001property all right we'll go ahead and get this meeting call to order with roll call please Carol Barnes here Bill Lowe here Ruth Johnson here Deanna Olson here Kim York here Paul Kaufman here Billy King here all right if you'll join me in the Pledge of Allegiance allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all the agenda so moved is our second second all in favor motion passes unanimously thank you on to the compensation planning Dr Schlegel good evening good evening thank you for having a special meeting tonight this is a continuation of our November discussion that we had together we promised you that tonight we would bring you a recommendation as well as a
002follow-up to how we presented information in our November work session real briefly we're going to review the November Seth work session because a lot of things have happened since then so we will briefly uh review that we will explain what we thought we heard from you that evening and talk about proposition RP from 2018 review the data that we're looking at and come to you tonight with a recommendation for action as you know at the November 10th work session we talked about salary competitiveness and looked at the rapex salary structure and competition with other school districts in the Kansas City metro area and came to the conclusion that in order to approve our competitiveness in terms of salary structure both from the certified and classified side of things that we had no major capacity exist
003in our current budget planning and to make movement on our salary schedule would require additional capacity in our operational Levy we also discussed in the November session that this Con conversation topic has been driven by our strategic plan and by our Board of Education priority something that we took a look at back in May with the approval of strategic plan and then visited with you directly back in June at our board advantage chance I'm not going to get into it again because with several slides but we talk about school Finance 101 which I'm sure was a riveting discussion for everyone we talked about our data relative to other school districts and what we heard from you at that meeting you know on November the 10th Joe Kinder who is also here tonight provided some additional
004analysis and discussion for you on the financial aspects of it and he is also on hand again to provide conversation and answers to your questions here's what we heard from you I think this is the takeaway from that November work session is that you wanted to improve our competitiveness from a salary structure standpoint do so in a very financially responsible way and also do so in a tax neutral manner those were the takeaways that we heard that evening and your task for us was to go back continue to do some research and bring you back a resolution tonight real briefly uh prop RP which was from 2018 was the total operational Levy increase of 75 cents the district was able to reduce 30th cents of that by a transfer from Debt Service the salary increase
005that was made possible by Prof RP was 1500 added to the base in fiscal 19 and 1300 to the base in fiscal 20. to a starting salary of 38 thousand dollars the promise was to increase the base over three years but it was accomplished over two years and in 2021 the base remained at thirty eight thousand dollars over the past two years as you know we've been able to make increase to the base by seven hundred dollars to its current rate of 38.7 we'll take a look at this table again here in a moment and I think that's significant and needs to be included in the going forward calculations of any salary improvements because you have done something over the past couple years to continue to build upon prop RP beginning teacher salary this is
006what we looked at back in November this graph still holds true of the 20 school districts on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metro area we are approximately 14th as far as beginning teacher salary being a teacher salary is the easiest uh area to pinpoint because everybody has to start somewhere we know that if you add money to the salary of a beginning teacher here in raypec that that transfers through the rest of the salary schedule we also took a look at this graph which is our historical look at our property tax rate for the last 10 years noted that over the past two years we have stabilized the rate at 5.0302 and the resolution that will be before you tonight keeps that rate at 5.0302 and transfers Debt Service Levy to operation Levy
007which allows us greater capacity for salary and compensation increases So the plan that we have been working on has been done with these focuses in mind to improve our competitiveness uh relative to the rest of the districts that are in the metro area in a financially responsible way in an overall tax neutral Manner and we've worked with Joe Kinder on the financial analysis to make sure we can bring to you a recommendation of a resolution tonight so here's our recommendation an April 2023 election that does not change the overall current tax rate it moves some of our tax rate from Debt Service over to operating which allows you the capacity then to make some movements on the salary schedules it's phased in over a period of three years and working with Joe it's uh analysis
008indicates that a total Levy transfer of 50 cents over a three-year period is entirely doable it would be 10 cents the first year 20 cents a second year and 20 cents the third year allows us to cap capital improve a teacher and classified salaries across the board now this is important piece because basically you're using the capacity that we would have used in the in 2027 for a no tax rate increase bond issue you're using that capacity now so when we get to 2027 whatever borders around the DS at that point you may be looking at if we go for a bond election in 2027 or later looking at a debt survey Debt Service Levy increase there are many factors that still come into play in that so that's still unknown but I want the
009board to know you're using some of your capacity now that you would have reserved for a bond election in 2027 and moving that up so that you can have a no tax rate increase uh Levy election this year okay you want to make sure that we are all on the same page here because that is a a significant change here's what we're driven by with our compensation Google's now and our strategic plan both 2.1 and 3.3 we have some metrics that we are taking a look at to make sure that we can accomplish or at least make some movement on uh with this particular uh resolution that will be before you the first one is that a total compensation package that puts it along the top of the 10 Cass County school districts that will
010be a metric over the next six five years to move that towards beginning teacher salary in the top 50 percent currently we're 14th out of 20. we would like to get that above the the median line uh among the 20 Kansas City Missouri school districts and all support staff classifications will have a starting salary above the Missouri minimum wage that is also a compensation goal from a strategic planning goal overall Finance maintain fund balances of 16 to 20 percent right now you're sitting very well with your fund balances so you might be able to upfront some of this movement because this is remember this transfer has done over a three year period so you're not going to have all 50 cents in that first year but you can upfront some of those raises or some
011of those compensation increases with the fund balances that you currently have would it be appropriate for your question now or what sure what would happen if we get to year two or year three and the rest of the world has fallen apart again and we aren't comfortable or whoever isn't comfortable doing another 10 or 20 sits at that time is it required because of the ballot language that we're doing now anyone talked about that yet I just don't want to put future boards in a potential yeah that is still within the description of the board to raise that um you know of course we're the idea is that we're not going to change your overall Levy but if you do that just know that if that's done during a reassessment year so if you don't
012take that additional 20 cents let's say during a reassessment year which the third phase of that would be during a reassessment year you will be stuck with that ceiling the following year so you've essentially locked yourself out of that increase over a two-year period as opposed to a one-year period thank you and I don't want to do that I just locked us are we doing the the 10 2020 because of the capacity that we will have at that time with our with some of the debt rolling off okay yeah that's what we're trying to do is make sure that we don't bankrupt that that service fund so we're trying to keep some money over there but only have to ask your patrons one question essentially as opposed to trying to ask them three consecutive questions
