Lawrence Public Schools Board of Education Meeting | February 14, 2022

001question on the budget and savings option dr lewis i'll turn it over to you to introduce your team to walk us through the budget planning process options good afternoon board members community members before i introduce the team i do want to welcome although this is not um their first time at this meeting our um very own lhs budget we have jack ritter who's also a member of our superintendent advisory council so thank you for being here jack and we do want to welcome uh rochelle frauverdi pero verdi okay who is uh lawrence turner i'm sorry the lawrence general world's education reporter rochelle has returned uh to this beat after five years covering city and county government she's also an lhs grad so i'm sure you learn those great journalism skills over at lhs so thank

002you for for being here with us this evening all right at this time we want to begin this workshop and we'll turn it over to um julie wall we have a number of speakers but we want to kind of uh share um the accurate depiction of how we got here uh to this point so julie will begin uh julie boyle the amazing julie boyle will begin with some history in terms of um what led us here to to to this meeting tonight basically julie good evening i am julie boyle executive director of communications i was asked to share a brief history of the community's discussion of school consolidations and i just want to make it clear on this valentine's day i was not picked because i'm old okay that's not why i was picked right

003this is my 24th year in the school district and some of you may know prior to that i was in education reporter so i have been attending lawrence school board meetings for nearly 30 years i think that's why i was selected i will not go back 30 years in this brief history but i could those who have been in lawrence during that time may remember the board's closure of india call valley elementary schools in the 90s grant school in 2002 centennial riverside and east heights elementary schools in 2003 but the history i do want to touch on tonight is 12 years ago in the spring of 2010 after having made five million dollars in budget cuts over a two-year period the board appointed appointed a 25-member elementary school facility vision task force and task force

004members did include parent volunteer shannon kimball and gr gordon ross as well the board charged this task force to review educational research with regard to elementary size class size and the appropriate staffing for an elementary school the board also asked the task force to review the history of elementary facilities reflecting on when and why the community constructed them and to look at the educational programming existing at various times of their construction to do this the task force broke into four subcommittees physical condition neighborhood school operating costs and financial efficiency and full-day kindergarten after nine months of study the task force concluded in brief and i will quote a number of factors other than school or class size are significantly more important to student success in our elementary schools these other factors include the implementation of

005research-based best practices in classroom instruction the delivery of effective instruction and behavior management by teachers who are passionate about what they do and who have appropriate training and support the diversity of students served and overall resources to meet the learning needs of each student end quote the task force recommended the closure of wakarusa valley elementary the expansion of full-day kindergarten and early childhood education and gave a list of best practices those included attracting developing and retaining high quality teachers strengthening teacher-student relationships streamlining cooperative learning practices and employing multi-tiered teaching and instructional interventions in addition the elementary schools facilities vision task force recommended that the board bring together stakeholders from the central and east lawrence elementary schools to quote recommend a community plan for reducing the six elementary schools of quarterly hillcrest kennedy new york pinckney

006and sunset hill to four or three schools within the next two or three years end quote the board received the task force recommendation and in the spring of 2011 voted to close wakarusa valley and appoint 26 site council members and nine teachers representing those six schools as well as woodlawn to the central and east lawrence consolidation working group and one of the quarterly parent representatives was mrs kelly jones the consolidation working group met for six months august of 2011 to february of 2012 and reached consensus only on recommending the board pursue a bond issue to improve elementary facilities including deferred maintenance and to address elementary staffing deficiencies and technology needs the working group forwarded to the board two written reports the first suggested the board consolidate these schools and determine which schools to consolidate its

007second report recommended the board keep all of the elementary buildings open in april of 2012 the board voted five to two to keep all central and east lawrence elementary schools open and to pursue a bond issue to address deferred maintenance and building and technology needs that of course led to the community's passage in 2013 of a 92.5 million dollar bond issue for facility and technology improvements to all of our schools with pressure from some in the kansas legislature to spend cash balances the board and the administration also decided at that time to use contingency reserve funds for general operations including staff salary increases that's my brief history and fast forward 12 years and patrick kelly is going to bring us up to speed on the last two years of our current budget planning process good

008evening cindy for executive director of finance so i will bring you up to speed on the current situation and sorry i'm getting there [Applause] so our current challenge began with the decline in enrollment from september of which is directly impacting our funding available during this school year even with the declining enrollment provision a reduction of 1.5 million was made coming into 2021-22 which included the repurposing of kennedy elementary going into next year we're looking at an estimated shortfall of 3.2 to 3.85 million with the loss of funding this year which includes virtual education enrollment decline and state aid waiting decline as we go into next year we also have a decrease in funding of 1.5 million because we're realizing the enrollment drop of september 2020. so both of those combined come to a cumulative 3.2

009million um less resources and that is an unaudited number which is why we come back to the 3.85 as as the higher end of where we could be at the bpac bpac subcommittees and boundary committee were charged with developing options to address the funding decrease the options included school consolidation and closure and program reductions no contingency funds are available at this point to offset the decrease in funding so going into next year or the next two years actually i didn't want you do that i'm sorry just do there okay all right thanks um we're making the following assumptions to look at the next couple years first of all an enrollment decline of 100 fte each of the next two years bay state aid increasing by a three percent cost of living adjustment which is up

010to the legislature to decide during their session and all other finance weightings and formulas remain the same as this year so for 2023 and 24 we could see a 1.6 million dollar increase and the same for the following year on the other hand if the legislature freezes the base state aid per pupil and does not do the cost of living increase then we could be looking at about a 668 thousand dollar decrease for both of those years thank you good evening i'm patrick kelly chief academic officer you've seen this slide before and it sort of is an encapsulation of some of the processes and the challenges we have ahead of us i'm going to provide just a little bit more detail and this is in your packet as a narrative titled it began with our

011budget and programming evaluation committee or what we call bpec which previewed budget cuts for back in october they actually looked at some budget review information back in january but that was based on projections and at that time we thought about 50 percent of students we estimated um we can't really know what our budget is going to be until after that september 20th counts so bpec took the first look at it october 13th seeing the budget situation on november 10th they have established those nine subcommittees those nine subcommittees included two district administrators two building administrators two classified staff members one that was selected by pal cwa and two certified staff members one being selected by lea and they were charged with developing three proposals for significant budget savings those are categorized as high medium and low

012and those proposals went to bpec on december 13th the boundary advisory committee reviewed those proposed adjustments to school boundaries for those proposals that came out of elementary school staffing the esl group and the middle school staffing committees and began doing boundary work on january 19th bpec reviewed all of those budget proposals that came from those subcommittees included estimated savings and reductions in staff on the 26th boundary advisory committee reviewed additional proposed adjustments vpack again reviewed updated budget proposals and boundary scenarios and prioritized a master list for the second time that is what you have in your packet as option one the executive leadership team reviewed the options one of those new options is one for no school closure based on feedback from board of education and then another option that was sort of in between

013or a midpoint between those two options finance departments have been working on calculating the effects of each budget scenario with fte reductions and savings on the ninth an equity impact analysis was done i think you're very familiar with that and the results of that are in your packet and here we are on february 14th to review those budget saving options i'm going to turn it over to zach who's going to talk dr zach conrad who's going to talk a little bit more oh before we do here's the school closure deadlines and again you've seen this slide we did adjust the first balloon there where it says 221 as you've called another meeting next week zach so just uh continue on with what patrick has spoken of there's options in your packet that are in front

014of you there's three options that are in front of you and i want to speak to a little bit about how we got there to those three options first b pack was asked to prioritize the list that came from the subcommittee there was 27 that came from our subcommittees bpec was asked to prioritize them but they were specifically asked to get to seven million dollars so the vast majority of bpec members did not want to do some of these cuts but because the expectation was to get to seven million dollars they did uh they were forced to choose options that would get them there and so that was option one option two took everything else that was on that list that was not a school closure or i'm sorry option three the final option option

015three so that's how we got to option one and option three then elt came together and we talked about a midpoint between the two a somewhat of a compromise between those two where we had some school closures and some program cuts we also made some decisions at that point of where we didn't want to cut as much and we had some values that were in there so learning coaches we know their role we know how valuable they are a library media specialist we looked at our executive leadership team those positions so there were things in there where we we valued them and we put that we put that in there so you'll see that in option two we have been making cuts at the district office for years that you guys are aware of and

016we've tried to do a very good job of ensuring that that does not impact our students or our teachers but it is felt here we feel that and so you'll see some of those priorities in there and i anticipate that we'll have some conversations about that uh here shortly um so from that in your packet i want to make sure we're all on the same page there's an executive summary now this executive summary looks different than the executive summary that was presented at the equity meeting as you saw on the timeline we started doing the combinations and calculations on february 2nd we had not completed it by that point but we work diligently to complete it on thursday so that we can update it and get it into the board packet so the numbers that

017they looked at are going to be different than what you guys see here but that's because it was in process we're still processing that and i believe cathy ola long has said those combinations because they're single line items when you start to combine them new calculations have to be done it takes a minute so you have option one two and three those are in the red boxes and then underneath we also put some bullet points there for easy comparison these aren't all the all the bullet points we could have put these are just bullet points in there so you'll notice the very first bullet point is school closings on the first one there's five second one there's two and then the last one there's zero right and then we talk about programs we talk about

018fte so just just for comparison purposes now in this report we go into a lot more detail here there's a color legend of the three options and so each of those reductions we tried to highlight which option selected that certain reduction and you have the full page of that and then we have under underneath out we get into the actual options within each option you have the reduction that was selected for that option you have the estimated reduction of fte again this has been updated sense the equity because we had to run that and then calculate the fte and then the estimated savings associated with that you then have a list of pros and cons now this is a cut and paste directly from bpec subcommittees and so the subcommittees did the work on that

019they came up with their pros and cons this in no means is a comprehensive list but the group that was thinking about this at the time that is the list that they created and then finally we have the equity impact analysis i'm going to let dr johnson talk more fully about this good evening to the board on september 9th we facilitated our equity impact analysis this request came from the board on december 20th we work with midwest and equity planes to develop this tool collaboratively we had different individuals from throughout the entire district give feedback over three weeks of feedback and going through and synthesizing all of that feedback came up with the final tool that we utilized on february 9th a total of 101 individuals were in an attendance we had different district advisory

020groups that are listed on the screen um participated in this event before we begin our analysis we began with a critical reflection on the proposals looking at these key questions what is the intent behind the policy proposal being reviewed who will benefit from the proposed changes and who will not and who is unintentionally being de-centered or marginalized those were the key questions that we entered into our space in our time before we engaged in conversation we went back and reviewed our work from courageous conversations looking at our four agreements and ensuring that we would stay engaged experience discomfort speak our truth and experience expect and accept non-closure the framework itself when it was developed is to assist stakeholders in engaging in reflection in conversation related to the agency's role in leading a vision for educational

021equity and at this time i would like to pause just for a moment because i want to go back in time if you will to may 10th of 2021 when the board approved the equity policy the key term in defining educational equity is the same term that was utilized on our tool it states educational equity when educational policies practices interactions and resources and are representative of constructed by and responsive to all people so that each individual has access to meaningful protest meaningfully participates in and has positive outcomes from high quality learning experiences regardless of individual characteristics and group memberships when the teams were put together they were randomly um put together in this room so all of the comfort groups were people when they entered in they kind of maybe went and sat next to

022people that were they were very comfortable with we randomly selected so there was no predetermination as to how the outcome was going to be um to be presented to you we looked at access representation meaningful participation and high outcomes you can see on the screen the four different areas that they had to select um from as well as write a rationale to a great extent some somewhat very little and not at all in your packet you will see that there are multiple groups that look to different options groups one two three and four analyze option one five six seven eight analyze option 2 and groups 9 10 and 11 analyze option 3. the results of the equity impact analysis is on slide 11 for your reference at this time we'll continue with the presentation looking

023at additional considerations thank you dr johnson these are just other considerations not necessarily to be answered tonight but as we continue the conversations and the dialogue around these options please know that these things are should still be top of mind one is growing enrollment growing enrollment you've heard me say yes we can make cuts but what are we doing to attract families attract students to lawrence because we know our budget depends on our enrollment and so one of the things that is still on the table is montessori we were looking at at new york and so that's that's some discussions that we're still having as a matter of fact we've had some meetings last night i'm sorry not last night gosh last week rather um to continue those conversations um in addition we're looking at

024uh are there any possible additions reductions or reallocations in terms of transportation when we think about where students will will move to their their new school and so it's incumbent upon us to hear uh from the board do we need to include that as part of some potential addition uh additional dollars there professional development in one of the um several of the proposals you noted multi-agent classes multi-age classrooms and so we want to make sure that we are mindful of that and thinking proactively in terms of what that professional development may look like for our educators and then of course during these transitions we want to make sure that we're thinking about staff and student support in their their new potential new buildings and as a reminder our thought exchange originally closed i think on

025the 12th it's going to close now on february the 16th so that thought exchange is still live and it's just asking the question um what is the most critical things that the board should consider when making these final decisions so i want to thank the over 1100 people that have responded to that thought exchange and have together uh included about 1200 thoughts there so that's still open and will remain open until the 16th at 11 59. and then lastly um the board had requested two things from administration one is a title ix report we did check in with the attorney again today to see where they are at with that i haven't heard from them and then also the administrative study which i'll be making some comments about that during our superintendent's report and then

026lastly we're done talking we definitely want the board to engage in conversations but as you are engaging in these conversations really think about these questions and so we just kind of listed some questions there in your packet as well and keep in mind you may be presented uh packages of options these three options you don't have to vote on one option together you can take bits and pieces of options to come up with the shortfall but really think about these questions how does each option align with the district's mission how does these options support the district vision for equitable access to rigorous culturally relevant and seamlessly aligned curriculum effective research based instruction all students achieving at high levels graduate on time and well prepared for their future as our mission states how does this option

027impact the current district student sorry the district's strategic plan and what is the impact of this option on teaching and learning is this option sustainable with this option what does the district look like in five years what does the district look like in 10 years in 15 years and we're thinking about these options i want to make sure that that's top of mind too that we're setting this district up for future success does this option delay rather than address district budget challenges how does this reduction of enrollment impact the decisions and then lastly does this decision get us closer to aligning our base cost per building across the district so with that we will turn it over to the board for discussions thank you dr lewis so before we enter into a discussion and thank

