001for the April 10th 2023 board business meeting for the safety of those in attendance display signs or banners will not be permitted if you have a sign or Banner you will be asked to leave it outside the boardroom boardroom for the duration of the meeting tonight's meeting is a meeting at the board held in public not a public hearing or discussion with the board please be respectful of the presenters the board and your fellow audience members as we discuss and deliberate the items on tonight's agenda comments are actions that are threatening to or disrespectful of presenters the board or others in attendance including use of foul language or any other behavior that is disruptive of the board meeting will result in immediate removal from the meeting patrons will be invited to share comments as part
002of the public comment portion of the meeting as outlined in board policy bcbi that time is set aside on the board's agenda for members of the public to share their thoughts it is not a time for dialogue with or a question and answer session with the board patrons who wish to participate in public comment must fill out the public comment form so that board or board or staff can follow up with you regarding your public comment as needed if your comments require follow-up from the board or staff that will occur after tonight's meeting the district assumes no responsibility or liability for the information shared during public comment the views expressed are solely those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Lawrence Public Schools in addition USD 497 provides access to
003our board meetings through live streaming the platform used for this live streaming has acceptable use rules for content on its site USD 497 does not delete our Hardware meeting videos however the streaming platform may elect to do so if the content of public comment or any other portion of the meeting is found to violate the platform's acceptable use rules thank you for your cooperation in these areas at this time a motion to approve the agenda would be in order and I'll note we have an amended agenda I move we amend and improve the agenda for the April 10 2023 board meeting to include the updated Personnel report Eric Ellison this is Carol I said I said Kimball yes van van yes could do Blackwood yes Emerson yes Gordon Ross Yes Jones motion passes 5-0 thank
004you next item on our agenda is special recognition this evening I'd like to welcome Amy mcinerney principal of Free State High School to the podium to introduce our honorees foreign good evening coach Randy Streeter our wrestling coach at free state could not be with us tonight so he sends his regrets but we're going to recognize two of our wrestlers tonight our two state champions will start with Eric Streeter Eric is a four-time state qualifier and a three-time state Placer for Free State High School Eric completed his high school career with 102 career victories and won the 6A state championship this year at 144 pounds he is one of only five male wrestlers to win a state championship in the history of Free State High School he's also one of only six wrestlers to ever win
005more than 100 bouts in his career at free state he is a two-time captain of the wrestling team and a member of the National Honor Society Eric assigned with Labette Community College and will pursue his education and wrestle in Parsons Kansas next year our other wrestler tonight is Matthew Markham Matthew ends his career at Free State High School with a career record of 120 and 23. Matthew is a two-time state champion a national champion an All-American and he recorded a perfect senior season this year with a record of 54 and zero Matthew is also Lawrence Kansas's First National wrestling champion from either High School no other wrestler in the history of our school has ever captured two state titles an undefeated season and a national championship Matthew represented Free State High School and the state
006of Kansas last month at the nhsca national Wrestling Championships in Virginia Beach Matthew went undefeated on the weekend winning six consecutive matches against opponents from New York Connecticut North Carolina Maryland and New Jersey in his championship finals match he beat three times North Carolina state champ Caleb Beatty by a score of six to two Matthew's undecided where he will attend school next year but is definitely wrestling at the next level both Eric and Matthew started wrestling together in 2010 for sunflower kids wrestling club here in Lawrence they have both enjoyed extremely successful careers on the mat with now free state head coach and sunflower kids wrestling founder Randy Streeter who has coached them both since they were just five years old so congratulations to both Eric and Matthew and the entire Free State wrestling program
007you have made us very proud as Firebirds thank you I want to start off with thanking everybody for coming out here and supporting Free State athletics wrestling means everything to me and I've been doing it for 12 years now with good friends and it's made me a better person overall yeah wrestling has helped me these past four years get through high school and I just appreciate all the support that has given to us through the school board so thank you for that [Applause] a question now that you've won the state championship and the national championship what are you going to do next uh I want to wrestle at the highest level I could possibly wrestle at but uh I certainly I haven't Underside yet so yeah any Disney World plans in there just kidding are
008your parents here yeah oh yeah over there okay could your parents please stand awesome I think that is a huge accomplishment I wouldn't even know where what to tell how to begin to wrestle you know so um but you've been doing it since you were five so that's a huge commitment to a huge Testament rather to your commitment to the sport and to have a state and a national champion right here out of Lawrence is is truly remarkable and something that we should all be proud of so congratulations on all of your accomplishments and your future successes thank you thank you congratulations to both of you and thank you for being here this evening so we could recognize your outstanding accomplishments um okay at this time uh Paula um would you like to recognize our
009retirements this evening please yes I would can you hear me okay yes okay um the Board of Education recognizes the following staff member with sincere appreciation for the years of service and Devotion to this community and its schools so we'd like to thank Sherry Murray for her eight years of service and Laura wolfock for six years of service thank you thank you Paula next is our report of the superintendent of schools Dr Lewis thank you good evening board members members of the public those that are watching online I first of all want to send a hearty thank you to Chef Camille acorn and her culinary students at the Lawrence College and Career Center for the wonderful spring meal that they serve the board and other staff members this past Friday you know these students are
010learning to plan prepare they're being educated about various types of food but most importantly this gave them an opportunity to cater fine dining meals I've definitely feel very fortunate that we were invited to test and eat their work that was really delicious I had a um a quail deviled egg for the first time ever in my life thanks to our Lawrence College and Career Center this meal certainly was delicious I think it was like a five or eight course meal enjoying also getting to hear from them you know what what was the favorite parts of their um in terms of preparing the meal and definitely hearing from them about this huge learning experience also we also celebrated during that same Day celebrated two students recent acceptance until the culinary school of Johnson County Community College
011and so congratulations to those seniors they are pictured with Chef Acorn on the left of your screen seniors Jacob Newman and Declan May so congratulations to these Scholars for being accepted into the Johnson County Community College and that's the quelled deviled egg on the right of your screen there very remarkable students definitely the staff there at College and Career Center definitely have something to be proud of into the culinary program I also want to congratulate Lawrence High students Tanner bully and Olive Harrington their photographs were selected by the artifact for display in the real exposure competition and exhibition in New York City in May and June in addition to LHS students Hazel Beeson and Levi Jones created jewelry and photography pieces that earned first place at the Washburn art day congratulations to these Scholars sticking
012with Lawrence High School I have several Lawrence High staff honors to celebrate as well LHS girls basketball coach Jeff Dixon earned the Eddie Ryan award as the top girls basketball coach in the greater Kansas City area after being nominated by three of his former students LHS math teacher and department chair Matt Ellis earned ku's wolf teaching Excellence award and three thousand dollars as well as LHS will receive one thousand dollars as part of math Matt's recognition then finally LHS assistant principal athletic director Matt Gilman passed the required exam to become a certified athletic administrator through the national intercholastic administrators Association certainly proud of these staff members accomplishments during the month of April each year our friends at the cannesville community sponsor a 5 000 pound recycling challenge with the proceeds benefiting our schools so please
013I encourage you to recycle your aluminum cans using the blue can houses in various parking lots around town Linda clinker and her crew will from cans of Kansas for the community will sell the aluminum and present the check to each one of our elementary schools so going on this week actually tomorrow you can receive first of all an amazing dinner from Chipotle but 33 of the proceeds will benefit our Lawrence Education Association and that's the Chipotle located on 6th Street this Wednesday April 12th from 5 to 7 is the LHS Innovation Expo students from a variety of the Career Tech education classes will be sharing projects that they have been working on over the course of this semester visitors will get to see student work from the field of arts and medium culinary engineering pre-med
014plant and animal science and computer programming along with many many more the event will be catered by the LHS culinary class this event event is free and open to the entire community so please make plans to stop by and support these amazing LHS CTE students they also have a commercial that I hope will play yes Wednesday April 12th from 5 to 7 PM the very first Innovation X e held at Lawrence High Career Tech Ed teachers and students have been working hard preparing for it my accounting class my my accounting 2 class they are preparing display boards to educate the public about financial ethics um my drafting two class they are designing and printing a 3D object to show off this past week we all settled on a menu everything that they would be making
015for Innovations night and then next week all week long we're going to be cooking during class period leading up to Innovations night and that evening I will have students come in and they will finish the prep work and finalize our dishes and plate them and present them to everyone okay so we're going to have an animal animal interaction experience where people will be able to see our rabbits that we have been raising and some chickens we've hatched out from eggs we'll have plants there that we've grown in our Greenhouse here at the school or that we've brought in from a nursery and transplanted and prepped for our sale so people will be able to actually buy the plants that we have put a lot of effort into we just finished building um lung models so
016we build healthy models of lungs disease lung models which we're going to Showcase kids are going to be measuring blood pressures for people coming in so it's Hands-On a little more yeah so in the Innovation Exposition my students will be doing some live work so I'll have a student who will be doing live uh digital drawing a student who will be doing a live painting and a student will be doing a live charcoal work so we'll have digital traditional charcoal and traditional paint being done as well as displaying the students work that they've done in the various classes on April 12th I'm going to be doing a live charcoal drawing and I'm really excited and stoked about it and very curious what I want to draw because I have no ideas yet I'm put I
017have three pieces that are maybe put as a layered portrait two of them are portraits and then this one if I finish it and I've never like been a part of an art show before so I'm very excited about it I'm working on an animation for the Innovation Expo specifically to just kind of announce it I'm trying to just show different things that um they do in the Innovation Expo like I have a camera I have painting um stuff like that be sure to come out to the Innovation Expo next Wednesday to support the hard work done by teachers and students for more information check out the posters or talk to a CTE teacher this has been Sydney Ivy and Jordan reporting for the Lion's Roar so that video was made by our Scholars edited
018produced and everything by our scholars in the the animation that you saw Anna working on in that video is actually finished and it's about 30 seconds I thought it was amazing [Music] [Applause] students in our district so super excited about that this is the last Slide the Lawrence College and Career Center will present its girls and Tech conference on April 27th with participation from both middle and high school girls and non-binary students Sarah Mahoney which are who is our computer science and business education teacher certainly does a great job of bringing these challenging and relevant experiences to our Scholars Bert you may have heard this Burt Nash began a phased opening of the treatment and Recovery Center of Douglas County today at 1000 West 2nd Street Urgent Care Community check-ins are accepted from 8 A.M
019to 8 PM weekdays and noon to 4 on weekends at the front entrance the center serves all Douglas County residents including children with immediate access to Behavioral Health crisis assessment and treatment after hours any individual is experiencing a mental health crisis may come to the entrance of the west side of the building to be seen by the center staff I also want to um I also have some important information as it relates to reminders to our school Families First new student registration is now open so please go to our website at your convenience and click on the new student registration link to register your kindergartner or your new student for this upcoming school year and we're also asking families of all returning students to please check your email for information about our annual student registration
020please complete this short online registration form by the end of the month to help us with Staffing and planning to meet students needs next year families can update their contact information emergency contacts and their students health history they will review annual parent notices and provide the required permissions that we need here in the district this process should only take about a few minutes of your time so actually all families of all returning students please complete this annual student registration for returning students by April 30th and then finally this is a reminder that there is no school for all students on Friday and Monday Friday is a planning day for our staff and Monday is our designated inclement weather makeup day which we do not did not use this year that's all I have thank you
021Dr Lewis next is the report of the president of the board I have a few things to share this evening I first want to say good evening and welcome to all of our members of the public who are here this evening thank you for joining us um here and also online I wanted to just share that I was very proud to represent our district this last week in receiving a national award for our College and Career Academy program which is housed at our College and Career Academy Dr Bill DeWitt is our leader of that program at the building and has put together a fantastic program that is supporting our students and it was an honor to be able to recognize that work on a national level also this past week we had a facilities planning
