001There are seven board members present. I would also like to point out a special guest that we have with us this evening. Uh the board is pleased to introduce to you our new superintendent, Dr. David McGee. Um, you know, we've been in town all day looking at houses and trying to uh find a place to live now, but I just want to thank the board for this opportunity. Um, and really just um let you know how how amazing the staff has been through all of my tours and and all of the discussions we had and the community members that came and they all had great questions. Some of them even better questions than you guys asked me. and and tougher ones. And so I I appreciate that. I it's just become very very aware that
002we're we're we're coming to a place where the adults care about the kids and that's very very important to me and I know that we're going to be able to work together to do some amazing things and I appreciate Dr. Harter and she's already been working hard to uh help me with some transition opportunities and we've been scheduling that. So um while we don't start till July one um we'll we'll we're going to we've already started. So just so you know that. And then I I I say that this is the best part of the deal, better than better than me. Uh this is my better half, Shelley. And so she she uh she also got to look at houses with me today and kind of get a feel for for for Emporia because she's
003only been down one other time back when I was here uh you know, a couple of years ago. She came down and surprised me on my birthday because I was in Emporia for my birthday. So appreciate appreciate her and she she she will be a super super support for me and uh you guys will enjoy getting to know her. Thank you. [Applause] Okay, I will go ahead and take a motion to adopt the agenda. So moved. Second. Motion passes 70. The next item is 3A um which is the recognition of Alexa Castillo and Kinsley Madrono and Emporia High School state wrestling champions. The board of education would like to recognize Alexa Castillo and Kinsley Madano, both juniors at Emporia High School, for their girls wrestling 5A state championships this past February. They became the first
004lady wrestlers to win state championships in Emporia High School history. Next, we would like to invite Emma Batty and Daniel Gillanwater. The board of education is proud to recognize Emma Batty and s a sophomore and Daniel Gillanwater, a junior at Emporia High School for their outstanding achievement in receiving a one rating at the 2025 Quesacia State Piano Festival which took place in February. We would now like to invite Alexa Courtney and Hope East forward. The board of education is proud to recognize Emporia High School seniors Alexa Courtourtney and Hope East for their outstanding musical achievements. Both students earned this prestig prestigious honor of performing with the Kansas All-State Choir at the Kansas Music Educators Association conference held in Witchah. Alexa and Hope qualified for the Allstate Choir through a highly competitive audition process in November.
005Their highly successful auditions also secured them places in the North Central District Honor Choir, which performed in December. [Applause] On behalf of the board, congratulations to all of our students on their outstanding achievements. That brings us to item 3D, public comment. Casey, is there anyone signed up for public comment this evening? We do not have anyone tonight. Okay. Thank you. As a reminder, anyone wishing to provide public comments should complete the online request to submit comments form. This form will need to be completed by 1 pm on Wednesday, the day of the board meeting. This brings us to the consent agenda. The items listed on the consent agenda are considered by the board of education to be routine business items. Approval of the items may be made by a single motion, second, and majority vote
006with no separate discussion of any item listed. Should a member of the board desire to discuss any item at his or her request, it will be removed from the consent agenda and considered separately. What are the wishes of the board? I move to adopt the consent agenda as presented. Second. Motion passes. 70. That brings us to item 6A, supporting new teachers. All right, we are always talking about the importance of retention and recruitment of highquality teachers. And that is our focus about instructional coaches. Tonight we have Dr. Erica Mickelson, director of teaching and learning. Mrs. Derek Tara Glaes, director of student services, who will introduce our guests. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, we're excited to have a portion of our instructional coaches here uh to talk to you about how we support new teachers. Uh
007we have both general education and special education instructional coaches here to work together on this. So, we have uh Mrs. Lauren Ayes who is instructional coach at Village. I'm probably not going to turn away. So, they're back there. So, look at them. Uh Mrs. Lauren Ayes, who's instructional coach at Village and Timberman. Uh Aaron Morse is a special education instructional coach who supports Walnut Logan Jones and William Ellen White. Uh Jana Marstall, instructional coach who supports Emporia High School. Uh Tara Drenan is a part-time district instructional coach as well as part-time supporting Logan Avenue. And then Jessica Kellison who is an instructional coach supporting Emporia Middle School. And as we met to talk about just the presentation and what we were going to do, we started all these kind of pulling out all these words.
