001maybe foreign um if we can stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge to the allegiance for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thanks for everyone for being here tonight if i could get a motion to adopt the agenda i'll move to adopt the agenda as presented i'll second miss teal yes mrs demint yes miss miner yes mr louder yes miss john yes mr pascal yes mr yeager yes seven zero zero the agenda has been adopted on to item number three this is the tax rate hearing so do i want it i guess you say some stuff zach or whoever i can take some stuff okay so the tax rate has been set or this is the proposed um tax rate and there was um some there
002was the assessed value for our dream had changed there was a revision done after the state auditor who went in and checked out their documentation and it has increased it looks like two two cents due to a new construction is that about the only changes anyone have any zach do you have any thoughts on anything no i think what you see there uh you know as michelle said that there was you know when we spoke in june i believe we thought the assessed value had gone down and then we got news from the county that it wasn't recorded accurately so assessed value is up about four million dollars or five your tax levy you can only raise your levy to an extent that new construction or increases in personal property exist and so it is
003less than two cent increase we left the debt service as it was um at like 86 cents and so there's a little bit of a change there but it's really pretty insignificant historically the district puts eight cents in the capital projects it's not something that we have to do but it does ensure that you get some money in there for routine maintenance and money into that account is there any citizens that would like to speak before the board regarding the tax rate all right does anyone else have any questions can we get a motion to set the tax rate i moved to set the total 2021 2022 tax rate at 4.55 5530 with eight cents for the capital projects fund 3.6039 designated the incidental fund zero to the special revenue fund and 0.8691 to the
004debt service fund second any questions or comments all right miss teal yes mrs demint yes miss miner yes mr louder yes miss john yes mr pasco yes mr yeager yes the 2021-2022 tax break has been set all right on to the next item on the agenda item number four staff and patreon input we're gonna item 4a we'll turn it over to jennifer ford if you'd like to address the board good evening good to see everybody i'd like to start with thank you um first of all thank you to bethany because she was so courteous and so prompt um in responding to my inquiries for being here i appreciate that thank you to the board members thank you for your service to the patrons and students of mexico and thank you for the opportunity for myself
005as well as mark and sally stewart and tommy and liz washer to be here this evening we're here because we have a shared vision we have a common love for our country we have an interest in the educational system obviously for retired teachers here and we know that the educational system is one of the primary means of equipping citizens for the next generation seems like we're living in a unique time in american history there's a movement taking shape people seem to be waking up to the fact that if we want to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and probably more important to our posterity that we may need to stop waiting for somebody else to step up as a wise man said it's time to run to the roar by all accounts it appears
006that this movement is a grassroots movement and you really don't get any more grassroots than a local school board so our educational systems exist as you know i'm not telling you anything you don't know in part to help prepare the next generation of productive citizens in a society that is evolving more rapidly all the time i don't think it probably comes as a surprise to anybody that some people see a possible threat on the horizon called critical race theory it is a threat to the continued existence of our republic it is in k through 12 schools around the country and in some places in the state of missouri so with that in mind we're here this evening just to extend an invitation to you to attend the presentation this thursday evening at 6 00 pm
007entitled critical race theory exposed the presentation is by dr mary burn she has completed extensive research she provides a thorough look at the hot button topic i will tell you she does not pull any punches uh she may inspire you at times perhaps offend you but one thing is for sure she will inform you as well as other patrons in the community that crt is real it is here in missouri and it's important that we work against it as thomas jefferson said a well-informed electorate is a prerequisite to democracy so we invite you to come and be informed hope to see you thank you all right on to our next item item 4b the recognition for educators so they obtained additional degrees or earned them congratulations to the following educators who have earned their master's
008degree donna trozer james walton jennifer warbritton kaylee hutchison and sierra buck on to item 5 the president's comments i want to recognize the following people for that have donated the eleanor is a chewy estate it's donated 55 and 55 cents to the viola leopold maxwell scholarship and then mr and mrs carl hurst dog father and wife donated twenty thousand dollars to the scholarship fund also the august 2021 employees of the month lindsay yancey lindsay is a guidance counselor at mexico senior high school and has been with the district for 16 years i think she also coached golf then jennifer mosley jennifer is a groundskeeper and a bus driver and has been with the district for five years congratulations to them this time um congratulations to the employees of the month and i'm just looking forward