028you for posing those questions um i'd like to add to that from a board's perspective from our board policy just as a reminder as you know we do have some tough decisions ahead of us and before we enter into a board discussion as a reminder for our board manual our board culture supports our district's mission vision and shared values and dr lewis shared these some of these on his final slide our commitment to equity and education the statement says the district has made a commitment to disrupt systemic racism and other forms of injustice that profoundly impact students current and future quality of life the board of education commits to advance educational equity by applying a systemic change framework to school governance and to resource allocation we also made a commitment to have a student-centered approach

029to the board's work so our district will be well positioned to personalize learning so that and i quote all students achieve succeed and graduate future ready and per our commitment to equity as a school community we must demonstrate courageous leadership to enact systems change and successfully educate all students ensure all decisions are data driven and align our actions to achieve educational equity and excellence again for all students during your comments please keep in mind that the board needs to be clear and decisive the community and district educators deserve that even though we are not making a decision this evening during this work session that is this is something to keep in mind during this discussion determine what our guiding principles are as a board and per our strategic plan we made a commitment to cohesive

030curriculum student-centered learning safe and supportive schools effective employees making data-driven decisions so one guiding question to consider is how will this budget impact student schooling and school experience as dr lewis mentioned on the slide also something to keep in mind as a board we need to identify our guard rails what are our non-negotiables for example cutting staff while not looking at streamlining and focusing on operational efficiencies is simply shifting the burden to staff this is not fair or the right thing to do and we should have guard rails against that um so we will now open the floor up for board discussion janet thank you erica um so many thoughts about so many things um but i think where i want to start is to say thank you first to our staff and all of

031our community members who have spent and i'm sorry because i have to have these on to read it looks like i can't look at you straight i apologize for that um i appreciate all the feedback that we've received from all quarters of our community it's been really important and helpful to framing how to think about the problems that we are facing i appreciate dr lewis this the slide with the questions to consider because i think that's really the way that i've been trying to frame my thinking around this what what are the changes that we need to make that are going to best support our students that are going to align our operations with our strategic plan goals that are going to position our district to recruit and retain talented staff that are going to

032put our district in the best position that we can financially for financial health going forward what are the options that we can choose that will make systemic change that is sustainable in other words things that we don't have to then turn around and undo in the short term or the long term and what ways can we change the way that we operate to improve student learning improve the work and the jobs that we're asking our staff to do and that also rearrange our budget to free up resources to redirect to all of these priorities i think really importantly the the strategic plan goals that erica just outlined you heard her talk about student-centered decision-making aligning our resources with with our goals which include supporting our staff and and i think that for me that has

033meant that our district has had an obligation and our board has had an obligation to look at the big picture and to look at as many options as possible on the table um for how we do this because these are really really large big picture systemic issues that we need to be solving this is not a this is not a one-time uh it's not a blip this budget situation is not a blip it's a it's it's become a it's become a feature of our of our budget over time whether intentionally or unintentionally and so we can't treat it as we can fix it this year and and we're done because that is not in my opinion going to free up the resources that we need to redirect them to improving student outcomes and making sure

034that we can pay a living wage to our classified staff and appropriately compensate our teachers for that reason i appreciate that we have had a really hard discussion amongst the bpec and boundary committee members our staff and the community about the buildings that we operate and that we've actually started looking into this question more deeply [Music] i think it's really important because it is true that we spend twice as much per student in our smallest elementary school as we do in our most most our least expensive school to operate we put it that way when you have a difference of almost five thousand dollars between one school and another school and you're really not doing anything different at those two schools for those students substantially that is a that is a problem that we need

035to be looking at i think we have to be looking more closely at how we are spending funds for our at-risk kids and i i know that that is something that other board members care a lot about too um i i think it's important to point out to the community that we have at-risk students at every building in our district not just our neighborhood schools and in fact in some of our non-neighborhood schools we have more of those kids than we do at some of our smaller buildings and i think we have an obligation as a board to ask the question are we spending our resources in a way that is meeting the needs of kids in every one of our schools not just some of our schools so for that reason i think it's

036been important that we've had this conversation about school closure [Music] i'm willing to continue consider considering that as an option but i will say to my fellow board members and to our staff that i don't think that the school closure options that are in the options being presented to the board right now are the right ones um i don't think that talking about closing liberty memorial elem middle school to either put elementary kids there or to use that building for another purpose is something that we should spend a lot of time continuing to talk about as a board and as a district i there are so many things about that proposal that i don't think align with our equity work or with this this notion of realigning resources um to meet student needs and so

037i i think that is for me [Music] not an option that i think we ought to continue talking about and for that reason given where we are in the time the time frame as the slide showed kind of where we are in our decision process i'm not sure that we can do the work that we need to do around that question in the time frame that we have left but i'll just i'll just say that for me those closure options that have been brought forward as part of option one and option two are not the right ones to be talking about so i'll stop there because i know everyone else has lots to share thank you can i jump in um so i'd also say that i'm um i appreciate all the work from the

038community and from the staff and in particular i appreciate the focus on how do we both address balancing the budget but how do we do better as it relates to reducing the disparity of wages for our staff and in particular as somebody with kay and andrew who ran from may to november in this community being asked to elevate our wages minimally for our lowest wage earners to 15 an hour we can't do that by just balancing the budget this year but i agree with with shannon that the proposals in front of us are not the right ones for the community and that there is not enough time for us to get to a space that i would feel comfortable with school closure and in particular i think the ask from the community that we we

039provide more time we provide more consideration based on a few um not a few quite a few concerns around the data we looked at around how we looked at the data and around who was looking at the data that also gives me pause and i believe if i am counting votes correctly which is eric's job not mine anymore we probably do not have the votes to close liberty memorial i i do have um as part of the discussion erica if there's time i have very specific asks around liberty memorial but i'll cede my time now to someone else so uh so yeah here we are was it february 14th happy valentine's day uh i would definitely have to say that for myself uh when i saw that the number is aligned and where we weren't

040really saving that much comparatively to other options and knowing and hearing about the potential disruption from closures or not closures right there i was kind of done um and ready for this part of the conversation and as we kind of talk about okay what do we do now because there's gonna be loss right there's gonna be loss uh i think about what actually are we paying for with this you know seven million dollars what is that what does that equate to are we talking about a 15 raise for paris i don't know you know are we talking about a 25 raise for all of our staff we know it's due um and so for myself uh when i kind of look at this i i really don't and i need more information and like my

041board colleagues shannon and kelly and hearing our public i had some serious doubts about this timeline and here we are all yours yield for now this is carol um i i cannot echo the sentiment that i've heard but these are going to be tough decisions i grew up in this community i i'm going to get terrible i'm a product of lawrence public schools i am the first i'm probably the only school board member here that has attended kindergarten lawrence public schools k-12 and i have a degree from haskell and two from ku and i grew up in east lawrence i love this town um but i i can i promise you we're going to continue to look for ways to discontinue the mental harm and do our best to continue to improve educational outcomes but

042closing disparities has plagued this community generation after generation and i have met we have met and talked with community members we marched community members and closing schools will not provide a sense of hope that our district has been attempting to and we've been trying to pivot and pivot and pivot and um i just it's time that we as a board can step up and show that our students our students and our community members and our staff that we value them but this is going to be tough thank you [Applause] i feel like i've been the most quiet out of out of the discussions that have been happening what may help with your quietness if you pull them okay let's try this again i know i've been very silent with the discussions happening in the community

043and in our public space but um there are reasons behind that because i like to look at all the information that is provided i like to hear from our staff i've watched the videos on the stream several times it's a lot of information to process it's a lot of information and like my colleagues have stated some really hard decisions but i do feel that the school closures are not something i would support at this time i think if we did that incrementally at a later date where we have a chance to have a community committee some form here to help us provide that feedback and really do that work along with us and i do appreciate the nine committee subcommittees that developed and put all of this information together for us so that's where i

044stand with what we are looking at today and i appreciate everyone's work and your emails sometimes i feel like you all should be sitting here in my place because you have some excellent points you have really brought a lens and equity lens to some of your comments and i just really appreciate that hello everybody um andrew nussbaum appreciate everybody speaking and sharing and i didn't know what to expect right this is my first work session on the board for at least um k and i um since we were sworn in and i look forward to what the next steps are of this work session for the next 45 minutes before we call to order our board meeting tonight i'm excited to hear some of the thoughts and perspectives that i'm hearing i agree and i

045think i've been pretty open that um i have not wanted school closures to be an option at this point and i'm excited to hear some of the perspectives and critiques concerns and wondering about time and pace i really appreciate hearing about when and how and who um i really hope to exist in this space in our board culture always prioritizing hyper prioritizing educational equity and equity with a critical sharp analysis that includes power dynamics and includes who gets to define what equity is and then who that impacts the most that definitely acknowledges resource allegation and even is explicit in equity that it's a resource allegation towards those that historically and currently haven't had as much resource allegation so i am hopeful based on what i'm hearing and actually um expecting myself and us and continue

046to build our board culture alongside all of you and staff and community members and stakeholders to continue to deepen what we mean by equity and then how we then process and act into what equity means especially when i'm looking at option one option two and option three i'm still seeing from my perspective my background my experience and hearing from community members and staff members most the cuts to me still seem to be harming those that get paid less those that are closer to school closer to students for example [Applause] for example assistant coach positions um and so in gymnastics and this and this all of those a lot of the assistant positions um are supplemental income for classified staff or am still expecting and needing and requesting um the administrative study review and i'm also

047still anxious and aware of the administrative study review coming from k s k a s i'm anxious about what that's going to share because if it's saying well we compare we need more administration compared to blue valley compared to shawnee mission compared to olathe my perspective is those are very wealthy and very conservative school districts compared to lawrence kansas so from my perspective i don't want us to model our organizational chart on shiny mission on olathe on blue valley and other districts that we compare to so from my perspective if we're looking at fte if we're looking at numbers of students we're looking at enrollment i'd like for us again to look at those that have the most power the most privilege and the most resources and that is those that work at the district

048office and that are furthest away from students on a daily basis and who over the last 10 years have been given more raises percentage-wise and numbers-wise than certified and classified staff i ran on working alongside classified staff my backgrounds as a therapeutic special education teacher and so for me my priorities and non-negotiables are classified staff certified staff programs that support certified and classified staff and are closer to students and also looking at ways of cons we're talking about efficiency right and ft fde and staffing let's think about efficiency of organizational chart and district leadership okay i just don't want us to be talking about efficiency only in special education only in sports and arts and the library instructional coaches and efficiency in neighborhood schools we also need to be looking at efficiency costs and resource

049distribution two schools two students and two staff and the only way that can actually happen is if we actually redistribute power and resources and decision making from the top and make it more bottom up um what i see in each of these options is actually and i'm very concerned about it a retribution of resources as is towards the top and away from those that are closer to students live in the neighborhoods that they work in and so forth i have a lot more to say but i'm excited about where we are and i still hope to alongside all of you and alongside the community push challenge critique affirm and go further thank you thank you so does he hold the applause please just very disruptive thank you so um if board members can keep your

050comments concise we have a lot of work to do in a very short period of time go ahead kelly i can i actually was going to talk about something really concrete um so do you want me to wait i'll wait and see what is next okay go ahead shannon you haven't had an opportunity so um we've heard from every board member and so the purpose of this work session was to give direction to the district to identify what are the non-negotiables effectively what's off the table at least in the short term because we are all very aware of the timeline of what we have to do for the resolution and all that so i would like to and we're not voting it's consensus among the board so are school closures on or off the table

051for the short term not period indefinitely but for the short term our school closures i guess i will frame it as off the table for me the specific ones that were identified in the option one and option two are not the right ones they wouldn't be off the table altogether for me now or in the longer term in terms of talking about how we need to structure our resources in a way that actually meets our goals but i but i do i have enough reservations about the liberty memorial component that i'm that's not one i'm willing to support okay this is carol i am not willing to support any school closures at this time and and like shannon said the schools that are targeted to me it was a slap in the face because i

052grew up in east lawrence so no i'm just i will say no for now thank you uh i uh i have consensus on that okay i agree yes off the table i'm sorry kelly yeah okay this is andrew yes off the table hey off the table erica okay so it looks like at least in the short term school closures are off the table so thank you all for for doing that um i would say i haven't given mine um at this point it doesn't matter because of how the consensus is but i would say in the short term i would like a little more time and time is not on our side unfortunately so so it'll be off the table for me at least in the short term can you define short term for the

053community the term is not like for the next school year yeah right thank you yes i wanted to go back to some some additional comments about some of the things that we do have to consider going forward i really want to challenge all of my fellow board members on a couple of things by taking the building closures off the table this year i believe that the cuts that we will be forced to make in order to meet our priorities are more inequitable than what we might be able to do if we had the time to work on these issues further i think that the idea that we will be able to solve the problems that have led us here by cutting administrative jobs is not based in the reality of the data around how we

054spend our money in this district and it's actually not true that we have given a larger percentage raise to our administrative staff in any year that i've been on the board than what we allocated to teachers and paraprofessionals and i want to be really clear about that and in fact some years they got percentage-wise less than those other groups because the board prioritized classified and certified staff over administrators so that is categorically not a true statement and i think that we have to move beyond that kind of rhetoric around around administration because honestly none of this work that needs to happen around the budget is going to happen without these people so i really really want us to be thinking about the fact that the consensus we just reached means because of the way we

055spend money in this district and the fact that most of it goes to students through the mechanism of teaching staff and classified staff in our buildings that what we are doing is we are going to be making substantial cuts to programs that impact kids regardless because you can't get to the numbers that we're talking about without doing that so i am going to really issue a challenge to everybody on the board to be thinking about how we can go through a process that is actually going to change the way this district operates so that we are driving resources towards our priorities which is student learning and teacher and classified staff pay and retention and the thing the things that erica mentioned that are in our strategic plan i will point out that nowhere in our

056strategic plan do we mention neighborhood schools because what we are about is a mission of serving students in whatever buildings would they are in and wherever they are in our community it is absolutely true that we are spending twice as much per student in some buildings as in other buildings it's also true that of the the 20 districts in the state that have more than 5 000 students 14 of those districts on average have elementary school building sizes that are larger than lawrence we are doing something in this district that is different than the way that other districts are doing things and that has been because the community has asked us to try to continue doing that but i would suggest that one of the reasons that we are struggling is that that mission that

057we've been trying to achieve is not aligned with the way that funding is done for schools in kansas and we are going to continue to struggle against that policy headwind as long as our state uses a foundation formula for funding schools in other words in 1992 when the legislature said we're going to give you base date per pupil and you're going to get that plus local option budget dollars to fund your buildings that was the point in time when the neighborhood school model that lawrence had had obviously with the history that julie talked about you know we used to have even i think eight more elementary buildings than we have now through usd consolidation that's what ended up in our district we've we've been through this process over the years because the funding model does