008And so you'll see on this word bubble uh that we uh started just talking about networking, collaboration, reflecting with the the new educators when they're meeting with them. But the but the major ones we started to talk through were support because without the support of these wonderful ladies um behind us our new teachers would they they would struggle because they really need that support and and uh help in and just that sounding board. Um, also coaching because the our coaches coach alongside all of our teachers and all of our staff, but especially those new teachers that we have, whether they're new to the profession or new to us in the district. And then the other one was professional development because sometimes we think of professional development in the lines of our PLT days, but professional
009development happens at all times. Um, even when when the coaches are going to and from then they get stopped in the hallway and say, "Hey, can you help me with this?" and and they have to need to write that down and and come back or they're able to take those couple minutes um to to work with the teachers. So, the coaches are actually going to take a little bit of time to talk through some of the pillars, some of the major things they uh work through and then we have a special guest uh one of our new teachers is here to talk through just the support she's had this year. Okay. So one of the first pillars that we had is just coaching kind of what our role can look like day-to-day and with that
010through the coaching process we provide modeling. That is one of the many things we do. Modeling might be stepping into a classroom and modeling a lesson for the teacher to observe. It could be modeling a small group lesson. It could be modeling an SEAL lesson or even classroom management techniques. It's really about modeling um specific things that that teacher might need and giving additional support. It could be modeling the curriculum and what that lesson looks like. The next thing would be observing. So stepping into that new teacher's classroom, observing their teaching, providing feedback, and it goes back to the the next bullet of reflecting. So being able to provide feedback through um maybe something that we modeled for them, maybe something they requested or something that we've noticed they just need more support on. The
011next thing would be data analysis that might come um supporting them through analyzing that data. We have monthly data talks where we're looking at student data, looking at our intervention groups and that's a really hard thing to step into and know how to do. So there there's a lot of support that comes into helping kind of teach how to analyze data because I don't you miss that in college. You know, you don't really I mean you get a little bit of it but you don't get the depth that we kind of tend to go through. The next would be peer observations. So providing coaching support. It might be covering the classroom so that they can go and observe their peers. It would be scheduling peer observations and going with them sometimes so that we can
012reflect and talk about the observations they're seeing of their colleagues which is very beneficial. Um the next one would be collaborating. So that could be um lesson planning together. It could be talking through activities. It could be just brainstorming ideas with the next bullet of being an ear, somebody, a sounding board sometimes to just be able to support and provide that collaborative setting with them. All right. So, the second um pillar is professional development. And um as coaches, we spend a lot of time with our new teachers in training and professional development. as you know that um all new teachers whether they're brand new or just new to the Emporia district come in a couple of weeks before the rest of the staff reports in August. And um one of the things or a couple
013of the things that we do with them as instructional coaches, we provide that dyslexia structured literacy training that is mandated by the state. And then we also spend um about three hours with them during that time just teaching them some best practices as far as literacy first and lesson planning components and things like that. So really to get them um off on a good foot that first day of school. And then throughout the first year, new teachers, whether they're brand new again or new to the district, are pulled two days during that year. So usually once in September and another time in January. and they're provided professional development for those days. And then the second year in the district, they also have two more days of training with the instructional coaches. And it's just um
014things differ from district to district. And you know, in our district, we're a CKH, we're AVID, we're lit first, we're implementing SCOP. And so just catching those teachers up on all of the initiatives and expectations in the Emporia district. So we do spend a lot of time with them um on that and then the implementation of that training. That's really what's most important, right? Not only the training, but helping them to implement what they're learning in that training. And so during our trainings, we um try to build in some time where they can process and we can be there to help them. And then as uh Lauren mentioned that obser um observations and reflections are a huge part of that. So helping them to implement it, but then going in and watching them um put
015that training into practice and then sitting down and reflecting with them later about that. Put this up. Um much like our students needing differentiation uh or our teachers need differentiation as well. Um and that looks a lot of different ways. Uh we help them with organizing their small group structures. We help them with um scaffolding their instruction. Um we help them with understanding um that with that um especially with special education students. Um students need that repeated repetition of those lessons. Uh so we differentiate that way. Um our training that we provide on assessments, we ensure that um students or teachers are giving those assessments with fidelity. Um so that way they're given the same every time. So we get those accurate numbers to know where we need to start uh with their instruction and
016placement. Um the differentiating then um with that accurate um instruction and placement can look different um how a student responds um to a test. Making sure that we are truly um accurately um assessing them and we know that what their needs are. Okay. So, the next pillar is support. And you're going to hear some of us say some of the same things because they kind of bleed into each other. All the pillars kind of bleed into each other. One of the ways we provide support for new teachers is with providing training for district and building resources. They can't use them unless we give them some training on those resources. um in August PLT some of that time that was talked about at in the summer before they start we have the opportunity to take them
017through a resource walk in our building so they can see the rooms where all the extra resources are located and we don't provide training on those resources all at once it's kind of as needed. So as they get to the skills that they need to teach, they may want an extra supplementary resource from that room and that's when we provide training on those. Um networking um each one of us coaches has a specialty in one area or another. We don't have all the exact same specialties. So it's really important especially at the elementary level that we network together. We do meet with each other quite often so that we can say hey I have a new teacher that needs support in tier one or tier two and tier three resources which is my specialty versus
018another coach's specialty might have um whole group instruction might be her specialty. So we try to line align together those resources as people to be able to go and give training to teachers as well as um networking together on our classroom teachers which classroom teachers are experts in certain things so that we know how to align um the observations that we send them on. We also offer co-planning. We'll sit with our teachers and plan with them so that they know which best practices to add to their lessons. um modeling assessments. We we have a lot of assessments that we give at the elementary level and some of them are one-on-one and they're not as easy to give as we may think. So a lot of times it takes not just the training but then we