009to school getting started i think i hated i hate that i missed the new teacher meeting yesterday morning mondays aren't good so no more monday morning but um that's all that's always such an exciting um few minutes to get to spend in an atmosphere of new people coming into the district because i think it creates a buzz and you know we always have a lot of new fresh faces that come in and um so i'm sorry i'm sorry that i had to miss that but um welcome back to school and i hope everybody's getting ready and to get started and excited and looking forward to the year so um i just want to say congratulations to those that have finished their master's degree um that's a super exciting thing to do and wish all of
010luck in the world to those that are still working on those specialty and bachelor degrees and all that good stuff um i did get to attend the new teacher's orientation yesterday morning and again yesterday at lunch they were semi-impressed with pick up and go i don't know [Music] i felt like i've attended probably four out of the last five years and i mean i just felt the vibe was very very positive this year um probably one of the most positive that we've seen and that's pretty special considering that we are still amongst of the stuff and all that's changing all the way all the time but it's just they seem very excited administrators seem very excited so excited for the school year on that front um thanks to christine for all the communication that's been
011going out i even heard on facebook the other day that somebody was like are we going to get another message about school registration and i'm still sure that some have missed it but that's okay we're getting there um there's been a lot of communication about all the upcoming events for the orientations the locker decorations all that good stuff so that's been great and just finally welcome back to everybody by the time we see you next month you will be full on in school so a little bit of sweet having a senior but it's an exciting time so good luck and have fun want to give a shout out to the high school some of you guys have elementary kids but i have secondary kids so i appreciated the fact that i have a freshman and
012he had an orientation today he didn't let me take him he went with another mom but it's fine but thanks to the people who are organizing those open houses i know that it takes a lot of work to figure out where you're going to put kids and there was even a photo booth and some fun things too and i'm usually working on what's going on with middle school as well so shout out to mms for getting that locker decoration and everything going i'm excited to see that happen tomorrow one of the things that i remember from being in the education spectrum is that right now i'm super busy and you even think i'll be in the board meeting tonight i hope it goes quickly so thanks for all you're doing i'll move through well thanks
013real quick to those that donated we are so fortunate to be in a district that is financially supported i'm not just financially supported but that aspect is is well taken care of and it's reflected in the scholarships that are available and so many things that are here so we thank those that continue to support the district i do want to congratulate as well those who are in degrees it's great to see teachers modeling what they ask students to do and so when our teachers are out in gaining advanced degrees modeling that is critical in my world um and then i too as as a former educator being in the classroom what it's always an exciting time of year for teachers to come in and to get your classroom started look at your rosters and to
014find out what kids you're going to see again or what kids you're going to get to spend a year with kids are doing that and they're either excited or growing in my case you were growing but it's just such an exciting time as things kick off and uh and then also you know we've all the athletic programs are off and running already so it's really real for a lot of a lot of students are already very much engaged and invested at the start of the school year so just wish everybody the best um yeah i'd like to echo what heather and he said congratulations to her educators getting those master's degrees our employees of the month i know all of our all of our staff and administrators and teachers have been busy getting ready for
015for next wednesday so that work is not unseen or unnoticed so thank you i think everybody did a good job of thanking everyone pretty much but thank you for all you do it is true that the pressure to say something new at this point is it is what it is but it doesn't hurt to repeat congratulations to the people who've done such good work our employees of the month the teachers who have gone on to get that continuing education that's so vital to make sure you're keeping up with ideas and getting a sense of how other people do things so that's important um the the start of school is is a magic time and i know that it's filled with equal parts dread but the boxes of markers that have been unopened right the every
016every empty notebook says to me i'm going to be filled with awesome stuff right by the end of the year and i just i love that and i know that some of them are going to be filled with with dirty pictures they proved when they weren't paying attention it's a wonderful wonderful time and all that all that stuff that has gone during the off season is about to pay off and it's going to be great so thank you good working all right i mean i could mock everything they said but one thing for me just from my point of view is we've had a lot of changes the last few months and the thing i'm excited to see the smiles on the kids faces just from being around things the positivity coming from melissa to