013or something like that okay okay do we have any kind of um I don't know if it would be a five-year projection 10-year projection of our facility needs and what position that puts us in um I mean I I don't know how we can decide if that's feasible if we don't know what our construction our bond capacity needs would be or debt capacity needs would be my question I thought 2027 we were looking at another school maybe right we've been talking about building needs so and if we do this now then we're going to look at a tax increase to to do a school then in 2027. and so I guess I'm not saying no but does this put us 10 million short or 50 million short I mean how much would we have to
014ask in a tax increase I'm assuming the 10 2020 is the good story and down the road instead of just being 50 it'll be 75 or a dollar because we've pushed it off or something you know the our current projections on that are that you would have up to 70 to 75 million dollars worth of actual State capacity if you remember that the state actually limits what we can issue from a general obligation standpoint before we even talk about what your cash can afford if you wanted to go all the way up and do a 75 million dollar deal let's say that your capacity at the time you know that would take 30 cents something like that 35 cents you know uh maybe 10 bucks a month on a 200 000 home tax increase to
015get that done but if you just if you needed just a building and let's say it was 40 million dollars something like that's going to cost you 18 20 cents something like that based on a projections of your growth so again when we talk about that in terms of what that costs your taxpayers on a 200 000 home that's a little under seven dollars and thirty cents a month increase that you would have to ask for but that is certainly part of this plan is that we are kind of taking that no tax increase bond issue absent some massive growth off the table here as as Dr Slagle already mentioned and and you know that would be part of the communication to your communities we're doing everything we can to address the operational side of
016this without increasing your taxes but at a certain point if we want a facility we'll have to ask you for more so just at a high level oh yeah sorry yeah so the other question is do we have a facility plan Dr pettingell has been working on that brought that to you about a year and a half ago for approval that was the basis that we use for proposition s he is in the middle of updating that with our citizens advisory committee now and we will be sharing that with uh an update within the next uh five or six months trying to wrap my head around okay so we have a debt I'm sorry we have our debt fund limit we have our current debt that we have you know 70 million I don't know
017what whatever whatever our debt is so we're lowering the tax to a point where we can still afford to pay off our debt and so three years from now or four years from now what's our debt balance going to be is it going to be 50 million because we're Limited in two ways which I think is what you're saying if we're at 50 but the cap 70 we can only get 20 million anyway there's too many moving parts right here to grasp what that does to us three years or five years from now I think that the the overarching theme here to back kind of out to the 30 000 foot view is that any facility that you need that you want to fund through General obligation debt that is going to occur anytime in
018the next at least three to seven year window is going to have to come with an ask in terms of a tax increase to find a hundred percent of it essentially what we've done is we've given we've taken as much as we feel comfortable of that debt service and moved it to operations so we actually show you running some deficits in your debt service fund balance and using some reserves to bolster that but there's certainly no Revenue available to do and no tax increase bond issue now that could change if you would grow and it might be that your Gap is only 20 or 30 million but right now it would be like I said it would be something around a six or seven dollar a month increase to on a 200 000 home is
019what you would need to ask for to go out and get another facility I think one way of thinking about this too you we're going to look at two elections one for compensation and one for buildings you know bonds within the next three to five years one of those elections is going to have to be a tax rate increase election what you've asked us to do is try to figure out how this one won't be a tax rate increase election and the only way to do that is to move the capacity from the future to now and worry about the future later now the author option is to have the tax rate increase now for compensation but that's not what we heard from you in November you've mentioned some numbers and some work and I
020apologize if it's in the packet and I didn't look at it do we have these numbers you're talking about no but I can I can give them to you they're going to be I I think I'm going to want to see the math not every detail but to vote on this I need to see the projections and how the math works I mean you say it's you know I I don't know I want to see where we're at in five years or three years or I think it did what we talked about in November was what Dr Slagle said it's either a tax increase now or a tax increase later um this is a necessary piece and so I think we need to do that here so that we have teachers to be in a
021new in a new building and that if we come in five years it's a tangible thing that we will be asking the the board will be asking the community for to you will see this that it will be um there so I know you've done your you the projections and have been very I'm sure conservative in in all of this so I think that's where we have that's what we said and I don't think that we yeah and I I I'm not disagreeing with any of that I'm saying that and I like the approach but I don't think we in good conscious conscience as representative our taxpayers and taxpayer money and being fiscally responsible we just need to see what you're saying and pointing to that says this is the impact and it could be
022a one-page summary but um I would like to see that to feel comfortable that we're not going to vote on something that will critically limit you know a future board I trust you in your math I just want to see the math um so when we vote we're not just voting blindly we've seen the support for it Yeah but I left an issue in there that needs to be pulled out on a subsequent page but yeah that would be it yeah so if we if we increase you know for salary now and then we ask and have to do a tax increase in four to five years for another school are we going to have to ask also in four or five years to raise any taxes to pay the staff that we're going to
023move into that school I mean you'll be at an elementary school or something like that yeah I will I will say in all likelihood yes but I'll let our financial expert tell you well that would depend on the projections operationally on what you think you're going to need to open that versus where your revenues are on the operational side of things so that would be a question that I don't know if you've done those projections yet or not you know but part of this and I and I don't want to be this is going to sound tongue-in-cheek but uh part of it is you know it's kind of the opposite of the Field of Dreams I don't know if you've heard me say that before it's not if you build it they will come it's
024if they come you will be able to build it I I you are leveraging some of your future borrowing ability to focus on salaries here we talk about some of the state aid issues and some of the other things that are pointing to needing more local revenue on the operational side of things but if you see this explosion that requires you to have build another building it's likely that our av projections have been too slow and so you will have more capacity to do things both from a what you need in terms of a tax increase but also in terms of what your state constitutional cap would be but in terms of operations on that note if you have grown in excess you're going to be driving more local Revenue but you know that would
025depend on how big of a building it is how much staff you're going to need all that good stuff one one other question the projections that you have now that you guys have all looked at and are comfortable with the moving the 10 10 cents 20 cents 20 cents Keeps Us current and about the ability to pay the current debt that we have with no question the issue is how good are the projections it's just as good as it's not that's right and I don't know that we want to limit what we do today based on what we think is going to be in in five years so and if you're directing that to me I'm not suggesting that no I'm just saying when we're just as a as a whole that's what we're looking
026at all right I think we just need to see it sounds like a very good plan we just need to see it just a real quick piece of clarification some of the concern is coming from our board members that have been with us for a while in that we RSP that we utilized as a projection had shown that we would be looking at a new an eighth Elementary within the 2027 area our current studies right now in reality in and also studying the actual capacity of our current elementaries does not lead us to believe we'll need an elementary that soon I would I would argue it'll be at least a decade before we'll need Elementary number eight okay great questions yeah and I just and I'm sorry but you know this kind of gets to
