors to the district has said that it looks like this uh you know the omicron variant could be washing through pretty soon and let's hope for that so we can get back to yeah thank you thank you brian um i have a question for joelle about the self-serve the new self-serve station so it said we are losing one but we're purchasing one so i just wanted to clarify yes what's going on we're losing one the high school is losing a food service a la carte
034station because we are going to use the gifted center now for the pegs program so right now for the open concept at the high school there is a station in the library and we have high school students that use that for lunch i mean it's a very popular station truthfully so with the gifted center project coming on board and the library being closed we're moving the library this summer into the new portion of the building that station will no longer be available and so there is a location in the current cafeteria um on the in the near the commons that has been unutilized by the cafeteria staff it's a little hole in the corner of the um you know that just says junk and chairs and stuff back there we're gonna make that a nice
035new um station to replace the one that really is we're not losing it's just gonna be served in a different purpose for different kids okay so the library when staying in the library but will be for the gift itself it will only be that will be a totally different um food service program because those will be you know not high school kids so that campus will be you know they won't have the high school kids won't have access to the gifted center at lunch so thank you good question any other questions all right all in favor of the motion as presented hi opposed motion carries 7-0 uh 10-0 individual action items we have none um 11-0 we have no reports there either so 12-0 is for our citizen comments regarding non-agenda items so at this
036time we have three folks signed up we'll hear the comments and we'll start with maki ronnaman and comments on library policy um at the immigration interview i was questioned about what i would teach my children this is should i move or um i'm so sorry um i was asked what would i teach my children to preserve american values and i answered america offers freedom that does not exist in other countries freedom is for every person and comes with responsibility we cannot violate other people's freedom so my responsibility is to teach my children to honor the freedom of others while we enjoy this real opportunity i lived in japan and in israel and here in the u.s let me simplify what the freedom is it is an ability to choose we will live the consequences of
037our choices but we can choose what to believe but occupation to have what values to hold to shape our lives and pursue happiness it becomes confusing when so-called freedom violates other people's freedom at that moment of removing other people's ability to choose it is not freedom anymore american library association claims bill of rights and calls it freedom of speech to furnish any material regardless to the reader's maturity as your beliefs what is lacking is the choice of not reading them which is also freedom of readers when it comes to the school library where the readers are minor children the parents have the freedom and responsibility to allow or restrict access it is the responsibility of parents to guide according to their conscience and values the suggested new border policy language prohibits parents to place restrictions
038to other family children which i agree the other side of the same coin is that the school shall not allow access to the content that families do not consent to schools should not undo what families do at homes last month you voted to retain two books without restriction it removed that freedom it brings our family to opt out from some of the library services because i do not consent any adult to allow my child to access x-rated content or information of how to set up and use tinder or grinder to engage strangers other books in the library have content such as sexual experience to imitate a porn movie star graphic image or description of nudity rapid molestation of miners and so on my children are excluded from the library services because of our moral values
039but our value is a guaranteed freedom by the constitution isn't it my children uh my children are ex i'm sorry was your vote inclusive did it shape good quality of education does it allow variety of choices the answer is no call to action for you tonight make the library services at lindbergh with variety of choices let the liberty and justice for all rule the educational services for all families in our community thank you next john o'fallon bell also on suitability books good evening thank you for letting me participate in this public comment session of the meeting tonight i trust you got my email and my attachment that i sent you in advance at this meeting the content of my public comment really is best described as old business the last board of board of education
040meeting on december 16th you were asked to confirm review committee's recommendations for supporting the use and the presence of handmaid's tale as well as genderqueer both either in the classroom or in the library what was a little unsettling from my perspective and i have held executive positions and run meetings and when you have a vote of this magnitude to think that it should be a voice vote i think is far too low from an acceptable standard so let me entertain and indulge you and let's correct the record so that there's no inference no deduction as to how this board voted on these issues so i wanted to essentially represent the public in how this voted the first request for consideration was the handmaid's tale classroom use [Music] i jennifer miller i christy watts i dr
041mike tishlis nay matt alonso i kathy lorenz i megan vetter i the second request has to do with handmaid's tale library use [Music] maikima i jennifer miller i christy watts i might tishlis nay matt alonso i kathy lorenz i megan vetter i the third consideration has to do with genderqueer library use long like shima i jennifer miller i chrissy watts i matt alonzo i mike tishlis nay kathy lorenz i megan vitter i it really is incumbent on you as elected officials to be clear as to what your intentions are and i hope in the future any book that is subject to review in a vote any issue that is an important issue that the community is divided on deserves to know where you stand because after all you're being held accountable to the public and
042thank you [Music] thank you for the record and with respect to my father it's shamia okay thank you i apologize no uh last person we have speaking is kim swenson on equity good evening i've been an educator for 20 years my family's lived in lynn barks since 2007. my son graduated from lhs and another one's a senior i want to let you know though that the teachers and staff are not okay they're not okay they're still teaching a pandemic they're transitioning online caring for their loved ones children that are sick getting sick themselves supporting and covering colleagues that are sicker out i could go on and on and on with the five thousand things they're doing they're dealing with negativity coming from some in our own community and beyond that are trying to ban books
043believe the district and teachers are trying to indoctrinate their children and have a negative view of equity and education so let's start with banning books under this ruse of profanity and sexuality diverse literature creates empathy which we desperately need right now books should provide a mirror for children a world where they can see characters and themes that reflect their own identities and experiences students should also be exposed to characters and stories that are different and connect with different lives customs and some have issue with equity and i would invite them to read research it's crucial for teachers to address any barriers students face to succeed in school equity in schools is the answer to supporting every student not just a few everyone has the opportunity to succeed regardless of their original circumstances the benefits of
044being in an equitable classroom extend to that higher academic achievement for all that we're looking for in lindbergh equity can also strengthen a student's health and social emotional development and makes for an environment where the students are comfortable and they have better emotional regulation has lindbergh moved in this direction yes i've seen it it should some teachers and school staff are being accused of indoctrinating students if you think teachers have time to indoctrinate a child with a book you have never been in a classroom or had a teenager some teachers and school staff are dealing with other people outside like my own representative dave gregory who favors charter schools that siphon money from our own public schools he's trying to ban crt in schools with a new bill crt is not taught in k-12 schools
045he can't even explain what it actually means gregory made a point to the key to his bill was that was going to have enforcement what does that mean will teachers be held to some enforcement to me that's more wasted time that takes away from the real job of teaching takes away our tax money spent on lawyers that should be going for teachers salaries lower class sizes and supplies for instruction sadly no one actually listens to teachers when they're talking about teaching it's time to stop demonizing teachers and staff and i would encourage you to substitute for a teacher in our district thank you and thank you to everyone who commented and addressed the board this evening and we'll continue with the remaining agenda items so 13.0 is recess we've already conducted our executive sessions so
046there's no need for that so we'll move to 15.0 which is adjournment do i have a motion to adjourn board meeting number 1547 so i moved motion by kathy second by mike all right all in favor aye aye opposed all right motion carries 7-0 board meeting 1547 is adjourned you