Lawrence Public Schools Board of Education Meeting | June 28, 2021

001good afternoon can you hear me okay oh so so quiet patrick kind of quiet here over there okay i'll use my band director voice maybe that'll work well good afternoon i'm patrick kelly executive director of curriculum instruction and we're pleased to present to provide you a work session today on our strategic plan process there's going to be a whole crew of people coming up today what we thought we'd do is start with a bit of an overview of sort of where we've been and the work we've done this spring on our strategic plan to do some alignment we're going to give you an essential question and practice a little bit of a strategy we use in our classrooms and then each member of our team will come up and present on a different strategic theme

002sort of tell you what we have done today what's been completed and what's our next steps going forward then dr zach conrad will be presenting some of our priority outcomes data to you um we'll take a break for questions uh after the first five right before the data and then we'll talk about next steps so it's just a bit of an overview of the process we hope to complete here in the next hour so you're probably very familiar with our strategic plan it started when dr lewis came in 2018 we did community meetings all over the community sort of trying to figure out as well as looking at our own data but also gathering that data from community members and educators about where our where our district needed to go and where our focus needed

003to be we were lucky to work with the greenway strategy group to create the strategic plan that document you see on the right hand of the screen shows you the strategic themes and objectives and each of the initiatives the initiatives are divided into three phases phase one two and three we would have been in phase two last year most we did some things in phase two so we should say well if you're ready to move to phase three due to the pandemic we're doing a few bit of phase two still and some phase three equity is worked into the entire plan and all parts of it and you'll see that in a new document we've created which is a strategic plan alignment document that should have been included in your board agenda it's a rather

004lengthy document i'll walk you through that those priority student outcomes are there just to the left what we do in the strategic plan should impact those priority outcomes we call those lag indicators so it means that it may take some time to get to really see some progress on those indicators but that's what we're looking for long term we met two weeks ago with our principals and one of the themes that we used with them is this quote that there will always be more good ideas than there is a capacity to execute a strategic plan can be huge and even during the strategic plan process we were constantly trying to keep it to where we had the capacity to do it we really asked each of our buildings and you'll see that tonight to come

005up with one goal for the strategic theme that they can really focus on it needs to be measurable something they're accountable to be time driven you might have heard of smart goals before we asked each building to come up with a smart goal that was supported that supported the strategic plan that is partially to make sure they can actually execute make sure we have the capacity to meet those goals as a building principle sometimes you think about your building goals and there's lots of things that are pushing on your building goals there's lots of pressures you'll see this graphic sort of says hey maybe my in my building equity is really important and we really focused on equity and yes the strategic plan is there and yes ci3t is there but oh yeah there's this

006kansas board of ed goals because they have a whole nother set of goals and there's the kisa process the kansas educational systems accreditation process and that might not be something our principals are really aware of and not sure how it lines up with their goals so our goal this year was to align those so that our principals could easily see that the building goals that they select support ci3 support our federal title programs the kansas board of ed goals the kisa goals the special education requirements our equity work and of course our strategic plan you'll find that alignment in a document i'll go back here it's fairly long it's in your agenda it's about a 50-page document that takes each one of those strategic plan goals shows you the initiatives and then breaks it down

007like how does it align with kisa how does it align with our title requirements how does it align with ci 3t our equity work even the danielson framework so we tried to think of all the different pressures and how principals could see oh this is how it lines up in my building we know that as we come back from the pandemic we need to rebuild rebound and renew and thank you to dr cynthia johnson for creating this slide and using these words we think this is a great time to rebuild on our strategic plan to reset we had places during the pandemic where we sort of didn't make the progress that we want we know that we have to build relationships in our buildings and in our communities again and what a great time to

008go back to that strategic plan to go back to the alignment with our other systems of improvement so that we can support our students and then renew and really get get a great start on the next school year when we ask principals to choose from a menu of building goals that are aligned to our strategic plan that are aligned to our kisa process it really helps us with resource allocation it really makes sure that we have the capacity to support it sometimes principals see something really great maybe that they saw at a conference or maybe it was something they used in another district that's not bad but we have to make sure we have the capacity to support that and so this year we gave them a menu of building goals to choose from that

009we knew supported the structures we already have in place if they came up with something new we didn't say no we said let's take a look at it and we're in the process of reviewing those as we speak that allows us to set up professional development that supports their building goals it has relevance for their building it's meaningful for their building but also moves us ahead on our strategic plan our support can be focused and it creates a community of practice so we've changed how we're going to do our administrative professional development we're going to start the beginning of the year really focusing on admin pd what are the skills that you need to have to support your building but as we move through the year and we start to collect data on their building

010goals we'll start to move to a professional learning community where hillcrest can come together with sunset and say okay what goal are you working on what data do you have what strategies are working on what can i learn from you by having those goals aligned so that they're similar that helps us make the most of that time so now we're going to break into each one of the strategic themes and we've provided you with an essential question i left on your desktop i guess is the best way to put it a little sheet that says avid in the upper left hand corner thanks to leo wisdom for helping us put this together and we put an essential question that says as a board member how do the updates provided on the district strategic plan influence

011progress towards the board's goals you've got the five strategic themes there what we're going to do is we're going to have each member of our team come up share a little bit of where we've been what we've accomplished and where we're going next on a strategic theme and then we're going to give you a couple minutes to write down what resonated from you what questions came up before we go to the next one once we do all five then we'll come back and that will give us some some conversation tools does that sound like a good plan okay excellent so i'm going to invite dr jennifer besselow up to talk to us a little bit about cohesive curriculum she's our director of curriculum federal and virtual programs dr bessel thank you patrick good evening it's

012great to be here and see all of you again i know the cohesive curriculum goals are goals that we have discussed over the last couple years so just to refresh us in terms of the objectives we're talking about today i want to touch base on some updates and how we are working to establish an align scope and sequence of the curriculum standards pre-k through 12 in all educational settings and then the second objective is establishing a core body of culturally sustainable primary and supplemental resources to support effective implementation of the curriculum so how are we moving things along and making sure it's happening and showing up with cultural sustainability in our classrooms so some things that we have completed this year under these objectives we do have a district timeline established we've talked about this

013five-year budget plan that we have so as we think about renewing curriculum resources we're looking ahead to determine what we have money for now and later so that when we have big initiatives such as our reading initiative coming in with structured literacy we have a plan in place and some budgetary components as we work with our finance department and other departments for planning we also have district priority kansas standards and this has really taken off and becoming part of our common language and plc's in classrooms so we're doing a really good job of establishing and sustaining some of that work that you've heard of a little bit the last couple years in making these kansas standards permanent and something that's grounding all of our work in those spaces that we don't have kansas standards we're

014also relying on kansas or national competencies so think about career and technical education so again we're having that common viable curriculum which is a board goal we have a lot of progress made and scope and sequences as we think about what is our guaranteed and viable curriculum how are we onboarding new teachers how are our students and parents understanding what's guaranteed viable curriculum so we've made a lot of tremendous gains in math we have english language arts 612 is fairly established by now we have scope and sequence documents you can now research and see we also have year to glance where we're organizing all of our elementary curriculum and some new teachers again have tangible documents that show what they should be doing as they come into the district we also have some exciting new

015work that's happened in our sixth seventh and eighth grade science areas specific to an adoption of open syed so it's a real hands-on science experiment based curriculum so and that's underneath the direction of denise johnson we have been very intentional in scheduling collaboration in content time k-12 so as we work on some of the guaranteed viable curriculum we're also establishing time for all teachers not just leadership teams to really invest and understand what the curriculum is and then we have these established processes that we've been um pretty proud that we've been able to sustain even through a pandemic year so we have our larry ainsworth formally adopted a rigorous curriculum design model so anytime we review make adoptions tweaks or changes we rely on that which is a research and nationally recognized curriculum review process

016we also have a clear process in place for resource adoption so not only do we have a budgetary plan but we have a plan in place which also includes a very strong component of really evaluating resources with a culturally sustainable lens and really thinking about how we work that culturally sustainable lens into our dialogue our plcs and carrying it through the implementation of teaching one area of focus that we've learned as we continue to work with some of our foundational or pioneer content areas in this rigorous curriculum design process is this concept of teacher clarity so hattie has a very high effect size really aligning to how we influence student achievement when we provide very clear teacher clarity of expectations of learning as we establish our student expectations of learning it becomes a little bit

017more crystallized in the importance and again buy-in in terms of implementation of that curriculum so the more we are doing to onboard our teachers and get them to really feel not only empowered to help teach the curriculum but understanding the why behind it the standards the structure the pacing that we've designed it's going to strengthen that impact across the district we're also showing a lot of growth in the documents and housing structures so where can teachers find these resources where can our community easily access and find the resources that we're designing so those are in progress but we're excited that we have some more clear crystallized methods to get there and then the last couple updates to share is our 21 to 22 major focus areas um in terms of contents we're starting to really

018dig into high school science by talking to teachers you will hear that those are some of our old most uh our oldest and most outdated resources so we want to work really hard with those teams department chairs to build capacity go through the curriculum reviews process audit the courses that we're even sharing and then work backwards in terms of holes aligning those standards world languages again resource need as you talk to our teachers so we're tackling that and starting some work this summer social studies has established really a good strong game plan in terms of where to where to get started again working with the net elementary reading i'm sure you've heard a lot about from the state level we have structured literacy which is not only impacting our resource adoption this year but it's

019also how we teach reading so thinking about that balance of literacy and how we shift from balanced literacy to structured literacy is going to be an area of professional development as well as resource adoption and a lot of teacher buy-in so we've done a nice job of already establishing some smaller committees with titles special education ell and making sure all of our student interests are representative and then we are in year two of a pretty heavy lift with our virtual school curriculum alignment and making sure that they're also seen and available to come in spaces for professional development and collaborate with their brick and mortar colleagues so a lot of exciting work ahead it's an entire curriculum instruction team that's working all along these including math who's continuing to do some great work in terms

020of some specific high school and some secondary areas so we're really excited at that about the work but we have a lot to get done so with that i want to give you two minutes of just time to write down questions thoughts maybe things that you might be excited that we're doing and then maybe some questions and at the end they're gonna be a few moments to facilitate some questions so we'll start the timer for two minutes and then i will pass it on to my colleague leah wisdom so go ahead and begin two minutes uh about 15 seconds all right go ahead and stop where you're at i'm going to go ahead and pass it on to leah wisdom to talk about student-centered learning thank you thank you good evening um so i'm just

021going to give some highlighted updates on where we're at with the strategic theme student-centered learning much of this you have heard me talk about and other presentations to you all throughout this year we're going to talk about 2.1 and 2.2 so ensuring student engagement and access through our multi-tiered system of support which is proactive and meets all the academic behavioral and social needs and then decreasing barriers to college and career readiness so some places that we have some things that we have completed along the way in terms of our strategic initiative and the action steps that we had listed out we had wanted to create a professional development plan together and based on the data that we have but also on what we're the data that we have from our staff in terms of what

022their needs are um and and what they how they want that delivered so we were able to accomplish that even during the pandemic last year coming into that year this year um work we have been working with our leadership teams patrick mentioned the summer institute that we completed a few weeks ago where we had building leadership teams here along with their building leaders and started the process of developing a professional learning plan we have a district leadership team in place with representation from multiple departments in the district we also as part of our teaching and learning team have some focus for our multi-tiered system of support and ci 3t for one meeting a month for that and that's to continue to develop out this integration of all those things patrick had on that circle a

023couple of slides ago we've been working to revise ci3t district masters we do that every year i think what's most notable in terms of the strategic plan and where we've been over the last year and a half is that we were able to revise our district masters last year really quickly to prep folks for the coming back to school in a remote environment so what are those expectations for everybody in a remote environment this year we've been able to revise them and include all the new things that are coming up we have new assessments new expectations regarding our cohesive curriculum and also include links and things like that within the document sort of a one-stop shop for our staff and then our parents um we as part of the our action plan we really wanted

024to get some of our srss data and if you remember that's that student risk screening scale for internalizing and externalizing behavior that's data that principals and staff have access to right away but it's not really compiled so we made big strides this year in getting that data back to principles in a week's kind of time frame as soon as that window closes and in a like in a powerpoint format so it's super easy to look at and see those comparisons and share with staff instructional framework is something that we have continued to work on you all have seen that it has been linked in other presentations one of our action step was to work in collaboration with our partners midwest equity and planes especially to make sure that our instructional framework had our layers of

025equity built into it along with research supported strategies and we spent about six to eight weeks with midwest equity and planes really revising that document part of our plan was to get the get a walkthrough tool and roll it out effectively we have done that as you all know we have avid at our middles and high schools this year in the fall we brought avid to four of our elementary schools um so this next year we're pretty excited to actually have more time to roll that out and then continuing to build in social and emotional wellness as we kind of talked about a couple meetings several meetings ago um related to the equity report we talked about the social emotional wellness and equity and those things being interwoven you're going to hear a lot more

026about that um with dr johnson's report the things that are still in progress is continuing to provide support to building leadership and district leadership and when we talked about goal setting and all those pieces um one of the huge foci focuses has been being integrated and being fluid being willing to change and so i feel our team has made a lot of headway in terms of how we're providing integrated and streamlined support no matter who's in front of them um our secondary schools are going to have an opportunity to participate and it's called project enhance it's a ci3t a way to support their ci3t implementation efforts elementary has been doing that for the last two years it has been funded through an ies grant with our partners at ku so it's been really well received

027it is free to us as a district and it is a huge support but it has only been available to elementary so we have applied for the grant with our partners and fingers crossed are hopeful that that is a support we can offer to our secondary schools this next year we will be working on revising the social skills curriculum um again just beefing up our instructional coaching social and emotional wellness support so our coaches are going to get training this year in providing that piece we will continue to revise our walkthrough tool to reflect what's necessary to monitor the building goals that teams have created as well as the instructional framework and support the school-wide efforts of avid how that impacts all kids as we think about decreasing barriers so with that i just want

028to invite you to go back into your notes um i did put some or we did put some supports next to that one of the things that we ask our students to do just taking notes is not very helpful so if you go back in there maybe some of your questions were answered if you want to highlight some things add some things um but what's coming up for you now as you've listened to the update on strategic initiative two um and do you have additional questions just kind of get back in there we'll give about a minute and a half for that i just have one question and i might have missed it can you just give me an example just one example of the social emotional wellness like what does that look like like

029what activity like on that fourth bullet okay social emotional well um honestly that's what we're talking about is like tier one support so as students are coming back into the classroom what can we do through our social skills curriculum or through support like with our instructional coaches to best prepare teachers to meet the needs of the social and emotional needs of students as they're coming in so relationship building that kind of rebuild refocus and then dr johnson's going to actually i think answer that question for you but um what we're really talking about is that tier 1 stuff what are the kinds of things that we're going to put in place as a school to be safe and welcoming as well as in the classroom and how do we support teachers if they're struggling with