019offer modeling. So we'll model the assessment and we do it in the gradual release model where we give the training, we model the assessment. I may only have to model one or two times and then the teacher's ready to take it over or it may take a little more time before they're ready to give those assessments on their own. The last pillar is miscellaneous. Um and there were a couple of key um ideas under this one. The one first one was stress um management. There your first of year of teaching can be pretty stressful. Um so we do this in a variety of ways. We help them with their work life balance um how to manage that. We give them some ideas on classroom management, just how to manage that side of stress. Um, and
020then the other one is like really a prioritization of tasks. Um, your first year of teaching, it can feel like you need to do everything all at once. So, we just really work through um, how to prioritize those. What needs to be done today? What can wait till tomorrow? What can maybe wait till next week? Um, so that's stress management. And then another one that's a big part is the confidential support. So, we're a safe place for teachers to come bounce ideas off, um, really be there to reflect with them, to be able to grow, to be able to answer any questions that they might have, um, but just in a safe, confidential spot. And now we are going to hear from Mackenzie Bosa. She's a secondyear teacher at EHS. Good evening. Um, I'm actually
021really excited to be here uh to talk about how amazing our instructional coaches are. Um, just to start off a little bit of background. I think it's really important to begin. Um, I was a December graduate and so I wasn't hired on until the following year in August. So that spring semester, um, I actually started off as a long-term sub. Um, and I vividly remember, I don't know if Jana remembers this, but I vividly remember being in this classroom that I had to long-term sub in. And she walked in and she introduced herself and she said if she if I ever needed anything to come to her office. Uh, she made me feel very very welcomed um on that first day. And it definitely it was a special moment because it definitely it was my
022confirmation. I this employee is where I wanted to be. um and she definitely um made me feel welcomed and supported from the beginning as a long-term sub, not even as a first year teacher. Um so since then both Jana and Stephanie have really guided me um throughout my sec first year and now second year teaching um guided me with lesson planning. Um you don't really realize how I mean as a student teacher you only do so much. as an intern, you only do so much and then you get put into a classroom and then you're just like, "Oh my goodness, what do I do?" Um, and Jan and Stephanie were definitely great um mentors and they've provided so many lessons um lesson plan templates um how to create a lesson plan, lots of strategies that
023I've learned in my first year training and my second year teacher training as well. Um and I kind of like what um Mrs. Drenine mentioned that they actually model those um strategies for you. It's definitely not one of those PD days where you just sit and you do you listen and then you leave and then you're just kind of like, okay, now what do I do with this? They actually model it. They um give you some time like how Jana mentioned, they give you some time to actually implement it in a lesson plan. the amount of resources, the amount of books, um, templates that I have been given by them like have definitely filled up the shelves in my classroom. Um, and it's definitely things that you use every day. Um, I really, one of
024my favorite things of being a secondyear teacher is when they come in to observe me, I think the other day I actually told Jan, I said, "Hey, you haven't observed me in a while. You should definitely come. Like, I've missed having you in my classroom." Um, and it's one of my favorite things because, um, they, you know, follow up with a reflection appointment and even if you think you've done enough reflecting, you you don't. Um, they've asked me meaningful questions, um, I have definitely every time that I come across a conflict and I'm like, no way, no way Jana's gonna have a solution to this or Stephanie's gonna have a solution to this. And then they each come up with like five solutions. Um, and so very great feedback, very great um, suggestions, and you
025know, they've always made me feel welcome, supported, and never judged. Um, even outside of just being an instructional coach, they're definitely my go-to people in the building. Um, I during my planning period, I stopped by in their office just to chat. Um, even as a first year, second year teacher, yes, we do need guidance through teaching, but you also need friends in the building. and they're definitely one of my, you know, go-to people in the building. Um, before wrapping it up today during lunch, I did ask uh a teacher who is currently in her first year teaching how she felt supported by our instructional coaches. And she said, "They're honestly the best coaches. I was super blessed to have them as my instructional coach my first year teaching. They are always willing to listen and
026reflect with me." I asked another teacher who is in her third year teaching and she said they've supported me since day one and they always have the right answers to guide me. Um overall just super grateful um very motivated by them and they have guided me to become the teacher who I am today. Uh one more thing that I actually just remember now they've also encouraged me to get out of my comfort zone. So I'm an avid teacher because of Stephanie McCracken. Um I am in committees in the building because of Jana. Um so definitely great instructional coaches and I have felt I don't think my first year teaching would have been as great as it was because of them. So thank you. I have one more testimony to share. She was a little apprehensive
027to come and speak on her. So kudos to you. So I just have something written. But one thing we our presentation was more about the pillars we as instructional coaches do to support our new teachers. But there is one thing and it is the mentor program where teachers are able to collaborate and have a mentor that can be someone besides us that provides that networking support. And so in this testimony you'll hear her mention having a mentor as being another support that our new teachers have. Okay. So her name is Shel Shelby Hamilton. She is a secondyear teacher and she teaches first grade at Village Elementary. She said, "This is my second year teaching at Village Elementary and I have received so much support from instructional coaches, my mentor teacher, and new teacher trainings. I'm
028also incredibly lucky to be on a team with two veteran teachers who have been in the same grade in building for many years, who share resources and ideas and allow me to share my ideas as well. District and building instructional coaches have come into my classroom to observe behaviors and lessons to help me think through my plans and ideas. They have also taught lessons from the district curriculum so I can see how someone else would teach the curriculum in my own classroom. My mentor teacher has shared resources and ideas for things I have struggled with. The new teacher trainings were especially beneficial when the instructional coaches allowed us to pick the topic of our training so it best fit our needs. As first or second year teachers, I have gained a lot of insight and
029recommendations from the coaches and my peers through these trainings discussing behavior and classroom management tools, curriculum, and small groupoup instruction. Compared to a few of my first and second year teacher friends who work in different districts, I am so grateful for USD 253 and the support, resources, and trainings I have been provided with my first and second year of teaching. And then you can see a quote from uh Sheila Garza. She's a long-term sub currently at Walnut in William Allen White. She said, "Instructional coaches are a wealth of knowledge and are the gateway to all the resources needed to help our students be successful. The hands-on face-to-face interaction can't be replaced through emails or check-in meetings. So, we know those things happen as well, but that that real face-to-face time is is crucial and important.
