Lawrence Public Schools Board of Education Meeting | June 14, 2021

001audio test one two testing audio one two had an open session with no action to follow from our meeting and we will now move on to the report of the superintendent of the schools dr lewis thank you once again um i want to mention and draw everyone's attention to the kennedy transition written report that's on the agenda that staff provided to the board and the community and this report outlines some transition activities that have been taking place for kennedy elementary students and staff you know the board voted back in april to repurpose kennedy the kennedy facility as an early childhood community center kennedy k-4 students will transition to prairie park courtly and new york schools this fall the report also mentions the tours that were provided to all kennedy students and a gathering of kennedy

002families that were held this past spring the report also touches on the collaboration that is occurring among teachers at kennedy and the three receiving schools so staff are prepared to support student needs during the transition staffing decisions for all kennedy employee groups have been made and communicated the district also has worked with boys and girls club which has generously added a before school care child care program to prairie park as you know that was a concern for kennedy families child care so what this will do it will assist families who may need to drop off their children at seven a.m in order to get to work and so our staff has also sent the boundary change information to the city of lawrence so it can be incorporated into the safe routes to schools planning and

003the city's multimodal transfer transportation commission met june 7th to consider recommending approval of the school area traffic control policy to the city commission a link to that report is also a link to that agenda is also included in the written report this thursday our staff is meeting with the city to discuss crossing guards again so i just wanted to bring your attention to that that written report that outlined some activity transition activities that took place at kennedy did my mic go off yes okay testing one it did okay should i wait no can hear you dr lewis you can hear me okay i also want to acknowledge that june is pride month and as you know lawrence public schools is a diverse community of learners committed to maintaining safe and inclusive schools for members of

004the lgbtq plus community so to all of our staff and families we want you to know that we see you and we appreciate you i want to invite all parents and guardians to the sign up for free meals during the summer you may sign up through our website at usd497.org forward slash food service to designate an adult to pick up the weekly meal kits each friday at one of four school locations these free meal kits includes seven breakfasts and seven lunches then finally i want to share that the school district is aware of an online petition posted by some former and current staff members of boys and girls club of lawrence the petition cites concerns about staff pay class size training safety and equity as you know our schools have a long-standing partnership with the

005boys and girls club deputy superintendent dr stubblefield who serves on the club's board of directors she's actually on a meeting now with the boys and girls club and they are actively investigating these concerns along along with the national organization uh boys and girls club of america and i know that the club's first priority uh like ours is the safety of our scholars the district is confident that any action the investigation finds necessary will be taken if parents whose children participate in boys and girls clubs have questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact the boys and girls clubs of lawrence ceo monica dittmer that's all i have thank you dr lewis so we will move on to the report of the president of the board um i want to echo a few things dr

006lewis had said and first start with recognizing pride month as well and say that i saw a lot of students and families marching in downtown lawrence this weekend and it was a lot of joy and just reminded me how important it is to really live our equity policy and make sure that we celebrate and encourage environments for belonging and and welcoming um all of our students and families so um also wanted to talk a moment about um a couple of committees that we have been on that i that i'm on that i think will be of interest to full board i am serving on the negotiations committee and both for for pal cwa and the lea we are moving into discussions about wages this week and right now the all parties ourselves included received a

007update from kathy johnson around budgetary issues and i wanted to extend my gratitude to kathy for coming to both of those meetings i'm always i always learn something when she comes to a meeting i had an opportunity to meet with families who recognize that it's important that we preserve or or make space for muslim and jewish holidays in our calendar i was really heartened by the district leadership's response to that and the commitment to make sure that when we have events that we have control over so those events that we identify that this year will be making a best effort and really we do every year but certainly appreciated those conversations and learned a lot from them so my gratitude that they contacted me and my gratitude to district leadership for prioritizing that thank you

008and then finally um i wanted to acknowledge that 12 people showed up to run for the school board that's an extraordinary number of people and i am really grateful for the caliber of people that showed up so as someone that's dedicated uh four years of my time to this endeavor it's nice to know that the district will be in good hands regardless of who is standing at the end of the day early voting starts july 14th and just again to any candidate running in any way that i can assist or any advice i can provide please feel free to reach out to me and i can tell you a little bit about my experience and that gr has offered the same okay now we'll move on to patron commentary i think um hannah we're gonna