030that does that help yeah maybe after dr johnson shares her part that'll help add a little bit more so only have five seconds left on your right so do you want to come up and start with that thank you and paula if we don't get that answered we can come back up at the end okay good evening to the board once again i was just here just a couple weeks ago and some of the things you have heard before but i feel like there it's important to go back and reiterate some of the different topics just to kind of kind of narrow your focus this evening as we look at safe and supportive schools there are two focus areas that we're going to look at tonight we know that to ensure that cohesive curriculum is

031in place as well as student-centered learning we have to have safe and supportive schools so tonight we're going to look at the positive behaviors and reduce behaviors that interfere with learning also we're going to focus on establishing engagement and connection of all students to their schools their peers their community in a safe and secure educational environment i'm just going to hit a few of these because some of these are repeats from the presentation a couple weeks ago i'm going to begin tonight looking at our counselors and our social workers i want to just really go back and reiterate the work that took place i feel that in many ways our counselors and our social workers reinvented the work that they had done for years they came up with ways to connect with students ways to

032connect with families even though there were barriers that kept us in different places due to covet our counselors and our social workers overcame those barriers to make sure that they were always there and present for our students that is going to help us enter into this school years because those relationships paula that you were just talking about asking about some different examples of the social skills it's about building those relationships when you have a relationship and you build those relationship everything else that you do in a school in a community can be built upon those relationships that you initially build i once also want to bring to your attention the um sources of strength training you can read the other areas that are on the slide there but that's sources of strength the reason i'm

033i'm pulling that out is we've been trained at the high school level both high school as well as teachers in the school have received training that we just completed a few weeks ago i'm pulling this out because you will see that sources of strength really strand throughout many things that we do to help support students faculty and staff in lawrence public schools that is going to be very important i want to talk about what we have in progress right now i said a couple weeks ago we're moving from a trauma informed to a trauma responsive practices that means that we're focusing on making sure that we have preventive type processes in place to help schools as well as faculty and staff and students to be becoming remain successful one of the things that we'll be

034doing this school year is looking at our social skills and our social emotional curriculums this year a laser-like focus will be on whether or not we are consistently implementing the social emotional curriculum it does not work if we do not implement it so we'll be looking at those at those particular areas another area that i want to talk about tonight is encouraging the development of calming rooms talked about this a little bit a couple weeks ago but those calming rooms or recovery or reset rooms whatever they are called in many different buildings is opportunities for students to learn to self-regulate as we look at the executive functioning skills and helping students to become and remain successful the last piece that i want to talk about tonight is the establishment of the student mental health advisory

035team this student voice student-led team will be massive in the work that we do as we meet the needs of our students in lawrence public schools not only will there be individual teams that both high schools those two teams will come together to form one team district-wide they're going to advise us on what they need to become and remain successful as they enter into this school year so as i said at the very beginning to be able to have the cohesive curriculum to be able to have the student-centered learning you have to have the safe and supportive environments in place to make sure that you're moving forward at this time if you will take another minute minute and a half or there's any questions in this particular area that you may have if there are

036questions and things that were answered circle it start and if not let's say we'll wrap back around at the end so let's take one minute and 30 seconds right you have about 30 more seconds all right i will continue so good evening thank you for allowing us to present tonight and i'm going to just touch base on theme four which is effective employees out of all the work that you heard tonight you know that can't happen without effective employees so not f1 which is our first objective is that is um that's a supportive culture that we have i'm going to interrupt just for a second um i'm just going to acknowledge students in the room just let you all know that we and and representatives from the community are in the room just to recognize

037that we see you all we know you're here we're going to make some space for you um as soon as we get to the end of this presentation so i just wanted to acknowledge we saw you all come in and and we're ready to engage in a dialogue and 4.2 centers around recruitment of our employees so here are some of the things that we have completed under the effective employees when the pandemic hit the spread the speed of change and uncertainty called for hr team to respond to and support to changing rules and let legislation and to deal with the real stress and pressures of all of our employees this the well-being of our employees is the uh most important to us so with that we had the opportunity to engage in over 200 individualized

038conversations with employees during the pandemic these conversations were in regards to child care work site accommodations and other needed supports these conversations also included the reassignment of teachers and other staff members to accommodate the request of our remote and hybrid learners hr also helped to organize student support centers for employee students who were working remotely and needed child care the other thing is we received our grant with the kansas leadership center and these trainings were virtual this year we have used 58 of our 90 spots and we have representation across all employee groups and this work will continue next school year the exit survey was developed last year and has been given to our employees leaving this year the results will be reviewed to help us specifically see why our employees leave and identify where

039we can focus on our improvements for retention for all of our staff climate surveys are in the second year actually so principals will review the spring results with their staff in the fall and we are working to standardize this process across all of our buildings on how to effectively use the data with staff to improve the culture and the climate of our buildings it should be noted that some buildings did not have enough participation to share these results so right now we are partnering with lea in the future to how to engage these employees i'm not going to touch on professional learning communities although this is extremely important it is a strong indicator when it comes to retention of teachers patrick kelly earlier spoke to that we will continue our partnership with pal cwa as

040we continue to use the ibb process to address the interest for both teams continue our monthly individual recognition program you know with the pandemic our goal it kind of disrupted a little bit and so our goal is to standardize this better across all buildings it's always really exciting to see our employees be celebrated and recognized on the daily post i'm excited to announce the hiring of caitlin lugo as the facilitator for retention and recruitment she has taught at quell run and was a cheerleader at lawrence cheer coach at lawrence high school she was a recipient of the bob's award in 1920 school year and she will bring positive and engaging energy to this new role so what's in progress now continue the klc trainings review the exit survey data and we'll be doing that in

041july admin meeting and just to highlight some of the work that the facilitator is going to start leading is our stay interviews is definitely going to be a priority we visited with you about a year ago on that establish a diverse recruitment team grow your own program i'd like to give a shout out to mrs welsh over during this past year she actually had her teacher cadets involved in a k-1 program where they had kindergartners and first graders on site and they were mentors for those students we need to have a stronger connection with our student teachers to be able to recruit and also continue our partnership and strengthen that with prairie park and haskell university i still see a lot of a lot of good things happening from that and ron may is in

042the right now he is revising our classified staff evaluations so this is very important because i do know when people are likely to grow when they learn with this specific feedback so that's where we are with hr we are looking forward to finishing the hiring season and we've already onboarded i we're up to i'm boarding over 50 some employees new teachers and looking forward to opening the next school year so i'll give you a minute to do your reflection and then dr conrad will be up next while she's while you're all doing the reflection um one of the things that i'm super excited about go back one more slide um timry um is the tensionality around uh recruiting a diverse work team we're looking at of course there are universities that are around us that

043we can go to but we're going to be intentional about where um where are the universities that produce the most hispanic teachers what are the universities that introduce the most uh african-american teachers and we're intentionally going there to those universities to to recruit so really excited about the new uh recruiter that's that's coming on on board and then we have to highlight our grow your own program obviously we have a diverse group of students so that those diverse group of students that are going into education how can we wrap arms around them make sure they are successful in college complete their four-year degree and then come back to work with us much better dr lewis good evening board uh zachary conrad executive director of data and technology i'll be uh talking about strategic theme number

044five data informed decisions uh particularly focused on 5.1 ensuring instructional decisions by administrators teachers staff members and students are based on data so some of the initiatives that we have done this year one of our main focus has been on the rollout of district common assessments so that we can better balance our assessment system within the district and better support professional learning communities with standards-based information coming back to teachers and to the district office and we continue to support all the other initiatives data-wise that were talked about today continue to have data presentations to buildings district plc and the board we want to continue to build capacity around performance matters this is where the vast majority of student data is held and where teachers and students can access the data broadly to make instructional decisions

045we are also working on a partnership with a department over at or a program over at ku to build out dashboards that will be a little bit more interactive for administrators and teachers so that they can make timely decisions so those are a few of the things that we're working on to continue to provide data so that students and staff can make a database decisions we'll give you a few minutes again for any questions that you might have okay we want to give you some time if you have questions that came up or things that are on your sheet we've set some time out for questions now or just things that emerge from you as you listen to the presentation board members are there questions that you'd like to lead with don't feel any pressure

046if you don't have questions that's fine we can go on to the priority outcomes um okay um i had a couple of questions uh related to the avid programming um just um i was glad to hear a reiteration that we've expanded that programming um to some of our elementary schools so i'm curious um if if the planning around this strategic initiative uh extends to trying to make that district-wide all elementary schools and then also related to that when you say building wide avid is that really just at elementary school or are we um trying to do building wide strategies for avid at uh at the middle school and high school level and then when you do that how does that impact the need for the specific course okay that was a lot of questions but

047i think i can get to all of them um so if funding were to an issue we i think would be very interested in being at all of our elementaries with avid but funding is an issue and so we're kind of working from here with just one to two buildings at a time um so we have a plan in place for two more buildings to do some exploration over the 21 22 school year avida elementary looks very different than middle and high so the programming is about um setting students up so the note taking strategy that you all are using right now literally goes all the way to kindergarten and they start like how do you set up two column notes and the way you might do that as a kindergartner is there's like an

048a on one side and i draw an apple on the other and it's just setting the tone for good um or successful and effective strategies for as they move through so when those students then go on into middle school and they're learning um other types of note-taking strategies more in-depth like cornell note taking or focus note taking strategies they just had some experience with it and that's a small small example but it's more like strategies for success the four schools that are currently doing that are esl schools and so they're working together as a foursome if you will to like have the same strategies and goals and really focus in on like academic literacy and the kinds of things that will support the populations in their buildings i think that was all the questions did

049i was there anything else i didn't get to um i was curious about the the school when you talk about school-wide avid is that specific i'm really just curious is that specific to elementary school or is that also a middle and high school thing it's also a middle and high school thing so the elective class is separate than the school-wide they they do it's and all those strategies are in our instructional framework so they might not always call them like avid school-wide strategies but they're things like collaborative structures and good note-taking socratic seminars philosophical chairs things like that so school-wide is universal okay but the elective is exclusive to middle and high okay thank you sure oh i have a quick question so i really appreciate how this is really integrated and streamlined i think

050it's great um i do have a question it was during dr johnson's part um so the student mental health advisory team i really appreciate that it's he said it's going to be one team can you talk about the thought process behind that first of all it will be two individual teams at each high school and then there will be times that we will come together quarterly to focus on the different areas maybe one school is stronger in one one area and another school may not be as strong so what can we do to learn from one another because the schools are two completely different schools it's important to be able to have that input from both schools i like that thank you helpful okay and like i said the students that were trained and sources

051of strength will be the students that will make up the mental health teams wonderful thanks dr johnson can i ask a question related to that is there um a discussion about expanding the mental health teams to the middle school level yes once we um you know get into the sources of strength for this very first year this this will be the the groundwork yes jose and i have already had conversations of how can we expand it to the middle level so that the middle lane level is using that same languaging that we would use at the high school level okay like that would be a very powerful bridge to build okay and i think somebody i supposed to say i have a question for dr johnson too before you step i think one two related

052questions how are the students selected say it one more time how are the students selected for the mha team for the for the sources of strength some students volunteered counselors also reached out to students so the the students that were trained for sources of strength we had 14 at on we had 16 at lawrence high school 24 at free state so i've already asked for lawrence high school to have eight more students trained so that we both have 24 so those are students that have already showed an interest and being a part of different activities as it relates to mental health and as i reminded you a couple weeks ago this is a this is an initiative if you will that it was student recommended emilia vasquez is the one that recommended it almost two

053years ago at the end of a listening learning lawrence lyons activity covert kind of slowed it down just a little bit but here we are and we're moving forward so i'm very excited to be able to welcome her back to see the work that we've done my question dr johnson is there are a couple of things on your slides about safe and supportive schools that actually tie into policy work that the board needs to do and so i'm wondering um how uh how the board should kind of expect to see that policy work happen for example um probably updating of the high school handbooks as the high school staff is fully trained in restorative practices we probably need to be looking at the middle school handbooks since they've already gone through that training um i

054guess you don't have to answer that right now but that's that's a question i have is then how does that work then translate into the policy work that needs to happen at the board level and i think that would be a combination i'm just going to answer a little bit of it that would be a combination of the work that we will do with our ci3t plans to be able to change that languaging because you're exactly right the procedures and processes for for the um current student handbooks will be out of date as it relates to restorative practices so once the high schools are trained this summer and we really get into that work then we'll look at what things need to be tweaked also we are having a meeting what is it um the

055seventh thank you it's the seventh we are already looking at those different disciplinary codes and what we need to move that relates to restorative practices okay thank you you're welcome is there anything else i have i have a question that builds on that will you let paula first go ahead um mine is uh related to ci3t and some of the um so actually kind of it goes to the stacking that you talked about in terms of the um strategic plan and how that how they intersect some some of it intersecting with different priorities you have and different reporting report priorities you have and some of it just intersects so with the ci3t and the safe and supportive schools it seems to me as i'm looking at that and the curriculum development there's a lot of

056overlap so how are you utilizing the data that you're collecting to analyze whether where there are tweaks that are needed for either the ci3t how it's intersecting with the social emotional support programs that you're implementing there seems to be some inconsistencies between some of those initiatives and ci3t just looking at it from a high high level so i'm just wondering how do you how do you make those things all come together when there are pieces of them that don't quite mesh yeah i think we could do a better job and that was one of the things that we tried to do this year showing how all those systems work together you know we have what we would call a tier one plan within the ci3t process which says academically this is what we would expect

057all students to learn behavior behavior-wise restorative practices are in that when it comes to middle school because they've been trained there so you see those things showing up there social emotionally you see the expectations there that's really our job as a team working with principals to make sure those things are lined up one of the things we wanted to do this year was quite honestly make our job make the job easier on principles and say we're not adding anything new we're taking the systems that we have in place and using them to their capacity so that ci 3t plan really will show like how do we do all of these things and there's pro there's procedures for monitoring to your data questions so we should be looking at specific data for each one of these

058a lot of buildings have put goals as common formative assessments so they're looking academically how they're doing for monitoring behavior it might be the number of referrals they get attendance is in there so we're very specific about the data that we're collecting that will bring that whole cycle around does that answer your question it does it yeah it's always kind of fascinating to me how you all are making those things come together and i it sounds like you're you're doing some tweaking in the in the in the reporting tool to make it come together so that teachers understand this is where this fits and where principles are understanding this is where this fits and this is how we're measuring it correct right okay thank you paul i still have a question no okay we want