022committee meeting gr is going to share more about what we talked about at our facilities planning meeting and then finally I wanted to share my thanks to Chef icorn in The Culinary students at the College and Career Center for the amazing spring formal lunch they really headed out of the park it was really wonderful um the the last thing I want to share and this is there's quite a bit going on but I wanted to give the board a brief as brief as I can make an update on the developments in the legislative session over the last week it was a bit of a zoo um the set the legislative session reached first adjournment um at the end of the week last week this essentially means that the regular session is complete and that legislators
023are returning home to their districts for a two-week break the veto session or the wrap-up session begins on April 24th where there will be several days where the House and Senate will consider veto overrides and also wrapping up any lingering items of which there's some really important ones to K-12 public education first off the legislature approved a tax bill Senate Bill 169 it imposes a an incredibly regressive flat tax and further reduces corporate income taxes in the state of Kansas it passed both Chambers it's going to the governor the concerns about this one have to do with the fact that it's going to reduce substantially state revenue year over year and there's concerns that it will therefore impact spending on public education and other programs that make up a large portion of the state's general
024fund obligations so that's one to keep watching um I think the next thing I want to talk about are there's a whole set of bills that was passed um and one that where the they overrode the governor's veto the impacts transgender students um across the state and in our district unfortunately the legislature overrode Governor Kelly's veto of the uh anti-transgender student athlete bill um interestingly the Biden Administration through the Department of Education is advising school districts across the country that blanket bans on allowing transgender athletes to participate in sports in alignment with their gender identity would be a violation of Title IX um the Department of Education rule would give school districts some flexibility in addressing the concerns related to um transgender students there were also a number of other bills regarding barring transgender individuals
025from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity and also criminalizing gender affirming care um I just want to express personally that I support our students in our district our transgender students I see you these policies are hateful and harmful and I want to remind the board in our community that our district has adopted an equity policy that divines marginalized identities to include transgender students people from lgbtq communities along with many others and that we have made a commitment through that policy to ensure that all of our students are engaged in positive and academically rigorous environments where Equity is woven into what we do in addition we have a board policy j e jgec which prohibits discrimination and harassment of students on the basis of a number of factors including sex sexual orientation gender
026identity or gender expression um and to um just reassure our students and our staff that we take our obligations to provide equal opportunities to our students very seriously and we'll continue to do so finally there were a number of developments in the K-12 policy and funding area unfortunately there's nothing that's been decided um the um house sub for Senate Bill 83 which is the big voucher Bill died in the Senate um and that's the one that would have given that would have taken a lot of money out of the public education system given it out in vouchers to be used in completely unaccountable education settings um it didn't pass the Senate legislative leadership has said that even though it didn't pass the senate in a motion to reconsider failed so it should be dead they're
027planning to try to revive the contents of this bill in The veto session in some form or fashion which could look like you know throwing it in in a conference committee on some other bills so um that those are issues to continue watching the legislature did not do its work or didn't finish its homework in funding K-12 education for the state they did not pass an Appropriations bill uh for K-12 funding even though we make up 50 more or less of the state spending they've saved the entirety of their work on that for the veto session which is concerning um there is a bill house sub for Senate Bill 113 which is alive and we'll we'll be considered during the veto session most concerning extremely concerning is that this bill includes language that would violate
028the Gannon settlement by removing the annual increases that are in the state finance formula for base stated per pupil what that means practically is that that for the not 23 24 school year but for the 24-25 school year if this were to become law our district would lose approximately 4.1 million dollars in funding that we would be slated to get under the current School Finance formula it's really disheartening to see the legislature considering that kind of policy given everything else that we know about what education funding has looked like in our state over the last many years in addition they took out all of the proposed increases out of the governor's budget for special education which we know they are illegally underfunding and have been for the last part of the better part of the
029last decade they also removed funding for the high density weighting which is something that our district benefits from that would be about a eight hundred thousand dollar hit to our district if that funding is not put back into the bill um unfortunately this bill in addition to dealing with the Appropriations piece includes a whole host of other policy issues that some of which did not even get hearings because they were placed into this bill in in became a Franken Bill really expands tuition tax the tuition tax credit program which is another form of school voucher requires districts to create a parent portal which sounds nice but when you read the details about what that actually means and what it what impact it would have on our teachers it is my opinion that it would effectively
030prevent teachers from effectively differentiating instruction for students during the school year because they would be required to to post any material assessment anything that they plan to use with a student in advance of the school year it's just not it's not good practice it's not good pedagogy and then finally um that bill would also require districts to allow non-public school students to participate in any activity that we offer that's Acacia sponsored activity without providing any funding to districts to support the staff that would be needed to facilitate the participation of those additional students I'm sure there's a bunch of other things in there that I have not listed um needless to say there's a lot of work to do still on in this area advocacy work to do and I encourage board members in our
031community to keep an eye on all of these bills and be make sure that your voices are heard I also want to thank publicly our legislative delegation from Lawrence they have been supporting our needs with their votes and um and oftentimes that you know that kind of support doesn't get thanked enough so I just want to publicly thank them for standing up for our students and our staff and finally um a previous meeting I had mentioned that the board was planning a retreat this month we've decided to postpone that we have some scheduling conflicts that have Arisen that are just making it difficult to move forward with that so we will reassess and provide additional information about that in the future all right I know that was a lot thank you for your patience at
032this time we have public comment we do have um three individuals who are signed up for general public commentary and then we have one six individuals who have commentary related to the boundary item that's later on the agenda so if a board member would please read the Bible commentary policy thank you 5497 Board of Education welcomes public comments and thanks you for taking the time to talk to us about our policies and procedures we set aside this time during our regular meetings to hear from the public patrons who wish to participate in public comment must fill out the public comment form so the District staff or the board can follow up with you regarding your public comment as necessary this is your time to share your opinions however public comment is not the appropriate form
033for making complaints about specific staff or students if needed the board president or presiding officer of the media may direct that a Patron's comment be heard by the board in an executive session in order to protect the privacy of the individuals to be discussed before participating in public comment to share a complaint the board requests the public commenters followed the complaint procedures set out in board and District policy as appropriate if you need assistance in these processes please let the board Clerk or other District staff know the board president will invite comments we'll invite comment on topics not included on the agenda at the beginning of each meeting comments related to agenda items are welcome after the board has had the opportunity to discuss the a topic please limit your comments to three minutes the
034district assumes no responsibility and or liability for the information shared during public commentary the views expressed are surely those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Lawrence Public Schools thank you gr this time I would invite Michelle Eagleman to the podium you'll have three minutes our board clerk will be providing you with the timer good evening board members thank you for the opportunity to speak on a topic that I care about and I think you care about too and that's the treatment of children I'm passing out some pictures right now of our four children I bet some of you have some very similar pictures yourselves and you're probably wondering why I can't speak for dads but I know that when my children were babies I could gaze at their faces
035for hours there's something almost mesmerizing about babies it's like there's a magnetic attraction between a baby's eyes and your own it's hard to look away it's nothing to do with their beauty though babies are beautiful or what they're doing they're not doing anything phenomenal so why is it what what quality is it that attracts and holds our attention like that the more I think about it the more convinced I am that what we're seeing is the quality of Innocence we're seeing what innocence looks like why am I saying this I see what is going on in our schools as an effort to destroy the innocence of children children are exposed to unwholesome images their bodies talked about in judgmental ways their young minds confused about their gender All In The Name Of Education it is
036an education and it isn't even indoctrination as far as I'm concerned it goes much deeper it's an effort to destroy their innocence to the sexualization of children this may not be intentional yet it is happening through books in the library sex ed classes at Young ages as well as conversations about gender why does this matter history gives us some insight into why it matters in the Book of Genesis God created man and called him very good man and woman were innocent but there was another creature in the Garden of Eden the serpent what did that serpent desire to do he wanted to destroy their innocence anyway could and he succeeded the look of innocence in a baby is the way I imagine God sees us through the blood of Christ totally innocent again something we
037could never manage to do on our own Jesus not only came to save us but he called down punishment on those who would hurt a child he says but who social offend one of these little ones which believe in me it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea I want to encourage you all of you to remember what innocence looks like what's the difference between Satan causing an innocent creature to stumble or a teacher administrator or board member today C.S Lewis back in the 1940s was traded for using the word damned nonsense on a radio broadcast but he defended himself he said he did not use that word flippantly he meant it the sexualization of children in our schools
038is damned nonsense it's not education it's not indoctrination this is destruction and it is evil and we need to stop it immediately thank you all right next we'll have Michelle Salmons okay all right hello my name is Michelle Salmons I'm completing my ninth year with the district eight of those have been at Free State High School where I taught art and graphic design and served as the CTE department chair and redesign co-pilot this year I've moved back to Elementary art and I'm doing so at Sunset Hill I have the privilege I've had the privilege of working with top-notch teachers attending numerous conferences and Leadership training I've made meaningful relationships with students colleagues and administrators the best support I have received over the last decade is from the teachers that I work with teachers can only
039do this job with the help of other teachers I stand here tonight disappointed frustrated and exhausted every week I hear more colleagues leaving the district or the profession I listen to them as they scan job openings compare salaries and weigh what is best for their families I don't blame one single one for choosing to leave my connections to this District are diminishing we have been looking at the most efficient ways to do things we need to now zero in on ensuring teachers can be as effective as a possible The Narrative of eliminating positions to provide a competitive salary for staff is harmful teachers certainly didn't make this financial mess however they are and will be dealing with the brunt what will the raise mean when teachers have more to do with less What do teachers
040need in addition to the raise smaller class sizes we know our decisions are doing the opposite time we create more time when we have fully staffed schools like millions of people I suffer from a mental health disorder there are times my world gets very dark and in those times I lose hope I know very personally what depression looks like I'm telling you this so you understand when I come I'm coming to you where I'm coming from when I tell you that our district is depressed many teachers staff parents and community members have lost hope ask our District Administrative leaders to take the data you will later hear tonight diagnose the problem create a treatment plan and multiple supports in place to lead us back to Wellness ask teachers what they need and actively listen when
041they respond we are tired of performative measures what will help teachers will directly benefit students plan time collapse time equal student feedback and intervention now is the time to put all effort into retaining our highly qualified teachers and recruit ones in place for those who are leaving we have a master agreement that guides best practices we are seeing the plans for next year manipulating the words in our contract District administrators administrative leaders are cherry picking the information they are providing us one of the most significant staff employee relationships we have is at the negotiations table take advantage of that we know that teachers matter more to student achievement than any other aspect of schooling research from American Economic Review suggests that among School related factors teachers matter most what is best for teachers is best
042for students thank you thank you okay and finally Topher president of archaeological indifference vice president of Truth Secretary of Statistics minister of celebrity Injustice Chief in staff and serpent blessed Paige Turner of the Great Book of misdeeds and overestimations Baron of the great climate war minister of the deteriorating Skies Baron of Epic boredom and overindulgence all gathered notables good evening I am the young man full of strength and hope Tangled in that ancient endless chain of profit power gain of grab the land of grab the gold of grab the ways of satisfying need of work the men of take the pay of owning everything for one's own greed yet I'm the one who dreamed our basic dream in the old world while still the surf of Kings who dreamed a dream so strong so brave