017the administration they had a meeting just recently and there are so many good positive comments and then you come in here yesterday and see the teachers all smiling and stuff i only sit here and think about what is that going to be like being passed on to the students and for them to be happy to come to school every day a place to get away from life in some sense or situations but they have a good positive environment to learn that's what it's all about so watching me said for melissa that's the second nice thing i've said i regret that i owe you a lot all right moving on to item number six the consent agenda can i get a motion uh i will make a motion different agenda as presented any questions or comments
018were any of these things out of out of keeping with your expectation or didn't you do the charges surprise you or no no i just got i put like on item number d the great circle academy it says we're responsible for transportation is that where they come here and do their services or how do we transport them do we take a school bus for one two people we take a one of our district vehicles okay does this happen daily or i believe in this case it does doesn't make sense and then one other thing i mean being in the funeral business you see item l there you see phoenix home care and hospice service of course we're not in hospice in this situation but what home care services so it isn't really home care this
019is a special education related to personal needed program more or less i mean i've been in school system so i kind of want to know anyone else have any questions or comments that's good clarifying on the on that great circle it says it's 156.48 a day is that or 160 or plus 160 if there's a pair it's plus okay so it would be great if they if they require it yes any others okay mr yes mrs demint yes miss meyer yes mr louder yes miss john yes mr pascal yes mr yeager yes 700 the consent approval of bills that require extensions for the motion i will make a motion to approve check number zero zero two nine five six written out to macc for the amount of 715 any questions comments all right miss deal
020yes mrs glenn yes miss weiner yes mr louder yes miss john yes mr pasco mr yeager yes check number zero zero two nine five six to macc for seven fifteen it's been perfect moving on to item eight eight eight and i have a representative from facilities solutions group and then mr kurt jackson will both address the board notice we said mister checks well i promise i wasn't going to recruit bus drivers but now back some time ago i was approached by ms chastain to look into a group to look at our facilities to give an overall view of our projects and try to set long-term long-term goals and projects and budgets for the next three to five years okay so we contacted the salty solutions group and i have two third representatives back to present
021their proposal all right i'll pass this out so i got my glasses i'll let the gentleman introduce themselves they would facility and uh we've been talking and does some tearing like this so he said proposal this is more or less just kind of an introduction to us to kind of give you guys an explanation of what we are and what kind of services we provide um everything up into this point's really just kind of done on the ifcom we just do it coming to give you guys kind of a high overview of like some of your facility needs and some of your deficiencies so just kind of understand that so just a real quick we kind of foresee ourselves as owners representatives really anything facility related we help districts uh not only do the master
022play department but also design it and put it up to bid and actually see it through construction so engineering construction administration is how i would describe our services we i'm a mechanical engineer my degree so is dan we're both registered professional engineers so that is our degree and our background 98 of our clients are public k-12 schools so we understand the dynamics with all the rules that go into public school projects but specifically capital projects so some of our capabilities master planning which i think is probably what kurt is looking for right now from from our perspective but we get into new construction energy optimization commissioning construction management or just some of our our skills i've listed some of our affiliations which some of you may be familiar with like masa msba we are leed
023certified and we've got amarant and kcp l trade allies for utility incentives the next slide is just a partial list of references we are based out of st louis but we do work all over the state we do a lot of work in the this part of the central part of the state but we go down as far as springfield come up darn near iowa so again we we kind of stretch all over the place we do a lot of bond issue management for school districts that got a bunch of facility projects and i'll get into some of those projects here in a second so kind of going back to what i talked in the first slide we do a lot of new construction um a lot of building renovations with a focus on mep
024and fire protection we do roofing replacements when i say we do what we do is we design it and we put it out to bid and we see it through construction kind of like a consultant we don't actually we're not the actual contractor building envelope from an efficiency standpoint whether it's windows doors or if you have foundation issues which i think you guys do have some of those or did have some of those and then some interior renovations and upgrades so really anything facility related there's not a project that we haven't done if there is a particular project that's out of our wheelhouse we have consultants whether they're architects or structural engineers or civil engineers that team up with us to help do those projects so the way we kind of see our role with