059to be conscious of your time because we know we have a lot of people waiting if you have other questions we're happy to answer them but we thought we might go on to some of the priority outcomes data that is that is after that and uh go ahead kelly okay this is carol i just have a quick question while we're looking at the safe and supported schools supportive schools are there efforts to have less of a reliance on the school recess resource officers in these plans i i applaud the district in talking about mental health and improving it but i just i am reluctant to continue to have them in our educationals built into our educational system we've i just i appreciate you making that comment i think one of the things that as i

060transition um into this new role because for two more days i'm still a chesty lion so as i transition into this new role we will look at all components as it relates to safe and supportive schools right now we have our sros in our schools and we're looking for different ways to partner and continue building upon the relationships so it will definitely be reviewed okay thank you clearing it it is honestly um at least i'm just being transparent taking some of my attention so can you can you can you tell everyone that's in the room not just me like where your timeline is at where we're at in the report and about how long there would be before there's space for folks to talk to address the board i believe we're about halfway through we

061have two sections left some of the board outcomes and then the next steps i think we could get through this in about 10 minutes okay are you all here so 10 minutes okay got some nods we're ready okay so these these were the lagging indicators as patrick had mentioned earlier and so on the screen that you're looking at is third grade performance over the last three assessment periods you'll notice that we do not have 2020 up here because we did not take a state assessment last year here is our eighth graders math performance and again these are the outcomes that we have selected to monitor set up a very similar manner 2018 through 2021. here's the gap one of our goals was to narrow the gap and so what you're looking at is the odds

062of you being a specific demographic and being proficient on the state assessment so the first category is white students are 26 percent more likely to be proficient in reading and 19 more likely to be proficient in math african american students are 30 percent less likely to be proficient in reading and 42 percent less likely to be proficient in math compared to the majority group with this all of our gaps have significantly decreased since 2019 state assessment scores except for students who qualify for free and reduced lunch in reading that has actually that gap has widened a little bit all other gaps have narrowed significantly this is truly a really lagging indicator you'll see here that this is 2018 data one of the reasons that it is so lagging is because we have to consider two

063years of college persistence and so that data is gathered by the state and then reported back and that's why this is so lagging we are decreasing here but again it's really lagging data and we have put some things in in process that will improve that and then here are the graduation rates we did not see a bump like the state did we have some things in place for this currently of our rising seniors current 11th graders going into 12th grade about 843 of the 893 are on track credit wise to graduate on time i'll turn it over to patrick for the next steps so as we mentioned a few weeks ago we had summer institute bringing on the first eight principles together where we walk them through that large document that you have that shows

064the alignment of each of our strategic plan goals we also gave them a menu of building goals that they could use to choose from there were variables in that and they can make adjustments for their own buildings on your table of contents of that document you can click on those goals and it will scroll all the way down so you can see that menu of goals those buildings had after our principals and district administrators met then we met as building leadership teams district-wide to discuss which goals were best for each building we're very pleased to present to you and at least attached it before your meeting so if you haven't checked your agenda the very first draft it's not done we have lots of work to do on that but you can see the progress

065that our buildings have made in just two weeks on establishing their goals for 2021-22 and how they align with their strategic plan you'll see there that each one is about one page it shows each one of the strategic themes and the goal that that building will be working on this is something that as administrators we can walk into a building and say hey we're interested in how you're making progress on these goals for you all aboard luncheon it'd be great to pick one of these building goals that they could talk on and you could see and then you can hear how other schools have similar goals we think that we'd like to talk to your group about maybe scheduling some of these meetings around a specific strategic theme we know this is a lot we've

066presented to you tonight so you can hear and bring principles in to discuss each one of those goals and how they're how they're coming on their specific goals our next steps are to build district action plans and building action plans building action plans are their ci3t implementation plan so it's directly engaged in that work and then even larger a professional development plan we have to make sure that all the goals that buildings are setting are providing enough support so they can be successful in implementation this whole process allows us to make sure that the professional development that we're providing is specific to their building goal that's aligned to your district's strategic plan that was under 10 minutes i think yeah it was pretty critical information somebody takes some time to slow down and ask questions

067about it thank you patrick for being efficient you have a quick question so on this slide that says 2021 achievement gaps um there's a note that says the gaps have narrowed significantly with all subgroups and so i want to make sure i'm interpreting this correctly so does it mean for example that african-american students are doing better than they did last time when we took this assessment or has the gap from the highest performing group and the other groups narrowed which is yeah i i appreciate the question uh so in what you end up doing is taking white students not proficient white students proficient african-american students for example proficient you figure out the odds of each of those categories and then compare the likelihood so you're comparing the odds of it and so it doesn't necessarily

068tell you that more students are proficient either white or african american just the odds of you being proficient either whites or african-americans are more similar than what they were last time and so just based on being white doesn't give you uh significantly better odds it does but those odds are decreased uh so that that becomes narrow do we have like that data that shows like how african-american students are doing not really the likelihood but just like in general and then yeah just that average score uh and then comparing the two average scores so average score of white students average score of out in the gap there we do have that information is that something that you would like if it's not extra work i think it'll be kind of helpful to compare the two and

069yeah yeah absolutely yep shannon okay sorry kelly i couldn't tell if you were like trying to make i'm making eye contact throughout the thing so zach so i had a question about the district comment assessment notes that are on those couple slides so when we're when we're talking about third graders performance on kansas state assessments those percentages are the numbers of students that scored in the top two tiers right yes it is it's performance category three three and four um so is that comparable to saying that a student mastered all the standards on the district common assessment or is it in terms of i'm trying to kind of okay because the number that really stood out to me was on that slide about our eighth grade math students yep that's nine percent uh that's alarming

070and i'm so i'm trying to get some context around that um is that comparable to say you scored in a tier four on the state assessment yes it's actually uh comparable to performance category four okay so can you give me some context around what our expectation is for students on those dcas um is is the is the expectation and the goal 100 of students mastering 100 of the standards so i think that's going to go back into some of the building goals that patrick was just referring to and should be we should have a plan for that so we're scheduling the district common assessments to be at a time where there is uh they're through the majority of the unit of that quarter but still giving a window for remediation so there is time to

071go back over the material if you have not mastered it yet so we do want to be conscious of that and build that in they do only take it one time those standards from a district common assessment perspective teachers are going to continue to teach and remediate and assess their students but the district common assessment is just that one window over those standards okay and so mastering 100 might not be realistic the first go-around but you should be able to identify what students do need and get them up to speed on that so if you're a member of the public looking at this slide it would it be fair to say that the blue box at the top and the boxes at the bottom are not really talking about the same thing so don't look

072at that data as comparable not yet so it right this is just it's more comparable to performance category four because what you're looking at here is mastered all those standards okay i mean that's the totality of all of them you you mastered them all okay um compared to the state assessment where it has varying levels okay and then so my next question um might um might actually be for dr buffalo so how how does this data that we've gathered particularly around 8th grade math how is that impacting our curriculum discussion about math curriculum at the middle school level and i will say uh before dr beslow does jump in here it's doing exactly what we would hope it would do in providing that district level view of that and i think i could share too

073one of the things that's exposed is just the need for um scope and sequence more than ever so to first establish are we all getting to the right standards at the same time and in discussions that's really come out as a probably their most pressing point so sean hansen's done some incredible work in really laying that out and now they're in that deep resource discussion so he's really done a lot of work and focus at the high school level on that but he is mid-stride with middle school as well as the need for we've just done some purchasing with big ideas in terms of updating and upgrading our math resources as well so i feel like we've got a handle on it but it has exposed some real things that we can work on okay

074kelly one thing uh and dr lewis one thing that would be i think helpful for me going forward would be um you know so we have this data um you know i know that you can't always predict exactly what's going to happen but it would be nice to see what the district is aiming for in terms of what this data looks like six months from now or you know next august when we're or next that's not august yet it's only almost july but next summer when we're having the same discussion about um where are we at with implementation um just so that um you know i know this is all new with the dca's this year but to kind of have like we've kind of done our benchmarking now so what are we looking for

075what are we aiming for yeah and pretty soon we'll be able to and that can maybe speak to this too but pretty soon we'll be able to do our i guess our own internal linking study to determine based on our district common assessment if just making this up if 20 of our students score mastery on this this is what we can expect on the state assessment it's also important to note also the difference in those two um and this is for anyone that's that that's watching the state assessment is a summative assessment so it's kind of like all types of data and in the past we would get that data back we'll always get that data back at the end of the year there's nothing that a teacher can do with that data other than

076just kind of look at it and say you know from a curriculum standpoint look at our curriculum but with our district common assessment data they're able to make some adjustments real time based on that assessment i think that's really helpful in important context for the public um as we talk about this data to understand the the purpose and the function that it's serving um in in the structure that we have so i appreciate that thank you and i may have missed this sometimes with the mass was hard for me to hear um so the nine percent what number are we aiming for just so i know how far off the nine percent is so we don't we don't have like a goal or expectation that's set at this point in time of saying uh every

077building should be at 75 percent as this was a pilot year truly for the district common assessment during a pandemic and so it gives us some baseline data but what we're really targeting for like dr lewis had mentioned is what we will eventually call pathways to proficiency where we'll be able to identify those standards that have the most significance of predicting that outcome on the state assessment those weightier standards so that we can really hone in and focus with those students that are falling behind so really it's not a goal on the district common assessment it's that you identify students that have those gaps and you help them uh you intervene and so that's that's really what this tool is for so if everybody's at a hundred percent that's fantastic but if you're at nine

078percent you now have data that you need to act upon and that's that's more the goal is that we're acting upon what data comes back i just want to reiterate something dr bessel have said this did exactly what we wanted it to do this year right so it told us that we don't have a very good scope and sequence if you talk to our middle school teachers where some teach certain standard and where other teach a certain standard was completely in different places what this said was when we look at it as a district as a whole we have work to do on that scope and sequence that's not saying that every kid by the end of the year didn't learn those standards and didn't didn't master those standards it's just at the time they

079took that common formative assessment in the middle of a global pandemic nine percent of kids knew that standard right for us as a district we couldn't be more excited it's hard work because it exposes a little bit some of our teachers the the differences in how they teach and so that's work for us to do to come back and look at that is our goal 100 you bet it is do we think we'll get there next year we will not get there i will not promise that we'll get there next year we'll make progress on it because as teachers understand the questions that are on it they understand the scope and sequence they get more work with a new resource you approved two weeks ago a new resource for for middle school math will make

080that progress there so we're tentative to say we want it to be a hundred percent that is the goal um but we've got a ton of work to do to get there thank you so i just wanna so i'm thinking through what eric and shannon had just said one of the things that strikes me and particularly as it relates to the equity policy is that we are responsible as a board for monitoring the progress in these particular areas and so i really do think it's imperative that we do that we see the data that erica is talking about so that if we don't have a particularly when we don't have a target that we have an idea about where we're going and then in the subsequent year um we maybe then when you've developed a

081target we we understand what we're looking at um one thing that dr beslow said was around um effect effectively rates so the the thing that for which you are using how effective is it so um now that we have this data and some of these things i'm hearing you talk about like scope and sequencing require funding really to be able to pull off in a in a proficient way in terms of engaging teachers because one of those one of those most effective things is how how expert is the teacher at doing it correct is that well so that it's the professional development piece yeah so how are you building that into the next year to to to go along with what you're doing here that was a kind of a long way of asking about

082professional development so yeah if you remember on the next steps that last was professional development plan so you know i'll have to say that it was with very difficult feelings that we made the last two common formative assessments optional because that was data that we didn't get that we don't feel confident but we also understood that teachers were under tremendous workload so it was sort of a balancing act like how much can we do that kind of data is very helpful to us when we go back and say okay as we think about a limited amount of professional development time what's the best use of that time this data would tell us that one of the best uses is to establish a better scope and sequence with our math teachers okay and that's the kind

083of way that we use this data to inform our professional development plan thank you that actually asks the question that was underneath all that was where because we were cutting all this funding for professional development so i was a little bit anxious about where we were going to get to that space so i really like that this allows you to target precisely the area for which we might have the most gains is that fair to say that is fair to say okay other questions okay do you have any summary statements or any takeaways you want us to have i would just say for one i want to thank our teaching and learning team and our building principles and our building leadership team that what you see tonight is probably about four months worth of work

084we have never really aligned all of these systems together we're very excited about it i can i can tell you as a team i think the feedback we have initially from principals was that was very helpful to give them a menu of goals to work from rather than saying to them can you come up with a goal for this can you come up with a goal for this can you come up with a goal for this so we'll see how it rolls out and we're really excited to come back next year and next fall and start reporting on the progress of these building goals and the action plans and how they're coming together thank you and all of those items and kudos to the team for this is a tremendous amount of work but all

085of those items that um the objectives and those action steps that are in the strategic plan all of those are leading indicators to the lagging indicator of our priority outcomes and so this was a lot and for our work session and so going forward what you'll see is um sessions uh broken down by theme and so we'll have an opportunity to go um a little deeper on some of those those themes but yeah you will see that data as well because that's something to celebrate um the closing those achievement gaps and you'll you'll definitely see some clear data that indicates that okay so that was the work session that we have and so now we're going to start our regular meeting we're going to take we'll go to 6 30 we're going to take a

086break so that we're centered but i'm going to hang out right here so if you want to talk to me i'll just to kind of tell me what brought you here tonight or anything like that i'll be available but we take a few minutes approval of the agenda move we approve the agenda second second there's an amendment commitment there's an amendment for the personnel enclosure ah oh my glasses are fogging up okay i move that we approve the agenda with the addition of the amended personnel enclosure is there a second this is carol ii jones yes phil yes could do blackwood yes kimble yes smith yes motion passes five zero okay we're going to move on to special recognition and okay we'll move to presentation of outstanding citizens awards to community partners dr lewis good

087evening good evening i am super pleased to recognize the lawrence public schools 2021 outstanding citizenship award tonight to a very large group of citizens here in lawrence you know when we face this um tremendous tough year um a couple of well year and a half you know there was a need and this community came together put their heads together mobilized resources solicited volunteers raised funds and really worked together to ensure that our community's children could access food not only just any food but healthy delicious meals and this happened right after the governor kansas governor closed public schools in all buildings in kansas last spring due to the covet 19 pandemic and tonight we want to honor staff members from the chamber douglas county government and the united way as well as our lawrence schools foundation

088all these individuals all these organizations took leadership roles in the planning the coordination and fundraising efforts for meal service for our scholars and we also want to recognize local business leaders with the lawrence lawrence restaurant association who provided children's meals we have an amazing food services staff here we love we all love cafeteria food right this is where you nod your head we all love cafeteria food but to have the support of our amazing restaurant owners here in lawrence just took it to another level for our scholars in a time that they needed it the most so just provided that sense of hope for many of our children and our and our families and finally we want to acknowledge the volunteers the many volunteers who supported the distribution of the children's meals to families and