043so true that even yet it's mighty daring sings in every brick and stone in every Furrow turn that's made America the land it has become for all the dreams we've dreamed and all the songs we've sung and all the hopes we've held and all the flags we've hung the millions who have nothing for our pay except a dream that's almost dead today oh let America be America again the land that never has been yet and yet must be the land where every child is free the land that's mine the poor mans the Indians Negroes children's we who made America who sweat and blood whose faith and pain whose hand at The Foundry whose plow in the rain must bring back our Mighty dream again sure call me any ugly name you choose the steel of
044Freedom does not stain from those who live like leeches on our children's lives we must take back our land again America I say it plain America never was America to me and yet I swear this oath America will be out of the rack and ruin of our Gangsta death the rape and rot of graft and stealth and Lies We the People must redeem the mountains and the endless Plains all all the stretch of these great green Earths and make America thank you that concludes our public commentary our general public commentary this evening uh next is board commentary I should have a couple things um so over the last couple weeks since our last meeting um I I want to congratulate uh congratulate Dr Dewitt on his uh award great program all the work that he's
045done and had a chance to to talk to him about that and the and the the work that he's doing over there um uh also uh you know I know I've shared a couple stories uh from this from this spot of uh the the lessons that I've learned from my kids and the things that they've taught me and I'll just mention if you look real close uh you might you might notice that it may look like I've been crying or that I came from a party or something it's because I was cutting up a tree in my yard over the weekend and my son asked me if I wanted gloves and I told him gloves gloves are lame and then we proceeded to cut down a tree that was covered in poison ivy and then
046I got poison ivy all over my face and my son has not let me forget it since so good parenting weekend for me um uh uh over the weekend went to saw see Oliver at Billy Mills it's a fantastic uh performance and then um so that was great and then as far as facilities go um where uh lots of lots of updates [Music] um let's see uh Holcomb property I'll give some highlights Holcomb uh we have a deadline for bids is the 24th um a lot of interested parties um so we're we're hoping to to to be able to to to get a competitive bid for that we talked a little bit about um a very high level plan for the East Heights property in a timeline when we uh when we move those programs
047out of east east Heights and potentially over to Pinckney um we talked about um a plan still looking at um vehicle update uh fno was going to talk to Enterprise because we're still having a hard time buying vehicles and so we're going to look at a plan to lease at least in the short term because that seems to be a better uh Financial opportunity um got an update on Esser funds um uh the The Oaf over at free state that was moving along um and then they um part of the issue with with The Oaf and and what kind of LED it to the the Decay and the and the rot was was really how it was originally designed and built and because the Press Box was designed and built at the same time in
048the same manner by the same uh construction company they have actually started to investigate Behind the Walls in the Press Box and found some of the same problems so we're looking at what what repair work we're gonna have to do in the Press Box as well um got an update on um uh fiber about 90 of the conduit is done um and we're going to start pulling fiber in about two weeks and connecting to uh buildings once that's done we'll start looking at um moving to the to the LTE phase and and what that's gonna gonna look like with the scope and a purpose and then um the middle school and high school devices hopefully will be here in about 30 days or so and then lastly we did get an update we spent a
049a good amount of time talking to Alan Langford from Langford Consulting um just about an update from solar I certainly don't want to turn this into teach the board about solar but um you know I think in the in the end we think talking to Shannon and I and the facilities committee we kind of want to probably schedule a work session to to really dig into it but just kind of on a high level you know we looked at um you know some of the pros and cons and and just to kind of give everybody con I know where we where we sat um you know we we kind of ran some numbers with Deerfield just as an example because it's got a fairly flat roof it's takes on all year all year round there's
050no trees we looked at um the potential system there and and with the limitations in the state of Kansas on um something called net metering and with 150 kilowatts and that metering and basically to try to explain that in very simple terms then net metering at 150 kilowatts is how much energy you can produce um to put back on the grid before it it before Effigy will then not allow you to get it back at a one-to-one cost they'll charge you wholesale and it becomes less uh of efficient and less cost effective so designing a system into Balancing Act um and so you try to look to to build a system that covers about 50 to 60 percent of the of the output of Any Given space that you're trying to cover and looking at
051all the buildings across the district some buildings would be really good for solar and some won't be and they just won't be because their roof space either has too many things on it it's covered in shade or we'd have to factor in the cost of the roof itself would need repair work or need work done to it within the next would need work or repair done inside of what the ROI of the system would be so the ROI of the system is say eight years and it looks like we'll have to do a replacement within four years it doesn't make a lot of sense to put solar on a roof that we then have to factor in a cost to take it all off the roof to replace the roof to put it back on
052so we talked about all those things but all of that would go in more detail uh we plan to do a work session to really dig into dig into some of that so that's what we talked about thank you VR other board members Kelly uh I wanted to give I sent I asked Elise to send board members a update on Fringe and benefits committee's report so I think most of you have seen that but one update I wanted to provide today and just some context for post listening um this is our second year uh using Blue Cross Blue Shield after we were in the market after going back to the marketplace and previously using Aetna when we went to Blue Cross Blue Shield it had a rate cap for two years of six percent um
053had we not had that rate cap in place which was an important component of our ability to have a healthy budget this year we would have seen a 30 raise increase in our expense to the district it has to do with the large rate of increases of um we had 91 large claims and additionally we're watching the cost of some medications which of course we want our staff to have access to but that resulted in a significant increase so when that cap goes away next year and what that means bottom line is that we will and if I say this incorrectly please let me know me Megan Epperson is here and who's helping guide that brilliantly as you might predict um three hundred thousand dollars is the cost to the district correct additionally um one
054thing that we want to think about as a board moving forward is that next year when that cap goes away if there continues to be a 30 percent increase in claims we could be looking at something in the multi-million dollar range for costs to our district let me let me just say this clearly multi-million seems like quite a bit so um between one and three million dollars is that about the right range Kathy a little over three possibly so that's something that we have to be looking for um next year and planning for certainly we want our employees to be able to continue to use a Blue Crush Blue Shield which we have just moved into so we'll be working to um with our Consultants to make sure that we can keep that price down
055as much as possible so I wanted you all to know that um and I that uh that committee um is one that Kay also serves on too so um then Paula and I were doing work with uh the negotiations team over the last couple weeks and I just wanted to put on everyone's radar that pal CWA will start negotiating with us using traditional base bargaining sometime I believe in the end of April is that correct Kevin or or toward the beginning of May so we've just started that there hasn't been a letter exchange and I look forward to working with pal and hopefully being able to incorporate some of the Matrix changes that they're hoping to see implemented this year and additionally my hope that the board is able to provide them a a wage
056increase this year along those lines the Lea has has been meeting in the IBB process and in our last meeting I wanted to bring to everyone's attention that there was consensus that we would like to see horizontal movement included in the um uh what the salary package looks like for this year additionally we're hopeful as you've seen in the last couple of meetings I know several of you were watching that we we minimally are able to make up the vertical movement we've lost in addition to Vertical movement for this year and hoping to also do some work on the salary Matrix there important to notice that the language around the middle school schedule was a very significant conversation at the table and we are the district is meeting with pal CWA and Middle School teachers
057to review whether or not we are working within the contract language particularly in article 17 if you would like to look that up to make sure that this changes to the schedule are compliant with the contract so that is different than what we heard at the meeting and and hopefully we our last meeting and hopefully we can come to consensus on that if not we'll open up the IBB process around that particular issue but I'm hopeful that the committee that's that's going to be meeting can shed some light on that in a way that will allow us to honor that contract language so those were the um updates from the Committees I serve on and then I also like Shannon wanted to take a moment to recognize our trans non-binary gender non-conforming students and staff
058and faculty and express my support for their uh what has been a rough couple of weeks or months and even and years for them and particularly with the legislation that's come through Kansas and I would hope that our district continues to celebrate what they bring to our communities and that this board stays committed to our Equity policy and to that end I think I would like to know as a board member more I would like to have a better education on what the consequences for the district would be and I I appreciated your article um and that the Lawrence Journal World was covering that I think I would like to a little more in-depth understanding of what happens if we don't comply with some of the new legislation that is being passed um and that
059doesn't mean that I'm suggesting we do something contrary I just want to understand more fully what the consequences are for that so that we can make informed decisions moving forward thank you Kelly um other board members I want to make sure to check in with Paula and Carol to see if you have any board commentary I have one update Shannon okay go ahead foreigners um so this is from the uh the uh the district site Council so we met on April 3rd and repeat um sorry we reviewed the Kisa improvement process and the role the district site Council should play in that process um as a group we discussed how other districts use their District site councils as part of that Keys up process and based on that and some discussion with the group members
060we proposed some changes to the USD 497 District site Council membership so what that would look like having two Board of Education members to students through parents five community members partners for business and industry three staff and two District administration from District administration and Kay was also on that meeting so okay if you have anything to add um um sorry this is k sorry not sorry this is gay this is gay um the only thing that I would add uh to that um is just I really appreciated um Patrick um Kelly really kind of leaning into that conversation with us um and really kind of focusing on us you know what's the purpose of the district site Council um one of the purposes is to be able to be those correspondents those individuals that can
061go out into their individual communities and help communicate ideals as well as share inquiries and so I just want to give a thank you to Patrick Kelly and his team for the very engaging conversation and if we think about engagement that way with the rest of how we do work I think we're on a good path so thank you thanks Keith that's that's all that I have on my list thanks thank you Paula thank you kay um additional board commentary um this is Carol I um uh yes I will just make this very brief but I would um like you thank the students at Lawrence High School for allowing me the honor and the privilege to participate in the the trans walkout that hap that occurred on March 28th it was it was a you
062know that was a hard day about it mentally but yeah I was um it just it was really empowering for me there was there was nothing more powerful in this world than the act of and being in the space of those who live openly authentically and and felt safe to walk down our streets in in support of our trans students and I'm sorry but I yeah that that walk itself it gave me the the power and the purpose to recommit to the struggle for full equality for our trans community and I'm I'm so glad I'm honored to be a part of this board that will continue to support our trans community members because our these people are our neighbors our family our friends and colleagues and they deserve to live dignity and be treated fairly
063in every part of life and nothing is more important than being supported as a trans student in athlete as a person than in the school and so I was honored to celebrate and continue and marching along beside our students with toward Liberation peace and equality and I will just make this very brief that it's been well established that trans children have supportive families are much more likely to see positive mental health outcomes when parents of trans students accept them for who they are they significantly have lower rates of anxiety depression and suicidal ideation throughout their lives and so I am just I encourage our students to you know reach out to a trusted adult if if they need someone to talk to and we have a really great board and a really and and anyone
064can reach out to me as well and that's all I have thank you thank you Carol at this time if that concludes board commentary we are going to take a five-minute recess we will return to open session at uh three minutes after seven thank you um return from our recess the next item on the agenda is the consent agenda consent agenda items are those that are considered routine and are adopted by one motion unless any board member or the superintendent requests that an item be removed and then those items would be that are removed would be voted on separately any items to remove this evening okay then a motion to approve the consent agenda is in order I moved the Board of Education adopt the items listed on the consent agenda van yes Jill yes
065could do Blackwood yes Emerson yes Gordon Ross Yes Jones yes Kimball yes motion passes 7-0 thank you okay our next item is new business on Bond refunding and I would like to invite Cindy Frick our Executive Director of Finance to the podium to introduce this item in our guest good evening I'm David arterberry is here with stifle Public Finance and he will talk to us a little bit about an option for refunding some of our bond issues I do want to mention that as we review this this would be potential savings to the bond and interest fund fund by decreasing our debt payments so it would not help with our general fund um savings or operating cost David um thank you Cindy and good evening everyone it's a pleasure to be here this evening I