025mexico is kind of your in-house design and construction department many districts use us for you know year by year whether it's upgrading an intercom system or hey we need to replace some hdac because we've got such a vast array of capabilities that's kind of how we kind of see ourselves typically when we get in with the school district we're kind of with them for the long haul so you're not going to have a project where it goes awry we just try to get out and move on to the next project that's just not the way we're built we're smaller so we're all we're a relationship-based type of business um so what does this all mean just to kind of give you another quick overview the process you know our goal now i think we're kind
026of in step one where we put together a master plan for you guys and develop project scope and budget so that you guys can plan accordingly i think that's sometimes that's the hardest part for school districts is they don't know what things are broke and they don't know how much it's gonna cost to fix it we're here to help you guys do that on the at no cost ideally if we move forward with the project we develop construction documents that we send out to bidders our contractors we administer the bidding process host pre-bid meetings evaluate the proposals that we receive make recommendations based on those proposals and then actually manage the project through construction punchlist phase and everything so kind of cradle the grave so what do you get for your fee a team of
027construction experts looking out for the district's best interests uh we like to involve the district heavily on a lot of the design decisions uh whether it's you know it could be anything but you guys are heavily involved in the systems or the types of systems that you guys want to incorporate complete project management administration so we handle any contractor issues and on the owner's behalf and just a real transparent process so that is an overview i i like to open this up more for questions i don't know if this what you guys are hearing tonight is something new to you guys or this is something you guys were wanting to engage somebody with to kind of understand more about your facilities but we did do a brief tour uh last tuesday we put together some
028very just preliminary scopes but i think the idea is that we would help you guys do a more detailed three to five year master planning session uh with so that's my introduction you guys are more than welcome to ask any questions my first thing i mean we've been planning on maybe setting a tour for all of us to walk through and they said that you all would come through and look for yeah so what i call kind of the next phase of this is the more detailed facility assessment we either with you guys or by ourselves and you guys can see the report and then we can walk it however you want to do it but we'll come and we'll do a probably a three to five page report for each building and it'll touch
029on things from hvac electrical to building envelope to even site work whether you've got pavement that you need to replace and it's really just kind of an overall assessment of all those different pieces with some cost estimates associated with rectifying anything that's deficient and you said you've already walked through we did are you already started doing this are you waiting for our we did a very i call a very high level one just so that we had some uh knowledge understanding of your facilities before we presented tonight with regard you know do you all want to speak up again your calls how do you get it exactly so it's good it's a great question so we do the kind of the planning on the on the on the front side on the chance that when
030you guys actually go to actually do a project whether it's hvac upgrades that's where we make our our fees because what we're going to do is we're going to put together a set of hit documents drawing specifications that are going to be sent out to contractors that that are then going to bid on it and submit a price to the school district and we make a percentage on that so that's how we ultimately make money but what we do on the front side for school districts on the on the off chance that you guys do work is this planning part of it at no cost yeah no commitment just is us giving you guys kind of a high level overview of your facilities and then once you guys move down the road you start budgeting
031for projects and you actually want to do them that's where we come in we put together our bid documents and that's how we make our money for our fees so all these school districts you all use to use the same people over and over that you send out bins or you can kind of it depends on the area we've got groups of contractors depending on what trade they are depending on what part of the state we're in but it's a public process so we can't control who visit anybody is allowed to bid on a project and we've got to advertise it and it's open fitting to anybody we put qualifications in our bid documents to hopefully kind of eliminate some issues if you will but at the end of the day it's a public money
032and anybody can place a bid on it but we do have contractors that follow us specifically around the state when we're in an area that like to bid on our projects because they think that we're fair to work with i'm assuming that you all have insurance that cover for you all right we've got professional liability insurance yeah you have to have a engineering firm that's why i'm not mentioned here i don't yeah and if you ever have to use it you're pretty much going out of business well you had me at the term or when you said cradle to crave okay well thank you all for your time i know we'll be playing on touring ourselves and we're more than willing to come down and walk it with you guys to answer any questions that
033come up during that tour um just say the word that'll be good thank you thank you all right moving on to item eight fees the federal program support more informational only anyone have any questions item eight see the communications report questions and comments my personal opinion i really like it kind of gives you an idea i don't know much about dr miles but i'll show you this on september 7th better be good no pressure moving on to new business item nine uh nine a is personnel we'll move to one all right whatever you wanna call it so approval of personnel and if we get a motion to approve the personnel is listed i'll make a motion to improve personal assistance is that for the middle school how did you arrive at that hourly rate here's