030So, what questions might you have either for me or the people behind me? I'm just going to pop in right now and say I hope all of your principles are watching and recorded this because now they don't need to do a review because of the glowing reviews you all just received this evening. So amazing. Yeah, I don't have a question so much as as a comment. and I've been on I'm halfway through almost my fourth year, which is less than most of you, but um this is like the most positive start to a meeting we've ever had between, you know, the awards that were given and then hearing this. Um and we hear positive things about your team all the time, which is great to hear, but this was amazing to hear from from you
031guys firsthand and just how you're just genuine and that is wonderful to to experience firsthand. And I think I speak on behalf of um most of you over there and I know I speak on behalf of the board when I say Jana you can't retire till you're like 95. So you're just here and you're not you you you had just started when I was in high school and I'm like we can't ever lose her like 95 you and you'll still look like you're 60 then. So so you're good. Any other questions? Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Okay, the next item is 6B, approval of class size capacity to guide transfer request. Okay, this has now become our annual agenda item. And Mrs. Judy Stanley, assistant superintendent of teaching, learning, and student services is going to
032give some information and ask qu answer questions. I'm not sure why I scheduled this after the instructional coach presentation. Um, okay. So this is the annual you get to approve the capacities so that we know what we're looking at for transfer requests. We use these capacities for indist. We use these capacities for out of district. In district is really strictly elementary since we have the six buildings and we have to make decisions on those before May 30th so that we can publish how many spaces do we have available for out of district. Um we already have applications coming in and when those applications come in they're getting an email. We have someone in the enrollment office who's checking are they already a student because we have families that are a little worried that will forget
033their transferins. So they get an email that says you're already approved as long as your student is a student is in good standing. If they have a staff member that's if their parents a staff member they're approved and if they have a sibling in the building. So some of those are automatically approved and they've already received notification. If they are families that have to wait for the capacities, then they receive an email that tells them when they will find out. So if they're an in district transfer, they're getting an email that says you're going to find out between May 15th and May 30th. If they're an out of district, they're going to find out July 15th and July 30th. So we're trying to make sure they're all in that loop. When you look at the
034capacities for this year, elementary is pretty much the same. We left the teacher to student ratio where it's at. it leaves that is not the like when I look at kindergarten and look at one uh 17 students to one teacher that's not where we would add another teacher that's where we max the transfer request because we need to make sure that we're leaving space for in district I mean the buildings that the kids that move in as well as the automatic approvals when you look at the secondary numbers th those capacities are a little bit different than last year um secondary was a little harder to figure out because we have some classes that simply can't have a lot of students in them like ceramics or glass blowing. And so last year when we looked
035at that we f for the high school we focused on English because every grade level has English and we I worked with Mrs. Bloomquist, we identified how many teachers did we have per grade level and we used the capacity number essentially what was in the course guide. That did not work out so well um especially for the first semester. We ended up with some core classes very very large and so we revamped a little bit this year. What we what I did is I looked at the number of total teachers, not strategists, but the total teachers, whether they were electives or core teachers, divided it by four because there's four grade levels. That left us with about 17 18 teachers per grade level. And then worked with Mrs. Bloomquist and Mr. Fischer to go, okay,
036what's reasonable here? Um, how many students would be reasonable to again allow for moveins, allow for automatic approvals? and where we landed was an 18 to1. So if I'm looking at 10th, 11th, and 12th grade, we're looking at 300 being the max. If we have more than 300, we would not approve that out that out of district transfer request. The freshman class is a little bit lower. There's a couple of reasons for that. One, they're coming in from the middle school. They have a a few higher needs. Um that year is a little bit more stressful than others because it's just new. The other reason is we are struggling a little bit with um filling all of our science positions particularly at the freshman level. So we we want to make sure that we're not
037causing a need for a whole another section or building um a place where we end up with 30 kids 30 freshmen in a class. So that's that led to the changes at the secondary level um at the high school. And then we just really made that shift this we did the same way for middle school and it just happened to be that those three grade levels ended up with the same student to teach ratio as as the freshman class. So it was a kindite kind of a nice little lead in. So that's where we're landing. Those are our proposals for capacities. I am still a little trepidacious with the secondary with the high school um because when you look at that it's when you look at the total number of students it's not that much
038less than it was last year but when you also look and you see well we really don't have any room for transfer requests anyway um and I look at the the teacher to student ratio it's about six less than it was last year I don't I wouldn't suggest going lower because then it starts looking like we're trying to block kids from coming in and really that capacity is to make sure we're not having to add staff or have too big of a class size. So, um, what questions do you have for me? So, this past year was our first year with this. Yes. And you've touched a little bit on that, but what kind of things did we were we concerned about or hiccups and how did how did that work out? Because going into
039it, I mean, we didn't really know what to expect. Um the biggest hiccup we had was when uh people started making transfer transfer requests during the school year because in the past we've done that but this year because of the deadlines with the statute for out of district we we kept that as a hard deadline altogether. So if you're you want to transfer you need to make sure you're do you're making that request for the next year. That was the biggest hiccup at the elementary in particular because that's something we hadn't done in the past. Um it was easy with the added district because there's a deadline. Um but that was the biggest hiccup. We actually were able to approve almost all um of the transfer request. The the trick going into this next year