066think the last time I was in front of the board to talk about a bond issue is back in 2018 when the district was issuing the final series of bonds from its 2017 election tonight I'm here to talk about a little something a little bit different that last bond issue that you did was for to to generate money for new projects what I'm here tonight to talk a little bit about is the possibility of issuing some new bonds tonight or issuing some new bonds and using the proceeds of those bonds to pay off some older bonds and hopefully much like refinancing a home mortgage hopefully that might result in some some savings to the school board so what I wanted to do is talk a little bit about what that transaction might look like and
067then also then kind of go through the steps if you did want to proceed with the refinancing the steps that you need to take in order to do that I'm going to go through a lot of numbers here I'm going to show you a lot of numbers but I'm just going to try to focus on what I think are the important points if you want me to go into more depth about any of the other things you know please feel free to chime in here um the district right now has a couple of bond issues the Arrow's not working um is she I was trying to click the but the arrow there oh it did work you make it bigger up there um the district has two outstanding Bond issues right now that were issued
068about 10 years ago that are currently callable which means you could pay them off right now if you wanted to the first of those issues is the 2000 13A bonds you've got about 27.15 million dollars of those outstanding the final maturity date is in 2020 or 2033 and they carry an average interest rate of about 4.1 percent on them the next series you've got is the 2014 a bonds they have slightly bigger outstanding balance of about 27.2 million dollars and carry an average rate of about 3.67 3.68 so so in total there's about 54 million dollars of bonds that on average carry an interest rate of about 3.9 percent um if you were to do a bond issue in today's market and use the proceeds from that bond issue to pay off the old bonds
069I anticipate that the bond issue would look a little bit like what you see on this page here and again there's a lot of numbers but the total issue size would be approximately 53.2 million dollars and if you look at the bottom of the page there the interest rate I estimate would be about 2.81 percent so about a full percentage Point lower than the rate on the existing bonds um based on that lower interest rate I estimate that the amount of savings that you could receive again if you were to sell the bonds in today's market would be about 3.9 million dollars now that's spread out over the remaining life of the bonds the final maturity on the outstanding balances 2034 so basically you would spread that out over the next you know 10 or
07011 years and save roughly you know about 375 thousand dollars per year and again as Cindy mentioned that that is a savings and a reduction to your bond and interest fund unfortunately it's not money that you can free up and use for other purposes but it would represent you know savings to to taxpayers um David just to clarify that savings to taxpayers shows up in the mill Levy that has to be levied in order to fund the bond and interest fund correct yeah the bonded interest fund has its complete um unique separate Levy from all of the other funds and this would work to reduce the amount that would be needed to be levied in excellent thank you um so are there any questions about the the refinancing again it's it's real similar to refinancing
071a mortgage you're going out and borrowing money doing a new bond issue and taking the proceeds from that issue to and use them to pay off the old bonds and the key is to whether or not you can taking into account all of the expenses pay off that old Bond and have the new bonds have a lower overall borrowing cost such that you reduce your total you know annual Bond payments total annual Debt Service so when we issued well so when we first issued these two bonds the we we had to go to the taxpayers and ask correct could you why would we not have to go to the taxpayers to do this reissue you know I know statutes don't require a refinancing issue to receive voter approval before before it's undertaken and I think
072the rationale behind that I don't know that's that's been in the laws for at least three or four decades but I would suspect that the rationale would be that a refinancing is typically something that's done to create savings and reduce interest costs so I think maybe the legislature felt that you know because there's not an added cost to taxpayers there's a savings that seeking the voter approval wasn't necessary okay thank you sure and also add a clarifying question so the maturity date on those two series of bonds right now is 2033 2034 right with the refinance the the it would still be the payoff would still be through 2034-ish correct okay yeah yeah we didn't we didn't extend the length of the bonds at all yeah okay okay yeah hi thank you I have a
073clarifying uh well it's a question so uh my question is is um when we're looking at refinancing um and being able to do some savings maybe you know reading reduce that interest costs so we're paying more on the principal rather than on the interest um what is that what happens to our like I don't know if we are doing this on like a monthly payment or if we're doing this on um like an annual uh payment I'm just kind of curious about what that payment might look like or how that might change if we move forward with this sure the bond issues are typically structured where they pay interest twice a year they have semi-annual interest payments and one annual principal payment and for Lawrence schools those payment dates there's an interest payment on March
074one of each year and a a principal and interest payment on September one and if you look at these schedules you can oops you can see that March and September dates I know the numbers are small um what what would happen is um those payments would be reduced each each of those semi-annual payments would be reduced so on that right hand side here you can see what that annual differences in payment so you can see that it's about 375 000 a year in most years if you look over to the left of that there's a column just that's simply titled savings where you can see the amount that each six month payment would be reduced and so what should happen then is when you're doing your budget each year the amount that you would end
075up levying for property taxes to make the bond payment would be reduced by that the aggregate so the total annual amount would be reduced by what's shown there I appreciate that because the when the conversation of taxpayers receive this in the mill Levy and I was like okay so but what does that mean is that I mean when I get my my bill or that says this is what you owe is going to be less so I just was trying to figure that out yeah that's exactly right the middle Levee should be I don't know what three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars is in a million unfortunately it's not a ton but it's still you know over time it's it would it's a meaningful amount of savings to taxpayers at least in my opinion
076thank you sure Carol and Paula I want to check in with you online since I can't see you right now to see if you have any questions I don't have any questions at this time thank you Shannon okay um real quick um the process if the board wanted to proceed with doing a refinancing um you can see a a preliminary calendar of events for the issue and I I've highlighted in yellow sort of the the key steps um that the board would need to take the first step is tonight just reviewing the financing plan if you did want to proceed with the issue at your board meeting on the 24th we've got you scheduled to adopt a sale resolution or sometimes it's called the go to market resolution it's basically a short resolution that would
077authorize us as the financial advisor as well as staff and legal counsel to put together all of the documents required to conduct a bond sale and then go ahead and conduct that Bond sale we would then return to you on the schedule on May 22nd with the results of that sale in hand and at that time you would look at adopting a bond resolution that would actually lock in the interest rates um that that the best bidder had submitted and lock in those savings and then after that the the transcript the proceedings for the issue would be sent to the attorney general in Kansas and approved and then the issue would close on June 15th now I've got that June 15th they've highlighted in yellow but that's not you wouldn't meet that's really a formality
078that's something that's all done by telephone but the two action items that the board would need to take would be on the 24th of April and on the 22nd of May between those two dates we would do things like get a rating on the bonds we would complete the Disclosure document and all of the bidding document and send them out to potential bidders on for the bonds do due diligence work all that would lead up to a sale of the bonds occurring sometime probably in the morning or afternoon of May 22nd so that the results could then be compiled and presented to the board for for Action that evening so there's a couple steps you'd have to go through and a lot of activity between then one of the things though I did want to
079make sure you were aware of is that that sale resolution what we would ask that you do and I'll talk a little bit more to staff about this what a good recommended number is we're going to ask that you establish a minimum savings Target how much would you bare minimum like to receive from the sale of the bonds because we're going to need to know that when we go into the bond sale on the 22nd we we wouldn't want to you know receive bids and think we have a good bid and present it to you that evening only to have it generate a say amount of savings that you weren't happy with so we'll ask you on the 24th to to consider a figure of a sort of a minimum savings Target now I hope
080we come back with a number much much higher than that but we do sort of need to establish a floor because we don't want to present numbers to you that you you wouldn't want to pass a resolution to lock into additional questions for David okay on that last note how would you advise us to even start coming up with the range I mean because I'm like okay but how no that that's a really good question um you know um in the municipal Bond industry there there are some benchmarks that some issuers will use to determine whether or not um it's worth doing a refinancing for for savings um one of them is that we will look at the um the the present value of the savings how much are these savings since they're spread out
081over you know 10 or 11 years how much are those savings worth to you in today's dollars um so we'll do a present value calculation and and some issuers will say that if those present value savings are equal to two to three percent of the amount of bonds that you're refinancing then it's worth doing um I don't know how they came up with that number but that's sort of been an industry standard right now your savings um it's actually on this page it's that long blue road towards the bottom of the page the present value savings is about 6.28 percent so you're well above that sort of Industry Benchmark right now you know whether or not you you know what you want to set is your own savings I I you know given that these
082bonds are are callable right now um if you wait to do a refinancing um and interest rates stay the same what will happen is the longer you wait the less those savings will be so there's kind of an incentive since those bonds are callable right now to to not set your savings Target too high because you might end up if you don't save the money now you might not be able to do a refinancing or you might end up looking at a lot less Savings in the future any other questions or board discussion Shannon I just this is kind of a follow-up question for you and Dr Lewis um so kind of giving that information and just kind of well would that be something Dr Lewis and Shannon that your team would come back with
083to provide some guidance to us on on the 22nd because again um this is really not my expertise and I would hate it to be us you know we are not working with these numbers day in and day out and know the implications so yeah we'll work with our finance team to come back with some suggestions and speaking of our finance team I want to just take a moment to thank Cindy Frick I think you've heard me say before that we're looking up under every Rock nook and cranny and this is something that Cindy brought forth to us in terms of something to pursue so yeah we can assist the board in developing that number my expectation would be that David's team would be an integral part of that given their long history of working
084with the district and understanding our our understand the district in our past history so um I think we would be well informed by the time we get to that decision point on the 24th okay about what that what that minimum would would be recommended to look like listen thanks okay thank you very much thank you David um uh additional board discussion if not there is a motion in um on this item go ahead I moved the board except the board refunding analysis as a recommendation of refunding the 2013 and 2014 bonds second Hill yes could do Blackwood yes Emerson yes Gordon Ross Yes Jones yes Kimball yes van yes motion passes seven zero thank you very much okay uh moving on to our reports this evening our first report is effective employee report part one
085Epic and Panorama data um I will invite Kristen Ryan our executive director of human resources and Megan Epperson Assistant Director of Human Resources to introduce the report thank you all right good evening Kristen Ryan executive director of HR my co-pilot tonight Megan Epperson assistant director of HR so our goal this evening is to share with you from our effective employee goal our epic and Panorama survey results at a give you the feedback from that it definitely fits into the indicators from goal for Effective employees revise number five revise and Implement a fall and spring climate survey and staff stay in exit interviews and then number two attract high quality candidates for all employee Group Employee groups and we definitely know in HR and is building leaders and District leaders that very importance of listening to
086our staff and our staff is very used to taking surveys sometimes a little survey fatigue but we greatly appreciate their input and high participation over the last two years in both of these surveys and we're going to dig into the data on those so why two surveys this is really important to differentiate between the two in terms of Epic and Panorama so epic is a Statewide initiative to retain Kansas Educators and our teachers took this survey in the fall of 21 we had great participation and so great information to share and we're going to get into those details it compares to specific benchmark districts and targets specific Recruitment and Retention drivers and Megan's going to talk to you about the districts that we used as our benchmarks like I said earlier it was administered in
087the fall of 21 and it will be ongoing and that's thanking all of you for your financial purchase using Esser funds to continue this Statewide initiative it's going to be very beneficial in terms of the information that we receive Panorama it is different and it can be seen as our climate and culture survey it's provided to give a Playbook to address areas of concern and it's given that information is based on building level on a scaled response and it's the goal is to give once a semester for staff families and students and so we have that information to share too from first semester it was given in January for the fall of 22. okay so I'm going to dive into some of the individual data points within epic and Panorama so the first one we're
088going to look at this evening is the Epic survey and I want to underline again that this was launched and then initially surveyed in 2021 and so I think it's really important to contextualize what was happening in Fall 2021 the 2021 school year prior to that we saw lots of tumultuous education decisions and lots of varying ways of teaching we moved from teaching all remote to teaching hybrid to teaching all in person in one year and then six months later our staff took this survey so I think remembering the impact of the pandemic in light of this data is important to contextualize but also we're really looking forward to what the data shows moving forward with that in mind so a little bit of background on the Epic survey this was a survey that went