089so when i call you or your organization please come forward to receive your outstanding citizen award representing the lawrence chamber hugh [Applause] carter this is the awkward part you get to stand up here and everyone gets to look at you represent representing the executive director of our lawrence schools foundation and my partner in crime dena johnston the infamous chef rick martin representing merchants pub and plate and representing the lawrence restaurant association emily peterson the united way of douglas county kj abel roosh [Applause] we also want to present an award to the united way of douglas county i believe president and ceo jeffrey cornish is with us and board president kurt schuler are here representing the organization representing douglas county jill [Applause] jolliker bills and ivy brewery jeff [Applause] ward love look at this teamwork up

090here 23rd street brewery matt llewellyn j wilson's i frequent there quite a bit rick renfro [Applause] all of these are my favorite restaurants too by the way global cafe kate gonzalez i'm not sure if chantal is here from ramen bowls but let's give her a round of applause shantel grace and i do not believe doug with biggs barbecue could be with us this evening doug holliday please give him a hand i know brad could not be with us tonight but representing six mile chop house in big mill brad ziegler [Applause] quinn i'm sorry cheesy street caitlyn she sends her regrets that she could not be with us tonight she had to work caitlyn france quinn [Applause] and if you noticed there were not any big chain restaurants that we call tonight so that speaks volumes

091to the local work that goes on here in lawrence and fabulous food that that's here in lawrence as well and finally to our amazing volunteers um this guy right here is just simply amazing in everything that he does d kemp [Applause] one of our amazing counselors kylie luckett gary and angie rexroad thank you and then brett dillingham uh sends his regrets he could not be here tonight so please let's give brett dillingham a round of applause and finally i just want to thank thank each and every one of you for really demonstrating what a caring community looks like that came together swiftly at just a phone call or text message say hey we need you you all chipped in for the benefit of this community for the benefit of our students and so on behalf

092of lawrence public schools i want to say thank you so much for what you've done what you're doing and what you will continue to do support our scholars thank you so i also want to take a moment to recognize kelly jones for her leadership as a school board president doing the most unusual and highly challenging school year kelly has been an active parent in her daughter's education she volunteered in the classrooms for 10 years and served on corley elementary site council for eight years including chairing the council for two years a former school board appointed kelly to represent courtly on the central and east lawrence elementary school consolidation working group this committee studied school capacities enrollments and district needs it recommended that the board put forth a bond issue to improve elementary facilities and technology

093this recommendation led to the board's successful 92.5 million dollar school bond election in 2013 and as a result the district was able to improve all of its elementary facilities enhance technology and expand career and technical education by constructing the college and career center kelly also was an active supporter on the campaigns for both the 2013 bond issue and the subsequent 87 million dollar school bond election in 2017 and the latter focused on our secondary school facilities improvements including excuse me the current renovations nearing completion at lawrence high school as a first year i'm sorry first generation college student kelly has advocated for public investment in education with her professional background as a social worker she is passionate about equity and access and opportunity social emotional learning and meeting the individual academic and behavioral needs of

094all students community community engagement and transparency also have been priorities for kelly's for kelly during her board service she also served as the board vice president last year and tonight is her final meeting as president before the board elects new leadership in july as is the district's tradition i would like to present kelly with an original piece of student art and kelly as you open this art i want to tell you a little bit about it so talk slow i mean open slow and i'll try to talk fast i think he means like really slow no you can open fast keeping up open fast um alexa money was a may graduate of lawrence high school and she created this photograph in angela perkins for photography 2 class and she calls this piece that you can

095show everyone the construction of optimism and this is what she wrote about it this world can bring you down repeatedly until the day seem gray in color to where the light no longer shines but shadows your perspective although this can be true there is always a small glimpse of hope and once you find that hope the sun will shine its millions of rays to help guide you alexa goes on to say for this photo i wanted to show the color in the most dull of places so i decided to use bright oranges with a bright orange paint card and use the reflection of the glass in water to help accentuate the sun's impact then the gray background helps allow striking contrast like the reflections of the water and the glass and she adds i also

096decided to photograph this during the golden hour to really bring out the color of the oranges the reason i named it the construction of optimism is because the paint card reminded me of a construction zone as well as when you are looking at paint cards and you are ready to reinvent something to start a room or a house all i can do is hope that everyone has or can build their bright oranges in their gray days we feel that alexa's story uh behind her work spoke spoke to the challenges of uh your leadership during this pandemic and in in your efforts to construct optimism and continue to glimpse hope in spite of the gray days alexa took drawing one and two she um and she also took advanced drawing and photography one and two at

097lawrence high she said that her drawing classes helped her build an eye for structuring the composition and color of her photographs she professes to being a doodler since uh childhood and says that she enjoys that everything around us is art her photography teacher angela perkins angela perkins shared that when alexia began photography courses she showed talent and commitment ms perkins said there is a wonderful balance in her work where she can communicate about the complexities of life with beauty still shining through alexa told us that she plans to take a year off from school to work she wants to save money and then decide what she would like to study and where i think i see a career in photography potentially she shared that she is a proud she is proud that lawrence high school

098nurse carol castille asked to display this photo in the school's health clinic and she is also excited that to have the district be the first to purchase her work and honored for it to be presented in recognition of your leadership on the school board as president so thank you so much kelly thank you all very much my gratitude to the student and to alexa to say thank you for letting us share that here today and and for sharing how you came to develop the piece so carol and i the nurse um when we when my children were very small i used to go to carol's house i'm not sure that she'll remember this and we had play dates together so anyway there's something kind of sweet about that connection and the orange and i appreciate

099it because that's pretty much what our toddlers ate the whole time so just kind of a neat connection i appreciate it thank you very much and i have a few things to say about being board president during a pandemic but i'll save it for a few moments all right so we'll um move on to the report of the superintendent of the schools yes and um first i want to address some information that i've been reading on social media during last week about a topic of school safety and i want everyone to know that lawrence public schools as well as this board of education we are committed to providing for all students all staff a safe positive and productive learning environment that's free from discrimination and harassment and that's more than just words we also appreciate

100students we appreciate parents staff members that report to us safety concerns that have that that have happened or or that you hear about because it's that open communication um that allows us to to keep our schools safe if you recall uh shortly after i arrived here i wanted to make sure that every student had at least one caring adult that was for a number of reasons but one of those reasons is that so students so that you will feel comfortable going to adults to share anything your aspirations your dreams or things that are potential safety issues i appreciate the students that have reached out to me personally and so i want to talk a little bit about process the process that we go through whenever there's a safety concern that's brought to our attention one

101we immediately take it serious safety concerns are not swept under the rug they are brought into light so that we can look into them and and hopefully resolve them we then immediately conduct an investigation and if the situation warrants it we report the concern to our law enforcement partners for their own uh criminal investigation there are certain things that they can and cannot share with us at at that point based on uh investigation findings we then take appropriate action that may be in accordance to board policy the activities athletics code of conduct student handbook but in order to protect the privacy rights of all students and all involved we have a responsibility as a school system to keep student disciplinary matters confidential and i i certainly understand that this can be frustrating for some when

102we don't know what's going on or we haven't heard anything it can be frustrating for those who may want to know more information about the results of an investigation whether it's our internal investigation the law enforcement investigation um this may be frustrating for individuals that may may want to know the consequences but to protect the rights of the students we we have an obligation to keep that confidential now we'll say this potential disciplinary actions of different offenses that are outlined in writing in great detail are in our board policy and our board policy are is accessible to everyone it's it's online during our board docs um if anyone accessed the meeting agenda tonight in board docs um that's the same place that you will find board policies board policies are keyword search searchable and so

103if anyone has a question about a board policy or need assistance finding a policy please let us know here at the district office and we can help you locate the information that you need and this building that we're in is called the education support center and it's called the support center for a reason our staff is here to support our students our families our staff our schools and this entire community whenever you have a question or concern we want to help so please reach out to us i'll tell you this what is not helpful and um i'm probably preaching to the choir but the choir sings the good news um what is not helpful is some of what i've been reading uh during the last week on on social media and those are the personal

104attacks um the offensive language to those that are standing up for for a cause others are um name calling and harassing them that's that's not acceptable we do support free speech rights this district does support free speech right and we seek and always want to seek multiple perspectives we want to hear the opinions of those that may not disagree we want to hear the concerns so that we can work together to solve those concerns concerns and disagreements can be shared they can be shared respectfully we can have civil discourse even if the issues involved are emotional ones and so i it is my hope that we can work together because at the end of the day it's our students safety that's of utmost importance to us um [Music] and so with that i just wanted

105to share that and again reiterate that this is something that we take extremely serious and i if you've been on one of our students and recall there was an incident of free state there was incident at lawrence high past two or three years we did not sweep those under the rugs we engaged community around some of those incidents and as always again if you have questions or concerns feel free to reach out to those at the school or those here at the district office and then i also just have some final general announcements to to share in order to get ready for the new school year we have to conduct our annual summer rollover of our student information system and so that means that power school will be offline and unavailable july 1st through the

1068th and potentially through july 14th once we know more we'll continue to communicate that congratulations to our free state high school speech and debate team for earning national top ten honors at the national association of speech and debate championship tournaments uh we will recognize them here at a board meeting at a later date four students um aiden bassor and ethan harris serena rupp and timothy huffman also made school history by placing third ninth and fifth in their respective events in addition congratulations to lawrence i'm sorry free state thespian carol caroline bork for earning a superior rating for her short film alone and she earned this at the virtual international thespian festival the douglas county early care and education work group is collecting input from the community regarding priorities hopes and dreams for the early childhood

107community center at kennedy that thought exchange that they're conducting is open until july 23rd all are welcome to participate and you can find this thought exchange a link to the thought exchange at our on all of our district social media platforms as well as many other community social media accounts during the juneteenth lawrence virtual celebration there were three high school freshmen becca kraft yee jong young a free state and may mahenya mahaya strayo of lawrence high they were honored and received cash awards for their winning essays on the topic of john lewis and how can you get into good trouble and why a recording of this event is posted on our on the on the juneteenth kent lawrence kansas facebook page including the students reading the outstanding essays and i think board i sent those

108essays a copy of those essays to you and we're hopeful to have at least one of those winners come to the board meeting to read their essay due to the independence day holiday this weekend our offices will close at noon on thursday and will will reopen at 7 30 tuesday morning i hope that everyone has a safe and happy fourth of july and then finally although she doesn't like it this is the final i know we've been saying final final she's been having some final meetings but this is absolutely uh dr struggles phil's um final board meeting final day actually on the job this is our last day and so we celebrated her a little bit today but this is actually her last board meeting and again kck public schools is really getting a strategic

109and intentional leader that will take that district to the next level and again and i know i've shared this with you i appreciate everything that you've done here for lawrence public schools these past 13 years that you that you've been here um i just can't thank you enough you've made my transition here um so much smoother you know and i really appreciate your leadership and everything that you brought to the district and our executive leadership leadership team and you will be missed tremendously i tell you like i told dave don't change your phone number answer when we call best of luck to you thank you dr lewis okay so we'll move on to report a president of the board i also recognize or thought i recognized that this was dr stubblefield's last meeting with us

110i didn't know it was your last hours with the district i i'm really grateful to have learned from you and for everything that you have done for the district so thank you dr stubblefield and congratulations to kck public schools dr lewis is correct this is an exceptional win on your part and i'm excited to see what happens in that district i also want to extend my gratitude to um kelly thompson who is the uh nat is the debate um coach for the firebirds it's really i mean it's so exceptional what he's done um there were 14 000 schools that competed and um i just it was really breathtaking so congratulations to you and to your students and as board president for a few more hours i'm super proud of you now i just want to

111take a minute to share really truly just a minute to share my experience over the course of the last year and i'm so delighted that students showed up even though this is not the way i like to interact with you but i appreciate so much that you are willing to be here and talk to the board and engage with the board um because it's been a rough year getting to interact with students and finding a way to stay motivated in this task of board leadership it has been really like nothing i could have imagined and i think that's probably the case for all of us over the last 365 days i'm proud that in the last year we still managed to pass an equity policy and in the last uh six months that i'm in

112this term i fully intend to get out into buildings i hope we're invited back again to interact with students and to celebrate the good work from the district leadership i'm grateful for the partnership with the lea who also demonstrated exceptional leadership over the last year as they dealt with things in their profession they could have never imagined i'm grateful to all the families who really wanted us to be in school and advocated for that so hard and that you were so forthcoming with me so that every time someone asked me to stay remote or to go in person i knew that you were right regardless of your position and it weighed heavy on me i try to lead with humility compassion and most of all gratitude but i can only do that if i am

113fully informed so i studied i studied very hard this year um more hours than i had available to me to make a go of this because i wanted to be quite good at it and sometimes i failed um dr lewis is an exceptional superintendent and lawrence is lucky to have him and as we see um dr stubblefield go 40 minutes away from us it really behooves this community to work to keep dr lewis and the team that he has created here with us in the district that's also true for the teachers who have developed expertise this year that they probably couldn't have envisioned that we help retain the staff that work so hard on students behalf and dear lawrence um i saw a side of you that i hadn't seen in 19 years you wished

114my family death you came to my home threatened my children in blue valley and in shawnee i think olathe school board members police escorts i thought about not sharing that last thing with you but i think it's important it is to celebrate the successes it's really important that you all know that those things happened and they happened primarily because on social media we allowed ourselves to get entirely out of control on both sides of this issue and it meant for people that were not mentally well that they really took it out and for whatever reason sometimes it was me and usually that's because i was facilitating a meeting so we need to think carefully lawrence about how we engage in civil discourse and how we protect those people that stand up for us and serve

115our communities so even when i was imperfect i was trying to lead with compassion with humility and gratitude and sincerely this experience has changed me and i'm grateful as much as i have struggled so thank you all very much um that was a lot more time than i promised erica i would take um i'm also i'm it's so easy to hand this over to you i can't explain um i know we we've had challenging conversations but i i have so much respect for how you lead your professionalism i know that in this next year when dr johnson talks about renewal you are the exact right person to be doing it so thank you for stepping into this role and as much as i look forward to seeing what dr stubblefield does in kck i look

116forward to seeing what you do in this role and i'm glad to have a few months sitting by you doing it so thank you okay now i had a moment to talk to folks that are here to give patron commentary i'm going to read the audience participation because that's just how we do it and then i know there were a couple of you that wanted to speak and i'm not sure whether everybody got to sign in or not so if you didn't elise or julie boyle will help i think julie's here maybe not one of us will help get your contact information um okay so the usc 497 board of education welcomes patron comments and thank you for taking time to talk to us about our policies and procedures we set aside the time during

117our 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 and any specific concerns you may have my glasses are fogging up so i don't know what the last line says but i believe you have about three minutes and if you could refrain from sharing anybody's name that's the biggest the biggest deal to us tonight okay so without a list in front of me i think we're going to start with the students and we met and i didn't ask