040will be going uh looking at everybody that was approved and making sure they're a student in good standing because then we have to notify the parents before school is out. Your child will not be returning if they're not a student in good standing. So we'll see how that goes. This will be the first year for that. I do want to add so Judy's being humble right now. So um there was a lot of planning, overplanning, a lot of crossraining. So um the teaching and learning team did an amazing job and so we're um we may have had a little you know hiccup along the way. Other districts really did struggle with it because they didn't do the amount of preparation that um our teaching and learning department did. So they did an excellent excellent job
041and the teaching and learning team is also making sure that there are no hiccups for the next year. So they're making sure that everything is in a really great foundation and that handoff will be very smooth. Dr. McGee will know that I will have we will have all this process written out for the next team. We don't want to leave them hanging. So, I have a question on um I'm you know looking at the capacities for middle school and high school and you know we're we're right there at like the 289 to 300 is what we're shooting for aiming for. Um so like for fifth grade I see they're at 352. So 2627. Um, do does that mean we need to we expect most of them to also go to sixth grade or are we
042kind of waiting to see and are we gonna have to hire more or adjust? You know, like I'm just looking at our staffing models and making sure, you know, we're keeping the class sizes that we love and um that's exciting that there's more, right? Uh but I just wondered what we think of that. You know, that dawned on me too when I looked at the total number that could possibly be at sixth grade. Part of I mean um for the following year, part of that is because of the number of teachers we have currently in fifth grade. Um we've set the capacity um the total capacity right now. Um if a if a building hits 26 students in a class, we add a teacher. So 26 52 blah blah blah at fifth grade which is
043still kind of high. It's kind of high. Um and because of that some of our buildings you you can look at um let's say Walnut. Walnut only has 50 stu 50 fifth graders but but because they have three teachers they have the ability to have 66. That's what's throwing the number so high in fifth grade. Um we are Dr. Harter, Miss Mrs. Janathan and I are looking at those capacities, making sure is 26 the right number? Should we be lowering that? Because we we do have a potential to have a problem. If we should say get that, let's see, 56 families that want to transfer into fifth grade, we would have to approve. Then that is going to throw a wrench into sixth grade the following year. So, we could definitely lower lower that. These
044are recommendations. We we could definitely look at that fifth grade group and and lower it. I'm not suggesting that. You know what you're doing. Wanted to stop. I know. It's it's a it's a worry for me. Part of me is like, oh, the odds of 56 families moving in and wanting I mean, out of district wanting in when we really look at about a 100 transfer requests a year, it's it's it would it's not likely, but it it does leave the potential. Yeah. I don't want to second guess you at all, but I see that number too and I just like what if what if we get to 340 330 and then we might have the teachers in fifth grade to support that population now but we might not have it in sixth grade. So
045that that would be a concern to me. It the the issue is the number of teachers we have at fifth grade. that is that is what's kicking it over because the ratio of 22 to1 is the same at the fourth grade level. Um and yeah, we could have 17 in fourth grade, but you can see that there's that gap is not as big because we don't have as many fourth grade teachers. Unfortunately, I get the math. So, yeah, I know it's a tricky one. Yeah. So, yeah. So when you have meetings with other 5A schools, are we are our class sizes similar or lower or are we lucky? Our we are lucky. Our class sizes are are lower. Um they they're used to 25 to 30 in elementary classrooms, which just is mind-boggling to me.
046Um but that's that's what we hear from people who work other places. Um, so we're we want to protect that smaller class size. 26 stresses me at the fourth and fifth grade level. That stresses me out. My son, he was in a class of 28. Mrs. Ays was his teacher. That's hard. That's hard. Um, so trying to find that balance, but also knowing uh if that when you add that teacher, all of a sudden those classes go really low. And so really just maintaining what's the right number is difficult. But we are lucky in this district with our class sizes. I think some I appreciate that and I think sometimes we don't stop and give ourselves, you know, pat in the back or credit for that that we've been able to get it down there
047and hold it. I mean, keep it down there for lower ratios. Any other questions? Okay, this is an action item. I move to approve the recommended class size capacities to guide transfer requests as submitted. Second. Motion passes 70. Okay. The next item is 7A construction update from Macau Gordon. Okay, we haven't seen Mr. Eric Holdy for a while. He's here from Macau Gordon to give us an update on William Ellen White. Good evening. Um, happy to say there's really not a whole lot to report because we're we're uh pretty much officially done minus some miscellaneous cleanup stuff. So, that's exciting. But um updated the last time I met kind of updated the schedule to essentially really showing the school taking full possession in May. So that's that's still the the plan and and the case
048really. We finished up um Casey if you want to scroll through the next couple of slides of the pictures, but I wanted to just highlight some of the last stuff that we turned over back in February. Um the old kitchen space since we built the new one and the new high wind um shelter and the the multi-purpose room. Basically that upper left picture is the old kitchen. So it's now a storage room. So it's some additional storage which I know um you can never have enough of storage in schools. And then that bottom left picture is um part of the new mother's room. So added that room in there. And then that right wh if you go back up real quick. Sorry. The right picture just kind of shows we infilled a couple of windows
049for that mother's room to you know provide um Yeah. And then this is just, you know, it's one of those things. It's not real pretty to always look at, but it's it's nice to know that you have a nice solid roof. Now, so with the alternates that we um have done since we started the project, these these were the last really final alternates was the roofing scope that um if you remember back in February said, "Hey, we're going to wait until spring break so we can make some loud noise and not disturb um classes during that." So that's what these pictures are showing. But essentially right now we're just cleaning up our layown area which the majority of the rock is is out of there. It was in that green space that we took over
050for lay down just because we are on a tight site for storage. Um we have some patchback of some concrete that we tore up during construction. Um one for entry into that area that we're in the process of replacing that. So soon as we get that all prepped, we'll place it and then we'll finish grading out the top soil and then we'll seed and then yeah, we're officially done at William Allen White. So it's uh it's exciting and uh next time plan is I'll come back in May and kind of give an overall recap, but yeah, William White, I know that said 95% but you could probably put that at 99% now. So um but yeah, any any questions that I can answer? questions talked about the May meeting just doing an over overview of