089out Statewide and we saw over 20 000 Educators in the state of Kansas participate at a response rate of 50 percent in Lawrence specifically we saw about 72 percent participation rate about 671 certified participants at the time we did not survey classified staff but there is more information on that one for this survey round and then as you'll see we have some comparisons against not only Statewide data but as well as some Benchmark districts that we were able to identify so we chose these districts based on demographics based on the size and also based on location so those districts that we chose were Olathe Gardner Edgerton Topeka Seaman Geary County and Manhattan Ogden so in terms of how the survey was actually given out staff responded to multiple statements using a likert scale to assess
090the extent to which they aligned with the area that was presented to them there was important survey data that was used to analyze future points here that looked at the educator experience their level of Engagement and their turnover intentions which those turnover intentions as well as their interest in staying in the district helped shape what was designed to be the drivers for Lawrence schools as well as what they were looking at Statewide with other districts so we'll look at that slide next in terms of the engagement and retention drivers and then the slide after that we'll look at we'll dive into the 11 items that they use to develop the over to measure the overall engagement of each individual teacher so this slide it contains the high satisfaction ratings moderate satisfaction ratings and low satisfaction
091for USD 497 again in 2021 and these are specific to the significant drivers that they found by looking at staff who were intending on leaving the district and so they were looking at what are the things that were scoring low in terms of satisfaction level for staff that were indicating that they were going to leave and then what were the things that were scoring high for staff that were saying they were going to stay or they were really engaged so putting all of that data together there were 34 total statements that staff responded to of those 34 14 of them the ones that are listed here are considered significant drivers for engagement retention or a combination of Engagement and retention so in 2021 our staff rated that they had a high satisfaction rate with their
092relationship with their principal and the level of safety they were feeling at school they indicated they had a moderate satisfaction level with access to necessary resources and the reputation nation of the district excuse me and then they indicated that they had a low satisfaction level with their current salary and the salary growth potential in the future just to name a few out of each of those categories and so again these are specific to USD 497 if you look at Manhattan ogdens they won't have necessarily the same drivers because these were analyzed based on how our staff were responding based on their turnover intentions and their engagement within the district and then the last data point for epic and then we do have one more clarifying piece for epic moving forward this includes the engagement index
093here so based on they're a set of 11 statements that staff responded to that were designed to measure their level of Engagement so the statements were such as I'm proud to work at my school teaching gives me a feeling of accomplishment my voice and opinion are valued etc those were then analyzed to view the overall teachers engagement level so we can see here in 2021 and at the top it says 2022 retention report because the report was given to us in 2022 so in 2021 we can see that between disengaged and actively disengaged we have about 61 percent of our staff fell into that category while 39 were some level of engaged at that time our Benchmark districts were scoring at about 44 percent so we were scoring about 15 percentage points higher with staff
094that were disengaged in 2021 the only other piece that we'll add for the Epic survey we are really excited to announce that we're working with Emporia State University and Dr Brett church and the Epic Center we have added a classified survey that went out March 30th to USD 497 classified staff and this is part of a Statewide initiative to look at retention and retention initiatives for classified staff Statewide so this survey will give us additional ways to break down the data by demographics we'll be able to look at additional age ranges that kind of thing it will also be accessible or actually it is accessible in multiple languages and device types we've had 566 folks who were invited to participate and as of last week we had 255 so far respond so we're at just
095over or just under 50 response rate so far and we have a couple more weeks to go so we're really excited to see those results and really excited to see those Statewide analysis with both of those pieces in mind and I think just we were very intentional with collaborating with pal working with directors enrolling that out and being really clear with the communication and then just having accessible in multiple ways has been I think really well done and because last year we just struggled and worked really hard but those stay in exit surveys so this is a good step forward and really appreciate the coaching from Brett church too to do it right yeah any questions on Epic and then we'll switch to Panorama classified staff that's first of all that response rate at this
096point is impressive so congratulations and thank you to staff for participating um the other question the other thing I wondered about is I I'm assuming you can also break down by um category or by uh will you be able to tell like what what area the classified staff Works in so you'll be able to see what fnos staff are saying you'll be able to see what our para Educators have said correct yes yes thanks with the uh you know with the certified staff can you can you break it down by level as well Elementary and secondary and the way that the survey so the survey is owned by epic and they didn't give us as much of the breakdown into those they could tell us how many participate at each level but not necessarily how
097each one was scoring that we can definitely work with Dr Church to get some of that information they were trying to be mindful of not sharing too much that would it would break confidentiality or be too identifying I was just curious if if you if if you had it I don't I don't necessarily have a reason to get it I was just curious if you had it and I think what's coming too with that with that survey hopefully is a breakdown uh by race and ethnicity correct that's coming soon so as we're continuing to look at what what we can do as a district to um retain all staff but also looking at our staff of color and recruiting staff of color that will that will help us in that regard when the survey was
098initially given it didn't give us that option to do that breakdown and so I'm really grateful that epic has worked with us to accommodate requests and do and make updates to the survey and that was one of our first requests was to start some of those breakdowns I have a quick question and this the data for classified and certified is it sorry this is just certified certified sorry no um is it Union and non-union or what's the breakdown correct they actually did include a breakdown of that information um so um as reported in the 2021 survey 68 of our staff reported that they did belong to a professional Union our Benchmark districts reported 58 and our Statewide reported 55 percent so I had I had a question um as you acknowledge we had a pretty
099high percentage of teachers indicate a sense of disengagement and then you mentioned um you know the 11 items that they used out of the survey to measure overall are those are those um the same 11 items that are reflected in that next page in the chart where it says low moderate or high satisfaction or those just to clarify are those kind of the overall um engagement they're separate so there were 11 specific engagement questions and then there were 34 um other questions I'll label them as and those 34 were used to analyze the engagement and retention impact the 11 for the engagement was particular to engagement so that's that's what I thought so but I wanted to make sure I was understanding that right so my question is out of those 11 items um do
100they fall into do you get to see and I don't you don't need to tell me the results but do you get to see um on each of the 11 items like is it is is it a particular thing in this District versus in other districts is a different thing that is driving that 61 percent versus the 44 in some of our comparative districts percentage for each question and does that does that question even make sense yes so okay so we have the state the our district and then our Benchmark performance and each one of the 11 items yeah so we do have the ability to drive down to each of those pieces um now the one element that does connect here is that the engagement items also influenced what became a driver so while
101the engagement is a separate questionnaire um the staff at Epic used the engagement pieces to see okay if our staff has really disengaged what are the things that they're not just they're not engaged with and is that contributing to a driver of them leaving the profession or leaving Lawrence so then my follow-up question to that is um will we see as a board what you are recommending specifically to that data that you're seeing that we do as next steps and is that is that coming tonight is that coming in part two of this report is that coming at a future date so we just started that work and and showing this information to our dis building principles and District administration and recognize quickly we need a lot more time with it there was excellent conversation
102we were in small groups we were in large groups we even had some really good conversation from a staff member that was a teacher doing her administrative intern and really could speak to some of these points I'm on the low satisfaction so we are getting started we definitely when we look at these they will use um Brett will use the words this is where we need to invest focus and Leverage average like in terms of where we really need to put our efforts and this is where the work can be done and I would just say we're we're just getting started with this with the goal that we will retake this survey in Fall of 23 and so we have some things that to that we would be able to see some growth we are
103a little bit behind on this one the transition in HR and so but we still are very appreciative to have the data and the support from our staff for taking the survey so we we do think we can make some impact and hopefully some of the very hard decisions that we're doing hopefully on the low satisfaction we'll address some of the salary pieces as well that was kind of where I was wondering what what the time frame looks like I think they're they're for some staff is a sense of urgency to see us do something about this so um but I also know that we have to have time to evaluate and Implement um so I guess I would just say if there if there are things that you are seeing that can be more
104immediate let us know thank you thank you yeah and I think the survey validated what we were all hearing around that time and so I think the board and District have been responding to some of these have you noticed at first point District's attention and approach to supporting staff mental emotional health around that time as as Megan indicates a lot going on and we brought a calendar to the board around that time to extend Thanksgiving you remember that that's because we were hearing from staff hey it's we're about what a Breaking Point here and so the the salary and future growth this is something the board is working on ability request and secure a substitute that's something we're having conversations about in terms of um substitute pay so we are it I've been hearing some
105of these this kind of validate some of the things that we were hearing Kristen will also mention this at the end of the presentation but this also comes at a great time for our buildings as they work on building goals so admin received this information at the beginning of end of March um and started delving into it a little bit and so hopefully we'll have some more time to continue but this comes at a great time for the pieces that they can control at their building level that they could start incorporating along with writing their own keys of goals um I want to check in with Paula or Carol do you have questions about the Epic survey piece this is Carol no thank you okay um this is Paula not a question just an observation
106from what I heard from Michelle Salmons um uh commentary that it sort of fits in with these um significant drivers for engagement so I appreciate you just bringing that up and I think that just confirms like the low satisfaction around districts attention and approach to supporting staff's mental and emotional health I think that was an alignment with what I thought I heard her say in her commentary additional questions or discussion on this this piece okay thank you okay so the other survey that we're going to share is Panorama and so this was designed to look at fall 2022 so a year after the Epic was captured um this was actually assessed in January 2023 meant to capture last semester so this breaks down and you'll see on the sides that we have two kind of
107bar graphs that we're looking at to capture staff which we can reference as classified staff even though on the sheet it says staff and then teacher participants so we had about 201 staff or classified staff participants 654 teacher participants for about 855 total participants there for fall 2022. so for each one um we're really excited about using Panorama because for each building they're able to really dive into each one of these areas so they can click on the teacher survey under belonging and dive into the individual questions that were answered they can see how they're building with scoring as well as their District was scoring and then from a district level we can see the percentile score Nationwide so for example under belonging you can see that staff survey is first at a 68 satisfaction
108rate the teacher one is second at a 64 satisfaction rate within the questions that had to do with belonging and so for the teacher one we're scoring in the 40th to 59th percentile Nationwide and as we dive into that data more we can really cater that to look at districts that are similar to us in SES we're able to look at districts that were similar to us in size even like Coast to Coast locations so we're really able to see how we are scoring in comparison to a lot of other districts as they are similar to us or just look at a nationwide lens I did pop a couple of comparative data points in here it's important to remember that epic and Panorama are assessing very differently but I thought it was still interesting to
109look at a really high level how epic was scoring versus Panorama and some of these pieces that we could start to try to connect so for example under belonging there you can see that I included relationship with colleagues within the school and how teachers were scoring there and they indicated that they were highly satisfied with their relationship with their colleagues which was a contributor and had and connected to that belonging category resources was our lowest scoring category both staff and teachers surveyed that this was something that we could improve in so we were scoring in the 20 to 39th percentile in both of those epic saw about a moderate satellite moderate satisfaction level for those pieces as related to resources and instructional materials and then there's three more so we've got school climate and in
110all of these you'll notice that the staff surveys classified staff survey is scoring higher than the teacher survey so 60 to 79th percentile or 40 to 59th percentile for school climate School leadership we saw some higher numbers 71 percent for the classified staff survey and 64 satisfaction level for the teacher survey in Epic we saw a moderate satisfaction level with that principal instructional leadership and then the staff leadership relationships was one of our highest scoring categories at 78 and 74 which also correlated with what our staff was saying in the Epic survey in 2021 where they rated their relationship with their principal at a high satisfaction level any questions on panorama building principles receive this information the expectation is that it was shared with their building staff and so when we look at our epic