009is hannah here i don't see hannah are you hannah are you here virtually hi i am here virtually okay i'm going to re i couldn't find i thought you were going to be in the room i'm sorry i'm going to go ahead and read the audience participation and then after that i'll have you jump in um the usc 497 board of education welcomes patron comments and thank you for taking time to talk to us about policies and procedures we set aside this time during our regular meetings to hear from the public this is your time to share your opinions however complaints about specific staff or students will be heard by the board in executive session in order to protect the privacy of the individuals to be discussed while you're not required to share your contact

010information we ask for that information so district staff or the board can follow up with any specific concerns you may have the board president will invite comments on the topic not included on the agenda at the beginning of each meeting comments relating to agenda items are welcome after the board has had the opportunity to discuss the topic if you could limit your comments to three minutes we would be grateful and hannah i believe the topic you're going to address is on consent so i thought we would just have you jump in now okay i'm i'm happy to go ahead um hi everyone uh thank you so much to the board as always for allowing me to speak this evening um i'm speaking as the chair of personnel association of lawrence uh dash communication workers of

011america or pal cwa we have a long name and i'm here tonight to ask that you all vote in favor of the recommended motion to recognize all the remaining classified workers in the district as part of our union really excited to be here as dr lewis indicated last year having all classified staff in one union will make bargaining our contract more efficient for our board members our administrators and our classified staff who are on the bargaining teams it will also allow us to have just one contract for the entire classified staff and we are excited that we have a majority of our non-instructional classified staff um in addition to our instructional classified staff who have signed union authorization cards and we can now all be in one union and i also just want to say

012that we are really eager to work alongside you all as the board members and alongside our administration to make the district the best it can be um as kelly mentioned we did hear the budget presentation um last week during our negotiation session and we know that like most school districts and public entities across the country our school district is also up against years of austerity budgeting and disinvestment in social services but we know that by working together alongside you all we can push for full state and federal funding in the coming years and that we can make sure that our public schools are the kind of schools our students and our whole communities deserve we are also grateful for all the work that you all are doing and have done as a board and as

013our administrators increa and as lia and creating equitable and anti-racist and disability justice centered schools and we're excited to partner with you all to continue doing that work especially by helping to recruit and retain a diverse well-trained and highly dedicated group of classified staff members and finally i'll just say just so we have a little bit of of sort of who we're talking about and can kind of put in perspective um who we are as the classified staff we're the people who clean the buildings where the people who mow the sports fields where the people who play the piano alongside our student choirs we're the people who stock the library shelves who answer parents phone calls and greet visitors who crunch the numbers on the federal funding so we make sure every kid can eat

014we are the people who soothe our students when they are scared and sad at school and who feed educate and care for our whole community's children and so our union is really important to us because we know that the day-to-day working conditions that we work in those are also our students learning conditions and we are eager to make lawrence public school the best workplace for us but also the best learning environment for our students and for our whole community ask that you vote tonight to recognize our all of our classified staff as part of our union so that our food service workers our custodial staff our administrative assistants our it workers and our other classified staff who are non-instructional can be at the bargaining table alongside our on our instructional classified staff as soon as

015possible thank you thank you hannah if you i'm sure you're going to but if you hang around if we have any questions when we come up to that item which will be right here after consent we would appreciate your being here all right so we also have one more public comment michelle are you with us hello hi michelle if you could keep your comments to three minutes we'd appreciate it okay thank you i am going to quote two of many parents in the loudoun county virginia school district at a recent board meeting we trusted you with our most precious gifts and you've not only failed you betrayed our trust you're indoctrinating our children under the guise of education and the illusion of systemic racism when this is the most racist thing i've seen in this

016community in 15 years you're teaching them to question the motives of their parents their friends neighbors and our precious police officers who are here to protect them you are the systemic issue in this community loudoun county implemented the culturally sustaining framework some time ago if that sounds like what's coming to lawrence it is the lawrence school insert in the lawrence journal world said that lawrence has been working with the peg pacific education group to develop their new equity program of which culturally sustaining resource criteria is a first step according to an article in the new american lps paid the pet over a hundred thousand dollars in 2016. that same year osseo minnesota paid the ped over two hundred thousand dollars and are regretting it the following excerpts are from an independent paper in osseo minnesota