051from the beginning of construction which seems like forever ago to now and then um just looking at we're still paying bills finalizing everything and if there's any um funds left over and I know Mrs. Stranathan and Mrs. Cape are working on on that with Piper Jaffrey as well just what that's going to look like. So hopefully we can bring some of that back to in May. Yep. Yeah. And I just I I want to thank you from accounting Gordon for the opportunity to work with the school district. It's it's been fun. I know it's been, you know, for for me it started in 2018. So, it's it's been a it's been quite a while, but it's been it's been fun. It's uh enjoyed getting to know all your folks and admin staff and um the
052district as a whole has been great to work with and very accommodating and um you know, just very appreciative of all. So, thank thank you for the opportunity. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Item 7B, technology purchases for summer 2025 replacement. Okay. Mrs. Pam Strinathan, assistant superintendent of business operations will introduce also Paul Beetles, director of information technology. So, just want to apologize. I know at the last minute we had to change the document out because um of economic uncertainties um that have occurred that caused an increase in um that pricing. One of the things I do uh Paul is going to not like me for this, but I want to give a shout out to Paul. Um when we fir I first started we I had them do a one a three and a fiveyear plan
053and Paul has done an incredible job of staying within that and keeping the budget and planning out for the fiveyear. So that's exciting. One of the things that I asked him to do at the last minute for you all too was to put together the last document in there that divides it out by buildings so you can see where the technology is going to each building. I think that's important um especially as we look at the needs assessments that are coming out of the buildings and stuff and um trying to meet those needs and and communicating that out to the principles too that that's on our list. So I'm going to turn it over to Paul if you have any questions. Um just so you know there may be some other last minute economic uncertainties
054that are coming through. I do know I know Macau Gordon left but that came up today that there was some economic uncertainties on some of our furniture that was going to come in on that bond. So, turn it over to Paul. Good evening. Um, the technology purchase proposal here, uh, first thing we're doing is addressing some end of life equipment. Um, and then wanting to continue to support existing equipment life cycle rotations that we managed to implement here over the past couple years and add some additional items into those same life cycles. Uh starting when we look at end of life there, we're talking about Windows 10 workstations that are still in use in the school district. Uh Windows 10 no longer will receive security updates after October 2025. Uh we've been slowly kind of
055bringing those out as we could. Um typically when you look there, you're going to find them in your VE2 locations like your CAD labs. Um they might power a specific piece of software to run a lathe or something like that. So, we've kind of got the last big chunk there done working with the high school to replace their um their CAD and their Master Cam Lab, leveraging both some hyperverirtualization software to deliver um Solid Works down to students devices, but then still delivering Master Cam traditionally on some laptops. So, we actually cut the lab size down because that'll allow students to pair up and work together with Master Cam. will looking at um using their own laptops and docking them to do the cloud-based solid works. I'm kind of excited to see how that one
056plays out. I think it'll be really good. Um some of the other pieces there, we have a lot of sixth gen iPads in the district that no longer receive security updates and we're anticipating typically we what we see with Apple is you get about five years of security updates on an iPad before they won't go up to the newest version of operating system. So, we're anticipating that the 175 to 180 um iPads that Jones will need will no longer receive those security updates. So, we've added those in as that's kind of a larger purchase. We didn't break them up. It's just the entire building at one time. We would look at as we move forward on these items kind of out there trying to make sure we're not running them up right to the end
057of their life. We like to give ourselves a little breathing room and not be like, "You got to do the CAD lab this year. This is it." So, I'm I'm excited to see how those move forward as as we work through them. The existing system life cycle, that's the the pieces we talk about frequently. That's our uh we're doing one grade in K5 for student devices. We'll do sixth grade. They'll start off with a new device and our ninth graders or freshmen will start off with a new device as well. And continuing to try to keep our staff so they're not on laptops more than four years old. um and staff d staff desktops at seven years old are kind of how we established some of those life cycles. the things we're looking to add
058that we currently don't have in really a rotation. It's really just been either through bond construction or items breaking. Um but looking to start tackling all the different displays that we have throughout the district, whether it's um digital signage out in the hallways or the what's in front of the classroom or the things that um our other staff members might use or even the things that students are docking their equipment to. How long do we want to run out a monitor um or a TV or a projector and really aiming for 10 years again? The goal being is we really want to replace things before they break. I don't want to have a classroom down or or see a student frustrated because their device isn't working because we ran them out so long. Some of
059the differences as you see through here because I know some of the numbers can be confusing. Licensing. Um, so when we think about how we license patch management and software management for our Windows devices, that's done through a software ah a software software platform called PDQ. It's an annual licensing um since we're just replacing Windows machines with Windows machines. We're actually seeing a reduction in the amount of Windows machines. So that licensing cost would go down. It's not represented here because it's something we've just been doing and I I didn't dig the numbers up on it. Um same with our MDM. That's our iPad management to make sure we can push apps to them, make sure they're patched correctly. Um, those and and usually with Windows, we see it's about $25 a machine. iPads is
060about $550 and that's just an annual licensing. If you add more iPads, we got to buy more as is perpetual Chrome. And the reason why you see that $31 licensing show up there is theirs is per device. So when I buy a laptop, I buy a management license. And if I use the laptop for seven years, the license is good for all seven years. if it if the laptop should break, maybe there's an accident, um student drops it and we can't fix the laptop. When we buy a same model, they actually let us transfer that license to the new model. So, pros and cons, both ways you want to do it. But I did want to point that out that there are some differences there if you're wondering. And when we looked at licensing on