111data our Panorama data like Megan said in terms of our building goals and also our key sub process we're going to be starting year one so it's very timely getting all of this data both certified and classified and building our next goals for our accreditation cycle um we also are going to meet with Lea and Powell once we have well we have our certified results but our classified results and review those and start those next steps of action plans and collaborating with schools on on their building goals okay um so my question is um uh once you have that opportunity well and again staff are being able to learn about the results of this um what do you recommend as to steps for staff who want to help with the um the engagement part with
112their building leadership on trying to help out or trying to provide suggestions or recommendations or how to improve these areas for for their teams I think first off knowing what those engagement questions are and really when we go back to Epic looking at those and how do we dissect those as a either if it's specific to the school starting with the building leadership team and looking at that information but knowing the what what is what is the question that we really scored low in and how do we start addressing that as a school and as a district I think as well and something I'm really excited to see and play Panorama has a specific Playbook that's designed to match some of the areas that you're slowly scoring low in or if you want to continue
113doing things well at so for example if I look at the resource survey and I see that our teachers scored a 31 level on that one that we can then based on each question the survey the Panorama database is set up for us to toggle into specific suggestions for either things to implement or things to be doing with staff to recognize and try to build up those areas so that's something that we're really excited to get in the hands of our BLT and our buildings to really start putting hands on and not Reinventing the wheel because we recognize that there's a lot on Focus plates already and we want to really use the things that are data driven to be supportive in those areas and we're really excited to see Panorama has that for us
114and so I just as a staff member as an employee at a building would they see this coming around in their natural conversations and their meetings that they're having with their building leadership as they're tackling some of this so I'm just trying to understand what if I'm an employee what what does this look like yeah and so that's what we're getting ready to build in terms of our first meeting with building administrators was just to end Veil this is the information um diving into it this is where we this is where we are and so we need we definitely that will be our next steps in terms of meeting with building leadership meeting with Lea meeting with pal what are the next steps that we need to do that are going to be as as
115we've been told to invest to focus and to leverage and what what have we already accomplished or what do we feel pretty good about that maybe we've taken some steps towards I mean yes the the mental health of our Educators that seems to be one that we really need to start talking and unpacking and that that came up naturally as a priority at our admin PD thank you so it's more of a waiting you'll see we're just not quite there yet yes and we also want to make sure that buildings are are given the time to take ownership for the work too and make sure that the work they're doing is authentic to their building and driven based on the needs of their specific staff too so we're really looking forward to that summer planning
116process as well and some of our buildings have taken the Panorama data already back to their either their building leadership teams or their staff and to answer your question and give an example of that is something and I don't know what it was called that this principal instituted but it came from the staff they took the data back and looked at I think the area had to do something with communication and a suggestion came through from staff member to to do was it Monday morning or something communication oh that um it was in response to this data a communication was an issue in that building or an area for growth in that building and the suggestion came through from a staff member in the principal instituted that Weekly communication mechanism I really appreciate you guys
117that deep Inc digging into that and helping us in a little bit more thank you so if you if you take this survey I think I understand you take it in the fall correct in this spring in the spring that was that was my follow-up question I missed that point thank you yes for Panorama yes there will be I think we were trying to avoid an overlap with epic and Panorama so epic should be wrapping up mid-april and then we know that Panorama should be rolling out mid April to late April for the spring data thank you any additional questions for our presenters Carol and Paula jump in if you have any questions I was uh Kelly actually took my question thank you sorry we're good do you have anything else for us nope that's
118it I think this was part one of the two-part series can I give us a preview of what we can expect to part two yeah so part two we're going to focus on our retention and recruitment efforts for this year and then also the four day student calendar week will be presented as a part of Recruitment and Retention as well thank you very much yeah thank you okay what's on our agenda is the boundary advisory committee report uh Dr Lewis and Dr Larry engelbrick our chief operations officer call Larry inglebrick uh thank you board members we're going to take a look at some of the work that our boundary advisory committee has been tackling and presenting this first proposal and just to remind members of the public the board will not vote to approve these
119boundary committees this is unlike their first Glimpse or their first read and that's where their first groups their first glimpse of it was during the previous meeting when the boundary committee work was on the agenda as a written report in terms of transmission then this will allow the board to have some open discussion around that proposal so I'll turn it over to Dr Engelbert thank you Dr Lewis Larry engelbrick chief operations officer I'm here this evening to present materials prepared and submitted by the boundary advisory committee with the support of RSP and Associates resp is unable to be here this evening because of prior commitments that they had this is an extension of the work that they began with our futures planning committee I will speak a little bit later on a slide about steps
120that we have tentatively planned between now and the next two weeks to give you an idea of course of action we hope to take would begin with board policy A.D school district attendance areas schools students shall attend schools according to the boundaries set by the board a student shall enroll in the school designated to serve the attendance area in which the parent or legal guardian holds legal residence the board will review School attendance areas annually and make changes as warranted the superintendent shall work with the boundary advisory committee to prepare a written report for the board when necessary concerning the changing of School attendance areas for the next school year and the reasons for the recommendations the board will consider and the recommendations at the first regular meeting following receipt receipt of the report but
121will take no action on the report at that meeting the board shall shall act on recommended changes should the changes appear to Merit a public hearing one will be scheduled I would like to do a brief overview of the Futures planning process what has brought us here today and taken driven us through the entire school year on this work as you know this past several years we have experienced declining enrollment we've also been faced with facilities that were underutilized we will use 80 percent capacity utilization as our Baseline for a building where we begin to optimize the utilization of that building we're also being faced with Rising operational costs you heard some estimates this this evening about the potential increase in our health care coverage for the next school year we're also expecting 25 percent
122increase in our property and casually insurance this school year all of those things take control tremendous hits on our budgets we know that there's a national estate and a local shortage of workforces teachers and our other staff members and we know we have funding limitations from the state we are not able to generate funds outside of those provided for by State statutes Last Summer the Board of Education hired RSP and associations Associates to do demographic and housing facility analysis and enrollment projections RSP spent the fall working with our futures planning committee and facilitating those meetings focused on three goals those goals being to provide competitive wages for our staff to support the Recruitment and Retention of high quality staff in all positions in our school district to plan for the annual increases in operating costs
123our insurance our utilities as all of us have experienced over the past few years the cost of gasoline it may be surprising how that cost impacts the amount of student transportation we do as a district during the school year and to replenish our contingency reserve fund you heard earlier a presentation on our bond issue our contingency reserve fund and our balance in that fund directly impacts our ability to lower and have to have a better Moody score and to lower the cost of refinancing or financing new Bond issues these things are all intertwined and work together during this school year the Futures planning committee began its work in August at the direction and facilitation of RSP during the school year there have been nine committee meetings a community-wide survey two public input sessions one at
124Free State High School and one at Lawrence High School and presentations to the Board of Education three separate presentations again RSP would have been here this evening except they did have a conflict the work with the facilities planning committee was completed in the month of February it should be noted that a high highly considered item by the Futures planning committee was Community input they took that input they took it seriously and they worked through many different scenarios to make sure that Community input was a driving Factor the majority of the members of the facility planning committee Futures planning committee I apologize recommended and supported the closing of schools the Futures planning committee actually supported Closing one to two elementary schools and one Middle School that among other budget reduction proposals they submitted that to the
125superintendent administration of the school district and the administration of the school district recommended to the board closing Broken Arrow pick me and Woodlawn Elementary schools and repurposing Liberty Memorial Central Middle School along with the other budget cuts the board approved notices for public hearings to close Broken Arrow and Pinckney Elementary School and gave the administration direction to use the next year for planning for the repurposing of Lawrence I'm sorry of Liberty Memorial Central Middle School to begin in the year 2024. after hosting public hearings and receiving additional information from the community the vote the board voted to close Broken Arrow and Pinckney Elementary School at its March 27th meeting the boundary advisory committee held four meetings during the month of February and March with the goal of focusing on the development of boundary changes to
126accommodate the reassignment of students if Broken Arrow and Pinckney Elementary Schools were closed the boundary advisory committee shared its written recommendations for boundary changes for the 2023-24 school year with the board on March 27th we we have tentatively set these events the boundaries advisory committee will meet tentatively on Wednesday April the 12th and Wednesday April the 19th to review and make recommendations based upon input from the Board of Education this evening tomorrow based on your recommendations and your input I will begin working with RSP to work through how those scenarios might be incorporated into the scenario of School boundary changes this evening we are seeking board input and direction to be able to finalize the boundary changes for the upcoming school year so that we look at the impact this will have on our students
127at Broken Arrow 223 students will be reassigned to these buildings cordly Langston Hughes Prairie Park schwagler and Sunflower Elementary Schools students at Pinckney Elementary School 169 would be reassigned to Deerfield and Hillcrest Elementary Schools those numbers are all based upon the current proposed boundary changes additional student reassignments or transition would include 93 additional students 13 quarterly students would be reassigned to Hillcrest Elementary 20 Deerfield students would be reassigned to Sunset Hill Elementary Deerfield students would be assigned to Woodlawn and 30 Hillcrest students would be assigned to quell run a bit of the information from RSP in their table format recommended concept and projections from the recommended boundary changes if you look to the bottom line to the right hand section of this table you'll see that we are at each year that 85 percent utilization
128of the capacity of our remaining schools again that is the Baseline that we would like to have for the utilization of schools and efficiencies within those units utilizations two schools New York and woodlawn's projections will Remo remain below the 75 percent utilization projected class sizes you have here at by building by class level grade level projected students to attend each of the schools class size is determined by the board approved Staffing ratio currently that is 25 students per class for grades K through 3 and 30 students per class for grades four and five if we're looking at lowering the student per class ratio it would be the ratio that we would need to change ethnic analysis deerfield's racial and ethnic makeup is five percent more diverse next year than its current population no other school
129in our district would have a five percent increase or decrease in its diversity free and reduced prices price lunch analysis no schools low social economic makeup increases or decreases by more than 10 percent that 10 percent is seen at Deerfield Deerfield will go from 29.7 percent free and reduced lunch this year to 39.7 percent next year and those are based upon projections like to go back all of the information in these tables will change it will change by day by week as students enter our district move between buildings in our district a number of factors there if we change the boundaries that will impact these numbers also I have a diagram here of I'm sorry I skipped a table this table shows our students impacted by boundary changes what this allows us to do is
130look at where the students will be transferring from and to if you notice there we will have 15.1 percent of our elementary students reassigned to different buildings next year Under The Proposal that would be 485 students and they will be redistributed or reassigned to 10 schools our next slide is the proposed map this slide is just an enlargement of that and the last information no slide comes from options for our families the administration would like to recommend the grandfathering of current third and fourth grade students and younger brothers and sisters currently attending the same school so that they may choose to stay at their current School or choose to move to the newly assigned School grandfathered students choosing to stay at their current school would be encouraged as soon as boundaries are established to complete
131the transfer request form and get those approved for the coming school year the district has a current transfer has a current transfer request policy and process that is available for all other families on a space available basis we would suggest that any family that is interested in changing schools because of the boundary adjustments consider this as a method to remain at the building that they're currently at or to possibly move to another building if there are questions we have individuals here to help with those or if you have input and direction we would be glad to accept that at this time so I just have a couple things that I'll start with um you know serving on on the banner committee you know that you know that that committee did a lot of work in