034an experience brought in yes mrs demint yes miss miner yes mr louder miss john yes mr pascoe hi i'm stan mr gager yes the personnel has been approved next is for information on only the personnel [Music] presentations and we'll move on to the next which is the approval of the 2021-2022 certified contracts i'll make a motion to approve the 2021-2022 certified contract contracts as presented any questions or comments miss teal yes mrs demint yes miss minor yes mr louder yes miss john yes mr pasco yes yes 700 the 2021 2022 certified contracts have been approved now on to the extra 2021-2022 extra duty contracts we'll make a motion to approve the 2021-2022 extra extra duty contracts as presented a second any questions or comments miss teal yes mrs demint yes miss miner yes mr louder
035yes miss john yes mr pascal yes mr yeager yes 700 the 2021-2022 extra duty contracts next item 2021 2022 horizontal level changes is there a motion i'll make a motion to approve the 2021-2022 horizontal level changes as presented hold on a second any questions or comments miss teal yes mrs demint yes this miner mr water yes miss john yes mr caskel yes mr yeager yes 700 2021 2022 horizontal level changes that occurred now on to item 9b the approval of the annual secretary of the board report is there a motion i'll make a motion to approve this 21 20 20 21 annual secretary of report report any questions or comments were you nervous i don't know why it's called this it's really not right all right miss teal yes mrs demint yes miss miner mr
036louder yes miss john yes mr pasco yes mr yeager yes 700 the annual secretary of the board all right okay on the september building walkthroughs just to establish a date is that what we're going to do or you want to talk about it i think do we need to establish a date right now or does it open this up to is this euros walkthroughs or our tours thing okay that's not wrong after i said i was like maybe i'm talking about the wrong thing do we do this together do we need to do this in separate bunches so we can do this together we just have to post it so you must be interested can i ask did i understand these gentlemen right and that they would do a walk through themselves and have ideas
037and would that be to our advantage to have them walk through first and get their ideas and have them go through them when we go you need addition to the walk the quick one they've already done well that's what they said they would do and do a thorough one and then they would as we walked through they would actually point those things out to us rather than us to go through we could go through and look at things but if they may if you took them out of the equation what would we be trying to accomplish well the other day is there possibly some money coming available to the capital improvement yeah with our esser funds i mean we have a substantial amount of money um and so we want to prioritize our needs our
038facility needs instead of just what's what's glaring and maybe we have something that's hidden and is definitely more of a need so they will come in and prioritize our needs um and we can do a walk through after they do and heads up to what you guys want to do because to me i'm with you if we do a walkthrough and i think we should there should be some purpose behind it so whether it's building administrators who are sharing their concerns about their building whether that whatever student flow or whatever they're having that should be part of our purpose of going through and letting them share what they feel their weaknesses are within their building and strengths or or these gentlemen putting something together for all of the above that some purpose and plan to
039what we're doing rather than just walking through and there's places i guarantee i've not been in these buildings but right so maybe we want to give them the opportunity to tell them to go ahead within the next month and walk through yeah i'm not sure when they can do their uh come in and i don't know that kurt was sure that date but we can certainly find that out and then let you guys know and plan from there i don't think if there's going to be a way out then maybe we go ahead and do something and talk to the building administrators and see if there's something maybe on the surface that may be more cosmetic or less of a reach out to them and ask them kirk kind of get an idea what they
040can get here if we do not want to not do every building in one day because it would be a little overwhelming why did you go there all right any other questions on the building walkthroughs all right on to the next item 9d the safe return to in-person instruction and continue to be a services plan i'll make a motion to approve the safe return services plan second any questions or comments [Music] i'll uh point out the comma error later it's not important the comma the comment areas is there anything that you'd like to can can you just summarize for the uh for the group sure so this plan is a requirement of an 3 funds back in march the american rescue plan was put into place and it's a federal plan and from that surgery
041came and so this is a part of that really what it is is a continuation of our plan from last year not very much has changed at the end of the year of course our mass mandate ended we had summer school things have changed since then with hobit and our cases are up as an admin team we have spent a considerable amount of time focusing on ways that we can socially distance keep kids cohorted as much as possible rather than focusing on the mask we encourage people to wear masks when they cannot socially distance and also if people want to wear a mask we will absolutely support that we want our kids to be safe we want kids to be in seat and we want to focus on educating students and i think we learned