061the 14inch student devices for our freshmen, they actually included the license into the cost of the equipment. Um, our quotes for the other equipment, they had it split out as a separate piece. See what we got. Oh, um, this is something kind of new. We're looking to do cases for middle school students as we know they're our toughest grade on them. Uh, and I would love to see just a few less coming to the library. Not so much. I'm not so much worried about the cost of the repairs. The cases I think were $8,693.75, but our goal was to save people time. I don't want to Yeah, I want to minimize the classroom disruption. I want to minimize the student going to the library. And I'd really like to see um those devices just hold
062up a little bit better with those kids. It's not horrible. It's not something that I'm like, "Oh, if we don't buy them, it's the end of the world." But I do think they would be a good investment, mainly based on time. It was hard to really put it to a number with repairs. Our sixth graders have been really good this year. um some of the things the middle school administration have done have really helped I think put the importance of taking care of that equipment. So we talked about the economic uncertainties um on some of these contracts they did come in slightly lower due to economies of scale on some uh we got a price update just recently which was kind of a shock but I I can understand those pieces and we're not alone
063in that. So total budget requests being $761,93049. Those are across various funds, but the majority would be out of capital alllay. Questions about a pretty large technology order. I have a question. Um, you know, Pam before you spoke talked about how um there had been a change in the document because of the economic uncertainty and all the tariffs happening. um you know if people have been paying attention to the news now I think the tariffs on China at least have gone way way up everything else I think is allegedly at 10% unless they retaliate and so I guess my first question for you is what was this price before it had to be changed um so that we would know the difference so we can educate ourselves on how much of that cost is being
064put back on the consumers because corporations don't eat that they make the the customer pay for it the same way our health insurance adds to your premium when the money you've put in has you know been outspent by claims. So I'm kind of curious what the difference is and do we know how much that might change now um with what's happening. So I would like to state my understanding and I talked to every one of the vendors that or vendors that gave us these quotes off these contracts. They said as far as they know we're good to go if the POS come in. He did say if you sit around and wait a couple weeks to get me the PO I don't know if we can necessarily honor the the quote. Um, we saw about
065a 6% increase. It was on the student high school laptops. The original quote came in sort of mid-March. Um, and when I had reached out for updates, I got one late. Um, which had bumped it up to 427. I want to say it was $41.75 off the top of my memory. I could get you the exact numbers if you would like. I just don't have them in front of me. I'm sorry. No, that's okay. I just kind of wanted to get an idea of what the actual cost was that we're having to eat. Now, I I was worried that they would be much more expensive and in all the conversations I was putting these together in March. The vendors were really pushing hard to how get them in now before April hits. It just took
066a while to put all these pieces together and have the conversations with administrators about their building needs. Yeah. And I think we're kind of in that position where the sooner we make this purchase, the better for us. Longer we wait, the more we're going to have to pay in. That's all I have. Any other questions? just thank you for such a thoughtful, well put together presentation. You really covered all the bases and I mean I don't want to say justified, but you explained the reasoning and I really appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. And we know that the change in cost is not your fault. It's Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I echo what Leslie says. Thank you for all your your hard work on putting this together. I move to approve the purchase of the technology
067equipment for replacement over the summer of 2025 as submitted. Second. Motion passes. 70. Thank you. Okay. Item 8A is board reports. Is there a report from the tech college? Nope. We don't meet till next Monday or the second Monday of each month. Great. But you you all had a really nice event on Thursday. We did. We had our our uh Thank you for reminding me. We had our capital campaign kickoff last Thursday. Um we announced our lead gift of $2 million from the Jones Foundation Foundation. Jones Foundation Jones Trust Trust. Um it was really exciting. The students led tours of the different excuse me areas of the um tech college. So, we got to see different programs in action and the students were actually like in class. So, they just were making all kinds of
068noise and doing their thing in the background and it was uh really interesting. There was a great turnout. It's a very it was a very exciting day for what we hope turns out to be a a successful campaign and a a great addition to um higher education in Emporia. And can I add, I I went and um I took the tours and it was so amazing to see the students and some of them are our students who were there and we walked into the automotive center and I did not know that anyone can bring their car in to get repaired there. That was amazing. Yes, I loved it. Like they're getting real world experience. I could have saved so much money. What if I have a car that needs an oil change like tomorrow? Look
069what you started, Jamie. Well, they did say that they might have a more competitive rate, but there's no guarantee in time because it's also a, you know, it's also a teaching tool. So, but amazing. Great. Um, okay. Emporia Rec Commission. Yeah. So, it has been a busy time for the rec commission. We have um an interim executive director now, Mr. uh our former executive director, retired um and so um Fred Lowry interviewed um this past Monday evening. uh he was uh from Hilton Head, South Carolina. And then on the 15th, which I believe is this coming Tuesday, starting about 5, there'll be interviews and a public meet and greet. So, if the public wants to come, about 5:00 would be a good time to meet the candidates. And the next two candidates we're going to
070interview are um Jean Mark Williams from the Deerfield Park District, which I believe is like a suburb of Chicago and Illinois. Um and then Amanda Goodier, our interim executive director, applied to. And so between that, the National Association of School Board conference, and then three back-to-back evening interviews for the Superintendent position here, I'm thoroughly convinced and and just adamant that I'm not hiring anyone else after next week. Um, we're going to be done. I want a break. Um, but all that said, it's a really exciting time for the Wreck. Okay. Uh, and then speaking of, we had some board members attend the National Association of School Boards conference. Um, so Grant and Jeremy, if you have anything to share from the conference. Yeah, it was pretty phenomenal. Um, you know, I'm on my second term