058not align with the operational model and so we have to figure out how to align those things so i'm really i'm going to challenge the board because if we're serious about driving resources to kids that need them and paying our staff better we have to do something different we cannot continue to operate the way we are operating and expect that those those that equation is going to turn out differently and and so um i i think that that's something we've got to acknowledge and we've got to acknowledge the pain that we're going to cause to our staff and families and students because we're going to cut some stuff that is really important to a lot of people and i don't want to do that any more than anybody else on this board does but that's

059the that's the place that we are in this process thank you for your comments shannon and i want to clarify um i wasn't very clear when i gave my um my my my thoughts around that um i think there are other i'm not against school closings um i think it's something that probably should happen looking at the data um however i think there are other models or other scenarios that we could participate like um explore and um again it's happening so quickly i think that's the part that i am uncomfortable with it's not with the idea of closing a school because i've seen the numbers i see what inefficiencies are there i also see that if we continue operating in an efficient manner that's in and of itself inequitable and it's it's not sustainable and

060we're going to be sitting here well we probably won't but we're going to be sitting here in the next 10 years having the same conversation but it's going to be even tougher so i wanted to clarify to leadership the community and my board colleagues what my answer what it meant some context there okay you had something you wanted to say yeah you know i i was just gonna say um you know i uh i definitely um hear and understand uh that you know we're facing some loss i mean i i said it when i was talking just a few moments ago but i think that there's there's opportunity in this uh and where we don't have to just look at we're cutting programs you know we're looking at restructuring and being able to provide services

061in a different way that's sustainable you know and i think that um yeah uh it's gonna be challenging moving ahead but i i i i challenge the board to be thinking about okay so here we are like if we're looking at for example 50 000 in athletics why are we picking one or two why don't we look at it collectively how do we save fifty thousand dollars um in athletics as a whole so i think that there are some collective decisions that we can make that our building levels can make um and so when we when we're saying cuts i don't i don't necessarily buy that you know i think that yes we're looking at restructuring how we do things um but i think our conversation gets to how do we transition our schools and

062our district in that manner okay so do you mind if i go okay so i really don't want to miss this opportunity because it kind of builds on what k said what where is there opportunity here so we've been talking about deficit thinking because we're dealing with a deficit um but one of the things that's come out of the conversations i've had with community members that i absolutely do not want to lose tonight so i spent two sent two children through liberty memorial um did you send kids through liberty memorial yeah i think yeah we a couple of us have sent our kids through liberty memorial and um it's liberty carol carroll's a graduate of liberty moore um i want to talk about title funding so one of the things that's come up and i

063don't want to get too too out of out of our lane or down a rabbit hole but i don't think this is actually because when we look at restructuring which is what we're talking about how do we deliver education differently to account for the the offset and the budgets that we have to make one of those areas is title funding um i i believe that this is this is my interpretation i believe we started looking at liberty memorial for a couple of reasons and one of them i suspect has to do with a lot of the challenges that liberty memorial is facing so right now we structure our title funding so that it lives only in our elementary schools it does not follow students to the middle school so all of you who have elementary

064kids that send them off to billy mills and to liberty memorial is my guess is where most of them are going those are also our neighborhood schools and they're also where our children end up and they need help and i am asking the district to review very seriously the decision to retain all of our title funding in our elementary buildings i think it is time for us to consider while we are restructuring services how do we deliver title funding and now is the time so when we look at these opportunities and the discussions that we had um i'm sure there are there are cuts we need to make at the administrative level i'm sure there are cuts we need to make in how we deliver education at the elementary level i'm sure there are cuts

065we have not examined at the high school level those have to also include a framing that assures the ideologies that andrew talks about in the practicality that shannon talks about there is a um piece of each of those things that are true and title funding is one of them it's not the only one so i'd ask the district to consider very seriously the way that we've delivered title funding and the only way that i can make an informed decision about the budget related to title funding is if i see that information in front of me so i'm requesting a report that just educates the board the district on how we deliver title funding what the decisions are and how we might do it differently starting next year if possible and i wanted to just say

066like as somebody that's on negotiations inflation is real our uh paula and i are are taking very seriously our our mission to work with our unions to increase wages for them if we only address the deficit this year we are failing again and i can't i just can't i can't live with that so i really want our neighborhood schools to live too i mean i really do but i also want to examine because if you do the math there's not enough money to cut every administrator to shut down this building you're in right now and still reach what we want to reach for the people that we we should be because it's an equity issue if we cannot find people to serve our most it needs students across all of our buildings we're failing our

067students so we have to do something about wages that might include and i'm asking you all to consider is the way that we deliver elementary education in our smaller buildings i sent my own kid i i know that we benefited from that and i'm gonna take what i've read from all of you very seriously but as a community i'm asking us to think about how is it possible that there's some truth between andrew and shannon that we need to consider now i don't think it's five elementary buildings i think not i don't think it's joining broken arrow and pinkney that makes no sense but i think it might be something in there that is where there are schools with affinity where we can build them up not not uh just close them so that's a

068conversation that's longer and doesn't have to happen you know this month um and so negotiations when do we make those decisions um paula and i will work with the union over the course of this semester so this conversation is ongoing so we we've committed to not closing schools for this year we are still committed to our unions to look at how can we better serve them and pay them now in this coming year better and i don't know how to do that without closing schools i'm just being transparent i don't know how to do that so i have to work with the district administrators to figure that out but it is a serious priority for me that everyone that works for us can afford their grocery bill i'll say it's a serious priority for me

069as well and it's the reason why when we were having the discussion uh back in december that i said we need to look way beyond 3.8 million dollars because that is something that we heard i'm sorry that we heard loud and clear appreciate that thank you that is something that we heard loud and clear through our strategic planning it's something that i've heard repeatedly in this room from a lot of you from our representatives from our unions um and it's it's our inability to make progress on the wage issues in our district is hindering our ability to make progress on our student achievement issues in our district so the schools that we all love will not be the places that we want to send our kids in a few years if we cannot figure this

070out and we have struggled at this board table and in this district to figure this out for the last 10 years i've watched us do it every year it just feels like there is not enough room in that budget to put real meaningful money on the table for our employee groups and i for what i'm i'm done with that we have to do things differently so we can make progress on that and it's one of the reasons why i am so adamant that we really push ourselves hard to think about how we're going to do this because um it's time it's it's well we're decades past time in this district to figure this out one of the reasons we're so far behind is that we have been operating the way we are operating now for

071the better part of the last 30 years and if you think about the lost opportunity costs that we have for having done that in terms of what we pay our staff you can see it you can see it if you pull the starting if you pull the wage data for all these districts that i've been looking at to kind of compare us to and you look at how they structure their districts and you look at what they're able to pay their staff for a starting wage and what their how far their salary scale goes how much a teacher in their district earns over a lifetime it becomes real clear real fast where our problem is and so we have to fix that um you know kelly i'm really glad you brought up the title funding

072um there's been a lot of discussion of title funding and the comments that have been coming to the board we get title funding based on how many kids qualify throughout our district but we are only spending it on as far as i can tell about 30 percent of the kids that are that qualify for that funding we're only spending it in buildings where about 30 percent of those kids go to school so that i think is a real issue that we need to be grappling with at the board table in terms of what we are asking our district to do in the way that we operate and i'm glad that we're going to have that conversation it's that is also overdue so thanks appreciate that and um kelly and shannon both bring up a really

073good point and we mentioned previously providing clear direction so another um topic that the community has emailed i know me and probably the whole board about numerous times the question is it necessary to do the seven million dollars that we talked about right now or is a phased approach more appropriate so do what's legally what we have to do legally to balance the budget we talked about conservative number as 3.8 million [Music] believe yes um so again giving clear direction to leadership as a board what what are we doing and what's the direction we want to give can i so i'm going to say real quickly for me on this one like i go back to the fact that what are we talking about so we're meaning 3.8 to legally or 3.2 to 3.8 legally

074but when we're talking about the um the bigger numbers what type of raises are we talking about what type of positions are we talking about it's it's hard to be able to to say yes let's be conservative when we don't actually know like our how much people are actually going to be taking home or that increased wages that they're going to receive so we have to negotiate wages at the negotiation table and that's going to happen over the course of the semester so we actually we haven't we haven't gotten a hard number from either the lea or from pal what they would hope that the district would do and more typically we do that over the course of the next couple of months to see like how can we get them to that number um

075in an average in a year that we didn't include like last year we had a freeze and you know i i'll you know i'll probably be on my knees actually hoping that we don't do that again this this year um but that we meet with the just in terms of honoring the negotiation process uh i really want to hear from pal like what they what they are hoping to see this year and then um we have a meeting with them paula because i came tonight and it wasn't tonight yeah it's on the 21st 21st yeah and then um we still will meet with the um with uh lea going forward over the but to be honest we have to wait and see what the legislature does before we have a really good idea of where

076we're at with our contract so that typically happens in may so we'll still be looking at what is the ask from the union and to honor that that process will do that at the negotiations committee so it's a little hard actually to answer your question because that's an ongoing process as it relates to negotiations with our our unions um so the the actual hard number they haven't given us yet and we'll hopefully hear that in the next couple of weeks and then that will be part of the discussion going through march but the the important uh math there is that kathy shared with bpac and with the board i think that it costs about 825 thousand dollars for each 1 percent increase in compensation that you're going to give to those um employee groups so

077you know that's that's the rough math right but what is that napkin math well what does that mean like if i i'm just like one percent like if you put one percent if you put one one percent more money into the salary pool for uh teachers and for classified staff it costs about 825 000 to do that so that's but then you have to you apply that pool of money to the salary schedules right typically and and so it can mean different things for different employees based on where they are on the salary schedule but one of the things that kelly and paula have been talking about at the negotiations table has been you know the request for example from pal cwa you know as they were talking about their contract last year perhaps we

078don't just apply it across their whole salary schedule perhaps we talk but that those are negotiable issues and so i think that's the that's the thing that's a little bit hard for us um in this conversation is that we can't really if we were to say for instance if we were to say this is the number hard and fast no more than that we would have decided a negotiable issue at the board table before we negotiated yeah yeah so so i go back to the to your question uh erica um i don't know right now we need to give the board the district some direction though so i'm gonna go down the line i'm still at we need to aim for at least seven million okay i think i would agree with that until we

079had more information okay i agree but this is carol i agree but i need more information as well um so uh honoring the process of the negotiation i definitely want us to look for more dollars and i'm interested in continuing that conversation with the union the seven million number is a number that we identified based on where we're at and the lea negotiations right now and some workshopping we did around the salary scale just to kind of understand where that number comes from but because we haven't talked to pal i'm not sure i mean to be so i can say seven million but and that might help just move this conversation along um so i'll end there but i i still want to honor that process and wait to hear from the unions yeah it's

080hard to say for me it depends on why seven million and where the seven million comes from um for me i think it's i'm okay with being kind of named as dishonest i'm i would i feel really authentic in what i've been sharing and what i'm understanding the positionality i'm in for me it's about classified staff then certified staff so if that's seven million yes i'm sorry andrew you said yes to seven million i said it depends on so many factors and if it it depends on where the cuts are coming from and seven million at this point yes okay you have any paula yeah i agree with um kelly um on honoring because we haven't had that number from pal cwa i would go with the 7 million and i'm saying that very carefully

081because i was leaning more towards the 3.8 but i do want to honor pal cwa and our at the negotiations table so this is what i'm hearing we're saying no school closures and we're saying find seven million dollars so what will the students experience if that's the scenario in the direction from the board like i need to know what a day in a life would the students how to impact the students directly not indirectly but direct impact on student learning and experience because that's what we are telling the district to do yeah i agree with that as an example just to kind of i think build on what you're saying so it might be that they show us that and we are not comfortable with that what that outcome of that is for our students

082and as an example taking the library media specialists which we haven't mentioned tonight that's an example of a position um particularly at the elementary level and that's not to disparage um library media specialists at any other level so please don't misunderstand but that functionally that's a position it would be very would have a very serious impact on the operations of our district and so it's kind of looking at what would it look like and then evaluating whether that's something we're comfortable with is that what you're saying erica i'm saying that we're we're kind of talking out of both sides of our mouth yeah a little bit not a little bit that's what's happening yeah we're saying save our schools if you will which we are trying our goal is to save the school system and

083we have to make tough decisions in order to do that so we're seeing no school closures in the near short term but we're also saying find seven million dollars and we're also saying we don't want the students to feel the impact of this i just don't think there's any way we're going to do any of this without students feeling an impact as well so that's minimal impact we obviously list the least disruptive option because we know students are going to feel an impact of this um but that's what we're i think oh go ahead kay i was going to say i said so erica what i'm saying is no school closures right now i don't really know what 7.7 million dollars actually looks like when it comes to how much money our staff gets to

084take home in the various levels and the various positions so i need more information before i can make that decision and to your point i also would like to know what will happen when it comes to the impact of our students on the day day-to-day because for example as uh kelly was saying library specialists different you know special education can have huge impact i don't know what that looks like and i need to have i need to have information of how that will impact our students on a day-to-day basis so that's what i'm saying and what i'm saying is as a teacher in this district that has worked alongside students for over a decade my experience and i'm excited about what the thought exchange is going to tell all of us since we're spending money

085on that is that the way to have the least direct impact on students is to actually look at the whole general fund and acknowledge that administrative class per person carries the most money relative to classified and certified staff we talked about facing huge grief cutting programs demoralization we got to do things differently and then yet when i bring that up that is like off the table that is a concern to me anybody has it no one has said anything and that's a mischaracterization that is going to cause confusion in the community nobody has said it it's in all of the options everyone believes that that's we're going to have to go but it's not going to get us to seven million dollars oh i'm not saying it's going to get us to 7 this to

086seven million dollars i'm saying i am ready to have more of that conversation instead of um where we're at with it right now dr lewis where does this put the district um well um let me start with this mark fagin you may know that name rochelle or not yep um he he penned an article coincidentally february 14 2011. um to this day and the title of the article school task force puts off decision on recommending elementary closures and there's an image on there that looks almost identical to the sign that's on the fence at pinkney wright right now and he interviewed chuck warner who i think was a former bank president here and chuck warner says this he said closing two schools next year and then consolidating four schools um into two schools within three