027having conversations at board meetings and work sessions and having all the information out there and demonstrating to our public that we are looking at the information and we're just not listening to you know a recommendation it would be good to see the facility plan again here at the work session it would be good to see what you're telling us that okay we don't need that and the math behind it I do apologize that I didn't have time to look through everything and request that in advance but I'm seeing our board kind of as someone who's been on the board a long time we need to be getting the information out in our meetings and seeing it and talking about it to demonstrate to our public that we aren't just listening and being a rubber stamp
028and so I appreciate the work I just feel like if we're going to have a work session there should be more of the information put on the floor for us to look at and to see how you arrived at this and you know to get to the answers of some of the questions we're having thank you thank you if we do raise our teachers salaries and we get in to the top ten say around the 40 000 range in two years are we going to be right back to where we are now I mean are are most of these districts are they going up yes is your short answer I know you know we all talked about what Hickman Mills did back in August and they're going to be uh raising to the top of
029that uh that salary chart Lee summit's doing the exact same thing we're asking you to do tonight they are moving some Debt Service level Levy over to operation in an election in April so yeah quite possibly Paul we will get to that point where we will make a an absolute Improvement but a relative maybe not so much but you can't stand still either I mean that's that's the point I mean we can only control what we can control so with things like uh properties that are being built in Raymore or if they were go up in Peculiar when we're talking about what affects that it has on the school district and the revenues that it has on the school district those are real issues and are not just lip service from the district that they're
030having an impact on both the people because they're the communities students are being taught and instructed and it's impacting the teachers that are here so you know when we collectively as as a board say this is going to hurt the school district we don't say that just to say it we we have information that if you're limiting our resources if you're limiting our revenues this is what happens it's great that you have things coming in but when you limit it and you limit the district this is what constricts it there's a there's a hose and that hose has got to be released somehow or it's just going to build up and like Paul said we're going to be back in the same spot because if you always just catch up you can't just be catching
031up all the time and I think the community leaders ought to realize that as well that we just can't be thought of as as well you know it's going to happen they have to have a stake in this all right I agree the other questions okay let's go back to the presentation and we'll get through it and then we'll talk about where you want to go from here because this is your decision tonight so um I appreciate all that one other compensation goal that we would bring you in our spring budget planning is a balanced budget in fiscal 26. so as this all shakes out and we move the 50 cents over over a three year period of time our internal goal is to present you with a budget plan that that balances the budget
032in fiscal 26. because those first two years if you upfront some money you're going to be running uh strategic use of reserves uh usage and so there's going to be a deficit but you're going to see a balanced budget in fiscal 26 that's what we're trying to do for you and so you know some of the understandings on um you know all of what we're talking about and you know you asked us the question um these assumptions are conservative and they're all based on what we know today three weeks from now three months from now maybe uh three years from now there might be some change in the legislature that changes our projections that was the case back in uh prop rpn 2018. this has always been a threat we are making our assumptions and
033our projections based on what we know today we are still waiting for some key cost information specifically Transportation which Dr Patton Gilson I'll talk to you about a little bit later tonight in healthcare those all come into play for how we build a budget what the ultimate ramifications are of those things fiscal 24 will come together in our budget planning workshop session in the spring as you know like it normally does and also this is the first step of a long-term approach towards maintaining competitiveness for teaching and staff Talent the olden days are gone the olden days being you had five candidates for every one position five quality candidates we are in Fierce competition for uh a select number of candidates amongst our all school districts and so this ratcheting up of salary pressure and
034compensation pressure is going to continue we need to be out front of it feedback for the citizens advisory committee we ran it by them this is again a conversation back in November we need to do something in terms of sorry competitiveness much more support for this tax neutral approach which you task us to bring back to you today and also um we need to have this conversation on a more regular basis so the timeline and then this gets into I think some other conversations you've asked about and some other uh data if we're going to run with an election in April of 23 the certification for that needs to be done in two weeks about less than two weeks now so there is some time constraint on us and we'll be happy to get you
035the information regarding uh the financial planning piece of this as well as if you want to have a conversation around the facility study we'll be happy to do that if we do that we need to table the resolution for tonight if you're not willing to to take the vote on the particular resolution and have another special meeting next week in order to pass that resolution so I think that's the fork on the road I think for the board to decide amongst themselves is how you want to proceed we'll be happy to try to find a date for next week where we can have this conversation with you with additional data that you've requested um and so I we're here to serve your needs on this particular question if you decide to go forward the resolution
036tonight it is the next agenda item and I'm sorry I guess I'm confused these are listed as information items oh okay I'm sorry these are action items tonight so that's concludes my presentation I'll be happy to ask or answer any other questions you might have in my opinion um I I think it's um a shame that we're the largest school district in Cass County and yet we fall so far below other schools and I don't know how we cannot vote for for this and for teacher salaries we've we've got to do it we just like you said the competition is fierce and um Lisa Dr Hatfield kudos to you I don't know how you do your job every day I really don't trying to find people to fill positions and people's calling up and saying
037yes they accept the position and the next day they have found something better it happens all the time and we can't we just can't keep that Trend up and keep our classrooms full of quality teachers for our kids if our salaries aren't competitive and they're not at this time so that's my opinion I agree I'm I'd like to move forward with this as well this is where we put our confidence in our leadership here and this is who we've selected and who we've chose to go with and we need to back them we talked about it in November I mean I thought we were all in consensus in November so I I don't think what Kim is saying is she's not in consensus if we're going to say that we were not putting information right
038yeah I'm in consensus for what we need to do I'm disappointed that we don't have more information in front of us given kind of the new I know it's not completely new and um the agenda says these are information items so are we voting tonight yeah if you look at 2.02 there's a recommended action that it's under informational items yeah that should have been an action item in there and so when I and so I'm sure we can move forward but this does not indicate that we're taking a vote tonight and it's a work session actually it's called a special we change the meeting title to special meetings show that it would be voting it could be can well and so we're voting on the levy resolution so that would be 2.02 is if there