132a very short amount of time and um I it was it was really good work and and it it came up with a with a pretty a pretty good proposal when it was in that room with the with the people that that were in that room um but since then we've gotten some some feedback and and so I think for me um in terms of input one thing I would like to say before I forget because I promised somebody I would I would say just to make sure it's it's clear there was there was some uh there's a statement that that got out there um that led to some confusion about the grandfather policy that that that um that it was it was stated that the grandfather policy applied to incoming fourth and fifth graders
133with siblings and that's not the case it's incoming fourth and fifth graders and if they have siblings it applies to the siblings as well so you want to make that clear because there was some confusion there um but in terms of feedback to to then take back to the committee that I serve on um I think two things for me one um would be the um the Deerfield area uh north of I-70 that that is proposed to go to Woodlawn um I I think that area needs to stay in in Deerfield um and then south of K-10 um and west of 59 right now that's split between two elementary schools most of it is Langston Hughes but there's that little bit going to Sunflower um that little bit going to sunflowers about 13 students and
134there was a lot of feedback and that's out where I live so I know a lot of those people I think anybody south of K-10 and west of 59 should all be in the same school um and so I think that yellow band south of 59 south of K-10 and west of 59 I think that whole area should be LinkedIn I also support retaining the students north of I-70 at Deerfield and not moving them to Woodlawn I'm interested I I am in conversation with District leadership it's my understanding that we decided to move the majority of students to Deerfield from Pinckney um in part to retain a neighborhood but I question when we are pushing capacity to 90 percent So speaking for myself as a single board member I'd ask that the committee reconsider or
135at least evaluate that point of view and potentially move more pink new students into Hillcrest to decrease the the capacity at Deerfield and I'll say on my own Street um on my on my side of the street the students attend or when my children were in school in elementary school attended cordly on the other side they attended New York and on the corner they attended Kennedy Elementary when it was open and then down the middle of the street the kids across the street went to Free State High School and the kids on my side of the street went to Lawrence high school so I understand so that's my my bias I'll just name that I lived in a in a in the place in Lawrence where there were the boundaries and I lived right on
136them and my children played really well with the kids from the different schools and it was a way for us to have and again this is my own experience I'm just naming that bias I don't know that that'll be the same for other families um but I would like to see the district consider potentially moving more children into Hillcrest because of the capacity issues and because we have a bit more flexibility in terms of attendance at Hillcrest than we do in other spaces um I also want to name that as we're talking about these boundaries we're talking about people's families and they're watching us eager to know when we will where their children are going this has been an extremely emotional experience for folks and to the extent possible I would like to see families
137retain autonomy of choice whenever whenever possible so I'm asking for a liberal transfer policy for our families that are experiencing this significant change to their neighborhoods that might include but not be limited to opening up transfers to Woodlawn liberally in that it is a smaller community and for some of some parents and some children it might be there might be some parity in terms of that those communities um and then I guess the other thing I I wanted to talk about a little bit about was we we saw some requests from the Broken Arrow families around cordly in the schweigler division and I'm not sure that the the boundary committee can address all of those concerns but I did want to name them because we've heard them from several families and then I will uh
138oh one other one other observation and then and then I will be quiet so my board colleagues can respond um I I heard the the reasoning related to not expanding New York elementaries boundaries and I want to acknowledge that I know some of that comes from that building leadership however I do think there is reason to consider expanding the New York boundaries and um that that in fact could have a positive impact on the Montessori programming so I know that the boundary committee met four times and they had to weigh many different competing values and I will be um eager to hear what their recommendations are and recognize that some of the things I've requested may not finally come through in the in the ultimate recommendations to the board okay I first want to say
139thank you Kelly for your feedback that's it was very comprehensive and I was like yeah that makes sense um so I had a few comments um one was related to the grandfathering um I uh in addition as we're considering who to grandfathered in um it would be I think worth a discussion for the about um boundary committee to think about grandfathering and students who are currently enrolled into the program I wasn't sure so this might be just a follow-up question how did we choose the the third fourth and fifth graders or fourth and fifth graders so I would that would be great for them to discuss um because I think of even a second grader because I had a second grader who made the transfer over from and again a personal experience from Woodlawn over
140to Deerfield and you know that transition we made it through it's fine but those families who are who have younger students this is a concern for them too so I would hope that we could talk about that one of the things that's been really weighing heavy was the um the high traffic on some of our routes specifically students getting to Deerfield or crossing over the 23rd again again you have to think about your boundaries so I think it would be wise to look at how much would it cost for the district to go ahead and add another bus route to ensure those students can get back safe safely to and from school I think it would be our responsibility to investigate that out um like Kelly you know I definitely think families who prefer those
141smaller capacity schools and with just the what we're looking at tonight the schools would be Woodlawn Elementary New York Elementary cordly elementary and Sunset Hill so for parents to be able who are affected by these boundary changes being able to have choice in their selection thank you Paula or Carol if you have anything to share go ahead and jump in and if not I have a couple of things to share okay uh this is Carol and I I want to thank everybody for their their comments their input and um you know I'm looking at you know I've studied you know we have all read the emails and we've studied these maps and I just want to Echo what Kelly said and K and I would just really like to emphasize that we would like to
142focus on giving parents a greater choice and where they can send their kids but um it you know at the same time it saddens me that we um we are splitting up the students between broken uh the Broken Arrow students because Dr and I both lose south of town and you know he ironically his students he's that he would be in the Prairie Park District and I'd be in the Sunflower Elementary so I'm just you know just hypothesizing here that you know the and I just want to communicate again that you know we are looking at this very cautiously in and um yeah we are not looking over any details and thank you Shannon I'm not sure if I would add anything new to the conversation um other than I would be in support of
143considering um Jr's suggestion around the areas that I had it written downl um and um yeah I might suggest being supportive considering um dr's boundary um considerations that he pointed out earlier thank you Paula thank you Carol um I I had a couple of thoughts that I would like for the to you know to add to the mix of things for the boundary committee to consider um some of it is a little bit of a repeat gr and Kelly both mentioned the um Deerfield area that's north of I-70 that's meant to go to Woodlawn under this plan um I want to acknowledge the boundary committee's work in thinking through how to increase enrollment at Woodlawn I think I don't want that to get lost I think that's a very important consideration for the district going
144forward but I also think that um the committee re-looking at that decision might be appropriate and I know that that then impacts foreign Kids Go and given given the substantial concerns that have been shared and that I have observed personally in terms of how to create a safe walkable route for that paintney neighborhood to Deerfield I would like for the boundary committee to consider whether that entire area between McDonald Drive and the river south of I-70 down to um the current Hillcrest boundary that's on the proposal whether it would be possible to move that entire area into Hillcrest rather than putting them into Deerfield if we're not going to take kids out of Deerfield to go to Woodlawn then you know that creates a domino effect and I think one of the things you could
145look at would be moving those kids to Hillcrest and and or as Kelly mentioned consider that New York Hillcrest boundary and whether some of those Pinkney students or current Hillcrest students might end up at New York I think those are those are things to consider given the feedback and just the knowledge that we've all um had shared with us about some of the challenges related to the current map I do want to thank the boundary committee for their work this is this is really hard work to try to figure out how to make all these moving Parts work together um and they really did a lot of work in a short amount of time um I want to make sure I don't lose anything here um I want to address or at least provide some
146input to the committee in regard to the capacity conversation it's come up a lot in messages to the board gr mentioned it you mentioned it Dr inglebrick in terms of what we are looking for you know that kind of a 80 percent minimum when we start seeing our buildings get to 90 capacity it makes us a little bit nervous um given that um we know that financially we need to be looking at having the buildings that we are using serve more students my suggestion for consideration would be that um instead of shying away from filling up a building we consider how we plan for the future the short term in the long term to expand those buildings that still have capacities under 400 or 450 students and I think that is one way to um
147allay some of the community's concerns when they see these out years in some of these projections where you've got buildings that are that are upwards of 90 percent like cordly and schwegler for instance and then you know Langston Hughes perhaps we are going to have to do some targeted to buildings to grow them and I think that needs to be at least in the back of the minds of of our boundary committee as they are putting all of these moving pieces together and then the final thing I wanted to to mention in this relates to some of the feedback we've received but then also case come about high traffic areas you know just because I wanted to think about what does our district look like as a whole I was looking at the existing boundary
148map and if I'm reading this correctly um it appears to me that every single one of our elementary buildings with perhaps the exception of New York and it's a little bit hard to tell because this existing boundary map is not updated to show the boundaries for Kennedy for the Kennedy closure but if you look at every single one of our elementary buildings all of them save one have boundaries that cross either 6th Street 15th Street 19th Street 23rd Street 31st Street Wakarusa Iowa Massachusetts Highway 59 and i-70. so I want us to be mindful of safety for students but I also don't want to leave a false impression that our current state does not include boundaries for elementary schools that cross all of those um very busy streets some of our schools have boundaries that
149cross more than one of those busy streets and so um I think we have to balance those considerations in terms of being able to operate our district in a way that meets meets our needs and also ensuring that we have boundaries that um we're working with our partners like the city to address some of the concerns that come up with some of those boundaries so that is what I wanted to add to the considerations in the conversation additional thoughts Erica my apologies if we've already addressed this but we have received a few emails from family members in the community that live south of K-10 and the West and West of Highway 59 I know we're talking about Elementary School boundaries with some of those considerations for Middle School where those students would still be going
150out to East Side and so just some considerations and direction for those those families foreign I just want to build a little bit on I think it's Shannon's comment about again that conversation around moving potentially more children into Hillcrest instead of Pinckney the other thing that that does because we also heard from not just from the folks north of I-70 but we also heard from folks that were we were going to move children out of Deerfield and into other neighboring schools and a request to be able to stay in their home school if possible it does seem I don't I'm I'm requesting the boundary committee review this it does seem possible that if we move more children into Hillcrest we could potentially retain the students that are in Deerfield could continue to stay there but
151that might not be the case so I would just be an ass to gr and Erica to see if we're able to reduce the number of students that are not in the schools that close that are impacted by by this decision of the board okay um and then just thinking about what Shannon said about our lower enrollment schools One Challenge I would put forward to the district around this and a request that we heard from from those buildings in particular Woodlawn is to look at um programming that could be enhanced there in terms of utilizing the building more fully what programming might be added or part of that building and then potentially building out that school as a um with Jaycees or or um the the building leaderships and communities input around how to build
152a community school there or the like that would serve that Community well and then also um potentially utilize that space better I have one real quick thing okay and then I think it's really important to note along those lines for those families who've talked with us about transfer policies we do have currently our transfer policy at the elementary school is quite um open like basically if you want to go to a different Elementary School and there's room at that grade level without us having to hire an additional teacher and class size considerations your transfer should be approved in most circumstances so um so that's something that I hope we can take this as an opportunity to better inform our community about what we already do at that level I know that it's a little bit
153different at the middle and high school levels but at least as to elementary school so for example if there are families who are interested in transferring to Woodlawn that would be allowable under our current policy and with the consideration being looking at that grade level enrollment and class size so um okay okay I'm sorry oh yeah no it's a it's all right um I um just a the other thing on that just just I can just barely hear you oh sorry the other thing on that um just uh um so people don't get the wrong impression um if a student is accepted into transfer doesn't mean that they also get the transportation bus and transportation to go there so I definitely want to make sure that families are very aware of that right um and