087to five years would do the most good for the long term and he also said this closing schools isn't as much about saving money as it is about protecting teachers programs and other educational efforts and so when i look at that article you know february 14 2011 and thinking about where we are today having this conversation when he mentioned about protecting teachers it doesn't take long to do a quick google search and see the articles where educators are leaving the profession in record numbers when i first came to this district and i know everyone on this board agrees um we said we must address staff salary staff includes administration teachers and classified staff we must address staff salary um been called a lot on social media i don't want to be called a lot on

088this so i'm that committed to addressing staff salary so we have to do that so when it comes to what the impact will look like for programs um and i can't remember who did this there was a recent study done where look what looked at what most employers are looking for those skills that most employers are looking for and those skills are not attained in the chemistry class they're attained in extracurricular activities you know sports uh choir man that's one of those skills that employers need and so when i think about some of the reductions as i relate to some of those programs that's where i think we will um hurt some some students now granted if we look at reducing electricity reducing the electric budget now we may need to tell students to maybe

089bring a coat we may have to cut the temperature down just maybe five five degrees but some of these it just depends on which one of these um options here on this on options i'm just looking at option three that we continue to pursue but at the same time what other opportunities can we give our students where it's not much as i think somebody said it's going to be some loss um but how deep that cut is and how deep that loss is um depends on what which one of these we pursue the most that makes sense thank you i guess okay as i say you know when you have when your budget is 85 people and you talk about making cuts that don't impact students um those those two things are like almost impossible

090to both be true right you because when you have when you have to make cuts and 85 of your budget is people that means you're you're cutting positions you're cutting you're you're getting rid of jobs that people have been doing and they've been doing them in service of the students in this district [Music] one of the reasons why one of the reasons why school closures is so often the thing that districts end up doing when they're talking about these issues is that your student is still going to have a classroom teacher at the end of the day and they're going to go to a school building where they have extracurricular activities and opportunities and hopefully an art teacher and a music teacher and maybe an orchestra a band program it might be a different building

091and yes there is a lot of research out there about the negative impacts in the um in the short and immediate term of school closures but i would suggest that one of the reasons why there's not research out there about the long-term impacts of program cuts especially substantial and significant program cuts is that districts don't choose to do that typically they don't gut their programs to balance their budget because of the very thing that we're all talking about here right now because it does severely impact children and probably more so than rearranging the buildings where you are providing your services so i i i know i was the first one to speak up tonight to say i don't think we can talk about these particular closure options this year but i am [Music] really serious

092about having a conversation about what is the purpose of our district why do we exist and what does that mean in terms of how we operate in the future going forward because cutting everything that our kids love about going and i'm a parent i have three kids in this district i have a kid in elementary school i have a kid in middle school i have a kid in high school one of my kids is an arts kid one of my kids is a music kid i don't know about the third one yet what her thing is going to be but i hope that she has options for sports and fine arts and all the things because cutting all of those things and getting rid of librarians and learning coaches and leaving our teachers to fend

093for themselves and their professional learning is not sustainable in the long term and so it's not what i want for my my kids or for your kids or anybody's kids in this district so i look at this list of stuff that we're going to have to do in order to balance our budget and make progress on our priorities when we're not talking about school closures and it makes it truly breaks my heart because we are going to take away some things from some people that are really important to them um so i really i really i'm struggling with that um i'm struggling with that i struggle with that coming to the decision that i came to about what i was going to say tonight about this question [Music] we have got to figure out how

094to do this better um year and next year and the year after so that we can provide all those things that we all want to provide um selling this building is not something that's going to help with that so i have gotten so many emails about this building [Music] and about the people that work in it and you know our staff need to have their paychecks arrive on time they need to have insurance benefits we need to have curriculum people in this building who are doing work that teachers frankly don't have time to do i mean let's talk about that let's talk about we get rid of those administrators that do that work and guess who is going to have to start doing it it's teachers in the building and we already are overburdening our

095staff with all the things that we are asking them to do every day so i want us to really also be thinking about uh being strategic in how we rearrange those resources so that we are not putting an even greater burden on our staff at the building level they already have enough to do and and i i am grateful that they do it every day agreed thank you for your thank you shannon and you're right we cannot do everything we're doing now but with less people that's not okay to do um so dr lewis do you have what you need from the board you and your team um i'm looking at him um no i didn't think so i know because there are some things on this list like when we look at and keep

096in mind we were looking at no school closures we were looking at where can we get the upwards of seven million dollars and there's some deep cuts on there for example we look at reducing librarians by 75 percent in our agreement um and we do recognize the value that our librarians bring in terms of those 21st century skills that our students are getting when they go to the library but in addition to that this is where some of our teachers get their plan time as well you know learning coaches i can tell you how valuable you know those learning coaches are in terms of improving instruction so we can look at this list and i'm looking at the team please come up if it's if it's a question you have or some information you need

097we can look at this list and see where we can get those those cuts because again legally we have to balance the budget um that's a just a and i think everyone agrees that we have to to balance that and then uh we did hear that um we need to address staff salary so the other i apologize for interrupting but building on what you said to to grow to get a bit more peace in this part of the board um i think it's not the direction around the options that are in front of us is that perhaps those are not the options that we should be looking at so while um you know that they're that those options might be the only options we have left i mean having served on on bpac for a

098couple of years i don't think there's anything hidden there i mean certainly i've looked over everything that kathy gave us for the last couple of years i've spent a lot of time looking over you know what we did in 2019 what we did this year i mean and trying to see is there something that we're overlooking so i don't i don't mean to infer you haven't already done that work um but it does you know like for example with the the administrative analysis when we get that back what does that tell us is there new new information there if we know we have to take library media specialists off of the table then then what would be the next layer thing that we might look at so it's hard for me to look at that

099list right now and and and erica go through and say this one this one this one where we're not really in that space yet i think the direction is you we looked at these three options two of them were clearly not not great options the third one might also not be exactly every you know all the places we can go and look at so that's i suppose the challenge and you might come back and tell us dr lewis that we've we have done the work that we could administratively and this is these are really the lit this is the list this is it and then you know then maybe erica we do go through each option and have a discussion and see where that takes us for this year if we're not going to be

100talking about consolidation and that might not get us to 7 million and just real quickly before we get started on our board meeting i'm just going to say that you know the list that was provided on january 19th it provided different levels uh when we're looking at some of those positions so that there are options and where it's not 75 is 25 so i think that i think that's where we should be looking at and where we should be having some discussions is maybe it's not 75 maybe it's 25 so that that is what i will say yeah and yeah i and again this list was with no school closure so that was the the max and so if it's 25 we'll just have to look for deeper cuts um somewhere else um and again

101we still have to address um our building utilization so you know again 10 years ago we were having these conversations and it seems like the longer we kick the can down the road the heavier it gets so i don't think it's a matter of um if we close schools but when and i think that one of the pieces of feedback from the community has been around time and timeline and certainly we now have time to really dig in to to the operational piece of what where do we go from here um if that does that mean building closures does that mean building closures and boundary changes does that mean boundary changes you know some of the you know i think it's real interesting to look at our spending data in our in our free and

102reduced lunch data and consider for example um in our title spending and which schools are title schools and really think about are we structured in a way where we're sending our kids that makes the most sense educationally um there is literature out there that says that you probably shouldn't silo all of your high needs kids in buildings together so does that mean that we need to be looking at boundary changes that change where people go at the middle or elementary level um i i think there are some given some additional time there are other places that we can look um to think about this problem that may help us come to a better solution and as an example we did get a um as we did get recommendations and suggestions from from teachers that were

103different than the ones that came from bpac so it'll to me it's it's it now that now if we know right now that there are no consul no um closures and thinking about um who we would want at the table to for this next year to have the discussion about what other additional cuts can we have or what would it look like in some of the in some of even some of our buildings that are run perhaps less efficiently but is there time to bring to the table or to look at the ideas that have come to us internally so not not those ideas coming to us maybe from people that have less understanding of how how the district runs but for those folks inside the district with expertise about education and how it's delivered

104we i mean we did see the board did see a pretty good proposal for what that might look like that was different than what was brought to the board and that might that might also be another avenue is who who can help you solve those problems if you feel like at the at the elt you but you've exhausted everything you possibly can to find those dollars and that that proposal by the way did not get us to seven million dollars um so i understand the ask is heavy and hard and i agree with you that we need to look at other avenues in the subsequent years i do want to honor the folks that were on b-pack in those sub-committees those were the people that were in internally that were working on on this i

105think what this time also allows us to do is in addition to montessori look at some additional programs that may attract families to to lawrence i.e dual language year-round school things like that okay we are past our time to start the board meeting but i do want to summarize just to make sure that the district has clear um direction from the board so no school closures for the upcoming school year but the board will consider possible the possibility of school closings in another school year maybe the school year after that potentially and the board still wants to identify seven million dollars in the budget to find and um we will take a deep dive on operational efficiencies as where um as we're i guess re-developing different proposals and scenarios does that sum up what our

106discussion and direction is from the board to the district okay so you have what you need now okay yeah yeah uh and this is just a plug i guess to um i do have some additional information on the administrative summary that i'll discuss during my superintendent's report so thank you all um district leadership for walking us through um this exercise it was very um it was very valuable i appreciate that and the board for having this tough conversation it's not easy to have this conversation regardless but then to have it with everyone's eyes on us it's another level so i appreciate everyone's putting themselves out there the vulnerability and um just the healthy discussion that we had so um we are seven minutes past when we said we're going to start the board meeting however

107we are going to take a five-minute break before we start so we will be back we'll disable start at 7 45. 14th board of education meeting is called to order for the safety of all those in attendance the display of signs or banners will not be permitted in addition masks are required to be worn during the meeting except when speaking at the presenter's podium please take a moment to locate the nearest exit in the event of an emergency in the event of a tornado you will notice designated areas highlighted on the maps located on the front and back walls tonight's meeting is a meeting of the board held in public not a public hearing or discussion with the board patrons will be invited to share comments as part of their as part of the public

108comment portion of the meeting as outlined in the board policy b cbi the 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 question and answer session with the board if your comments require follow-up from the board or district staff that will occur after tonight's meeting the district assumes no responsibility and or liability for the information shared during public commentary the views expressed are solely those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the lawrence public schools please be respectful of the presenters and the board as we discuss and deliberate the issues and topics on tonight's agenda comments or actions that are disrespectful of presenters or disruptive of the board's discussions and deliberations useful foul language

109or threats to the board or others in attendance will result in immediate removal from the meeting in addition usc 497 provides public access to the board meetings through live streaming the platform used for this live streaming has acceptable use rules for content on its site while the district does not delete or hide board member sorry board meeting videos the streaming platform may elect to do so if the content of the public comment or any other portion of the meeting is found to violate the platform's acceptable use roles thank you for your cooperation in these areas at this time a motion will be in order to approve the agenda do you have a motion i move this shannon i move we approve the agenda this is carol i second bill yes kimbo yes cadoo blackwood yes

110emerson yes jones yes newsbomb smith motion passes 7-0 next is special recognition none for dr louis i do know we have a retirement shannon yes we do uh the board would like to extend their congratulations to diane gene owen on your retirement please accept our heartfelt thanks for your six years of service and devotion to this community and its schools thank you nexon's report of the superintendent of schools dr lewis yes thank you board president hill i am excited to talk about some student highlights first of all serving as the premiere event for more than four thousand boys and girls clubs across the country the lawrence celebration featured three of our scholars freshman ohin denzel lawrence high school sophomore sophomore azura clark and congratulations to arabella gibb a lawrence high freshman who came out as

111this year's 2022 youth of the year so she will go on to compete uh regionally and then hopefully nationally so congratulations to uh arabella the national coaches poll ranks free state highs debaters serena rupp and john marshall third in the nation this is the highest ranking of any district debate team and we think any kansas debate team on the national coaches poll in addition the roland high i'm sorry roland hall high school in utah uses and a logarithm to consider win loss and strength of schedule statistics to rank the top debate teams in the country well this poll ranks rump and marshall number one in the nation so congratulations to serena and john that's awesome [Applause] and just announced this morning the kansas scholastic press association named lawrence high's caller dunn the kansas student journalist

112of the year this morning during its annual conference that was held right here at ku he will now go on to represent the state and the national uh in the national competition so definitely congratulations there last week yes thank you well not thank you for me but thank you um last week was um national school counselors um week and so the kansas school counselor association presented its kansas councilor of the year award to amanda atkins sunset hill elementary councilor she received this award award last monday and that was a great kickoff to the week celebrating all of our school counselors across the district who play a pivotal role uh in our schools so congratulations to amanda midco and a vista credit union recognized chef camille acorn our lawrence college and career center and academy culinary

113arts teacher with this educator of the month award last week and if you have not had any of her tasty goodies i think the board we've had a meeting out there a couple of times her and her scholars do an amazing job and this is a huge honor for a chef camille who does a fabulous job at our lawrence college and career center and academy and thanks to board member kay emerson for being present doing this presentation so congratulations to chef camille [Applause] last week the lawrence lions noon club honored the infamous d kemp one of free state high school security officers with its local heroes award for his outstanding service and outstanding service to the community he is always he's everywhere first of all but he's always looking for ways to help someone else

114so congratulations to the kemp another honor congratulations to elijah ditto and evelyn gursky both are free state higher bases they were invited recently to perform at the carnegie hall with the high school honors performance series so what a huge honor for these two scholars to perform at carnegie hall congratulations to elijah and evelyn liberty memorial central middle school 8th grader eli kochlet won the douglas county spelling bee um oliver minor of west middle school finished second so congratulations to both of these spellers we do have the douglas county spelling bee winner right here from lawrence public schools over at liberty memorial so congratulations to eli also when our scholars leave us they are still doing great things we also learned last week that free state high alumnus max the lich i think that's his last

115name is one of ku's three nominees for the prestigious truman scholarship it's always rewarding to see and read about alumni accomplishments so congratulations to max max max can get some a round of applause thank you this is just a reminder that doing during wednesday's douglas county commission meeting commissioners unanimously approved extending the january 7th emergency public health order it requires face masks for the face mask for those ages 2 and older inside public spaces in douglas county this order will remain in effect until march 2nd unless rescinded or modified by commissioners i will say we have seen as you notice we have seen the county's new case rate declining and the same thing in terms of our reports in our schools however we're still in red so with that please stay vigilant with our prevention

116measures and i wanted to provide as i indicated earlier i want to provide the board and the community an update on the administrative serv study as you know the board had asked for some comparisons in terms of some other district numbers administrators uh the the account as well as the salaries across districts that are similar size as well as those neighboring districts that we tend to compete with for for staff and we previously shared some principal and superintendent salary comparisons from the kansas state department of education i want to share those again of the 18 large and neighboring districts lawrence is the seventh largest in kansas um average principal salaries in lawrence in 2019 20 were ranked 13th after desoto topeka wichita and alban alban washburn and ranked 12th in 2020-21 our principal salaries were