039is someone uh that wants to make the motion to approve the resolution well I don't think my vote will impact what's happening unfortunately I'm gonna I support it so I am going to abstain tonight simply for lack of the supporting documentation for what you're asking us to do and if it's in another packet from a prior meeting I'll go look at it but we're being doing being asked to do something that has a significant financial impact which we all support but um without a lot of supporting documentation with it so I'll abstain I obviously the votes happening and I apologize I I saw it under informational items and I did not think we would be voting tonight I thought this was our chance to ask more questions about the final presentation so when it said
040informational I didn't know that meant it would be a vote can I take full responsibility for that that I reviewed the agenda and I did not catch that I caught the uh the actual motions that we were going to make for that and I did not see that it was listed under informational instead of accident I apologize and uh we can vote but I'm I don't know Pam might correct us I think if anyone wanted to contest it we didn't post it we were voting well it's a it's it's listed under informational items but in the type there's an action within within that context so I don't know if that makes sense so we can move forward I'll just abstain but I would request to have that information sent and not just not sent to
041the board it needs to be presented you know somewhere where it's available to the public and to the board and I 100 percent you know in favor of what we're doing um I just think it's incumbent upon us to see see more before we vote and before you vote I don't want the board to think that this election is going to solve our compensation issue we're going to make some steps to improve it but there will still be other districts ahead of us and there will be other districts that will leap progress so I don't want the board to think that this vote tonight solves the problem because this is an ongoing issue that we're going to have here in the rapac school district however there's a big step forward in this and helping the
042absolute increase relatively to other districts we may find ourselves in a very similar position three years from now I'll go ahead and make a motion to approve the resolution I'm gonna go ahead and state it just so that it's true to approve a resolution calling for an election on the question of whether to increase the operating tax levy ceiling for Raymore Peculiar R2 School District so moved okay is there a section second any other discussion just because I love numbers too um and I can't not talk I second what Billy says um we trust you complacently 100 percent and that's how we're able to do what we're doing I'm also with Kim on you know it'd be nice to see some of that and and have that so I would still like after we've I
043would still like to see that as we're as we're moving forward so absolutely and again I apologize they did not have that information tonight for you um if you would like to have a special meeting next week to go over it prior to the certification of the election I'd be happy to try to schedule that with the president or we can wait to the 25th and have it as part of the actual um board meeting that evening and so what you're saying is that it will what's the date where where there's no going back I guess not that we would but what is the date the 24th the certification and the 25th is our next meeting and I request a roll call vote please before you vote we have um I just wanted to also
044point out that you you set the tax levy each year so if something were to happen that's just totally unforeseen uh it's like Ruth's question earlier that you know you can you can deal with that as it comes thank you that does help I will request that we um you presented on the 25th that would be my request what's your request I'm sorry that we have the presentation on the 25th we at the board meeting which would be after the certification but it just further supports what what we're looking at and like what Cindy said we would have the ability with the tax levy the the following year and it would give us an opportunity to present that make that information publicly available we are planning an election update that evening anyway so it can
045dovetail right into that conversation any other discussion all right we had a roll call requested Carol Barnes yes Paul Kaufman yes Ruth Johnson yes Billy King yes Bill Lowe yes Deanna Olson yes Kim York I abstain and if the record could note it is based on lack of information thank you motion passes thank you on to Transportation with Dr pettingell good evening as we talk about future budgets one of the two big unknowns is transportation and health care so working with our bus company who was purchased by first student maybe we can lock some of that up and get ahead of that I've given you just a one page in your packet about First Student First Student recently purchased applebus so giving you a little bit of background first they've been first student has been
046running the company during the transition and we've been seeing a lot of improvements and I previously shared last month with you of the perception data from our parents and it was astounding the increase in positive perceptions on bus company now that we have implemented a lot of the new changes with the new company so statistically I have some stats here for you but first student provides transportation for over 1100 districts they're the largest bus company in North America and with that comes a lot of systemic power so they have a lot of Technology they reward good and safe driving behavior in terms of their mod their technology monitors everything from aggressive braking and acceleration anytime they're driving over the speed limit correct routes and bus stop timing are all monitored and real time and anytime
047long idle times I guess that comes in because the district pays for fuel so besides you know just being good for the environment things like that are monitored that are not currently monitored with the previous company I mentioned they have a lot of Technology each bus has its own tablet that tablet takes care of all their maintenance their mileage their routes their schedules their pre-post inspections that has to do with the GPS is all part of that and it works well for us in terms of monitoring it also comes with what we've talked about before apparent a parent mobile app they have a proprietary parent app to refer student and when you're that big you make your own things and so that'll be something that comes along with this um the live tracking in real
048time is very good as they start implementing new Fleet I mean I believe we're getting six new buses just this spring brand new coming out as they rotate their Fleet and update their Fleet the brand new buses will then have um three cameras instead of just the two so that helps with some of the incidents we have at the at that camera facing out the door so it catches anything that happens at the bus stop or who specifically is coming onto the bus so we appreciate that there's child search features which we have some of that now but just um for students just another level with that going back to my the way I started tonight Dr Slagle talked about some unknowns as we do this multi-year forecasting for budgeting which is always tricky um
049with the economy and there's so many different variables that Cindy and and Dr Slagle monitor closely um we have worked with them if we are willing to move forward with a five-year contract they will lock it in at five percent year over year which side note that is lower than what we've that's a lower increase than we've dealt with the last few years so that would lock Us in over the next five years with them please understand as as part of this if the recommendation is approved to go into a contract negotiations further there would be a separation Clause so when I say locking this in for five years that's if we want if both parties agree to stay together so as I've researched other districts and talked to my peers in other districts I
050would recommend that we move forward with contract negotiations with first student to expect to expand our partnership through June 30th of 2028. but I'm happy to take any questions so we won't be putting like the contract out the bid that's what that's that's what I'm that's what I'm bringing to the board is to not go out to a public bid um it is it is acceptable by policy to do this after the research we've put into it um I do not I believe um if we go out to bid we will still be with first student and it will not be at these rates scar attorney if it's acceptable by Statute well I just looked at the policy and Cindy and I walked through it it's 3170 page two paragraph three remember correctly last time
051we did it wasn't there like a million dollar difference between yeah five years ago which it's weird to think I've been here for five years but five years ago when I went out to bid we ended up with three responses and applebus at the time was well over a million dollars per year cheaper than any other competitor which makes sense because they already established they've already they already have the depot here they already I mean they and also for a student have no desire to lose ratepac they have the nice bus depot here which then they use to support mechanically and seeing some of their other local districts that they have that don't have those amenities so did they bid for us last time or were they every student did not bid for us last