118your name which is um not polite but do you want to come up and share yeah and then would you share your name again my name is annika maximov but i'm reading someone else's speech that wants to remain anonymous so yeah should i start okay make sure you're right into the mic and that's the way that everybody at home can hear you and we can record it for prosperity okay thank you so i would like to preface this that again it's not my speech a concerned student wrote this speech who is unfortunately unable to make it here today so i'm merely reading this speech for them and i'm no way in no way trying to take credit for their words um and because of that i feel like it would be out of place for

119me to answer any questions about this specific speech so however please don't let that hinder you from understanding the importance of the speech and you can address your questions to people who are speaking after me so yeah um i speak on behalf of the lawrence high school students lawrence high school student body and come here uh come here tonight to express the concerns that we have about this predecent that the school board has set for some of its most vulnerable students in current events there was a there was an incident that involved an lhs student with multiple allegations i'm sure you know um and that insta that incident was discussing in and of itself to know uh that sorry to know that those kinds of things happen within our community and at this age what

120was more disturbing was the way the school board handled it we were sent an email saying that this investigation was taking place and that was it nothing else was sent out but nothing else was set out if an investigation occurred we had no clue more questions were left unanswered when the student was allowed to be on the football team with no repercussions whatsoever i don't want this case to steer your attention because the real issue is is that the school board is setting the present for victims of sexual assault this is why it's hard for survivors to speak out when all we get is an email their name is a buzzword for a week and their assaulter gets to continue without repercussions it's hard for survivors to speak out when the administration that is supposed

121to care for them and their well-being abandons them um and at the very least this district needs to be held accountable and be transparent with their student body because in the end they're only hurting people that they were elected to protect thank you thank you so if um i know there are others of you that want to address the board as well do you want to come up to the mike and then if you could just tell us your name hi my name is caitlin sand and i'm a junior at lawrence high school i'm here today to express my concerns regarding the handling of recent allegations of sexual harassment and assault at lawrence high school did you know that according to the american association of university women nearly half of students in grades 7 through

12212 report facing sexual harassment one in nine female high school students and one in 36 male students report experiencing dating violence in the past year only 20 percent of female students who experience sexual assault report these incidents to authorities safety at schools include an environment free of these incidents and the knowledge that policies and procedures are in place to protect victims the cycle of harm and injustices that have existed in school must be addressed by the administration and the board of education when students ask questions and demand answers regarding incidents of assault and harassment they demand answers victims have been silenced they feel isolated and harmed victims should feel comfortable getting help support and protection they deserve we need fundamental policies and real solutions to keep our students safe from these situations sexual harassment and

123assault limits students from accessing a safe and respectful school environment it impairs learning and impacts mental and physical health and well-being i am here to highlight awareness of this very serious issue in our schools and hope we can implement education and policies that promote change by bringing awareness i stand here today with my peers to advocate for change thank you for your time thank you are there other students that wanted or other folks that wanted to join hi my name is rachel crambeer and i graduated from lawrence high school this may i'm sure all of you have seen the students protesting within this room in the comments and social media referring to sexual assault in the wake of these issues being brought to light is become blatantly apparent that sexual assault and harassment have been

124a widespread issue at lawrence high school and within the district whether it has been sexual harassment assault or rape the district and administration have long lacked action on these matters the current precautions for preventing sexual violence are insufficient and that failure has a compounded cost when authoritative figures lack action on matters to sexual assault and harassment it makes the matters appear trivial and decreases the likelihood of these acts being reported we need more than unfulfilled promises we need action and policy change to feel safe last fall when a student at lawrence high school sexually harassed another an administrator belittled the students involved by telling them the issues should have been brought directly to administrators rather than becoming public information and reported on social media it is unacceptable to value the reputation of lawrence high school

125in the district before the safety of students this isn't about the actions of one individual nor will punishing just one individual and continuing the behavior be acceptable what we need is prioritation of the community and the students not as an afterthought but as the bare minimum we need more accountability and transparency from both the board and administrators we need less censorship whether through staff actions or social media comments and posts we also need consistent prioritization of the safety of students and victims it is easy for the board to make a statement but it's more important for you to take action things have been swept under the rug things have come to the board's attention months ago and little to nothing has been done it's not just one or two incidents the number of women i

126specifically know at lawrence high school or within this district that have been assaulted will list would astound you the point isn't what the existing processes are it's why the existing processes are what they are it is too late for you to make a change while i was a student in this district but it is not too late for you to change the culture and environment of this district for the safety of other women and other students because right now i'm not proud to be a chesty lion i was not proud to go to a school where i walked to the halls with people who i knew had abused and harassed and assaulted people i knew and loved people i knew and loved were too scared to report because they felt that nothing would be done

127by the administration by law enforcement by the community by the board we need change and we need to do better thank you for your time is there other public comment from folks that are in the in the room i actually um wasn't planning on speaking tonight but after seeing the representation from my peers i found it necessary speaking as someone i just graduated from southwest middle school and i'm a freshman now i'm going to be going to lhs this year and for all my life i've been really proud to say that i'm going to lawrence high school and that i will be attending but recently i haven't been so proud to say that i understand that it's important to be civil when you're discussing a serious matter such as sexual assault sexual sexual assault or

128rape but i feel that the importance of this matter hasn't been taken seriously and i think that it has indeed been swept under the rug and i am i've heard you guys and i've listened that you say for years and years that um our counselors and our staff is there for us and it's and they're here to listen but in reality it's just a document on a piece of paper that gets put into a file and forgotten about and i feel that it isn't taken seriously and speaking as someone who knows specifically several young women young men and women who have been assaulted or abused etc personally i think that it is really important that we feel safe at our school and i can't feel safe when there's multiple people who abuse and who assault

129just walking through the hallways with no repercussion for their actions thank you for coming and for sharing with us [Applause] elise do we have people online one michelle who is it michelle eagleton um michelle are you still with us yes okay we have three minutes okay two meetings ago i spoke about how the similarity between your csrc and critical race theory and the opposition in other states including kansas to those initiatives the last meeting i spoke about the pacific education group and the other cities they've quote unquote helped which are disasters this time i'm going to talk about equity in the court in the aftermath of the civil war we amended our constitution to prevent slavery we are the first nation to ban the slave trade the fourth to ban slavery we spilled more blood

130in the civil war to make that happen than in any war since in the 1960s among other civil rights legislation preventing jim crow laws in the south we overturned bad law and brown versus board of education to desegregate schools the country is driven to become a more perfect union in terms of equality of opportunity however there is no guarantee in reality of equality of outcome not having a guarantee of equality of outcome doesn't qualify us as a systematically racist society equity aims for equality of outcome everyone agrees that no two people with different families education priorities are going to achieve or even want the same thing if siblings whose upbringing are exactly the same go different directions and pursue their happiness in different ways there is no way to expect that among the general public

131the boards csrc says it aims to eliminate inequities equity doesn't allow in order for there to be equity of outcome that outcome has to be predetermined and resources educationally economically socially provided for by the government redistributing it number one it's unrealistic to assume that there could ever be or we could ever want that much control over our individual decisions and number two it's an impossible goal given the differences in people so i have a problem with this definition of equity that everyone's income should be the same that we should all have similar living arrangements the same quantity of education that dissolves individual freedom and lower standards for everyone as well as stifling creativity innovation resourcefulness and the will to work equity diversity initiatives have been around a long time probably 30 years since i was

132in the school of education three or four decades is certainly long enough for an experiment equity is unrealizable it is a perfect cover administrators keep finding things to blame to disguise their failures academically and they have a continuous mandate to push progressive agenda if the schools really wanted to promote good racial relations they would promote respecting others they would back up and encourage the values parents teach at home they would not be color conscious definitely not color focused they would be color blind they would have the same expectations no matter who someone was public schools need to focus on academics leave politics ideologies and values to parents and families subjects don't need to be seen through any lens especially csrc the first requirement of real education is freedom when you insist on one and only

133one lens you have gone from education to indoctrination that we should treat others as we would like to be treated that's free it's in the bible and in this country it's available to everyone it's wise because it comes from god what the public school has been paying for it's not wisdom it's big business top-down leadership and social experimentation thank you all right okay um to the students one one of the asks that i heard from you is around policies initiatives and procedures so um shannon kimball and paula we're all on the policy committee so the board does um governance policy so the umbrella policy the kind of big picture policies and then the procedures and practices that follow those come from dr lewis and dr johnson and other folks that do administration at lhs so

134what we can do is review the policies and procedures that we have and look and see how are they interacting or intersecting with the practices and procedures and how do they support our equity work around gender equality specifically because very often we talk about sexual violence in terms of gender so that might be one space that the board can commit to i think it's quite brave to come and and address the board in the way that you did and we will um from that develop some action steps to help support students at lhs and free state so that's my commitment to you and as i'm stepping off as board president i will have a lot more time to do that so we'll for for certain um be following up at least specifically with those of

135you whose contact information we have and most specifically with those of you that are are still students in our school so i heard a junior and a freshman coming in and a recent graduate but will definitely be working to make sure that we follow up on the things that you've addressed the board about so we appreciate that okay um now uh board commentary kelly you won't be surprised that i have a couple things to say okay um and i want to start off actually by thanking you for your service as board president this past year i have really appreciated working with you during your tenure as president you have faced unexpected and unprecedented leadership challenges this year i admire your courage um i think that you had an experience this year that was levels beyond

136what the rest of us on the board had i will say that kelly's not wrong that some of the safety concerns she cited over our service this past year were not entirely unique to her role as president and i think it's very important to for the community to know that but i admire your courage and i admire your willingness to continue asking tough questions and demanding answers and your commitment to finding common ground whenever possible to serve the best interests of our students and our staff i look forward to continuing to serving with you you bring conscience and heart to our work at the board table and i am so very grateful for your service on the board especially this past two years as a board leader but most especially this past year i thank

137you you've done a job that no one should have been expected to do and you've done it with grace and humility and i like i said i really admire that thank you um i also wanted to say thank you to dr stubblefield it's been such a pleasure to work with you over my years on the board and especially the year that i served as board president and you are our interim superintendent it was such an such a a wonderful experience and i will miss you and i wish you all the best in your new position um i'll try to make the rest of this brief i just wanted to update the board on a couple of things i learned at some professional development over the last couple of weeks i attended the kasb summer school

138law seminar there's some important new developments from the department of education on guidance as to how they are going to be defining and this is really actually related to the advocacy from our students this evening um how they will define sex discrimination under title ix the department of ed has said that they're going to use the title vii definition that came down from the supreme court in the bostock decision which means that the department of education is going to consider that discrimination on the basis of sex under title ix includes sexual orientation and transgender status and i was pleased to see that guidance from the department of education um and to learn about that um there was a lunch and learned for kasb last week um there are some really extensive new data dashboards available

139to board members through the kasb member portal you could look at some extensive survey response data from not only from our own district from but comparative data from districts across the state they walked us through how to use that portal i encourage you to go out and take a look at what's available it's really helpful in addition they talked about the expiration of the governor's statewide disaster declaration and how that means that the attorney general's guidance on the use of virtual meetings has also expired and the takeaway that they shared with board members about that is that um as we are doing now we need to be holding in-person meetings um for the public to attend in person if they so choose even if we have board members that are attending some board members that

140are attending virtually um the policy committee met this past week we have a number of ongoing projects and um some big projects we will be looking at the things kelly talked about tonight and adding that to our agenda but we are also working on looking at investigating a social media policy for the district and updating our fundraising policy as it relates to social media we're also moving our meetings to the second and fourth thursdays of the month at 3 15 starting this month and we're going to be doing some work looking at our policy on board committees to make sure that our policy and our practice aligns um with with the board policy um finally i wanted to say thank you to the board candidates who have reached out to me i've met with a

141handful of them and i'd like to extend the invitation to all the board candidates in the upcoming race i'd be glad to meet with you and discuss board service please reach out to me using the contact information that is on the usd 497 website if you would like to set up a time to talk so thank you this is carol first of all i would like to thank kelly for your years of service and dedication to this community it's been an honor to serve alongside of you and i've known kelly for a number of years and i i just thank you for all of your work and i'd like to thank dr stubblefield for her years of service and i wish her all the best in kansas city and and important more importantly i would

142like to thank the students that came here and spoke and um where they were i am i i just i'm hopeful i'm i'm so glad it's it's not the best of circumstances that you came but i am so glad that you came here and to uh participate and engage in your civic duty but i also and i am i am encouraged by the board of and that we will enforce the title ix and the the entitled seven of the civil rights act of 1964 in the kansas act against discrimination and thank you shannon for your work and let's see in other business i i attended the boundary advisory committee on june 17th and we discussed classroom sizes and estimated to cancel student accounts for next year one of the major areas that kept coming up

143was regarding transportation and needing to look at keeping as many students as possible from not having to cross major intersections and on june 23rd i was honored to take part in a kansas leadership center center panel discussion with other board members from kansas on june 23rd the topic this topic has been a constant source of pain and english for many in 2005 the american psychological association passed a resolution calling for the retirement of american indian mascots and on june 24th i attended the visit from the house of carvers of the the looming nation at haskell indian nation university as part of their totem pole journey the group's efforts are to honor unite and empower communities and the the tour is just the stop and lawrence is just a tour a stop of one of many

144and with the tour began in bellingham washington and will ultimately end in washington dc and i'd like to add that members of the group's last stop was at billy mills middle school where the totem pole stopped and they took pictures of the totem pole in front of billy mills middle school and on june 25th saturday i attended the city commission candidate forum at the lawrence arts center hosted by the douglas county democrats and i urge everyone to attend the school board candidate forum on saturday july 10th at 10 a.m at the lawrence arts center and some important dates are to register to vote by tuesday july 13th that's only 17 days and advanced voting by mail and in person begins wednesday july 14th so i urge everyone to get out and vote because as we've

145all seen especially during the pandemic that local elections do matter thank you thank you carol um anyone else paula erica um i'll just make it quick um i attended the policy committee and shannon gave a really good overview i also attended the pal cwoa we're starting the ibb process and i'm learning a lot going through that also attended a couple of meetings with the negotiations lea committee and reviewing some language and i think that's it uh dr stubblefield thank you for your service here in the district um i feel like i just got to know you and you're leaving though i've been in the district for quite a while so i appreciate that and to the students that i appreciate your courage coming up to share your stories and share your words i i echo

146what kelly had brought up and making a commitment to addressing some of these issues in our policy committee and kelly i appreciate your vulnerability in expressing what it's like to serve on the board during a pandemic and i you won't be far so i see what we do in the next year and welcome the new board president eric hill you and i spend a lot of time together paula so we're in a lot of meetings together you'll oh i know yeah we're going to be together for a while all right um anything else you're ready okay good all right so we will move on to um approval of the consent agenda do we have a motion this is carol i move the board of education adopt the items listed on the consent agenda is there