042a lot last year we're going to make mistakes this year and uh we'll have to tweak this plan our state supervisor has to approve the plan and it's not um whether you're wearing mask or not or through social distance in your cohort it's more what dustin looks for and are we missing verbiage in words and are we needing requirements so this will most likely be brought to you guys next month again um and certainly we can continue talking about this we do have to meet every six months and so we already have a date schedule that we're going to meet so that we meet that requirement but i appreciate our admin team we've spent a lot of time as a team talking and i know you guys in your buildings they have thought and rethought
043how are we going to do this and what did we learn last year and how can we support our students it is on the bus it's a federal order and not a choice to wear a mask so we will have masks on the bus do you guys have any specific questions are we using the same formula guidelines to the same red yellow green business we're not doing that this year not yet um we are going to have our dashboard correct i have to look at christine because sometimes i think i make the face up we are going to have i thought we had decided we would share quarantine information so there's a link that is like all code-related information the plan is on there a spanish copy of the plan is on there um i
044put like achd hosted a vaccination event i put those dates on there the senate bill 51 is posted on there and in spanish so everything coveted related is on that link so we will provide that information we won't have like we did last year the green yellow that was more geared to our sports and all i will tell you i have also spent a lot of time talking to our conference superintendents we're trying to all be on the same page with this we are if you look at their plans they're similar very very similar and then i've also been in really close contact with um community r6 that superintendent there and so we're on the same page i would like to say emily buck where's emily here she is um this information changes constantly as
045far as what recommendations are and we take the recommendations and try to curtail it to meet our students needs uh achc's awesome i'd also like to say thank you to simon he's reached out and helped us a lot um i always say your last name wrong so i'm going to say it wrong doctor thank you did i say it right you said it oh he was right my husband always said i was saying it wrong um so we do appreciate um you guys very much and feel like we work collaboratively we just have to take it and make a plan that works what we think is best for us so whenever we send this out and we let people know like i love the website it looks great and with the information on their stuff
046but i'm thinking about like senate bill 51 and the sign that we had to post yes like it looks scary yeah and you know i work with the law office so i understand the background and all that but i wonder just as a teacher or a parent walking in if you see that if you really understand what that means because if you just see all that legal jargon on there i'm gonna wonder why well why is the school hanging a sign on there so like do our secretaries and our front office people know to pay anticipation if they're asked they do and we can definitely um reiterate with them and maybe even put something out for our parents so that they know that's a good point um i mean like i know that we have
047to yes we have to it's a legal thing but people need to know that right and actually that's a good out you know i told you how to do it and that's one reason and you helped with this last year so you know if you look at a lot of people's plans their plan is looks like this right it's just on the sheet we were trying to make this look friendly because it is scary and it's super overwhelming and so that's why we stuck with this again this year because we thought it was user-friendly so we can definitely do that i know whenever you see those words like reckless and rule for misconduct and all that stuff on that side you're going to be thinking okay you know do i want to go in here
048right maybe one people think that but we're going to get slammed most likely at the start of school and you know social media and everything else because people aren't going to be happy with every decision they never are so i just feel like letting people have more information to be able to answer the questions would be helpful absolutely and i will say we have not this has been on our website uh it had to be posted in a certain date and it's been there we did not formally share it because i wanted you guys to approve this plan i didn't want to bring something and then it wasn't approved and then go back so we will share this tomorrow yes if um if someone else has to approve before we can approve i mean we
049can still approve it as a board and then and maybe the supervisor is jayrus he'll say yeah yours is great you can i i don't think so because he's come every district i've talked to he said hey you need to tweak this um we'll have to bring it back for you guys to approve the changes but it won't be anything that really impacts what we're doing if that makes sense yeah well really hope to know that it was required because even if all the stuff that i've done in school i didn't even know was required so whenever you said that i'm like okay well that makes sense any other questions comments miss you yes mrs demint yes miss miner mr louder yes miss john yes mr pascoe yes mr yeager yes 700 except return plane
050has been approved all right moving on to item 10. devotion to the chairman [Music] yes second [Music] miss teal yes mrs demint yes miss miner yes mr louder yes miss john yes mr pascal yes mr yeager yes seven zero zero thank you guys thank you thank you