071in the school board. Um, and just because I've always been, you know, busy with work and 23 acres and a bazillion animals and other boards and activities. Um, I never really had the time to go to the conference, but I decided to this year. And I'm thoroughly upset at myself that I never went before because it really was a blast. You got to meet people from all across the country. I met school board members, ran into the Junction City School Board. They had about four or five of their people there as well as met uh made some connections with folks from New York, Nevada, Utah. Um and it was really just a good experience to meet folks from different places and bounce ideas off. I um really appreciated the workshops and the continuing education. I
072was telling Grant how I like that so much more than even the evening speakers. I'd rather just have another two-hour segment of of workshops to go to to learn stuff. Um, one of them that I took, um, just to kind of highlight a few was a, uh, um, a workshop on the impact of CO 19 on K through 12, um, mental health, um, and I think it was a school, I want to say it was out of California, it was somewhere the West Coast, I think, um, and how they, um, really embraced teleaalth to get more mental health services into the school and open that up to people and families that normally wouldn't access it. Um, there was another workshop I took about um, it was funny because I I saw it on the agenda
073and I was like, "Oh, I bet you I'm going to run into a grant." And it was uh, transitions between superintendent. Um, and what we basically learned was as long as your superintendent is actively working with the incoming superintendent, it's smooth. When they don't do that, it's weird. Um, so I don't think that's something we have to worry about. And then one that was really interesting was a school district and I can't remember which state they were from but they did a presentation on on AI and and I think the gist of it was they were talking about ways that people can utilize AI chat GPT or DeepSeek or anything um to you know work smarter right work smarter not harder um I would have liked to seen some more discussion about how to ethically
074utilize AI in a way where you're using it as a tool as my friend would say use your tools don't be the tool Um, but I think that that's something that maybe we probably just want to be more cognizant of that people are going to use that tool in their life to make things a little bit more accessible, easy, and and quicker. You can save a lot of time creating a lesson plan through AI, but you want to make sure you don't rely on it such that it's not a quality uh product that you create. And so that was interesting because I think that's going to be kind of a new frontier, not just for education, but a lot of other industries as well. Um, it was phenomenal. And I got to go to the
075Georgia Aquarium. Um, and every night I doom scroll the news now, I just I just think to myself, I want to be a fish and go live in a Georgia aquarium cuz it was really nice. So, not to add too much more to what Jeremy said, um, because I mentioned it earlier before the meeting, but one of the kind of hot topics was AI, artificial information. And, um, it seemed like it was in a lot of different sections there. And I think it was kind of interesting because different places were approaching it differently and some of them I mean it's very much their friend and they thought it was a very good education tool obviously how you do it what you do with it is important versus um as we all know being very cautious
076with that type of thing. Um you know sessions and people from very very small districts to very very large districts. Uh, one thing I find always find interesting, you know, there's a lot to learn and but sometimes we don't always appreciate what we're already doing. Some of these people think that there's they got some hot topic and we've been doing it for a while and doing it very well. But there are things that um we are learning and um it's very useful that way. So um you know the AI the superintendent transition um you know children and now and very much the challenges and how that's being dealt with um as we all know I mean our demographics continue to change on uh special needs and so forth. So there was a lot of good
077sessions with those kinds of things. So always a good session always good conference and meet a lot of good people. So good job. Great. Thank you all for sharing. I hope a few more of us can go next year. I was sad that I couldn't go this year. Um, okay. Item 8 B, board policy updates, second reading. Okay. Mrs. Pam Strinathan, assistant superintendent of business operations for second reading. And Casey Casey. So, it sounds like it's on. Yeah. Okay. So on the second reading here, this uh remember we were retiring GAE because that was the one with grievances and those steps we had already put over into the negotiated agreement and that would become complaints. And then we also had ING. That one changed up also and that's that has to do with our service
078animal guidelines going into that. So any questions for Jared? There he is. Look, he's hiding over there. What's up with that? So Lillian also correct. Yeah, Lillian also. There's a lot of people on that, is there not? Yeah. So yeah. Are there any questions? Okay. Well, this is an action item. I move to approve to retire policies G AE and ING and to approve new and revised policies G AENG and KO as submitted. A second. Motion passes 70. Thank you. That's probably our shortest one, right? We didn't have to read the whole alphabet twice. So, thank you. Thank you. And thank you to everyone on the committee and for all the work that we did to uh not we that that Jared did to put together the service animal procedure and the the research that
079you did on that. Thank you. Okay. Item 8 C is approval of superintendent contract. I move to approve the contract with Dr. David McGee as the superintendent of schools for the term 2025 2026 through 2026 2027 school years. and authorize the president to sign the employment contract on behalf of the board of education. I second motion passes 70 [Applause] Okay, that brings us to 9A, executive session for personnel. I move to go into executive session for 10 minutes to discuss personnel matters of non-elected personnel in order to protect the privacy interest of the individuals to be discussed and return to open session at 7:14 p.m. Superintendent Dr. Allison Harter is invited to attend. Action is anticipated. Second. Motion passes. Seven. regular session. Second Motion passes 70. Okay. And then we have action following the executive
080session. I move to approve superintendent transition stipens to Lindell Langren and Casey Jones in the amount of $2,000. A second. Oh my gosh, you guys. Who made that? Motion passes 70. Thank you guys. Thank you. And thank you Casey and Lindell for all your hard work. I know a lot of it was done behind the scenes, but we so appreciate everything you did to make this happen. Okay. Item 10 A is future board calendar dates. Our next uh board meeting will be Wednesday, April 23rd. Uh we will start at 5:30 that evening. We'll have a study session ahead of the regular board meeting. Then on Wednesday, April 30th at 5:00 PM we will be at White Auditorium for staff recognition. Wednesday, May 14th at 6 PM is our regular board meeting for May here at
081Mary Herbert Education Center. And then Sunday, May 18th at 3 p.m. will be Emporia High School graduation at White Auditorium. I would entertain a motion to adjurnn. A second. Okay, my mouse just quit. Can we do a hand vote, please? Thank you. promotion.