147a second year jones yes hill could do blackwood yes kimble yes smith yes motion passes 5-0 okay so we're now going to move on to the draft of the board of education meeting schedule this was the draft we asked the elt to come back to us with regarding our meetings for next year you will note that we have moved to one meeting per month holding a second one tentatively if needed and then i'll open it up for discussion thank you kelly um i'll just i'll share some feedback that i had previously shared with board leadership around the schedule so um i think one of the things that i was hoping to see as we move toward revising our meeting schedule draft was to use that as an opportunity to designate some times throughout the year

148where the board would be specifically doing some professional development in the form of work sessions or otherwise i think that if we if we don't specifically commit ourselves to doing it it's a lot harder to ensure that it happens so i would encourage board and administration to consider that perhaps we designate one meeting a quarter of the of the fourth monday meetings as times that we will meet and do [Music] professional development or work sessions i am worried i will admit i am worried after having done this as long as i have i am worried that our one meeting a month will become too long and too much i mean we already are experiencing that at two meetings a month you know this past year especially now granted our experience as board members this last

149year with some of the issues and the amount of discussion was unusual i remember times in the past where we've met and the board meeting lasted all of 30 minutes you know this is a number of years ago so um so there have been times when we have been able to do our business very quickly um that hasn't been the case particularly even really the last three years i would say and so what i don't want to have happen is by doing this for us to shove too much on an agenda because we're only meeting once that month and that means that the quality of work that the board is doing is not as good mm-hmm um and and you know sometimes i even with the two meetings a month i feel like we feel

150pressure time pressured over some of our discussions in executive session for example so i have reservations about making this move and i just wanted to make sure that the rest of the board got a chance to hear what those were before we moved forward and i guess i would ask to consider the proposal of of designating you know for those second monday meetings as definitely we're going to meet and if we don't have other business that we have to do that we can use those for our own professional development as a board i think that's an interesting idea uh other folks i do um thank you for raising those concerns shannon so moving to one meeting a month it wouldn't make a lot of sense to just double this if we don't make any changes

151operationally it wouldn't make any sense to double the size of this meeting so dr lewis can you walk us through what changes will be made so that we don't have a really lengthy meeting once a month versus two two and a half hour meetings and i think you've experienced that in the past maybe two or three meetings with written reports i think in the past we were providing board updates on some things that could have potentially been in a written report or potentially a friday update as i mentioned earlier what we want to do going forward is look at meetings that are closely aligned to our strategic plan that's the work that we're doing so how are we updating the board on on that work you know again going with a particular theme as opposed

152to what we did tonight all five themes which was a lot but uh taking for example cohesive curriculum really going deep and into that but not you know long obviously during those agenda setting meetings uh we will get input from board officers in terms of what are the key points that that that board members will need to know also being intentional around bringing reports to the board that may not require decision um that could be something that could potentially be in a written report keeping the board updated on on the work uh but just being more intentional around bringing reports to the board that require um decisions um that may have budget implications policy implications uh and then obviously the update on our strategic plan but i think with the the use of the written

153reports i think that will will help tremendously so do i hear you saying that the board meetings and the content will be more streamlined um and so we'll still have ample time for meaningful discussion um focus on the strategy is that what you're yeah and making sure that we are um not putting board members in a position to get in the weeds you know so real high level board reports and i think we've agreed on like maybe 20-minute type water reports but then having enough time for board members to really dig deep into questions or suggestions as it relates to a report is it fair to say that the elt spends quite a bit of time putting together the reports they do for the board as opposed to doing other work that might be more

154directly related to the students it's a huge time commitment in terms of you know obviously getting the data and the necessary information for a report doing that rehearsal and then going back and tweaking the report um we just want to make sure we have time to do the work as opposed to you know preparing the reports so i'll just say i'm really struggling to think back through um what has been completely unnecessary that has been before the board over the last year and so i guess that's where some of my hesitation comes from or even you know over the last five to ten years very rarely do i sit here and think i don't know why they're telling me this i have nothing to do with this um so i i really do have that

155profound concern that spending less time at it is actually going to make the board less prepared to make good decisions over time and the other thing the other unintended consequence that just occurred to me is that it's going to slow down by half our policy process because we are required to have two reads of every policy so if we only have one board meeting a month that means it just takes us that much longer to get those approvals done that's that it that just is what it what it will be but that is something to consider did you have something if there was a policy that needed more immediate approval we it does have tentative so we could there's that option if we if we had to but i understand what you're saying the other

156thing that occurs to me i was thinking back to something patrick said earlier in the presentation he was giving and and something that i've missed this year which is you know we haven't been in a building or connected to students or um the things those aren't just only the joy moments but it's really where i learn the most is when i'm sitting in front of a teacher who says i mean i can actually remember what what topic we covered in every board breakfast or lunch i've been to so there is something about how you learn when you're in that space and talking to people that do the work so some of some of what has occurred to me is that utilizing those that time i know not every board member can come to every single

157one of those but those that keep us in um updated in in and process things that are not necessarily decision but to use those strategically to um if we try to move to this meeting and i i'm actually in i i share you know i've heard your concerns shannon and i actually i think they're relevant and um fair critiques i i'm interested in giving this a try and seeing how often we have to use the second meeting and then making it a determination in the year if if you know maybe this didn't work so that's i think if we don't try something new we're not going to disrupt the way that the meetings are going we'll just continue to to run the way we have been and i would say sometimes it's not super effective

158so do you have thoughts about it carol or well i'm i'm just concerned about it building voter's trust and we've seen that during the pandemic there's a lot of we we need a lot of there's a lot of work to be done to rebuild that trust so i'm just worried about voter engagement and i like shannon said i'm just i'm worried about the the the meetings that we will have i just want to make sure that everybody's heard and that they are impactful that i don't want people people to feel like they're rushed that's a really good point i will say i do i mean i understand um and i appreciate the concern about how much staff time it takes to prepare for a board meeting but i think that you're going to be doing

159that prep work on what if it's important enough for it to happen in a board meeting you're going to be doing it anyway so i want to be thoughtful and mindful of our staff's time and what they have what they need to accomplish um and and i'm sure that there's a balance there i just i don't know if this for me i don't know that this completely strikes that balance paula do you have thoughts about it it's just a couple of things um because we just passed the board governance policy of the board governance document i'm wondering if we'd put that that we meet i will have to revise the manual if if we adopt this um if we adopt this schedule at the july meeting we'll have to revise the manual and yeah make

160those changes yeah and i agree with carol that building board cohesiveness and especially if we have incoming board members this january and at their only meeting one time a year what will that onboarding look like for them how will we how will they get to know our systems that we have in place those are a couple of things that i have um just looking at this and i also think it's relevant to keep committing ourselves to some professional development in these tentative sections okay so it sounds like for you some of the concerns around um connecting with the community uh ultimately that's less time for the community yeah we present to the board and we've seen the significant number of people that come in and talk to us about issues and we we as a

161board should not i mean i i'll speak for myself we should not i should not cut off the community their right to come in and express their concerns on an issue okay i think i have a different perspective i don't see it as cutting off the community um because it would allow in some cases more time to go and engage in a more like if you're going into the schools i know schools are not open at six o'clock at night but see my point like you're still going to answer emails you still are going to engage with the community um so i don't see it as like limiting that but i i understand the perception at least yeah from the community standpoint the perception although that may not be the reality of the situation yeah

162no that's fair and that's probably probably poor choice of words on my end um but just seeing the example that came in here the students that came in this um this evening so i can say that part of this came out or the reason why we were looking at this is at the board retreat we we talked about meeting once a month and we asked the district to review that and there partially we looked at it because it actually is standard in most districts to meet once a month that's what the statute is and it doesn't mean that we have to follow that but that is the standard practice for um most boards in the state of kansas um i have since learned a little bit about how they managed that both from shannon and

163then some other phone calls i made to see how they address some of the issues that have risen here but and so anyway so that that's where it came from and that's why we're having the discussion here just to kind of orient everyone to why this is on the table am i advocating for or against at this point um i think i would feel i'd be more hesitant if we didn't have that tentative date on there and if it was completely wiped off but the fact that we have that tentative date it gives me a little bit more comfort that if we needed to exercise that and use that second meeting we have the flexibility and we're not limiting ourselves it's more of an exploration like is it possible for us to do this in

164a different way we've always done it this way from what i understand i think it's an opportunity to possibly try something different and explore and like kelly said if it if we're finding out that it's just not working and it's not manageable and it's actually causing more work for the district and the board then we can always adjust if needed okay so i think the next is there additional discussion because i think the next step might just be see where we're at if we not at this time okay is it do you have any additional paula anything additional to add i don't right now okay we can i think for now um we can take a vote see where we're at and then move from there i do want to say that the commitment to

165the quarterly professional development is something i'm really interested in i don't know if it has to does it have to be in so shannon do you see that if we if i were going to adjust the motion to include that or can we do it separate even if we don't have it i mean that's something we can get we can commit to within the board governance document without adding it to this motion correct that way we could schedule around our time yeah um i mean there's gonna be a motion on this one this is just discussion and approval will come at the first that okay erica is going to be more don't have to sign off on this until our organizational meeting okay so i mean i think that's something for board officers and administration

166to consider between now and july 12th is whether whether you want to adjust the schedule i mean the thing about full board professional development is it has to take place in an in a true a noticed public meeting yeah so even when we have a board retreat that's a noticed public meeting so um it's so you could put it on here as as one of our regular meeting times and you don't have to even say it's for professional development you can just say we're going to have a board meeting this month this month and this month no knowing that that's what you plan to use it for i mean either way it still has to be a public meeting to do that kind of full board training okay all right so um at the moment

167what it sounds like for erica and shannon at your next meeting to have a discussion about where this conversation went what you've taken from it any shifts you might want to make based on what you've heard melissa and gr unfortunately are unable to to be with us tonight but because there's only two of them there is a possibility of you potentially reaching out to them and not not um breaking coma or is that not do you receive any feedback from either of them i did i have not okay yeah i think it would be good to try to get some feedback from them um some input um okay so i'll leave that to to you if that's okay okay i just i just want to be clear these are obviously these are your meetings um

168we will be prepared to present whatever we need to present to you obviously we want to obviously provide an update on the strategic plan but there may be instances where out of the five themes you may view next year just give us updates on these three themes and then these other meetings we want updates on policy governors has relates to this particular policy and then elise can i just ask for your input did i miss anything obvious in that discussion that we should consider as a board nothing i know of okay thank you okay we'll move on to the budget and legislative update kathy johnson executive director of finance is here to provide a report good evening kathy johnson executive director of finance can you hear me okay no we cannot take this off to

169talk or do i need to leave yes would you if you are you comfortable i am yeah that would be great there were okay um tonight i just wanted to bring forward a few things that came from the budget workshop that just really are kind of important um some of them you actually noticed probably in the calendar that you got and so i'm gonna spend a little bit of time on those because they do kind of change how we do business when it comes to processing kind of our budget and then kind of a few just an update of where we are and there's our year ends not quite over we still have some open-ended things but i'll talk through that as we go so the first thing i wanted to share with you is

170make sure to go too many pages i'm not sure what i'm looking at okay is the um house it's senate bill 13 house bill 2104 so they they kind of had two different things out there and it ended up with um what were what they're calling this revenue neutral rate information this is new and originally with this bill it was city county and they kind of pulled school districts in there and we don't function the same as cities and counties so it has created some uniquenesses that they've had to work through with the counties that has actually put more work on them to some degree and um in a couple of years we'll actually be sharing a prorated cost of what it costs for them to do some notification to the public but basically what

171this is is that currently assessed valuations will go up and down and if you have a flat mill levy and the assessed valuation goes up so the 20 mils general fund for example or your eight mills with capital outlay and the assessed valuation goes up that eight mills brings in more dollars if it goes down that eight mills brings in less dollars so what revenue neutral rate in a mill levy basically means is is that if the evaluation goes up you're really capped by the dollars so your mill levy goes down so for example the 20 might be 19.5 which will raise the same amount of dollars as the year before um that doesn't meet statute we have to raise 20 mils by statute and so in order for us to or your eight mills

172in capital for example raises a certain amount of money next year if the valuation goes up they're just wanting you to do a mill levy that raises the exact same as the year before so in order for us to raise more money that would be allowed with the mill rate with the increased valuation we actually have to have a public hearing set a hearing date and go through an approval process and file some forms with the county so for all school districts unless your assessed valuation goes down you'll be doing it for the 20 mills in general fund because that's statutorily required we don't have any choice but to raise 20 mills and that goes into the state aid and then it comes back to us and so if our valuation goes up and 20

173mills means 19.5 the board has to say to the county we're going to raise our mill levy above this revenue neutral rate and this is what it's going to be 20. and we have to notify them and then so i'm going to walk through some of that and what that means but um we have other funds that this does impact capital is the one that comes to mind immediately just because it has an eight mil piece to it so that kind of makes sense i didn't read the slide verbatim i was just trying to kind of give you an idea of what it means i did also share the full statute legislative information that the state gave us at the budget workshop there's a lot more items in it than just what i'm going over

174but i'm going to hit the high ones that impact finance and there's a little more information in that handout to go through so basically the timeline requirements that i'm talking about is by june 15th the county gave us our assessed valuations in order for us to calculate this revenue neutral calculation on july 20th it's that's the last day we can notify the clerk that we have an intent to levy above that revenue neutral rate then we have to give them the proposed tax rate what it's going to be and provide them with some hearing and information and then what what the county is supposed to do between august july 20th and august 20th that notify taxpayers either by email or by mail what's going to happen so if we're raising the rate then they go

175out and email all of the taxpayers that school district is going to go above the revenue neutral rate and they they need that 20 day win or that month basically to do that beginning in 2022 the county clerk will be doing that but i believe it's two years in then we start paying for the cost of that mailing or that email process so um it will be there will be eventually a cost to us tied to this because it's going to be very time consuming for the county clerks to do this so then somewhere between august 20th and september 20th we need to hold the hearing in conjunction with our budget hearing again that 10-day window between publication and hearing then we have our budget hearing and we have the revenue neutral rate hearing then

176you all will pass the budget and it's certified by the county so those are the real kind of big window dates i put together then on the next slide what that means for us the best that i could in your new board meeting schedule so what you're probably what you're used to is usually we do a budget kind of presentation the first meeting in july and then the second one you have the budget to approve for publication we have the hearing the first board meeting in august and we certify in august this extends it significantly because of the time frame so based on the dates that fit within kind of the limitations your july 12th meeting i will bring with you what those rates are going to need to be in order to meet the