117higher than those in garden city kansas city eudora manhattan baldwin city and derby in terms of salary change from 2019 to to 2021 our principal salaries had improved the least of the 12 districts whose principal salaries had increased and this is hugely important as we continue to compete with other districts for administrators and if we take a look at of those same 18 districts my salary in 2019-20 was ranked seventh and in 20 2021 it was ranked sixth and so in terms of superintendent salaries that had increased during that period eight superintendents saw a larger increase in nine either received a smaller increase or decrease in salary and those decreases in salary were new superintendents that i took have had taken over after some long-standing superintendents kds i'm sorry kansas state department of education um

118does not make other administrative salary comparisons uh because of the difficulty in comparing like positions different school districts have different administrative structures and titles so comparing apples to apples is challenging we typically compare apples to bananas almost and so we have asked as you know asked the kansas association of school boards to update some of the uh some administrative comparison it had done for us a few years ago so we are currently reviewing those uh now so we can make sure that we have accurate comparisons and more of an apple's apple's comparison of like data we will plan to definitely share that information as soon as it is verified i would like to share that you know just like any organization every large organization in this community the city of lawrence douglas county government the

119hospital universities private industries they all have administrators doing vitally important work and our school district is no different again we're the second largest employer in lawrence after the university of kansas as you know we serve over 10 000 students and employ over 1800 staff and operate 20 buildings six educational programs we have 32 building principles we only have vice principals or assistant principals in our secondary schools middle and high and each one of our middle schools have one assistant principal most middle schools you'll see have at least two so we have 32 building principles 35 district administrators overseeing all of these services and as it relates to my executive leadership team we have nine team members there and together they oversee all aspects in terms of the board's mission vision the strategic plan from cohesive

120curriculum to student-centered learning they supervise academic and operations functions finance data technology custodial maintenance grounds etc etc now we have seen and continue to see a lot of turnover in our administrative positions um obviously where samri she's the most recent one along with kathy johnson who definitely had taken the advantage of a well-deserved retirement but i will say a lot of this turnover concerns me and i know that the board members have expressed that concern um as well as a matter of fact it was discussing um a previous evaluation now the board strategic plan has a focus on effective employees and attracting high quality candidates of all employee groups and this definitely certainly does include our building and district leadership team and so i also want to clear up some misconceptions or some confusion around

121the notion that there was uh i don't remember maybe a um three percent or uh well it's there on the screen if you look at administration and support from 13 million in 2019 to 15 million and 21 22. this came from the budget at a glance that's on our state department of education's website and so this includes everything it includes technology technology services it also includes some capital funds that are here and um these capital funds can definitely skew these numbers as well include central office staff those functions and i'm going to impress kathy and cindy here those functions 2300 2400 and 2500 the functions of general act administrative activities here at the district office including secretaries board clerks staff relations negotiation staff um directors 2 400 includes school administration activities their secretaries they're bookkeepers

122vice principals department chairs and then 2500 includes central service activities to support other administrative and instructional functions human resources planning administration information technology so if you look at that and this is budget and keep in mind we budget high right and so this is um just the the the budget that includes everything and kathy or cindy let me know if i'm missing anything on this um what one should probably look at is the general fund um that includes just that the the the general fund and what you'll notice in the general fund it decreased uh by four percent from 11.3 million to 10.6 million in administration and support again this is available online it's the budget at a glance at the kansas state department of education's website and it's also available on our district website

123as well and then finally uh the thought exchange about equity and the budget is open as i mentioned earlier through midnight uh february 16th i do want to clear up some misinformation that has been posted to this to this thought exchange and this is like the third time that i heard it so i want to clear it up hopefully and say this i do not have any relatives working in this district let me say that again i do not have any relatives working in this district the board has a nepotism policy and the district is is in compliance with that policy and you know as we think about some of the information that that we're seeing you know our schools teach students to make sure that information is true and accurate before it is shared

124online and so this will also be a good reminder for our adults as well thank you dr lewis next is a report of the president of the board of education and i will keep my remarks very very brief so again like i mentioned previously i do want to thank all the staff and community members that took a lot of time to go through the proposals a lot of alternative recommendations and solutions were presented and so i appreciate everyone bringing your enthusiasm and energy into that conversation and i know i mentioned this last week since then gotten probably hundreds of more emails and so i do appreciate everyone who takes the time to email me you know the board feels the same way so if i haven't responded to you please know that i i read

125your emails i have a running list of considerations that i've gotten from the community and oftentimes i will ask those in my questions to the to district administration or in my in my comments and so please know if you don't get a direct response from me um i will do that as time permits but please know that i do um take note of your of your suggestions and um i will in my my report there i know we have a lot of ground to cover this evening next we have um public comment do i have a board volunteer to read the policy this is carol public commentary pursuant to board policy bcbia the usd 497 board of education welcomes public comments and thanks you for taking time to talk to us about our policies and

126procedures we set aside this time during our regular meetings to hear from the public this is your time to share your opinions however complaints about specific staff or students will be heard by the board in executive session in order to protect the privacy of the individuals to be discussed while you are not required to share your contact information we ask for that information so district staff or the board can follow up with any specific concerns you may have the board president will invite comment on topics not included on the agenda at the beginning of each meeting comments relating to the agenda items are welcomed after the board has had the opportunity to discuss the topic please limit comments to three minutes thank you thank you carol so before we go before we begin with in

127person public comment i do want to acknowledge that the board has received looks like 10 video videos that were submitted so i do want to acknowledge those kyle cobb the topic is woodlawn elementary third grade students dj smith experiences at new york elementary shane mccall broken arrow celebrate our schools tiffany easley library love j.c robertson twenty thousand sixty rudy's macy biasy my apologies if i didn't say that correctly um hillcrest elementary parent mary margaret ice builder woodlawn elementary parent stephen noble woodlawn elementary parent linda easom concerned residents jerry jost concerned resident and so i do want to speak to we did make an exception to the video not really a policy but we made an exception to a lao video at our um a board meeting two weeks ago and that was an exception based

128on what was presented to us and so we thought it was reasonable to make an exception to what it was a deviation from what we normally do in our general practice and so i do want to acknowledge that there was a exception and that's not the role and so again i wanted to acknowledge that and with the board has received the videos that were submitted for our um for us to read room for us to watch and view so we will do that first we have um pastor leo barby pastor barbie here okay [Music] okay thank you so much [Music] to the board to superintendent lewis to the board i'm thankful for the opportunity to be able to just speak to you very briefly uh and i just want to first introduce myself uh say

129a few words to superintendent lewis a few words and a few words to you and i will be out of your hair i don't tend to understand all the intricacies of what you have to deal with i will say this you are in our prayers and our concerns for this community i first like to introduce myself my name is leo pastor leo barbie jr victory bible church i've been in the community for almost 46 years i came here in 1917 17 1976 with my wife my leg wife and our six children we've had all six of them to graduate from lawrence high my daughter was the first black homecoming queen in the history of the school at president we had seven grandchildren to graduate from lawrence high school and at president we have one granddaughter

130that's in middle school my life taught in this school district for 21 years at these heights until it closed she was in move to finish at sunset elementary school i've been down this road before about 19 years ago when the discussion came to close some of the schools and what i did uh not trying to put anybody down i challenged a white pastors to come to the meeting and they didn't and i did not try to humiliate them but i said to them these words you're not at the meeting because you live on the west side mister brother conference who's going on with the lord and he had were the two that spoke and i'm so concerned about this total community in which we live this brief word to superintendent lewis i'll say this without

131any apology that i'm convinced that the lord has brought you here and i want to say to you do not be intimidated to leave here you've been here been pointed divine i'll be the god has brought you here from a divine appointment and i say this do not let anyone or anything intimidate you to leave this community because you are a blessing scripture says no weapon formed against you will prosper i'm almost through i was supposed to be run out of town 39 years ago but i'm convinced that where god guides he provides and what he ordains he sustains and to the board i say this to you uh i've heard and i read during all the intricacies about you wanting to close some of the schools i commend you however i was somewhat disturbed

132as i saw years ago that most of the schools that were closed uh considered closing was not on the east side or west side but they were on the east side and this was the way it was some years years ago let me say this in closing all of the people in lawrence kansas are important not just those on the west side not just those who are multi-millionaires not just those who have large homes and drive huge cars not just those who have huge bank accounts and are influential in this community but you see beloved all of those things are just stuff and this non-essential stuff i've yet to see a brinks truck following a hearse to the cemetery and so i say to you as you consider this total community that the decisions you

133make that you will make them for the total community and not just those on one section of side of town this is lawrence kansas thank you and god bless you [Applause] thank you pastor barbie next is helen valoria thank you okay is this good can everyone here all right my name is helen valoria i'm a senior at lawrence high school and in about three months i will become a former usd 497 student i've had the privilege for the past 13 years to be a usc 497 student all the way from kindergarten up until 12th grade being a senior which is why it is incredibly upsetting that on my way out this has to occur but i think that myself and everyone else in the community is done asking ourselves questions about how we got here

134because we deserve answers and we deserve them from you upon looking at the proposals specifically option three and all of the options that talk about cutting from 76 up to 117 full-time jobs i was wondering if you could clarify what full-time employees were exactly targeting here because the full-time employees that i know are the teachers who are balancing extra classes in empty classrooms because there's severe understaffing the full-time employees that i know is the custodial staff that is working overtime and well above their pay grade to try and keep our school clean in the midst of a pandemic the full-time staff that i know are people who are dedicated in working to improve our schools and our students it's not the people that are currently trying to make the decisions for us on how to

135keep our own livelihood during this decision you're not empowering future ready learners when you close schools and lay off people because you're leaving students and parents to contend with a district that deems that their struggles aren't worthy enough to equate to that six million dollar price tag like the previous speaker i'm worried that upon this decision you're setting up lawrence to be divided in which schools on the east side and the people there were deemed expendable they d they were deemed not enough they were deemed that they weren't enough to equate to budget cuts when you're making these budget cuts keep in mind that some of us will not be able to afford tutors to fill in the gaps in learning some of us will not be able to move to a new district and

136some of us will not be able to afford new price lunches this isn't so much of a question as budget cuts as it is a question of your priorities and your leadership you're asking teachers custodians students and families to sacrifice their livelihoods to make your budget but nowhere in your budget proposals does it say that you as leaders of our district are willing to make that sacrifice yourself leaders sacrifice for the good of the many leaders lead their battles from the front they don't watch us suffer as a consequence of their decisions which is why i have to ask you if you as usd 497 are going to lead us from the front thank you carl burris my name is carl burris i'm a former free state firebird a former central mustang and a former

137new york nova i'm not up here to tell you to close schools or not i'm not up here to tell you how to do your job as a board or a superintendent what i'm here to do is to tell you a testimonial of my experiences in some of those under uh unders the less than schools i am i am a former foster child who grew up in an abusive home it was because of a small school that i was finally pulled from my my abusive home and brought into foster care it was also due to a small school that i had a principal care enough to say that i don't care where you place this kid but know that he will not be moved or transferred out of central junior high school i spent my

138formative years 13 to 15 in foster care and it was with the help of a small school that i was able to survive that it was with wonderful teachers that i was able to get through that i'm not here to tell you how to do or how to make this decision i'm just here to tell you what this decision can change i'm just today is the anniversary of my uh adoption so just know that i chose to be here to speak to you rather than be with my father on my adoption anniversary thank you and i will yield my time to the next speaker thank you carl for sharing your story with us appreciate that molly adams hi i need to share what lawrence schools have meant to my in family 90s my dad was

139offered a new position and we got to choose to relocate from kentucky to either houston or lenexa my parents researched all the surrounding suburbs and towns outside the two cities and chose lawrence for our family the primary criteria for this decision was the quality of the special education program my little brother timmy adams had down syndrome and autism back then he was considered low functioning but now we'd say he required level three support and had a comorbid intellectual disability our school in kentucky isolated timmy in a windowless room and treated him like he was incapable of thought a direct quote from an aide that will always haunt me is finish no finish want to look at book we left kentucky and moved directly across the street from prairie park elementary and timmy was integrated into

140the regular classroom for the first time in his life he had paris who created unique systems to work with him as an individual and they treated him like he was a person he was a delightful little boy and he was finally accepted and valued at prairie park is where he made his first friends my mom will never forget opening the door to travis and skyler assuming they were there to play with me and they were being floored when they asked to play with timmy no one had asked to play the timmy before lawrence is special like that when timmy's cancer returned for the third time his school rallied around him you can google pennies for timmy in the lj world to learn more when he died at age 11 he was surrounded by letters from

141his friends and his para was by his side for his final breath now i'm a mom and my second grader is autistic he is so much like timmy sometimes i see flashes of my brother in his face what an amazing surprise when i found out one of my brother's paras was helping my son broken arrow and she lives right around the corner from us we see her on walks regularly these connections don't happen accidentally neighborhood schools foster lasting meaningful real relationships and lawrence is better for them thank you for supporting the neighborhood schools that make lawrence so special that my family chose usd 497 over all the districts around houston and kansas city thank you [Applause] next is kalyn mccall school board members i am speaking on behalf of the broken arrow pta and we

142feel the community of lawrence deserves more time to conduct in-depth analysis of our options that will serve better serve the entire district there are some points that we feel need to be made broken arrow has the highest building capacity usage at 77.4 percent and the lowest cost per student at five thousand sixty seven dollars of the elementary school's proposed foreclosure it's curious that the district claims to be trying to find efficiencies yet broken arrow was the only elementary school included foreclosure under the compromise option 2. despite the fact that broken arrow is a title 1 school it has some of the highest performing scores in the district the excellent culture of learning that exists at broken arrow is one that we cannot simply replicate by picking the kids up and moving them somewhere else not

143only does our school have a rich history behind us but we're always striving to do better broken arrow was accepted as a ksde apollo redesigned school and began training training and planning in 2019. what a waste of the time that the teachers and staff have invested in this project and what a loss to our students if these innovations would never be allowed to fully come to fruition if our school was closed captioning not middle available and high school the proposed move of broken arrow students to schwiggler would require many of those walking elementary students to cross both louisiana and 23rd streets we further asked the school board to consider the indian hills neighborhood our school draws from which has a large aging population with many young families moving in we asked the school board to