052time and what's the policy and is it short isn't something you could just reach us because I thought we had to bid things out every five or ten years or something I didn't know there were any exceptions when Dr Montes was here um and the contract came up we did this once before where we went from when I'm I think my first year here we extended another five years with applebus at the time and then what's the policy number I believe it's 31.70 but Cindy's looking it up for me it's then it's like on the second page maybe third paragraph it's the word count in the paragraph it's the most it's pretty much the whole paragraph it just says the purchasing officer which would be Cindy in this case um working with a with cabinet
053has the authority to make that decision on page 2 3170 it says when the purchase the officer determines that is in the best interest of the district products or Services may be purchased by competitive negotiations or proposals rather than the competitive bids okay thank you I'm assuming with any contracts that we have we are putting in some type of contract language for any types of shutdowns how we would be handled and how we pay those out I know last time when covet hit I mean we were kind of treading new Waters and we're like how do we pay everybody and this is kind of what when when Dr Montes and I sat down with our with our bus company partner at the time when that happened what we did was we took into consideration you
054know their drivers and monitors can go on unemployment when we have a Black Swan event or something like that I believe they call it um but some of their their salaried employees their bus payments a lot of those items they have to pay regardless and when we shut down in March of 20 we want them to be able to resume Services we don't want to bankrupt our partner so with Dr Montes and I back at that time we actually dove in and determined that it was 45 of our home to school to home is what would cover the salaried positions and the bus payments on what they what they were going to be stuck with no matter what which came out to nine thousand dollars a day so that that number there will be a
055little bit of negotiation as we go through the contract negotiation but I would I would assume it would be fair to leave it in that area so do you anticipate the contract coming back to us then for approval and February February as an action item yeah so the action item tonight is I'm just asking and it doesn't have to be an official action item but I would like to know that the board is in favor of me moving forward with this contract negotiation um based on the information presented I think by moving forward we actually save money because we're very much it's like any other contract negotiation we want to continue with you um yes and these numbers um this five percent year-over-year um have been communicated to me that that's if we are committing
056to them right now because it's it's a pretty expensive process for them to put together an entire bid response as well and that they would not necessarily honor the five percent year-over-year in a if we went out to bed we did ask them to consider a one-year extension and they came in at a 9.75 percent one-year rate so um going a longer time where they know they have us is probably our best financial interest as you said yeah who else would we use you know like you you see first you see apple bus they were here you see first student Now everywhere are they doing about also it was for student new Belton no DS bus lines in the paid group does Belton um they didn't they also did not put in a response to
057our bid last time however I think some of that just being honest was a gentleman's agreement between competitors there to to not try to take each other's districts um but at this time I still believe our best course of action is to move forward with first student for a five-year contract will the parent well um as Ryan Gooding can tell you technology is a little slow on lead times right now so as we're rolling this out um it will be the dashboard will be ready for the district and the local terminal in the next month but um it'll probably be after spring break or even at the beginning of the year to roll it out clean to the parents my big goal was to get it before it got cold but we missed that asked
058me a question on that app it two separate household parents can they both have access to their student on the app I don't want to get too far into the details so that was a question I would tell you that I believe it's tied um to their credent their credentials are tied to just being enlisted as a parent okay so obviously many of our students have divided homes where they may have step parents and and so we would not I would I would push them I would be very surprised if we could not spread that out to more than two parents we don't need a motion on this which this is just nope we're in agreement of moving forward we would like to have a recommendation for an action item for him to move forward
059to negotiate a contract knowing that that contract will come back before you as an action item in February but if we could have that statement from the board that you are giving us permission to negotiate a contract with first student that's what we are seeking this evening so then would there be a motion on the floor to authorize the administration to begin contract extension with first student transportation so moo it was our second second any other discussion all in favor okay thank you motion passes thank you on to chat gbt yes this is a conversation I'm sorry really this is the conversation that came up that's her that's hurtful from a question from Mr King about uh how we are anticipating on using some of the new artificial intelligence tools that are out there that
060really have taken taken off since November once this was first uh first made known uh Mr Gooding is here to talk to us through about what these things are you I think he's going to give you a demonstration that's going to kind of if you haven't seen it that's going to blow your mind as to what this tool can do and then also talk about how we're going to use it educationally so Mr good yeah so uh first off thank you uh it's not very often that the technology director gets to come in and show off technology to the board of education so I'm going to take advantage of today and actually have lost a safe believe it or not so I I'm going to channel my inner Al volcker and and go to work
061up here um so part of this I'm gonna I'm gonna read for you guys because a lot of this stuff is new and I want to make sure that I want to get it right into some of the definitions and things like that will be probably new terms that a lot of you guys haven't heard up till now but that moving forward I think will become a little bit more uh more familiar to you anywhere or more likely for you to hear anyway so chat GPT or generative pre-trained Transformer is a Transformer based AI which I was not really comfortable with what that meant Transformer based AI but what that is is that it learns contexts and meaning by tracking relationship relationships in sequential data like the words in a sentence so it's gaining meaning
062basically by going out and seeing writing and interpreting what when it sees words by each other interpreting that and putting it into a gigantic databases is pretty much what that means chat GPT is in its third version and it's a free tool developed by open AI an open AI is a not-for-profit at least started out for as a not-for-profit I don't know if it's going to remain that way but it started out for a not-for-profit and it started out by some some pretty big Tech Heavy Hitters a guy by the name of Sam Altman and another guy by the name of Elon Musk are the two people that started that business so it has a bat it has the backing of some pretty much if they're not trying to do it on their own all
063the big players in technology so an example of Microsoft has invested a billion dollars not a million dollars but a billion dollars in in this company in open AI so everybody I think in the technology sector understands the importance of what's of what's going on and really Elon musk's uh reasoning behind getting by starting this company and getting behind this is really his fear of what artificial intelligence can become moving forward gears down the line what's what's that mean for society in general so his idea was let's let's make a not-for-profit let's make it available to everybody so everybody can be part of the process and everybody can kind of see it and there's a little bit of transparency there so um chat chat GPT has had an unbelievable adoption rate so they've reached their