177budget forms as they get laid out and we just received budget forms today i was hoping that they would come soon enough that i wouldn't have to do this by hand so this is going to be helpful and so that will be where you approve the intent to levy above that revenue neutral rate it'll be on july 12th technically you don't have to approve it but we feel like it's a good thing for you to have that conversation make sure those rates are what you want us to navigate within the final budget document we have till the 20th to notify the county that we're planning on doing that and then between july 20th and august 20th they will share with taxpayers that lawrence public schools is going to do that and we know no matter

178what we're going to have to do it for the 20 mills i would expect the eight mills as well and then the other funds bond and interest local option budget special assessments adult basic the and the cola will all really depend on what the legal max or the debt requirements are within our budget and then the mill levy kind of is backed into and then based on what that is and the dollars being raised versus the year before we'll identify whether we have other needs and other funds besides the two that i mentioned does that make sense it's kind of a convoluted thing and i think it'll make more sense as we navigate forward but we have to go through all those funds and if we need more basically if we need more tax dollars

179levied than the year before and it means the rate's going up then we have to give permission to do that or have a hearing to do it so that does mean then that we'll publish somewhere between august 20th and september 1st and then september 13th i'm yeah i missed a date in here so i apologize august 9th will be the date that we will provide probably your budget report and your budget documents and i missed adding that in there and that's my fault because i'd like to have the hearing held september 13th hold the budget hearing and the revenue neutral rate resolution hearing you'll approve it at that meeting and then we have to certify it with the county october 1st so after the july 20th and your first board meeting in august the 9th

180will be when we do instead of july 26th it'll be august 9th that we do the presentation of the board and what the publication will look like for the hearing so i i need to add that in there i apologize i jumped all the way over that one it's in your calendar tonight if you look at that calendar i've listed those out very specifically those three dates but it does extend it so you know when you think about that we're three months into the school year and we don't have a budget because it'll be september 13th and then certified october 1st so it was always kind of a little bit late august now it's almost another month later about that because it is just really odd and it's new but it is it's going to

181be something we're going to see this from going forward i can't i just can't understand why they would do that i don't i don't know why it got pulled into the bill the school districts got pulled into the bill because for cities and counties it's a good thing they've always been under a cap so this really does allow them some flexibility i'm not really sure what the rationale was for bringing school districts into the same bill when we asked at the budget workshop like is this forever and whatever are they going to talk about it again and we got the impression that it probably was going to circle back around just because of what it's causing extra work for the county and and just the whole whole thing kind of um i think it will

182be discussed again whether it gets changed or not i don't know it seems like there's it is very different than what there's some legal questions that this will create in terms of districts have a statutory obligation to raise the 20 um but then you know what happens if you have a board that has the hearing and chooses not to do so like i i this cause the cynic and me kathy wants to say that the reason we got pulled into this is that because the legislators that were writing this legislation don't understand the school finance formula well enough to know that this is a ridiculous requirement to put districts through um it makes absolutely no sense particularly when as you have educated the board very well over the years most of our mill levy rates

183um are backed into based on how much funds we have to we have to generate because there's a statutory requirement that we generate those funds so so i am hopeful that this does get revisited but i i don't know if it will be this upcoming legislative session um my question for you is um i know that this process was going to extend our budget season anyway um but i guess not a question but my i would urge you that if if it makes more sense for your budgeting process for us to have two meetings in july august or september in order to make this work better please tell us that i think this will work i i think the august 9th it's just later and um but it'll still fit within this time frame so

184i think we can still make it navigate um but you know again this will be the first year we're experimenting with this or doing it it might actually give us some additional time but certainly i don't want our meeting schedule to hamper your work so that's that'll be mine seems to fit for now so um we'll we'll kind of navigate that and thank you for paula and gr and i how does this impact well for everybody on negotiations lea everyone how does this impact it doesn't okay it just puts a few more hoops for us to have to jump through um a new publication hearing okay um schedule thing and really what your hearings will do they'll be just staggered they recommended the revenue neutral be like at six o'clock and you open the hearing

185you close it then you do the budget hearing and you close it and then you have your board meeting and you approve it at the board meeting both so it just creates another layer of of information that we need to share and then go through the process of approving so that one's kind of a biggie because it really does change just how how we navigate this whole thing i'm also really curious how much those mailings are going to end up costing um because i'm sure they don't have emails on file no no it'll be mail it'll have to be mailed so when we do a when we do a bond election mailing just to like when we've had a special election how much has it cost the district to run that so a little over

186a hundred thousand so we're basically going to be asked to spend a teacher on sending a piece of paper to voters or taxpayers property owners in our county that um absolutely at the at the end of the day will make absolutely no difference in what we actually do because we're statutorily required to set the middle levees where we set them yeah i mean i'm just being like it just it's upsetting that the legislature has put this requirement on school districts the hope is maybe by the time that happens we won't it won't be in place and so the cost and that that cost is just us solely doing the mailing if we share between county city and school district it would be somewhat less than that but it's still an expensive endeavor to to do

187so so then i just wanted to go through a couple of other items you know that they did the um they did approve under house bill 2134 a variety of things and i am not going to go through every single one of them there's a laundry list of them in the handout that you've got but there's a few of them that are important enough to to kind of talk through just briefly um they did do the appropriations through 23 which it's been a really long time since we've had promised funding that they've actually kind of followed through with so that was that was good they've created because they don't want remote learners they've created this new funding category for individual remote learners with some exceptions so if we have any remote learning more than 40

188hours the state has to approve that for school districts so if you have a student or somebody that kind of fits into this category they're actually going to fund that child differently than the brick and mortar kid or more like a virtual student is what they're going to do so we have to give them a list of any students that that became remote learners during the school year when they come to audit and they'll navigate that through audit but then they will remove them from how they fund us under a brick and mortar way and they will which means they'll take away the weightings on it the for a full time it'll be the 5000 which is similar to virtual school and similar to virtual school the weightings come off for that same students so

189if they happen to be an at-risk category or they happen to be a cte category or something like that we would lose any weightings tied to them for that but it's a new kind of funding category again new don't know really what that will mean don't know that we will run into it even but it will be uh something unique and and different than than what we've had to navigate in the past so we kind of have three spaces although this looks a lot like virtual we'll have we'll have to navigate that as a new type of learner and and funding category going in to next year they did extend the high density at-risk funding through june 30 of 2024 but interestingly enough they are going to do a performance audit the year of 23

190and they're going to evaluate district expenditures compliance with statutes ksds compliance and then they're going to evaluate trends and academic outcomes of our at-risk students and what they're looking for there is sort of a continuum of learning of any student that has been identified at risk they're receiving resources and they want to be able to see that as a result of those at-risk funds this student is getting better and that's going to be part of what they're going to look at in that performance audit coincidentally enough it is right before they talk about extending that because it does sunset june 30 of 24 the high density at-risk piece so i think that they're doing this just ahead of when that legislative session would happen in order to see whether that funding is really making a

191difference and whether they'll continue it or sunset it for good so that was that was kind of an interesting little piece in there and then the other piece about just at-risk guidelines you know we can only spend them on an at-risk approved program and there's a laundry list of those on the state side that have to be things that we're using with these funds in in order to to work with the kids if high density risks they come and audit us and they find out they're not spent with best practices we'll need to repay those funds and then this is the longitudinally tracking of students academic social and emotional not poverty as a cohort group so those were some things with that at-risk funding and that's a really big pot of money for for all

192districts the other piece that will impact that and we don't know how is this new household economic survey that is going to take the place of free and reduced lunch applications so with usda doing free lunch for everybody that application that all districts completed to determine free or reduced students in our district is not going to exist and so they're having us do a new form household economic survey that we'll have families complete for us we still have to evaluate them to see which category they fit in we use free and reduce for a lot of things we use it for fee waiver for all of our data we use those you know as a subset and we use it for title monies is you know there's free and reduced calculations as a part of

193that title formula and even s or grant is based on a title formula so there's just a lot of things that free and reduced classifications incorporate in so that's going to replace it and for how long we don't know because we don't know if usda just decide this ongoing and permanent that they'll do freelance for schools or whether that will circle back around so we do still have to verify three percent we still have to do a lot of those same hoops as if it were but um it will look and feel very different and so the success of getting those turned in was not good during covid we're hoping um and gonna meet and try to figure out how to to make sure that we get those completed the best that we can to

194make sure that our at-risk funding doesn't go down and maybe comes back up as kids come back to school and we have the information so that that and you've talked about this form before so i just want to and you might have just said it actually i just want to get one point clear the um what is the incentive on the form they get their fees waived what would incentivize a family to fill out that form really what the form and the cover for from the state it's basically all of our federal funding is based on um part of these categories and so it's really just encouraging them to clean it to make sure the school district gets the most out of their funding we do have the ability to let them know that the

195use of this fund form in order to determine what status they are does waive them for fees and again we can't change the form itself but we'll use julie's expertise and communication to try to figure out how to best um share the information so that we get that back and we are also looking at digitizing it or trying to figure out how to make it just easier for families to do and then i'm wondering about this um most the the academic and the last bullet academic social and emotional and then capital letters not poverty can you explain to me why students are not it's that's not the sole identifier for at-risk students in the use of this funds and so it's not poverty they want you to identify it does not you're free and reduced

196that are considered those at-risk kids we really need to look at the academic social and emotional at-risk student and that's that's that tracking of because these funds are not just to go we generate them off of free students but they're not to go that's not who gets back the money it gets back to any student we've identified across the district in the weighted funding when they are evaluating that the weighted funding comes down to us through medicaid dollars through the federal government correct this money for at-risk funding is a awaiting based on free lunches okay students that qualify for free lunch so this doesn't have anything to do with medicaid but the the um when so when they were talking about looking at the 2023 longitudinal data that we have around um whether or not

197those receiving the weighted funding have improvements or not their incentive is not to provide us more money because they didn't give us enough it would be that they want to to take that money away correct um it's the sunset that i mentioned yeah that's what i'm talking about in terms of the sunset so it's sunset um they extended it they've they've multiple times have had like hearings on it and then okay okay we'll do it one more time two years passes it's again one more time but they're kind of putting some things in place now that will really i think help them decide or give them some evidence um as to whether it's something that they want to continue thank you kathy um technical question so since u.s um d.a has decided to extend the

198free lunch um i imagine that you know pre-pandemic there are probably families who had put money into their lunch accounts with the district that's just sitting there are we going to provide any guidance to families about how they can get that back you know paula's not here so i don't want to speak totally on on her behalf but anytime a family has called and said um we have money singing our account and we'd like a refund we've refunded so we've done a number of refunds i don't know that i can't speak for her to say whether she's sent something out globally or not but i do know that we have processed a number of refunds to parents based on balances in those accounts um and i don't know if it's just on request or she's

199communicated something and then they've they've requested so um i can certainly ask her and see but we've we've definitely refunded anybody that has um asked or some of them have said apply it to fees and we've figured out how to navigate that as well so okay thank you yeah anything else before i kind of navigate forward to um some year-end kind of summary i didn't really i didn't go through the whole legislative thing those were some kind of key things that i just felt like were really important because they may change how we navigate a few things going forward but if there's something on that list you want to know more about when you read through there if you need reading material at night or something it gets kind of dry so i wanted to

200share just a little bit about um you know we with the enrollment decline we really saw a significant impact to our current year budget and we had to do a number of things to to navigate that and so just as a reminder this was kind of where we planned this very first column and it shows you know we had we had planned down to this kind of legal max of about um and that was adding about 4.3 million dollars into the 2021 budget from 1920 based on enrollment weightings everything you know panning out um like kind of normal um kovid hit and we didn't get you know almost 700 kids and so this is kind of what we ended up with in this final audit column and the shortfall is about 4.3 million dollars so

201really the ad that we had planned we never received those fundings enough funds to even to cover that and it really is just in weightings and and you can see that um in a couple of spaces this at-risk weighting which is about 2200 a kid or more because you've also got lob to think about um and then uh you can kind of see where the other big ones are but special education is another space that that we had some funding decrease there their vocational and then cost of living is kind of backed into based on where your general fund ends but the total ended up being about this so we've had to navigate this close of this year which again is not complete we we don't close till june 30 we still have some final

202year-end things that are running through tentatively it looks like with the freeze on spending that we've done we've navigated quite a bit of savings through for through just freezing budgets and saying you don't get to to spend through june 30. when we swept you know all those different vacancies retirements that maybe were left unfilled until july 1 and when we think about our legal max is transfers from that fund to special education bilingual vocational so just wrapping it all together and trying to just pull every place we can there was a lot of unfilled positions and a lot of a lot of hourly positions in particular just couldn't find somebody or while we were um remote or hybrid we we didn't have the same need for some of that and the students weren't also there

203so so with that that has helped cover a large chunk of this you'll see some other things on here you know extra duty some transportation costs with not being in person some savings there virtual state aid kind of that indirect side some reimbursement credits and really that one that's in yellow is really where we're navigating that balancing act of is there some open pos that people have that are really not purchasing something they're just kind of open at a almost like a blanket kind of and we can close those cancel those and they can reopen those july 1 and go forward this does have some repercussions for those folks that had frozen spending because they they really plan in the spring they order those things they come in over the summer and they have them

204in place in august and we've not allowed them to do any of that ordering until july 1. so now they're on a different cycle and so that's going to be a little bit um of a challenge to to balance that going forward um but in order to try to find the kind of dollars to to make us break even um we had to go to that extreme in order to make it happen so the last june activity in our accruals should all clear by july 9th and so then we'll move forward with the new budget year [Music] there is we had some discussion at our workshop about this utility bill and do we have to do we not have to encumber it we are going to have to encumber it they highly recommend we don't

205do it in general fund or we will get a deduct for state aid if we end up not having to to pay it so which um we'll end up encumbering it in the cap contingency reserve fund and then if it's um not spent it just clears that unencumbered cash back to cash and and we're good if we do that in general then because of the way the legal max works then it just is a deductible a deduction of our state aid because that cash comes back in is unobligated now they don't need to give you state aid for because you don't have the obligation anymore so it's called a cancellable po and we would want to avoid losing that kind of state aid so unfortunately what that does mean though is our contingency reserve will

206will be encumbered by that much and won't be available for other kinds of things um we are working through that with um the same legal firm that kasb is using it for their k-jump and the resolutions and um you know they said it could take 60 to 90 days before we find out for sure where we are but the disputed charge right now is about 392 558.25 of the 498 that we were billed for that i know a lot of other districts that workshop i talk to quite a few and they're at varying stages of of negotiations or some of them just went ahead and paid it paid it out of funds that they had either in contingency or reserves and others are just kind of waiting so i did want to talk just a

207little bit about the contingency reserve fund because i think sometimes we kind of forget what what that means and when it goes away that we don't have it back because it is one time many so i think i've shared some of this information in other spaces but i did want to bring it just in front of the board for a moment there is a statute um okay so first of all currently within the district's operating budget we don't have any more just this reserve of we've budgeted for we never spend it kind of thing to carry over from here because that kind of went away when we've been doing the deficit navigating so we what we what we budget is what people have planned to spend and there's really no just contingency within the general