144consider that living on the south side of town close to the k-10 connector with new construction occurring regularly means new students to our school as the city expands southward we believe it's short-sighted not to consider the town will experience this growth and the positioning of our school as a grade school is optimal to encourage families to invest in our district there's also fear that those who choose to live on the edge of town so they can commute to work would move elsewhere and enroll their kids elsewhere if there's no longer the draw of our school we asked the board to consider the hardship of the rural population the district has already decided once that the school those families attended was expendable with the closure of wakarusa valley elementary in 2012. as an alternative to closing

145schools we asked the board to adopt one of the proposals presented that would adjust the thresholds for next school year multi-age learning is already something we have implemented daily at broken arrow with great success we have come to the board as concerned parents community members and we ask above all that you consider the long-term implications of your work not simply the short-term budget relief the district is seeking and we appreciate your service and your time [Applause] next alicia erickson hello my name is alicia erickson and i appreciate your time i'd like to take a moment to thank you the board for listening to us and for recognizing that we do need more time we recognize that there are hard decisions and hard discussions and our work as a community must extend beyond tonight save our

146schools 497 calls on the board to create a formalized process for closing schools which will include more input from stakeholders and additional time for thought for thoughtful decision making best practices show that the process must be open and transparent and allow at least 12 months for making well-reasoned and deliberate choices that the process should draw from a cross-section of community members that is representative of the district's demographics in evaluating school closures the process must look beyond declining enrollment and consider the condition of the school's facilities operating costs capacity special program facilities environmental factors ethnic and economic balance transportation neighborhoods aesthetics and the value of the building we also call on the board to establish a formal process that allows the committee to submit budget savings or revenue gathering ideas to the board which will then

147be evaluated as part of the budgeting process each board member as representatives of the community should be empowered to the distr to direct the district administration to consider specific budget options and for the district to provide these options openly as a part of the formal budget process sos 497 is concerned by the lack of community input built into this budgeting process and believes it sets up a system where the feedback is given in a closed loop and does not allow for a full slate of options to be considered save our schools is coming to the board and district in a spirit of partnership as parents community members and taxpayers we are deeply committed to creating an environment where schools not only survive but thrive we want to have the deeper conversation fully analyze the data

148and ask the hard questions so that we can all find long-term solutions that will situate all of the students to succeed we promise that if you provide us the time and space to have these conversations we will come to the table engage and work together thank you very much thank you alicia next sarah smith you guys hear me okay sarah smith um i'm a mom of four two at new york two at central um but i want to talk about my son micah today he's 10. micah has had behavioral problems low frustration tolerance and aggressive outburst for as long as i can remember he's been in therapy since toddlerhood and has was able to graduate from therapy at about age eight and but throughout that therapy process he was diagnosed with odd which is a

149positional defiance disorder he also presents with symptoms of adhd and anxiety long story short he has a very very very short fuse he was able to graduate from therapy due to the diligent work of his therapist but more importantly and arguably they put probably more work into it are his teachers his counselors his raps worker the principal at new york and the other staff that is at new york currently it was a lot of hard work to get to where we are and the new york teachers and staff have stood behind him worked with us and his therapist and created a safety plan for him these teachers in that building are his safe space he's currently in the fourth grade with sarah edmonds an amazing educator sarah is compassionate hard-working patient and kind to him

150and micah does not always make that easy samantha saltz who is here today his former first grade teacher in her classroom are the safe space he escapes to when he needs to decompress and get away from his peers she is the trusted adult he seeks out first when things get overwhelming for him shane hyman his third grade teacher is there to lend an ear to him and all his other students always shane led micah's third grade class through the unprecedent unprecedented pandemic and remote learning with grace kindness and humor sunny halstead our principal is equally amazing she has attended all of our parent-teacher meetings with us and has helped us strategize and maintain micah's 504 plan then there are the counselors some of francis raps work or mr michael who are always ready to meet

151with micah should he need a little bit of extra encouragement this team of teachers and staff they are in micah's corner they want to see him succeed academically but also emotionally the effects of a school closure such as this would be devastating to children like him and thank you for your time sarah next is samantha saltz and kerry davis hello um we all come down to uh the schools in a variety of paths and the school board i know can be kind of treated one-dimensionally when we're in positions like this but they also have a lot of paths that they walk down and my path tonight comes as a teacher i've been in this district long enough to know that we are an innovative creative group and we are not going to really be able

152to start working until we all know that it's a team effort all students one team and i just want to come and say to you um first of all all the time and energy that you have put into listening to communities input and the work that you did tonight in the session and the hard conversations are just starting because we still have a you know a budget but the teachers that i have worked with we have really creative solutions on how we can make not just cuts but savings and make our whole structure be a better place and i'll just say this when we started fall convocation we we learned that we're going to be rebuilding and renewing and restoring and i think that this budget it's going to bring out some solutions that are

153going to allow us to really do that i agree with all of that and i would just like to add that we we can make anything possible it's just realigning our priorities and deciding what it is that we represent and what we stand for there are thousands of ideas out there that i have seen about ways to make this happen and i think when we allow that to happen when we think differently we can really change for the better i think about this situation that we're in is horrible none of us want to be here i can't think of one person who wants to be sitting here having this conversation but we can come out stronger if we prioritize we can come out stronger if we work together and this this idea that there aren't

154other options it it's false we can we can make it happen i know we can and we're willing to put in the work i think every teacher here we heard you know there's 85 percent of us 85 percent of us who solve problems for a living let us solve some and kerry next is kt walsh good evening my name is katie walsh i live in east lawrence the two women that just spoke are part of the new york school psych council and they submitted a document to you i believe this week it's brilliant and with all kinds of suggestions and tactics to solve this problem so i would urge everyone to look at that i just want to say in terms of housekeeping could we get rid of the acronyms i think i know it's

155hard i know it's a pain in the neck but whenever you say bpoc and acl you know yadda yah we a lot of us don't know what you're talking about and it creates an inclusive exclusive um you know it keeps people from participating so thank you and i was really encouraged when there were tears tonight from a school bar member and there was a little bit of sharpness these are the frank hard discussions we need to have and we need to just be open and stop being so polite because we have some hard problems to work on these are the frank difficult conversations let's do it um let's see oh this is a little snarky superintendent but 11 years ago when mark fagan and chuck warner talked about closing schools i respect chuck warner and

156mark fagan but they very much are chamber of commerce business people and writer and they were opposed you know they wanted the schools to close and so looking at them as a model for ideas is anathema to me people on the east side didn't agree with them so just for the record let's see we are so encouraged that you are not going to do the school closings this year but as alicia just said now we need community involvement the real work begins i would also urge the school board and the superintendent to meet with craig owens our city manager because he has instituted a community engagement model that is working so well it's all new if there's a project that affects your neighborhood your school your family you can get on board they want to

157hear you from the outset it's a top-down policy and it's working and that's what we need this next year to engage all of us and all these great ideas that are coming up to save money and lastly i know that each of you are just deeply committed and are taking this process very seriously the short timeline has been maddening and frustrating and counter to a thoughtful process so now i am really relieved that we have a bit more time and also we need to hold up the energy people need to keep coming to meetings rallying we all have to work we can't stay home thank you next is rebecca zarazan done well thank you for all your careful work school boards are making national headlines this past week book bans mass mandates curriculum content and

158locally here in lawrence school closings is not an easy time to be on a school board in reports of these mentioned debates regardless of where i personally stand what i consciously look for is what educators off up as solutions i do this because oftentimes it seems that the ideal pathway when analyzing optimal outcomes for the students they it's for analyzing optimal outcomes for the students they serve during recent budget meetings the district has not once projected student and educator outcomes if we are an institution who believes in equity start there then determine budget cut values listen to our award-winning direct service educators doing so will paint a picture of optimal long-term effective scenarios for our students and the educators who serve them doing so will provide optimal student success in these district-wide decisions this is

159a democratic process you dear brave board members we're elected by the constituents of the city to provide equitable student-centered education to our youth public education is the foundation of democracy the lawrence public school district is founded in democracy what are your constituents communicating to you yes we have challenges ahead we need to be united in our effort to make decisions that ensure the greatest outcome for the individuals impacted this is your elected democratic commitment thank you for that commitment the district has delivered three messy rushed incomplete packages we must remember solutions are not bound by solar or by polarizing wrapping paper schools targeted for closure should be given the same amount of time and consideration in their closure as was put into their formation in this budget crisis what is the path of least resistance

160that will provide ideal support for our students and educators what concerns and solutions have been provided by our educators and our community the answer is there opportunity is there the trust in the democracy of this district depends on it thank you for representing us next is shannon burklas i got one second i'm done okay we good all right so this is a letter that i wrote and this is the original version it's to kennedy elementary school dear kennedy elementary school community this apology is long overdue and it should not have taken the threat of more school closures for us to realize as much we should have taken notice when the school district began to whisper kennedy we should have raised our voices and rallied at the district's front door when the district spoke kennedy allowed

161we should have done something and most of us did not we as a community failed the families of kennedy elementary school we failed to support your school when it was threatened and we failed to be there for you when it was taken we were not listening when you spoke of your trauma we know now that what we did was wrong and while we cannot turn back the clock and fix what was irreversibly broken we will not stand by silently while the threat of more school closures loom we commit as a group of parents educators and community members to stand up now and in the future for our school communities if someday soon we find our own schools safe we will not take for granted that they will remain so and we will look to protect

162all schools in lawrence we will go forth to those who make the decisions for our state of kansas and we will demand that our public schools are funded fairly and fully we may be small but we are mighty and we will do everything that is within our power to protect such a precious resource we need our schools and our schools need us and it is the importance of that that brings us to you we promise to do better in the future not only for our own children but for all of the children of lawrence kansas the kennedy community is not gone and you are not forgotten and i would like to pose this question to the school board and the district will the district anonymously asks staff what they want in a meaningful and listening

163way and truly incorporate feedback from those at building level thank you dean metz christine metz good evening i'm christy metz howard and my daughter goes to hillcrest from the start of the school closing process we have talked a lot about data in numbers and while that's important for me what was keeping me up at night and that's literal was the thought of having to tell my daughter yet again that she'd be losing something she holds dear over the past two years our children have lost so much first days of school birthday parties play dates sports competitions celebration of important milestones and time with relatives some families have lost jobs housing and access to food many have lost loved ones and now we are looking at the prospect of telling them they will lose their schools

164as well which for many our space of stability and safety one of friendship and joy and laughter and learning so much learning i think most of us here today know of the exacting toll the pandemic has brought on our children's mental health if we haven't witnessed it personally there are plenty of report reports to confirm it in october the american academy of pediatrics the american academy of children adolescent psychiatry and the children's hospital association joined together to declare a national emergency and youth mental health in december the u.s surgeon general warned that young people are facing devastating mental health effects the report showed that 25 percent of youth experienced depressive symptoms and 20 percent anxiety symptoms and most alarming and early 2021 emergency room visits in the u.s for suspected suicide attempts were 51 percent

165higher for adolescent girls now couple that with what we know to be true when schools close studies have found that for students school closures damage their friendship and other relationships that there are stereotyped at new schools and have higher rates of absenteeism in eve ewing's book ghost in the schoolyard about chicago's massive school closing in 2013 she coined the phrase institutional mourning and noted that people mourn the loss of an institution the way they would mourn a person the grief that communities feel when schools close is real and it must be accounted for in the decision making process as part of as part of this process we must be reassured that support will be in place for students who move schools which was a serious concern as the light item in one budget proposal show

166that the options to form a mega school if billy mills combines with liberty memorial there would be zero mental health support professionals i am confident that the pandemic will result in one of the most resilient and adaptive generations this country has ever seen but at what point have we asked too much of our children we cannot proceed with this these decisions without first considering the real and costly impacts of our students teacher and staff's mental health thank you for your time thank you christine next is emily bodeger sure i mispronounced your name my apologies to give you something at the end i promise it's very sweet okay i'm going to take this down just so i can talk loud enough good evening hello my name is emily bodecker and i'm a teacher at woodlawn and

167cordley elementary schools one of my jobs as a teacher is to highlight and amplify student voices whenever necessary because of this i'm going to spend the rest of my a lot of time playing audio from a video that was originally going to be shown during public commentary tonight i know you said you received these videos these student voices need to be public they wanted them to be so and on the record i want to ensure that you and the others in attendance here hear from students tonight thank you helen for being here especially considering this late hour perhaps we need to look at the rules regarding patron commentary especially when we want our students to have voices their classroom teachers recorded this video while they were completing a unit on persuasive writing and a unit

168on community and social studies their essential question was why is it important to participate in your community moving forward i implore you to think about the qualitative data these students present when talking about their schools and the teachers who care for them the first question is what's one word to describe woodlawn oh no wait hold up i had it down so i wouldn't play it during anyone else's stuff okay family friendly caring saving love home family safe home unique woodlawn is happy good what's one thing you love about woodlawn [Music] i love how the teachers know my story i love the size of this i love all the teachers and students i love all the teachers i love my teacher i love being with my friends i love my playground i get to grow my

169brain i love seeing my friends and teachers i trust everybody i love school because my teacher because she teaches me stuff that i didn't know before playground it fits us all perfect for me the staff teachers recess great great neighborhood special everyone is nice music the teachers what's one reason to save woodlawn which i thank you for doing it it's my home we spend most of our time here we would miss the community the community is great i would miss my friends our community needs this is where i get my education teachers know who we are the students don't want to leave to keep our family together because if you guys clothes i'll have to drive far away also this school is the closest to my house the small size helps us learn because it's

170a really good school i live so close thank you emily we have those videos we appreciate the opportunity to hear from the students thank you next we have ashton martin can you all hear me okay um no a little closer a little bit is that better there we go uh so i had prepared a bunch of numbers to talk about tonight but given that the school closures are off the table i think it might just kind of shift focus a little bit and forgive the rambling because this is all just off the cuff i want to first of all say thank you to the board for listening to the public and hearing our request for more time i think that it's greatly appreciated and we appreciate you hearing us related to receiving feedback you know

171i think that it was pointed out at a previous meeting that there's some of us that are privileged enough to have this opportunity to speak with members of the board or speak at committees or engage in committees when we're contemplating community engagement i think it'd be important to consider the digital barriers that exist with regard to thought exchange and how that may prevent some of our community members from actually engaging in the process and providing feedback i'd like to thank you for pulling school closures off the table at least for this year because i think that as mentioned in previous comments there are some serious issues facing us at a state level and i would hope that many members of the public and members of the board continuing to engage in advocating for a district