064one they've reached 1 million users in five days so just to put a little context behind that Angry Birds see everybody in here loves to play Angry Birds on their phone it took them 35 days to get to a million users Instagram took two and a half months and Netflix Netflix took five months to get to that to get to that point and chat GPT did it in five days so some people ask me and I'm sure other people probably in this room questions like what's the difference between chat GPT and Google so I'll give you the best example that I can imagine that you go into a library and you say I want to get a book on the American Revolution and so librarian says no problem here's your book on the American Revolution
065and you go read it and that's the information you get that's that's Google chat GPT is something that you would say and can you take my picture off of there and just show thank you chat GPT and I'm going to give you guys an example here hopefully you can see it on that confidence monitor in front of you you could go and say Give me a summary of the American of the American Revolution so you type that in there and immediately chat GPT is going to give you give you information about the American Revolution so that's pretty cool and we'll talk a little bit more about that but let's say that just for fun let's say that you want to write a summary of the American Revolution and let's do it in Shakespearean language and
066just like that it'll put it up there for you Ryan is this what they've been showing on the news that College college kids are cheating with now oh yeah yeah we'll talk we'll talk about that yes but yes okay okay very very yes it is okay so um just as we continue with a couple more examples here let me give you more personal example so um let's say uh let's say that your daughter really wants a pet really wants a cat which would be personal to me because my daughter's been asking me for a pet and a cat for like five years and I've said no but one of the most important things you do when you get a when you get a pet you get an animal is you got to give the animal
067a name right so let's see if we can ask it's at GPT what are some good names for a pet cat and we put that in there with the last game so put that in there and in context it's going to give you several names that you could have for a cat okay it's ultimately up to you but that may not be enough for your everyday user and something else that's really neat about about chat GPT is that it continues to understand context so it knows that I just asked about that so if I followed it up with what if the cat is black and white foreign so about this search and about the answers that it's giving to us so it's not pulling this information from any web page it's not plagiarizing this material
068it's not regurgitating anything it is synthesizing information and using the context of the words basically reading it and giving you the the answer back to you so um I just think that's that's pretty cool that it can do that with within the context so I think that the big question is and and what we want to talk about is how can this be used positively or negatively in the classroom and you look at these examples and I think everybody can hear their English teacher or just maybe their inner teacher saying that okay take-home tests are done no more essays that can be taken home those are obsolete now um because the kids are just going to use this to to write the essay and I and I would agree with them that some of that
069probably is true so I'll give you I'll give you another example um let's say we're in an English class and we're we're studying Hamlet and this has really just been here since November well this is the third iteration they've been working on this for a long time they've been working on this for a long time but let's say we're we're studying Hamlet and the uh the assignment is to ride a 250 word essay on the similarities and differences between Lion King and and Hamlet so let's just see if chat GPT can handle that so you can see within seconds I mean that's a pretty specific ask from chat GPT that it's coming with right there so pretty pretty incredible and it really shows the the power of the tool and it's it's writing an essay
070it makes sense it's it's structured pretty well um and if if a student handed this in and they handed if you guys are familiar with like turnitin.com or any of those other things if you had kids scroll through the district you know about that um it will not get picked up by any of those any of those methods that teachers have used in the past right [Music] the same thing would they get that no it's different every time every time it writes something new and I've played with this a lot I mean you can sit there and say give me a 500 word essay about the American Revolution written from an eighth grade's perspective and it will do that and you can say and include sites and it will do that all true all true
071so obviously the example I just gave you that raises some red flags for schools and really for schools as we know them as we remembered them as they are right now um however I just want to make sure everybody understands kind of where I'm at that my core belief and I believe that Technologies in school should be a way to equalize and it should level the playing field and not all students have the same life experiences chat BT chat GPT is definitely an example of technology that provides students additional supports that they wouldn't otherwise have so I understand we're going to have to deal with concerns raised by chat GPT but I'd also like to show you guys a couple of positive examples before we talk about the other side of it of how it
072could be used in the classroom so let's just kind of imagine that we're in a science class and we're asked to where we ask students to explain photosynthesis so I was never a great fan of the science classroom so photosynthesis that may have been a difficult that may have been a difficult task for me for you guys that may have been super easy to to do that but with that assignment I could go in and ask chat GPT just explain photosynthesis as a student and it's going to break that down for me now for whatever reason maybe um my vocabulary is not as large as some other students for whatever reason there's lots of technical words maybe in that explanation and maybe maybe I don't understand exactly where it's coming from so I can go
073back to chat GPT and say explain photosynthesis to a child [Music] and from the context of that it's going to take those Clues and it's going to basically take the reading level of that reduce it while still keeping a lot of the context of what you need to know to explain what to explain someone what photosynthesis is so pretty pretty cool and also I think really powerful just if you're if you remember being in the classroom how powerful it was when someone could come and explain something to you a little bit differently than how your teacher explained it to you and all of a sudden you're like ah I got that now sometimes just having it presented in a different way is is really effective for students so let's try let's try just a couple
074more um let's say um what's the difference between affected or effect and effect so I'll opt admit every once in a while I have to look this up because I don't I don't remember all the time so what's the difference between working on grammar what's grammar what's the difference between effect and effect so it's going to give you pretty much the definition of what it is and maybe for someone like me that's not going to be super helpful but I can also just go in and say well I see what you're saying there but use use it in a sentence for me so that I can see it in context and then it spits those out for you so um another example of how it could be used in a classroom let's say students are
075going to write an essay about renewable energy the positives about renewable energy so as a tool instead of kids going and saying write the essay for me if you teach kids how to use a tool they can go and maybe say oh they can search for give five positives about renewable energy as a bulleted list and I cannot tell you how many people struggled just to get started writing and look at a blank page and think I can't do it I can't do it I can't do it but to have something that could give you information like this that could at least get you started super super valuable and obviously you could repeat for the negatives and it would give it would give you that as well so the final example I want to give
076you so those are a lot of student examples how a student could could use it I want to give you an example about teachers and administrators so How could an administrator use chat GPT well let's say that a high school principal or that we're all high school principals and you're getting ready to give an AC test on Super Test day which happens here coming up pretty quickly to all of your juniors and you need to get that information out to your parents you can go into chat GPT and say write a professional email to parents of of your students with suggestions for how they can prepare students for the ACT test then it's going to format the email for you Traders won't be needed anymore along with some examples of what you can do what