154then I just wanted to um so Kelly you talked about expanding program and then Shannon you talked a little bit about expanding um and did you so about the like Woodlawn and those small enrollment schools and so were you also referring to programming um just I don't want anything no actually I'm referring to building capacity so if you look at that that was the intention of my comment so if you look at the slide um right after the slide uh that says BAC recommendation draft um I think it's one more uh this one yeah and that column capacity where the red numbers are that First Column so what I'm what I'm looking at specifically is knowing that in terms of funding and and being able to fully staff buildings our capacity at a building needs
155to be above for 450 and ideally somewhere between five and six hundred so we have you know cordly is still below 400 and that's if you as if you it was enrolled at 100 capacity right so we we've talked about um it's really hard to run a building at 100 capacity so somewhere less than 375 students would be the probably the max enrollment accordingly um Hillcrest is close to 450 but not quite there New York Elementary is quite small Woodlawn Elementary quite small Sunset Hill not quite 450 so looking at those those buildings over time and from a facilities perspective as our district grows um again in the future sometime you know out past that five-year I'm sorry please no interruptions from the audience um sometime out past that five-year time Horizon where we have
156those enrollment projections that show us still declining once we do start to grow again we will be poised if we are thinking about it that way we will be poised to manage enrollment growth if we are looking at how to enhance those assets those physical assets to address that that enrollment growth with additional capacity at those smaller buildings does that make sense kind of so I'm just going to just ask for clarity so so essentially it's like um no way Know Where Your Capacity limit is um based off of like 100 but also give yourself wiggle room so if we need to expand out further in a couple several years we have room to do that in that building is that yes and and just in terms of I know from the experience of being
157on the facilities committee and doing the bond planning that you know if we're projecting out that we are going to need additional classroom space at a building you know next year that's really like probably not going to be able to build on a classroom in that time frame so planning looking at all of this information working with our partners and planning out as as we move through this next few years planning out what that looks like going forward because and I think that what that does is that IT addresses um the concern in some of those out years when you get out to 26 27 27 28 we do have a couple buildings that look like they're filling up we need to be thinking about how we plan for that [Music] um in those out
158years I believe I understand thank you Shannon all right would you would you also and just to just to piggyback on that question and that answer would you anticipate as part of the yearly facilities master plan that that that's where that planning would take place or would you anticipate it would be a completely separate process and not a line item I I would want to rely on our facility staff to give direction on that but I just based on my experience and knowledge with the capital plan um I think you could look at it through that lens and have it be a part of the capital planning process um we have a lot of other I mean as you as we all well know we have a lot of other needs that are being met
159through that Capital outlay fund um but we're doing some things like selling the Holcomb property um perhaps there are opportunities to earmark phones and out years you know through some things like that to address some of some of these needs that we see not next year the year after but in future years um without exceeding our ability to pay for it through our Capital La funds okay good question okay thank you very much I have 21 items 21 items of notes from you I appreciate that I would also like to Echo my thanks to the members of the boundary advisory committee they worked extremely hard and very very focused each evening on staying on task and doing the work that was right in front of them they self-monitored and they self-directed as a committee and
160look forward to the future meetings with them they just they did a tremendous job thank you we do have public comment related to this item so at this time I'd like to invite oh I'm sorry I just have a clear this is my clarifying question um so the first I also want to just extend a huge thank you to the boundary committee and then that you all are meeting again back to back with short notice I appreciate your taking the the information we've gotten and seeing how you can incorporate it what you come back with so just I know it's in the PowerPoint but just for clarity we will they'll meet um on the I think your last meeting is the 19th and then we would vote on the boundaries so that families know because
161as quickly as we can get this information to both principals Educators and our families that I'm recognizing this is very late in the school year particularly for um students to so that they know where they're going so I would say there's a couple different possibilities around that um if the boundary committee meets on the 12th and feels like they need to meet again on the 19th in order to follow up on this feedback then I would expect that you would see a final vote a final decision on it at the April 24th board meeting if the boundary committee meets on the 12th and does not feel that they need that meeting on the 19th then it could be the potential that we could have a specialty called board meeting in order to take action on
162this I would anticipate because of the nature of this item that I would if I notice if I called a special meeting I would notice public comment on this item as part of that meeting normally we you have to notice the public comment at a special meeting we would do that for this to allow the public to come and give input before we take a final vote so that would be I think it really depends on how the meeting goes on the 12th and what what feedback we get you know board leadership gets in terms of where where the committee is at that's that's really helpful I just I'll say as if they're able to and I that it might be too much for them to do but if they're able to and we could
163look at it I would support a an additional meeting if that would be helpful I appreciate you know okay sorry stuck on my shirt here um this is K I would agree with what Kelly would say um the the other thing is um as uh board leadership is kind of looking at the public commentary um just continue to think about how you may want to structure that because this is one of those one of those items that probably has a lot of comments so appreciate that um okay uh we'll we'll move to our public comment on this item we have six individuals who signed up so um uh our board clerk will provide you with the timer and invite John Monahan um to the podium for your public comment and then Eve Bonner and Lee
164Bonner are the next two individuals thank you thank you good evening my name is John Monahan I'm the parent of a fifth grade Deerfield student and a resident of the Deerfield neighborhood to the board thank you for your work and for hearing me today you are often asked to choose between the least horrible of horrible options and I recognize that to my fellow Lawrence citizens and Neighbors at risk of losing their school or being forced to move to another ICU and I hurt with you I'm not here today to speak for myself or my own children because we're not directly affected by the proposed changes my student is moving to West Junior High and no longer will be attending Deerfield instead I'm here today as a Deerfield resident to remind the board that in 2014
165the ubenn boundary advisory committee made the same recommendation to move the Sunset Hill boundary into the Deerfield neighborhood to Trail Road it's easy decision to make when looking at a color block map because Trail is a nice straight road but railroad does not divide the Deerfield neighborhood Trail Road in the streets which originate from it are part of the Deerfield neighborhood I'd say half or better of that small color block of the proposed change is actually Sixth Street business Frontage where no students live uh the suggestion doesn't move a large group of students instead it alienates 20 kids from their neighborhood in 2014 I stood here with a petition signed by myself and 115 of my neighbors asking the board to reconsider this exact boundary recommendation we asked the board to look at the actual
166streets and recognize that this boundary would deprive Children of the opportunity to attend school with their neighbors as well as depriving them of a safe route to school we invited members of the board to come and drive the Deerfield neighborhood and observe just how safe and walkable it is at least one board member obliged and the board ultimately voted unanimously to preserve the Deerfield neighborhood and ensure its students had a safe walkable route to school with their immediate Neighbors I'm here to ask you all to do the same thing today for the last eight years my kids have walked a straight shot down Lawrence Avenue from Lindley drive without crossing a single four-way stop let alone 6th Street one of the busiest streets in town during morning Rush Hour my neighbor's children want the same
167thing many of them have expressed they want the same thing I'm certainly not speaking for everybody and I want that for them I know that our district is facing much bigger and more complex changes today than they were nine years ago but this particular boundary changed has been discussed before and is no less at odds with prioritizing the safety of our students today than it was then thank you all for your consideration and thank you to the boundary advisory committee as well I know it is not an easy thing to do thank you next is Eve Bonner then Lee Bonner then Jamie Reed is Eve here no okay uh lee Bonner are you here okay we'll move to Jamie Reed hello my name is Jamie Reed I live north of I-70 and west of the
168Kansas River after listening to the board input it does sound like you guys got our emails and I appreciate you addressing our concerns and thank you for those thank you for that so the proposal boundary lines would move our neighborhood kids from Deerfield to Woodlawn currently currently we live one mile away from Deerfield but the move to Woodlawn would be three to five miles away depending on the route under this proposal we wouldn't pass by three neighborhoods that are closer to Woodlawn to get to our assigned school and not anywhere else in this proposal are you jumping and Crossing neighborhoods to utilize other schools as I understand in coming fourth and fifth graders and their siblings would get automatic approvals to stay at their school so I surveyed our neighbors my neighbors and this approval
169would allow 24 out of the 30 kids to stay at Deerfield my second grade daughter does not fall into that we moved to this neighborhood for the specific reason of being closer to friends and family that can be our village to support me as a single mother now we're losing it all my support system gets to stay at Deerfield and we're forced to go to Woodlawn I'm sure that Woodlawn is a great school with great teachers students and students most families in this neighborhood chose to live here based on it being in this Deerfield School District it as it is the nearest school so as the north of I-70 West of Kansas River representative we're requesting it to be kept in the Deerfield District we understand that boundaries can change at any time however no
170one could have predicted a boundary change so drastic it would have us go from Deerfield to Woodlawn if you must change the neighborhood boundaries please consider allowing all children to be grandfathered in and allowed to finish their Elementary career and not just the incoming fourth and fifth graders and their siblings thank you Jamie next is Andrew's surmeyer good evening and thank you for pronouncing it so well not many people get that right so thank you I appreciate everybody on the board and the boundary advisory committee I know it's not easy what you guys do is not easy but I do want you to consider that area that both Miss Jones Mr Gordon Ross and Miss Kimball have mentioned about north of I-70 just keep that into the Deerfield District it would just be way out
171of the way for those people for those children to have to go almost four miles to a different Elementary School while passing through another area um after listening to the comments and the suggestions that that the doctor has given about different things that something kind of popped into my head and have we looked at the possibility of having Michigan from sixth in Michigan up to I-70 having possibly that area go over to Woodland and the remaining picnic area then go to Hillcrest then we're not looking at children Crossing Sixth Street or I mean sorry McDonald Drive they have a passage and we can add crossing guards for Sixth Street to get those children from the Michigan over to McDonald Drive North or South down to Hillcrest it's just a suggestion maybe something we can look
172at I know that there's so many things to look at here and I just appreciate you guys listening to the input and the advice me being a former police officer and a former Accident Reconstructionist and knowing that there was another fatality on McDonald Drive just this morning it scares me to death thinking about children Crossing that road scares me to death so please consider that I know you guys have a very difficult decision a lot of recommendations coming your way but please listen to me I appreciate you thank you thank you our last public comment is Melody Alexander okay so it technically hasn't been two full weeks because it was about midnight a couple weeks ago when the decision made was made to close Pinckney um we had Parents up here begging to protect the
173safety of our children and unfortunately four members of this board who now my son knows your names and faces chose to close our most vulnerable schools um it's also been a couple weeks since Kelly Jones you told us that you felt personally attacked by the pleas of our parents over their children Crossing this road that's right out here in front of us and yet it's been a handful of hours since a man was killed right in this very street that you are telling our children that they might have to cross I personally lack faith in the promises of this Administration and I will tell you this that this entire Community is watching I have heard myself the failed Promises of Kennedy kids that the parents of these Kennedy families are dealing with the lack of
174promises that have been kept do not do that to Pinckney do not do that to Broken Arrow these have been failures that have been ongoing for the past several years we continue to bleed students from this school district because of administrative decisions we are likely looking to leave this District do the right thing for our children I do hear and I appreciate the fact that many of you are raising the concerns that you are about these districts or about the redistricting but I need you guys to demand that this is taken care of please make sure the administration does the right thing because I cannot have our children I cannot have our children suffering because we make them cross this street thank you that concludes our public comment on this agenda item further board comments
175or questions Paula and Carol I want to check in with you again just to make sure if there's anything you want to add just please jump in and let me know no this is Carol and I just want to thank everybody for taking the time to um make your comments and we are reading our emails and getting back to them as soon as as um as time allows thank you thank you I don't have anything thanks Shannon okay thank you Paula thank you Carol Dr Lewis or Dr engelbrecher are there any um anything you need clarification on from the board before we conclude our discussion this evening and I think this conversation was was very helpful for us in terms of taking some things back to our boundary committee I also want to take a
176moment to thank Ron May and our first student team for beginning to address the students that would potentially cross McDonald by providing transportation for those students but we will take this information that we received tonight and back to our boundary committee okay I think that concludes our work on this particular agenda item then Dr list do you have any closing announcements for us this evening no um then a motion to adjourn emotion um that we adjourn this is Carol I second all in favor aye aye thank you we are adjourned