172for funding to ensure that a difficult situation isn't made even worse i think that i also want to recognize that at least speaking for me personally i i hear the board in the need to attract good talent for teachers and to pay them adequately because as so many of the stories have been shared tonight it's about a lot of it is about the teachers and so i do hear that and another topic that you know i would maybe briefly want to talk on is innovation and how we can not only consider cost saving measures but how we can innovate and bring in potential additional revenue or savings so whether it's montessori whether it's steam whether it's dallas did you know a recruitment to bring kids back after the pandemic you know something of that measure

173to increase student enrollment and not just find ourselves in a race to the bottom of how we can make do with less and less in my day job i work for a large utility scale renewable developer you know we're in 34 states multiple countries not trying to push this particular company but just as an idea some school districts have taken the opportunity to install solar panels as well as utility scale batteries and given that our utility costs are roughly two and a half to three million dollars a year maybe this is something that we could consider as a long-term solution for cost savings thank you ashton next bird okay no closures for now the community has demonstrated its will a message to those at the top of the pay scale for 497 let us ensure

174that it is not those who have the lease that lose the most let us not apply the usual cost of doing business to this business the business of our schools which is a public service funded by us meant to serve us i ask that as you streamline and downsize and consider what to consider in savings be it a school a program a staff member i ask that you look to your own job to your own place of work and ask yourself what can be sacrificed there we all make sacrifices for our kids and these kids that you have been entrusted to serve they are your kids too this is an informal list of the topics i've been hearing raised most often from our community listed in order of frequency i hear them administration not the

175in-school administration but the top level the fancy digs the perks the poor communication with in-school staff the inefficiencies the lack of transparency and comprehensive data number two more time number three raises for classified staff number four too much money tied up in underused buildings and building maintenance number five transportation to school number six high school football as american as corporate tax breaks how many coaches do we have i hear that question a lot okay number seven compliance with iep laws number eight technology expense when i was at hillcrest it was really big deal when we got a computer lab with two computers i would venture bill gates grade school had less and he managed yes our high school students should graduate to a level playing field but for our younger students let's prioritize the fundamentals

176of education technology is a tool which can be mastered in time school board and administration consider these concerned citizens allies we are happy to speak up in advocacy of getting the money directed where it is needed most at city state and federal levels share with us how best to do that save our schools 497 gmail.com a question if we don't already do this can the district partner with parks and rec and or other organizations institutions to make use of existing programs and facilities for four credit electives for our students without woodlawn north lawrence will be a ghost town we don't even have a grocery store i had like three extra seconds to say that thank you so much bird next is erica hunter good evening my name is erica i moved here in 1987 with

177my family from kansas city kansas because these were the best public schools my dad worked in the maintenance department for over 34 years when he retired in 2014 they hired three people to fill his job three i'm not saying every administrator isn't worth their money because i know it's hard to work in the school district not because i had great teachers all throughout lawrence public schools i became a teacher later myself at the very school that i went to at the one i started screwing up the most at actually it was like retribution i had to come back and serve my time and i did and i started a garden there and i quit over that garden there was a nearly million dollar grant that was not being used correctly that i thought because i

178didn't even know about it and i started saying that's not cool i got fired from that position a volunteer position that no one wanted to do in my school i had been a french teacher a math tutor a substitute teacher a stuco leader a yearbook coordinator the reason i say let's look at administrative salaries is because as a teacher there were many times where we had curriculum specialists come in and say okay each of you teachers figure out a lesson plan to share with all the other teachers why are we paying someone to do what we already do you have teachers here who tell you i am here to help you here are some resources here are some ideas teachers are like that every single time they will work hard for you see what they're

179saying i hear some of you saying that you're that your kids might not get some programs they don't have like football in france did you know that in other places in the in the world they don't have school funded football programs we do still have activities for kids to do use your resources i know it's hard but each one of you voted no tonight on school closures and i thank you i think on some level that means to you that you know it's important not to rush this from the bottom of my heart i sincerely thank you very much and the community for what you are doing so moving forward i know you're looking for how how do we do this use your resources you can do this i am a parent now my kids

180are going to enter woodlawn next year this year this fall because you said no closures thank you i will volunteer i will do whatever i can i will step up i will give you ideas just listen that's all you have to do next we can do this together thank you thank you erica next is susie johannes hello my name is susie johanna she her hers my child is a woodlawn student i first want to thank the school board the students teachers staff and our schools and the school district i am truly appreciative of the time and the brain power that's been expended to help solve this crisis i really want to express my gratitude and i appreciate your patience and communication and helping us all learn how we got here and the incredi inc intricacies

181around public education finance and the decisions that were made in the past i really i'm trying to stay open to what this could mean and challenge my own assumptions and try not to think about us versus them or anything like that so with that i want to humbly offer the following i'm here to talk about transportation i don't know how it is possible to know what the equity impact will be to access and meaningful participation without knowing what transportation will be provided if schools are closed as someone in the equity analysis meeting said we are only seeing part of the picture with the savings projected we need to know what busing will be provided and what the cost will be i also know that transportation is an experience the same way by all students transportation

182decides how early a child has to wake up how much sleep they get how far they have to walk before they get breakfast if they depend on breakfast at the school students who don't have transportation are less able to participate in after school activities at a minimum we need to understand if all students can get to school various walk in their shoes events were held in the past weeks the results of these walks are posted on the saver schools website it included zero day temperatures it included 60 day degree day temperatures mile and a half or more walks 30 to 45 minute walks with lots of heavy traffic and unmarked crosswalks we have kids who get themselves ready and walk themselves to school by themselves i know that's not unique but that's what we have

183we have a fairly comprehensive accident map along routes that have included in the board packets um so just wanting to say it's unrealistic to expect students to walk two and a half miles to their new relocated schools we want the board to commit to being transparent about what busing will be provided and provide trans uh transportation when there's significant hazards and obstacles to walking to school all proposals showing the cost savings must be accompanied by the amount the proposed savings would be decreased with additional busing costs for example the group calculated the cost of the liberty memorial consolidation would decree the savings would decrease by eighty thousand dollars uh given a f i can send you the formula sorry i just heard about this a month ago i really appreciate more time i want to

184work as hard as i can to get every student enrolled in our schools and to pair talented staff thank you very much thank you susie next we're going to switch to virtual we're ready to go for virtual we're good okay denny go up go ahead jenny hello do your name here we can hear you go ahead jenny can you hear me i'm jenny gorip i've worked in the school district for 22 years six at sunflower as a teacher and for the last 16 as a librarian at quail run last year i was the elementary teacher of the year and as such this fall i applied as representative of our district to be the kansas teacher of the year the application asks that if i was selected as teacher of the year what would my message

185be i wrote about how a strong library program with a certified librarian is an essential part of every school little did i know that only months later i would need that message to defend our program tonight you're going to hear a multitude of heartfelt reasons why cut shouldn't be made but this isn't a discussion about who has bigger feelings or who cares more there's tough choices that must be made and what it comes down to is what is the impact on our students data from 34 statewide studies shows that a strong library program has a direct correlation to student achievement including better test scores and higher graduation rates currently the 12 elementary librarians provide 214 extra plan time lessons a week to classroom teachers without librarians who would provide coverage for the 9630 minutes a

186week that's given to teachers as part of the negotiated agreement all students and staff in our district have devices librarians provide tech support at every building when text district techs aren't available recently nine of the librarians tracked how many issues they resolved over the course of four days it was 104 issues all librarians are required by state certified teachers if we're restructured out of our jobs the savings listed in the budget committee proposal is not accurate we librarians would be displaced into classrooms displacing first year teachers who would likely be pink slipped out of their jobs as librarians we don't just check out books we teach digital citizenship lessons research and technology integration lessons as well in an age where there's more information readily available to our kids they need the skills to find accurate

187information to be able to discern credible sources and identify biases and information we manage a district district-wide collection over over 200 000 books we're responsible for selecting ordering processing maintaining and circulating these resources we know access to these resources provides our students both mirrors of themselves and windows to experiences beyond their own we see across the country access to books running into opposition everywhere we need librarians knowledgeable not only about our books but a reader's rights supporting our teachers and our kids the suggestion that when we're restructured out of our jobs that will be replaced by volunteers would be something that my long-time parent and community volunteers would tell you is not possible though we circulate hundreds of books a week checkout's only a fraction of what constitutes our real library programs we're one of

188a handful of staff members in each building that works with every single student libraries are a safe space for so many of them i'd ask you to consider what the cost of cutting libraries is to those students thank you for your time thank you jenny next is justin spies is justin available justin here i see his picture now we can't hear justin can you hear me now yes you can start his time over can i have my three minute start over please i just said that please go okay hi my name is dr justin spies i have a phd from kansas state in human development and i want to talk with you about a couple of words tonight um the words uh you guys are uh familiar with and those words are uh empowerment and

189consent and then a word you're not familiar with courage but before i do that i just want to remind everybody that dr anthony lewis makes two hundred and thirty six thousand five hundred thirty dollars a year just got a ten thousand dollar uh raise last month um from the board there uh another uh another administrator there who's a county commissioner his name is patrick kelly makes a hundred and nine thousand about individual staff dr spees if you have comments about individual staff it's not allowed thank you kelly can you hear me now can he hear us he can't hear you guys on webex we'd have to start the webex in the meeting and we haven't done that can you text him that he cannot say you don't hear me now all right oh okay i

190got cut off because i was mentioning staff salaries um anyways this past week there was a student in usd 497 district uh at the lawrence college and career center and she stood up she came and said she can't speak we have to hear that in executive session we're not allowed to talk about individual students why do you guys keep muting me man stop muting me you're not muted this is true stuff she was told by staff studies that showed that mass do not yo man this stuff is true thank you they just cut me out sorry about that that's okay thank you hi there can you hear me hello could could you hold for what it was uh i don't want to do that so can you tell justin that if he has comments related

191to a specific person at all that um we can discuss that in the executive session or he can email the board okay um okay we probably should communicate that to him though just because he was cut off and there was audio issues and to give him those two options to communicate with the board all right thank you thank you shannon okay lindsay you're up thanks okay lindsay yeah hi can you hear me okay yes we can i hope so okay um thanks for your patience webex has been troublesome with audio so um first thank you so much for taking school closures off the table for the year um i really appreciate that personally and i know our community does also um so kind of shifting gears i wanted to speak to you about a few

192ideas that have been generated by the community in regards to bringing money back into the district um this is rough this is not the three minutes i had been prepared for um but i just want to mention a couple of things that jump out to minds that i'd like to share renewable resources is something that ashton had mentioned and the idea of kind of exploring with grant funds especially ways to um can you guys still hear me i just got another message um can you guys still hear me i just got another message okay um okay so renewable resources um could bring money back into our school district um and maybe using grants to help offset that cost to get those going a board member had mentioned magnet programs and mentioned the idea of an

193environmental magnet which sounds phenomenal i would like to know more about that exploration and if looking into magnet programs is something that the school district would continue i think it has a lot of potential to bring some people back into the district that might be looking other other places um small nitty gritty things in the conversations i've had in the past month there are some paperwork issues that translate to money that i just wanted to call attention to one in particular is the household economic survey and to make sure that that is in the hands of schools and parents so that um that is the most equitable way um to reach people to get them to fill out all of our forms um also um speaking with families who have transfer students um and a

194simple edit on the form um to allow them to put in multiple schools that they would be interested in going to in the district rather than waiting for a a refusal letter before they were able to apply for another school i know that seems small but if we lose families because of it we lose money because of it um some others have mentioned recruitment um i think that that is kind of in partnership with what or uh why students have left where they went and when they're coming back into the district that the district could use some some more study on trying to bring those people back comprehensive boundary analysis is a big one that you all obviously know about and talk about a couple more things listening to teachers and bringing in anonymous surveys

195that are open-ended and available on the teacher's time so that they can express their true concerns and feelings and ideas because they are idea generators um so something that um i feel like i've noticed lindsay you're at your three minutes thank you so much for taking the time to come speak with us this evening thank you next is sarah rosalind sarah can you hear us sarah can we come back to sarah that work okay all right sarah you're up oh awesome okay well i'm gonna take the chat says that you can hear me and just go for it um so i wanted to thank you all for the gift of more time to try to help solve the budget crisis oh sorry my name is sarah sally and my pronouns are she and her i'm

196a parent of some lhs graduates and i have a current student and i also work in the district um i'm gonna try to do this on the fly i had an original thought and then just listening to tonight um since we have that change so um one of the things i'm still kind of trying to find out more money or more money more um clarification on is what the what our track record for the projected savings versus actual savings is like when we had kennedy close if we actually saved or realized those savings um i also wanted to echo the thoughts on the library media specialists because they do so much in our building um what's the cost to save you know this great amount of money um who takes on the itds who provides

197the plan time coverage that reaches into you know possibly having added more special teachers to try to help pick up the slack on that and would also lead to um language changes for the master agreement um and then i've had a lot of people talk to me and ask if we could um instead of referring to cuts as fte being full-time equivalent to actually just use the word staff that might make it feel a little more personal and then my original thought tonight was about gymnastics being all students in one team we've talked about mental health for students providing opportunities for scholars i would like to see a reduction spread across all of the sports rather than just cutting a team that has won state titles and had a coach of the year there are

19883 universities that have girls gymnastics programs with scholarship opportunities there's an alphabetical list online from usajem.org that begins with the university of alabama and includes ivy league schools such as brown and yale i read an article in the newspaper i talked about how the district knew that they'd be closing the program in the fall so i was a little surprised when i looked at the recruiting page on our district website and on page 20 of the glow and grow digital flip book that they're being used as a recruitment tool for new staff we have that team featured on there and so i just wanted to know why our team is good enough to brag about but not good enough to keep so thank you thank you so much sarah my computer went to sleep but

199i do know sue is next okay sue can you hear us hello yes go ahead hi my name is sue herrink i wanted to speak to you tonight about the fact that we are living in madness it is characterized by masks on faces even on two-year-old children censorship forced medication the vax and backside ease just for starters let's take a break from madness for a moment and focus on valentine's day let's focus on love a wise person once said something that's stuck she said be the love that you are that means every day not just valentine's day that brings me to where love is being manifested in douglas county and where it is not being manifested the not part is easy we're in its missed amidst in this meeting here children are not loved they