077kind of filters are on this I mean some depressed kid goes give me 10 ways I can commit suicide I have not put that in there but um I do know that there are uh protections that they put in place for some some words I would guess probably suicide probably wouldn't be one of them but some of those things that are really big problems on social media right now I asked it one day how how can how can I build a bomb and it wouldn't it said I can't tell you that how about pornographic images and stuff like that so so a different program not chat GPT but open AI worked on another program it's called dolly and Dolly is something where you can type in [Music] um give me a picture of a bear
078dressed in Egyptian era clothing something like I don't know that's first thing I thought of that's pretty weird but um and it will make a picture that is unique never never it's not anywhere else it's not pulling off the Internet it's a unique image of a bear dressed in Egyptian clothing and so when that came out they did have some they started to have some issues people started to with like child pornography and stuff like that people started to manipulate the then I know that they they cinched down on that really tightly I'm but I'm not as far as filters for all of those I I mean I don't know exactly what filters they have in place for them I just know that um several of these systems have been put in place before and
079have failed because um and I don't want to get into all that in a board meeting but if you you know if you're on social media and you know a lot of the problems that are within social media those things crept up also in in those other systems and it caused some big problems so I know they've kind of taken some keywords and and said we're not going to report on those that was my first question when I reached out to Ryan about this was do we do we shut this down is it locked down do we have it blocked on our equipment and then as I kept messing with this and getting into it um Microsoft spent how much Ryan billion dollars okay so everybody's used Google and that's kind of been our Flagship
080when you want to you know Google that and see what it is this is going to be the backbone for the search engine Bing which is Microsoft's search engine so there's a lot of people Elon Musk is one of them saying over the next two to five years you're gonna see Bing become the flagship search engine because open AI is going to be the backbone for it so if we're going to shut it down here it's going to be ready available on search engines so I just got a little bit more and then if you guys have any questions for me um really there's no there's no doubt that this is going to have a massive impact on education so as with all disrupted Technologies or ideas schools will schools will adjust we're going to
081adjust and I can remember since being in education for as long as I have been but I can remember having deep conversations about calculators in classrooms and if that was appropriate and if we can do that [Music] um how comfortable are schools with Google when it launched not very how comfortable were schools when they went one-to-one with computers yes not everyone supported that believe it I believe it I believe it I heard it firsthand so uh what about Wikipedia people still have arguments you can have an argument with an English teacher right now is it okay to use Wikipedia as a resource and they can go back and forth either way on it but um one thing that I can guarantee is that we are going to adjust because students are going to make a
082suggest they are not going to give us a choice so as a district we we will be blocking chat GPT in schools I believe teachers and students need a chance to explore the technology and understand how we can integrate it into into the lessons in classrooms and the experiences that teachers are giving to students but the fact that you know I'm I basically am in blocking chat GPT does not reduce my excitement of all at all to see how teachers and students are going to use AI with their educational practices moving forward and how they're going to use it to improve exams and how they'll leverage AI to do things that right I mean we can't even talk about it because we can't even really imagine where it's going to go so with that I'd
083be happy to answer any questions that you guys have about it you know I do think I really appreciated your examples because as you we all know all of kids learn differently and so this could be a great tool for our teachers to like your photosynthesis I was having to think of how to spell it by the way but you know I think those are these are tools that our teachers could definitely use and then you know just we'll have to they adapt and for essays and all of those things but um so I I just touched just briefly on essays because I know that's a big concern and a lot of people see this and they were like where was that when I was in ninth grade because that would have been great I
084would have loved that right all adults see that and think that's the first thing they think is where it was at when I was in ninth grade um it's going to be important to open AI to other companies to be able to have something that that can differentiate between something that was written by Ai and something that was written by people and I'll tell you why that's going to be the case they still need to gather information from us to make this better if they're just pulling information from this it's just regurgitating the same the same thing through and through and through they have to somehow be able to differentiate and get get the writing from this side as well so I know it's important for them to work on that what that looks like
085for schools is you know we have my guess will be some type of Plug-In or some type something that works with the tools that we already have like turn it in something like that that will be able to be added to that that would be able to recognize some of this some of this writing but eventually the AI is going to get so good that it it won't be I mean there's this is an exponential growth thing this is we're at the beginning of this and it's it's getting to it's going to go to places that we really can't fathom or imagine where it's going to go so I I have just like I guess a comment and observation I I first heard about this I don't know if it's been a month ago but
086it was the dolly program where you can create art by typing in you know words and it generates it and then I think that led me because then I was interested um and then I think I got is there something else like chat bot but well anyway I got to something and maybe it was chatbot and I didn't remember the name but as I was thinking about it you know um as we were saying you know 10 years or 15 years ago the idea of computers and every kid having a computer seemed unrealistic and crazy and a bad idea you know like calculators right and you know as technology advances exponentially the um disruptors you're talking about you know that used to happen every 30 years are happening every two years or six months right
087and as we're preparing each student for you know a successful meaningful life um as I've you know tried to give thought to this it um schools we are on the verge of potentially becoming irrelevant to students because and to adults you know when I needed to figure out how to disassemble this piece of Furniture I didn't go read a textbook I didn't do what my parents would do which was call the you know the Sleep Number store right I Googled it right and I watched a video I watched a YouTube video and in two minutes I knew what to do it kind of reminds me the Matrix right you can download what you need to know and so information comes from YouTube I know I talk about Tick Tock a lot but it's becoming the
088number one news Source for Youth you know and and there's valid news and information you know BBC has a tick tock you know the Washington Post um so everything that has a bad part to it also has a good and valid part to it in this kind of new information realm and I think we as as Educators as school district need to be thinking about how do we maintain our relevance with youth because sooner sooner or later the youth is going to be sitting here right the youth are going to be the teachers in the classrooms and you know we should be helping them take the vast amount of resources and figure out how to use them how do I know what is I go to tick tock how do I figure out which news
089source is good or YouTube and I think we do I know we do some of that now but that's the same with this ignoring it I think it's right to block it right now but long term ignoring it and pretending it doesn't exist is just like ignoring computers and pretending they don't exist the kids are going to go home and use it anyway we need to you know we should be teaching them how to use it successfully and I could see I think education public education looked very different in five years and if we clutch on the textbooks and even classrooms and walls I mean it's going to evolve how who knows but it's things like this that are going to make that happen and it's good I mean it levels the playing field 100