208fund so our contingency is really the contingency reserve fund and school districts are allowed to have one under kansas statute 72-5165 and it's really for financial contingencies as determined by the board and it's one-time money so it's no different than you pull it out of your savings account the only way you can build your savings account back up is your expenditures at the end of the month have to be less than your resources coming in and as we've navigated the last number of years with budget we've not had the the blessing of having revenues in excess of expenditures we've been the other direction so until that occurs to build this back up it will take a purposeful underspending with a balance that would purposefully be transferred here and the only way to build this back

209up is a transfer from general fund so i just kind of share the statute and that information we've had the question about what reserve levels should be and so statutes don't really have one there's nothing in the statutes that says the cap is this or that anymore it used to be there was a cap of four then there was six then there was ten then there was none then they just you know different stages different statutes right now there's currently not a cap um now we've talked about for this for us six percent makes sense for a district our size just kind of giving you a range of what four six and ten would be you can see four percent is about three point four six would be around that five million mark and ten

210would be closer to 8.5 our current contingency reserve is the 1.198 million um it will be 800 and some after we encumber our utility bill so it is going to be lower for a while we do have some cash flow issues and so we'll we'll have to probably do a request of additional state aid let them front some of our state aid that we might not get until january and december in order for us to navigate that low spot that we typically um hit i will say that um just for a reference point again that just the certified payroll one month is 6.2 million so again those financial contingencies are really you know are we not going to get money from the state is there some other factor that's going to prevent us from being

211paying our bills or again an arctic freeze in which you have something that's unexpected and you you have to navigate it so um those are all things to think about and what is that right limit and we've never really talked about that as a board or or as to maybe what your preference would be what your goal might be to build that back up i think that's something that through this next year maybe through the budget committee and that we can have some further discussions as to what that reserve we want that to be as a district and and make a conscious effort to try to to navigate back to something that maybe is a little bigger than the one we have which is only about 1.4 percent of our our budget um and like

212i did note at the bottom you know that puts us at about 805 000 is all in that fund um kathy can i ask in your i i don't remember it ever being that low as long as i've been in lawrence i mean i don't have been this low yeah for a very very long time because we did have reserves as you remember um before we we started going through the budget flat and then doing all the the different stages that the finance law suit took us and then used reserves and this was one of those reserves that that was depleted over time as just a result of that trying to get that right sided back up so um it is low compared to where we are the other piece that um is important that

213i is different than contingency but is that there are unencumbered cash balances in different funds and for the most part we've we've navigated those down as well um just trying to um never really building in when we did get money back to helping maintain these to a healthier space um and so one thing to remember with kansas we're in a cash basis law kind of thing which means that each fund has to function on its own one can't be over and the other one under and still be positive so just because i have cash in the bank and it's bond and interest cash of 12 million dollars to pay our next bond and interest payment and i have zero in general fund i can't use that cash in the bank legally to pay for that

214and if i did and then all of a sudden the next month i had my principal and interest payment and i didn't have the money there to do that that would that would be statutorily an issue as well so we have to look at each one of those funds general fund llb everything that you're going to see on kind of this next cash summary independent of each other the only exception is the federal fund because they work in a reimbursement world and so you kind of go deficit and then they pay you back kind of thing and that's the only one that's really legally allowed to be in the red everything else should always be zero or something positive we don't we're not allowed to carry money over in the general fund so that's something

215that's different in school finance than the cities the counties those kinds of places where if you underspin you have a balance left you get to to keep it we don't get to do that in kansas for general fund and so that one has to be zero um and then food service is the only one that does have sort of a guide they give you three months worth of expenditures that's the most your cash balance can be others don't have a statutory amount putting cash flow into would the conversation could change where those should be at which fund and so a lot of those went down to zero because if you recall the legislature was like if you have balances in any fund you know we're going to sweep them kind of thing and so that's

216where that mentality was well we can't have balances then but when you put yourself in that state then you can't put yourself back until you have money or leftover money to actually allow that so um there isn't a statutory limit in some of those but some of the legislative legislature actions can can dictate that so the next slide i was just going to show you the last this was out of our budget document from last year and it's just a three-year look at cash balances and if you go back further you'll see that the balances were even higher and you've just seen this continued decrease so the yellow funds are the ones that i will say are what we would call your operating those are your kind of your legal max they start in general

217fund they start in supplemental but we transfer into at-risk bilingual virtual professional development college and career if there's ever money left it would be contingency so those all are really funds that kind of have interactions with each other the white really are standalone also not considered part of that operating but more restricted your capital outlay your driver's training what money you receive for driver's training has to go in that fund for driver's training has to be spent on driver's training the balance belongs to driver's training you don't get to move it around some other place and so kind of sharing and then green is special education which is always good to have a balance but you can see if you go back further you would see that some of these yellows like bilingual et cetera

218had cash balances those were navigated to zero during that legislative period in which everything needs to get cleared out you shouldn't have cash you can also see that the balances are going down and anytime there is a decrease in your cash balances your expenditures exceed your revenues that's that's just kind of simple math so um if you go back further if on looking at this and i've shared these in in previous reports you'll you'll kind of see that that trend there was an efficiency study commissioned by the kansas legislature a few years ago what is that recommended percent what should those balances be you know if you're in a moderate financial risk kind of environment so what i have at the bottom here is you can kind of see if you looked at all of

219the funds together but you can't actually spend all of those funds on operating dollars but if you looked at all of them you know we're at about 23 if you look at just the operating the yellow we're at about 4.75 and if you pull in special education in that july 1 2018 column we're at about 18.88 so as you navigate to the right you can see how those have decreased and kind of what that same percentage is to a total so we're definitely below that 15 percent now um and and in some spaces i would say we're too far below it um but if you look at say what special education would be at 15 it's a 4.65 million dollar balance um to address cash flow contingency that's 6 percent and we're at july one

220so those were two funds that if you were to kind of do a suggested balance maybe as a target those would be two that um consider that that kind of a percentage in order to address some of our cash flow i just think it's important to continue to bring this in the forefront because you know we've been we've got us at some point make some purposeful decisions to to try to navigate going forward the sad and difficult part is with enrollment declining right now we're just continuing to put out fires um as a result of it so um just keep working through it so the next little bit um is just some information for 2122 and i'll go through this quickly because not a lot has been finalized just because we're not um we still

221have some open-ended things but i thought i would share a couple slides this is our bay state aid state foundation aid you can see that this is because of ganon we've actually had increases and this is what they've looked like and yay because we had some years we went up and then we went clear back down to the beginning of 0809 and then we went clear back up again so this has been a consistent um which is which is good um for us unfortunately when although there's an increase in the base state aid when your enrollment goes down unless when you multiply those through you actually get a bigger number um you're not going to get any new dollars because this is really the only way to get new dollars so um because it is

222a higher number even with the enrollment drop some of that 4.3 we lost this year we're gaining back but it's just not enough the other thing that i wanted to make a note of is this is kind of that enrollment um and there was conversation in the budget workshop and i'm going to confirm it with the forms now that i have them but we may not be able to average when we get out to this 22-23 we'll have to use whatever is september 2020's enrollment and the averaging in the formula is now only with military count school districts and so if that's truly proves out to be the case um we'll have to net whatever our fall enrollment is is what we're going to have to use for 22.23 it was only about 30 kid

22330 fte difference when i did the averaging so it wasn't huge and we definitely don't want to use the the 9.973 that was audited out for this year supplemental general has always been at a different rate and the law says until it catches up with general fund which is this year so going forward now they'll both be the same again just as a reminder the community voted to support our lob at that percent of 33 and it is for perpetuity and it is the maximum in the law right now so we are we are levying and assessing the the full 33 percent statewide now it's 31 and school districts are going to now be able to navigate that 31 without votes and different things just because the state average has come up to that level

224special education was an interesting conversation at the workshop and i think shannon you've experienced a little bit of conversation on special education yourself but they had a big chart and i was looking for the i think the the actual workshop powerpoint didn't come out till late today and so i didn't get to pull the slide but he had one that went clear back to oh 809 which was the last point in which it showed we were at 92 percent funded and since then i think and these these may not be quite right because i was trying to go by memory of this slide is around 62 percent state average but lawrence we're about 50 so we are only getting state aid at about 50 of our costs and so this kind of gives you a

225little idea of that categorical aid which typically would just continue to go up year after year and so um with a full-time teacher we can claim and we get this much back in state aid and then the difference is covered by local dollars and so um you can see in 1617 it was 27.5 and then it started to go up the only reason it went up in 2021 is because statewide there was about 1100 less peras across the state that they had to fund and so um that allowed the the categorical aid to go up because it didn't have to get spread special ed is just a flat pool of money and based on costs it gets redistributed and so when the cost went down they were able to provide some but it's going back

226back for 21 22 you can see we have to budget at the 30 000 and for 2223 we'll budget at 29 so it's not going up for us and the thing is if costs are going up and that's going down the difference between the cost of a teacher and that categorical aid is all local support so we'll have to increase budget transfer to special education to fund the loss of those resources or the increased cost or figure out how to to net balance those in some fashion they don't know for 21 22 or 21 22 23 that para categorical aid it's 40 of the the teacher typically there is some s or funding that's coming into special education part of it they're going to put in to cat aid and part of it they're going

227to process like the title 6b grant money and so we're navigating what that might look like so that's special education i had a lot of lots of conversation about it but i thought the chart was kind of interesting and helpful to see that it's not growing and they're not definitely back at 92 percent anytime soon based on how far away from it we are currently um so from 2008 nine to today that's that's been a continued drop so the last slide really which is one you you've seen is um kind of really the same stage we we were before um projections and now that i have forms i can try to finalize this and we'll present on the august 9th meeting kind of the full package of of where we landed we still have negotiations

228that haven't settled and so we'll have numbers to fill in there the rest of the numbers in white you've seen in previous meetings the the different increasing costs and some of the savings that we put into place in order to to balance and then through some restructuring just at esc through lots of retirements resignations transfer positions all those different things that have been happening there is about a hundred and sixteen thousand dollar savings that we've been able to put into this big picture which leaves about three hundred and ten thousand of monies we still need to find but we're looking at those through you know up to the 10 of reductions in budget pools or positions not being filled or kind of navigating through those other spaces in order to maintain the budget neutral piece

229that we need to achieve so unless there's specific questions this really is the same information i've shared a number of times just a couple of little updates on it so the final is just going back to our next steps and this one i do have august 9th in so um june 30 budget year end july 12th will provide you the rates to be levied estimate and are get your approval for the intent to levy above that revenue neutral rate based on what that looks like notify the county by july 20th we'll present to you the 2122 budget august 9th with the revenue neutral rate information and you'll approve a publication of hearing for both of those items september 13th will hold the hearing for both of those items and then during the board meeting you'll

230approve and then october 1st will be the last day we can certify the full document with the county in the state so unless there's questions i know some of that kind of drug on but i thought it was new information to some degree that was probably helpful to just have a conversation about so that's where we are when we have the conversation on june 30th will that include the recommendations for where we come up with the the remaining 309 we have to um we're we will come up with it through those reductions those reductions vacancies or there will be budget reductions in various places within the budget document okay just like where we froze we're looking at department and building and just all those different things and we'll have to reduce the per pupil a

231dollar or whatever it is for those calculations so that it just navigates itself back into that budget pool because that's all we have so we have the same okay that makes a glass of water so you won't need to line item any of those kinds of things you kind of helped with the big big piece through the process and this is we're just going to kind of nickel and dime wherever we can find and and try to get that balanced out and there's there's some spaces that you know it won't be a full ten percent might be two percent it might be none like utilities because we had to add for utilities but some spaces it so anywhere in that range up to 10 depending upon where people are and their needs and we'll go

232with that some spaces i'm i'm actually you know i may look a little bit more and then if budget looks a little different when we audit and we give it back to them it's easier to do that than it is to start them off with some things have them spend it all by september 30 and then find out we don't have it so we may stage it even though we give it to them or stage it out to them a little bit so till we know for sure that we actually realized it it's a little easier for people to work than okay thank you but that's kind of where we're headed for that last part questions does it make sense i know interesting railroad this whole school finance world is [Laughter] it makes a lot

233of sense and i really appreciate the detail that you provide so that we can have a solid foundation to understand what the challenges are that you're facing in trying to manage these funds um i wanted to just ask you kathy because i know this even this happened before i was even on the board so it's been a number of years ago but one of the things i remember in regard to the conversations over the years about contingency reserve and and why that number on the slide number um about the monthly certified payroll is so important um 6.2 million it was the case more than once in 2008 to 2010 that the state did not pay our state aid on time correct so we continued to pay our employees and we were able to do that

234because we had enough contingency reserved to meet payroll yeah right we we there were some districts that struggled especially at your end when you do all those balance of contracts june july and august they have the option of getting all paid in june or i think you may remember we brought some implants like a dual plan to the board and if if you weren't on the board you may have heard about it but we we actually had a plan if we get the state aid this is what we can do and if we don't get the state aid this is how we're going to get you paid but it it it may be on a different time frame and we had to navigate that and try to cover what we could and unfortunately we did

235have reserves in which we were able to to navigate it with a lot less difficulty than some of our neighbors that did not at the time and those reserves then were something close to six million weren't they we um i would have to go back and look i think at one point our contingency was closer to eight okay thank you yes so i just i wanted to bring that up because i think it highlights the the re i mean we are one finance national financial crisis away from not being able to meet payroll for our district if the state should also [Music] be in that kind of financial crisis so it does i am really concerned about that um in the long run figuring out how we how we create a plan to improve our

236the stability of our financial health this purposely has to be planned a little bit so okay thank you kathy appreciate it all right now we're going to move to recess to executive session i'm going to make the motion and move the board of education recess to executive session to protect the public interest in negotiating a fair and equitable contract to discuss negotiations pursuant to the exception for employer employee negotiations under coma with dr anthony lewis dr anna stubblefield samree devin and kathy johnson invited to be present and with the board to return to open session at 9 46 with possible action to follow oh no nobody's going to stay here that night hopefully um what is the time then eight minutes yeah so 8 57 is there a second okay try to make anna just

237stay and stay call kelly you know all those in favor aye opposed we're going to the boardroom hello we're waiting for dr lewis's announcements here one more announcement for dr stumblefield yes it was just uh ceremonial over there she just turned in her laptop it's signifying it this is this is it so but we'll um definitely keep in touch and watch watch the the good things that she does at um kck congratulations dr stubblefield all right so we're going to move to adjourn do we have a motion to adjourn move to adjourn second oh shoot this is carolite i second that's it right uh all those in favor aye we are done i am done congratulations