200are lost to this school board's greed love is being manifested by a group of protesters on the corner of this administration building we protesters are standing out of love for children and liberty while blindness for the well-being of children continues here at usd 497 we are doing our best to be the love that we are every day especially around 3 30 to 6 o'clock this has been going on for six months and will not stop until the draconian masking of children stops the responses we receive are around 85 positive and rising as we make our stand we are passionate sometimes offensive always unapologetic and unrelenting in voicing our love for children in liberty dr lewis all of you here tonight be the love that you are and stop the madness unmask the kids in usd

201497 stop the vaccine clinics free our children happy valentine's day thank you sue next is next is joe herring no it's not there okay all right krista gentry krista can you hear us hi my name is christa gentry thanks for giving me the opportunity to speak today i'm an east lawrence resident and have been following closely to the proposed budget cuts when my husband and i had a baby four years ago we loved the idea of having our child within a short walk of the elementary school and middle school so much so that we added on to our house in order to stay in our wonderful neighborhood i emailed you all recently and told you about our love for our neighborhood and neighborhood schools i emailed you that we have continued to live in our

202neighborhood in order to avoid the large schools offered in larger cities and the walkability of our neighborhood i also told you that we work in the kansas city metro and without the amenities of our that our neighborhood has to offer we would likely move closer to our jobs the majority of persons living in our neighborhood however don't have the option to move they are the ones who are impacted the most negatively by the choices that you're faced with making i'm appalled at how quickly this process has gone it seems that proposals are rushed without fully vetting their implications it seems that they're multiple budget related committees but the members are just there to give the appearance that there isn't one or two people driving the train i'm pleading with you to slow the process down

203and i'm thankful after hearing the meeting earlier tonight that you're choosing to do that i urge you to examine all proposals including those offered by the community such as the one from the new york site council and really consider long-term impacts on your decisions figure out who has left the district why and their plans to return examine revenue generating options and ways to attract new students making permanent decisions based on a temporary situation is ill-advised thank you thank you krista brady swenson okay hello everyone um dr lewis and the school board my name is brady swenson i am a parent to two children at woodlawn and just wanted to express to you my gratitude for your work energy i know it's not easy to listen to hours of um sometimes emotional testimony and handle and

204deal with these tough issues so i appreciate your your energy and time on all of this i know this is might not be where some of us want to be on the night of a valentine's day but maybe it's appropriate i think that the extension of time to consider school closures and how to address this budget shortfall long term um is a great way to express love and respect for our kids tonight so happy valentine's day to everyone and to all of our children who you know have earned this love and respect that we're showing them tonight to think about this thoughtfully and together over the next year so most my comments are going to be about that that we really need more time for this to consider these decisions and one month is just

205a ridiculous ask so i really appreciate the sensible decision tonight but um since we're going to be having these conversations and have time for them now i just want to spend a minute to highlight one concern that i have and consideration i want to make sure is on the table as spreadsheets are flying around and numbers you know are being banned bandied about and obviously we'll continue to play a central role in this decision process some of the qualitative aspects of these decisions are are really hard to capture and be mindful of throughout the process and one of those is mental and emotional health and i know someone spoke earlier to these issues as someone who is from a family of mental and emotional health issues along history including myself and my daughter we have

206very much appreciated the support and the absolutely extraordinary support that she has received at woodlawn elementary it's been uh well i mean she's in fifth grade now we've been through uh basically know every single teacher in that building they all know my daughter and they know her struggles and everyone there is united in supporting her in that entire building it's an extremely safe place for her i know that if when there are cuts uh if and when you know there will be cuts and i know that there are cuts to mental and emotional health support probably on the table and i just want to make sure that we keep mine be mindful of that we have i know uh made amazing strides in understanding mental and emotional health especially in children recognizing it and supporting

207it over the past many decades since i was young and in school i just want to make sure that we continue to keep that momentum moving you know uh forward when we're going through these closures uh kids need a counselor in school um and amazing safe places like neighborhood schools so thank you for your time and thank you for energy and and work here appreciate it great thank you brady jill groves not there okay all right kimberly is it grossy grossy kimberly can you hear us hey i hope you can hear me hello i'm a parent of a kindergarten at woodlawn kindergartner at woodlawn elementary woodlawn is a place for in the first time in her life educators truly care about my child and they try to understand her and make her success a priority

208they see her for more than her struggles they see her strengths and they empower her every day i'm here today to express my concerns about impacts on iep services as a result of school closures whether they are now or next year more specifically i'm concerned that impacts on special education were not considered within the equity evaluation disability is something that was specifically mentioned under under meaningful meaningful participation within the equity construct but participants pointed out that this data was not provided to them as part of their evaluation i don't believe that the time committee spent to evaluate the proposals with the equity lens was enough to fully consider these issues furthermore those evaluations were done using incorrect numbers that did not accu accurately present the true cost savings the equity evaluation should be completed again

209with the correct information as well as including data on special education i understand the task before you as enormous but since the committee was presented with inaccurate data and missing key pieces it seems impossible to make the best decisions for our students based on these results thank you for your time thank you kimberly next is ligna baumann no okay um amy bauman yes okay amy can you hear us hi i'm amy boffman i have a daughter in the usb school district i've lived in lawrence almost my whole life as a kid i enjoyed my schooling in this town for the most part when i grew up and had kids of my own then i grew up and had kids of my own times changed the government got its fingers in first no child left behind

210then common core schooling has gone downhill ever since which is exactly what they wanted for pete's sakes it just keeps getting worse it definitely shows in your enrollment numbers people can't wait to find a new program and leave public schooling behind clearly you are doing something wrong it's called enforcing ridiculous mandates and crazy crt transgender bs odd comments that the kids will either die or get put in hospitals if they don't get the vaccine keep the politics out of the schools stick to the teaching stop indoctrinating our kids it would be easier for teachers to teach if they didn't have to continuously tell students to put their mask on correctly the reality is the kids don't need masks or vaccines they are very capable of naturally fighting any of this endemic going around covid is

211not a pandemic it never has been handled correctly in our country had they allowed people to take ivermectin early instead of sending them home to get worse there would have been fewer deaths let's talk about the face coverings totally unnecessary for healthy kids these kids would have a lot better success if they were given a choice in the matter i mean a student teacher or staff member should be able to decide if they are at risk of having serious side effects if they get an illness not only do the masks make it hard to breathe they make it hard to concentrate they make a child that has anxiety have it twice as bad they also cause skin irritations and headaches all totally unnecessary back room deals with politicians is why we are in this mess

212fauci is a flood and a liar there are emails about it over 19 being made in the lab this is ridiculous to make our kids suffer any more than they already have in this plan endemic and i demand i don't demand but i'll end by saying masks are child abuse and we are supposed to protect our children not the other way around if you are worried about your health then you should wear a mask healthy people shouldn't have to wear masks hey thank you amy all right are we good okay okay we will move to board commentary i swear i will make this very short tonight i wanted to say for the folks who are here with save our schools this week if you have time tomorrow by noon there's a deadline to submit testimony

213on a bill that's going to be heard on wednesday in the kansas house k-12 budget committee the bill number is hb 2662 and it's the parents bill of rights bill which sounds like bill wright's like but it's not good um really really could use some testimony submitted on that bill on thursday there are two bills that are supposed to get hearings in the senate education committee so the deadline for testimony for those would be noon on wednesday senate bill 363 and senate bill 393 they're kind of similar they're both this let's tell our teachers they have to post everything that they're ever going to do for the entire year by july 1st and one of them would take away two percent of our state general funding for each violation that we are found to have

214made about not posting our stuff a year in advance and then leaving it up for a year after that so please please please if you have time write some testimony and send it to those committees it is really helpful to public school advocates when they can say there were so many you know we had 93 people submit testimony against and only one person who works for the kansas policy institute submitted testimony in favor so that's my big ask please please please in addition i just wanted to share with the community that we have canceled this month's policy committee meeting of the board uh samrie devin is leaving us and in light of her departure she's the staff person that we've been working with as kind of our lead on that work we're going to take

215a minute to regroup and we will announce when our next meeting is and that's all i'm going to share thank you thank you shannon anyone else uh this is carol i'll just be very very brief i just want to thank everybody that came out tonight and thank everybody for staying extra and i just wanted to say thank you thank you thank you for the bottom of my heart and especially and i'm not really funny it's a valentine's day but happy valentine's day um i just want to say a happy gotcha day to carl i don't i don't see him there you are happy happy got your day and um krista if you're listening please tell your daughter that we said happy birthday i saw that today's her birthday and emily i promise you that we

216i've watched the videos and i'm sorry that we didn't get to watch them and i see the valentines are there in the bags and i saw the kids working on them during the rally and thank you good night that's it i'll just say quickly that i have several emails that have been gone going to my junk mail so we have tried to correct that recently and mr ashton martin i did get your maps of the boundaries for through gis so i apologize for not getting that back to you or getting a response back to you good evening so i am going to kind of summarize my thoughts from earlier just i i don't know what i'm going to say briefly briefly but yes happy valentine's day um i want to acknowledge that we are in

217a time of loss um now the next part of the discussion has begun you've probably heard me talk about how i've been waiting for this next part of the discussion what comes next will affect all of us east west north and south if you're not involved with discussing school closure trust me you'll want to be involved in the next part of the discussion so pay attention and get up to speed at this time the board has decided not to close schools this year this is not this does not mean forever we will continue to have this discussion in the months ahead regarding the future of our neighborhood schools now 70 million dollars is a lot of money that does not mean that we will end there though we may end around 5 million i don't

218know depending on the collective decision of our voices your voices which includes our educators special education teachers and our library specialist just to be clear we need not only the voices of the families who are receiving the educational services but we also need the voices of our educators to help determine what is next as one of seven i want to learn from you and i want to hear from you perhaps in seeing where thought we as a collective do not have to accept option number three that was laid out before us today i'm thankful for the work but we have to move beyond this linear thought that we're cutting programs regardless if we were closing schools as andrew said several meetings ago we have always been talking about structuring our staff we've always been talking

219about staff who provide services we need to reframe our conversations on how this is an opportunity to streamline our our services to maximize our resources and reimagine how we do business that we don't have to go at this alone so i encourage our community our partners to ask yourself how can i help reach out again i say this if you weren't in it before you're in it now and we're in this together remember it has always been about restructuring staff reimagining our educational services now we just have to get creative to do it as the late john lewis said what's the legacy uh will be determined what what the legacy will be termed by the people of this generation what legacy do you want to leave behind thank you um i'll be really quick i

220just want to acknowledge a few things i heard this evening and some to do's from me uh so i'm not as inspirational okay thank you um so the uh as a east side resident i'm i'm not interested in a mega school and i just want to that phrase has come up a lot we've talked about having a large singular school in our district so as we move forward in the conversation i want as a single board member i'm committing that that is of zero interest to me um and that there are certain neighborhoods or certain schools that we've been talking about that i think have some structural issues as we move forward in the process and the reason why i'm mentioning it like for example woodlawn has the river and perhaps um we really wouldn't

221consider moving uh closing um woodlawn so using that as an example uh thinking about this process going on for another year and the amount of trauma that you all have experienced in the last couple years around the pandemic so it's true that i fought this fight 12 years ago and it was a toll on my family and on my kids and all my energy and resources it was a toll on my marriage actually we're so married it worked out okay but acknowledging that and thinking about you spreading your time out over a year one of the things i'd like to ask for you as families and for the staff and the buildings that are serving our children that if there are buildings that would just be off the table that we kind of identify them

222early and that doesn't mean that you wouldn't be engaged in the conversation it just means i want to really definitively say let's you know take down some of the stress in individual households as quickly as we possibly can so that's my ask to staff as we move forward in the process and process has come up quite a lot and i did hear it from you all in the district patrick kelly has a phenomenal process he uses within the curriculum development that we've seen and there are administrators in our district that have process that we use to make decisions that i think are really good models so i want you to hear i know you don't like the process we've had in this rushed month but as somebody that's been following the board for 12 years

223there there are some exceptional facilitators in our district some of them teachers some of them administrators and we can do a better job and will and we can make space for you all but in particular as i've said to many of you i'm very much interested in seeing more educators at the table and then this question around kennedy i can't remember who was talking shannon maybe or um but uh it's an interesting conversation just to understand what happened for the families in kennedy and the district has been following up um with with with folks from kennedy but i do think that we could do some initial um outreach to kind of see what what has their experience been like in consolidation what can we learn from them as part of the process of if we

224consider consolidating schools um and then uh katie the city planning um there is some city planning right now to try to increase density in the city in the city core that's been conversation for some years but in particular it's picked up some speed and it is part of the facilitation process that we've seen recently at the city level and that does speak to how do how do these schools impact their ability to attract folks into our neighborhood and to our side of town so i do think that partnership is a really a good one to highlight and i appreciate that you brought that up and redesign this is my last thing so we do have a redesign model that you all have seen and broken arrow is an example of a building that does it

225brilliantly and is doing a really great job hillcrest is doing a beautiful job there are a couple other buildings that are really highlighting um i'm highlighting it to say that we do have a model to to create the innovative schools that we've been talking about we have we have that model and our administrators and our and our teachers do it really well so as we're thinking about that process that's another space that we can draw on we've really been in this kind of deficit thinking and i just want to tell you there are there's great brilliance in both our administrative staff and in our teaching staff and collectively they do very good work and i can highlight it and it might not feel like it in the last month and a half and you might

226have lower trust but i'm telling you i've seen brilliant work from dr lewis from his team and from the teachers and educators in your building and i know we can do better so i apologize that this was not the process that you all wanted and that brought our community together and highlighted their strengths but they are very good at their jobs and if i am wrong about that i know you will tell me so i thank you um in this moment in this moment i'm excited and hopeful about the possibilities of where we are where we've been and the possibilities of where we're going um so i look forward to how we create and then how we interact and how we apply whatever comes next alongside each other and alongside each other so that's where

227i am in this moment next is the approval of the consent agenda if you have a motion i'm this shannon i move the board of education adopt the items listed on the consent agenda go ahead this is ki second cadoo blackwood yes emerson yes jones yes new spam yes smith yes hill yes kimball yes motion passes seven zero announcements dr lewis um at the 21st board meeting we will have um some type of budget update for the board to kind of have some conversations um with again i want to thank all of our advisory groups that participated this past wednesday night over 100 people here also thank all of our members of our budget program evaluation committee and our of our subcommittee for putting in a tremendous amount of work as well as our district

228administrators as well at the february 28th board meeting we're looking to have anne ma state board member ann ma here to give us a legislative update [Music] thank you dr lewis do you have a motion to adjourn this is carol i moved to adjourn the meeting you have a second this is ki second a discussion all those in favor say aye aye those opposed say no all right motion carry you