090percent I don't have to be a certified Sleep Number bed maintenance person I did it myself well in itself this is this is not bad but kind of like a gun in the wrong hands right it's very dangerous and I think you're getting into teaching morality teaching what's right and what's wrong and field in the back and step in go I'm the one that you know does that which we know that some kids don't have the two parent or even any parents at home sometimes I think the moral fiber you know I I don't know how the education system gets into teaching what's you know white right and wrong how you should use this well just to clarify I wasn't suggesting we teach right and wrong I was suggesting we help kids learn to recognize
091valid factual data versus you know what is a good news source not good what is an accurate source of information what's wrong no what's accurate I mean a website that says two plus two is three is not accurate a website that says two plus two is four is I say we're going but I mean there's both there's both sides of that and that's been the conversation like with this chat GPT and everything um a lot of the people you know Microsoft Elon Musk they say the people that have the influence of what information is introduced to the AI is very significant because it could be introduced you know in in a good way or a bad way um I've reached out to you know and you're not going to harness technology it's always going to
092evolve there's always going to be the next big thing and I've I've talked to Al before about I'd like to see going kind of the other way like a low-tech curriculum developed at repack if if teachers or students or parents or students want to take a a low-tech you know classes where they're actually doing math on you know paper or writing essays with a pen instead of everything being on online I'd love to see a low-tech approach you know to kind of keep the old type of teaching alive we all see now why we put it on the agenda start the discussions well I think the uh idea of it is so it's kind of scary yeah I mean that's a lot of information being put out there that you can't really control um the
093idea that that instruction can change yeah but you know when we talk about going on YouTube to look at look something up fix something I do that all the time but I don't know I don't really learn from that because I'm not I'm not critically thinking about well how did this happen well how do I get from this point to that point then to back to this point well that's what that teacher's for that's what that that teacher connects those dots that teacher helps that that student that person critically think about well if I do this with the electric then this is going to happen so just like with the AI this it's going to be a matter of the the teacher having the capability and the knowledge to know this is how this is
094how this works and how you can help create an Avenue yeah I mean the the number one indicator of success Student Success is a good teacher and I don't think any kind of technology is ever going to change that a good teacher is always going to be successful with students and always is going to have great results whether they're using a pen and a piece of paper or they have a Chromebook or they're using open AI it doesn't you know I just I think the teacher 100 is what makes the biggest difference in students lives so so is this just a scarce or just I mean what are we going to be doing with this well I think what we probably should have some of the discussions is how do we start to bring this
095forward to allow the teachers I mean you have a a group of your higher Learners accelerated how can we use this to develop different material for them to look at versus your individuals that need photosynthesis described at a low level I mean and and your tests can you differentiate your your tests like there was something I don't remember what program it was but they said your kid didn't stop because it kept getting the right answers like I you know and and that's that I think that we need to start thinking on how do we equip our teachers with this tool while while keep the kids off of it for a little bit in the classes I think that's what we need to be directing so I just want to briefly speak um now I'm a
096self-admitted early adopter so I will have to say this is more exciting to me than it is concerning but there are some concerning things but I want to assure the board that I believe we as a district are headed in the right direction and already were before this became to the Forefront and we're talking about open Ai and resources so as we focus on our portrait of our Apec graduate and we the skills that we want our students to have you will notice that they are very much dependent on skills for the future that our kids are going to be able to access information at a rate that we don't even understand right now in a completely different way you know so with when you see what we're looking for are students being effective communicators
097responsible collaborate collaborators critical thinkers it's how you take this mass of information and then work together to solve problems of tomorrow so that's what we are going to challenge our staff and ourselves as Leaders to do moving forward we are ready for that challenge there will be bumps along the way but I don't think this is going to be and the anything in the long run anything but good for students it's going to take time there'll be bumps but we're already positioned to think the right way about this massive information I believe that there will be some historical things that we've always done that we might have to do differently and guess what that's okay okay well we will go ahead and move on to our last agenda agenda item legislative issue with Dr Slagle
098yes this is a truly an informational item for the board tonight and I just wanted to bring you up to speed on a request that has been made up of several school districts across the state and let you know at this point we're taking recommending no action on this particular item but this is the third consecutive legislative session that open enrollment will be a part of somebody's idea of utopia and how to move forward to a better society and this year open enrollment probably has an option or at least a real chance of passing there are several school districts across the state several School District groups that are concerned about Open Enrollment and what it might mean for especially rural school districts and have asked a school district across the state to sign on to
099a resolution opposing open enrollment I'm not recommending that yet for the board I want to let you know that we did were reached out and asked to be a part of of passing a resolution I think there's time for us to consider it I will let you know that the Cass County kids first legislative positions has this as part of their platform to oppose open enrollment I'm not sure we want to get into it as a specific District signing on to this resolution but it is something I wanted to bring to the board in your packet tonight or at you on the board docs you have two things you have the draft resolution that they're suggesting as well as the talking points about open enrollment the bill itself is interesting and I think over the
100past of the past several years that it has floated around the State House it has been refined to the point where school districts would have to opt in to be a part of open enrollment each participating District would also establish the number of transfers any given year that it would receive and also develop its own waitlist policies students would be allowed to transfer one time per year and then activity stipulations would follow that decision as to whether or not they are transferring in or out for activity reasons and transportation will be left up to the parents so as a bill I think it is as palatable as possible to districts um but yes there are several District many districts across the state who are concerned about the ramifications of this wanted to bring it to
101the board's attention again this is not coming with a recommendation for us to sign on to the resolution but should this continue to to move and we have need to have a conversation on it wanted to let you know the request has been made of us we have to try to answer any questions you might have is this a way to do the voucher system without calling it the voucher system so certainly that's that's a great point so because I think how the bill is set up is that money will then start following the student from one school district to another the state funding and it's just it's not too far of a next step for that money to start following it to the private schools as well so many observers feel that this is
102the first step towards a voucher system that gets that follows money to a private school that may be an end game I don't know but it certainly has been suggested all right well if there's nothing else we are adjourned this evening thanks for being here everyone [Music] I think