017from 2017. minnesota school districts have made national headlines after reports of identity politics in the schools has caused outrage among some parents in 2012 the osseo area school district hired the ped to help with the high suspension rate amongst its non-white students an achievement gap issue the school districts faced last week the school board canceled the contract with the racial equity consultants after abiding by its suggestions for five years our district made a number of changes including hiring a full-time director of educational equity to lead our changes robert gerhart chairman of the osseo area school board said pedu was brought in as an alleged expert his concern with the ped platform were multifaceted after five years and millions of dollars spent academic achievement among our students of color is actually slipped gerhart revealed according to

018statistics obtained from minnesota department of education what your heart also reveals peg used institutional racism and whiteness as explanations for high suspension rates for black students for heart states it has translated to a lack of discipline for black students your heart also describes a situation teachers faced gerhart describes an environment where teachers were afraid to step forward teachers who were in three minutes thank you pardon you're at three minutes thank you um so that that would be it i um we'll follow up with you michelle i remember when you and i were um mothers together at cordley and i think maybe even nurse babies together and i'll tell you that peg has we've been working with them for at least 12 years i believe and we certainly are practicing culturally sustaining practices here and we're

019doing the best we can to make sure that outcomes are are improved for all students okay so now we will move on to um recognition of pal cwa oh excuse me we're going to move on to consent board commentary um anybody have anything they would like to add i've got just a couple things so just in the last two weeks have been to a couple negotiations meetings with lea and powell cwa as we work to finalize some of our final items here as we come to the end of june and the end of the fiscal year working with dr stubblefield and those have been productive that they've been good i'll echo kelly's comments that hearing kathy's presentations i always learn something as as well and and and that was good um as we as we

020move forward with with both of those those groups they've been productive conversations and and very fruitful and and they continue to be some of the my favorite things to do now also last week got to go to a monthly facilities committee meeting so heard a general update as we as we wind down the bond project so general update from there lhs update as that's on track um we talked a little bit about facility use especially over the summer and moving forward into the fall and then a couple updates on some ada updates that we're making to central and on a student-led project at free state thank you gr other board members shannon thank you kelly um i have a few things to share so this is a little bit long tonight um i'll try to

021go through it quickly um policy committee we met a couple of times since our last board meeting and we continue to work through our um routine review of the entire policy manual i'm really excited that we're making pretty good progress on that we have a few policies on the agenda tonight that are a result of that review nothing um largely substantive just some some minor tweaks we have a few things that we've pulled to have some further discussion about out of those uh those sections and we will update the board as that moves along um this last week was a busy one for me um in terms of board work and my my work for the state association i attended the national school board association advocacy institute which was held virtually last wednesday tuesday wednesday

022and thursday we had two days of virtual sessions and training and then we had thursday we had meetings with our congressional delegation um the training was was really good i was impressed with um the things they were able to do virtually with this conference one of the big highlights was that the national school board association's um the nasdaq which is the national school board action center um i sit on the board of directors of nasdaq released the results of a scientific poll that we commissioned of likely 2022 voters on public education it showed that students access to the internet was a priority a huge priority for voters across a wide spectrum of both demographics and politics local school boards local school public schools remain popular with voters who expressed support that hasn't waned for increasing

023funding to public schools for a wide range of voter priorities even if it means increasing taxes voters also strongly support allocating public funds to public schools not to private or religious schools through vouchers or other fund shifting programs i provided a copy of the poll polls pollster slides that they presented and the executive summary about the poll to elise and she's going to scan that and share that out with board members so that you can see those those results one of the things i was particularly happy to see is that when we were planning the commissioning of this poll the nasdaq board was very adamant that they make sure that they do some oversampling in communities native american communities communities of color some other some other communities that didn't get um as well represented in

024the poll that they did the previous year they did that they did an oversampling in a number of groups and i think that the results that they were able to get from that polling um were really helpful so i'd encourage you to take a look um i also as i mentioned i was at the meetings with the congressional delegation meetings i presented at meetings with staffers for senator moran and congressman let turner who is our congressman for kansas ii and i also participated at the advocacy meeting with senator marshall staffer our delegation shared three top priorities from this kansas association of school boards delegation full funding of idea support for closing the homework gap through universal broadband access and support for expanded use of e-rate funds and support for continued efforts to improve the teacher

025pipeline and teacher recruitment and retention and professional development funding so i appreciate the support of our usd 497 staff thank you dr lewis thank you kathy johnson thank you kevin harrell for the data that you provided to me on our special education programs i was able to use that in those advocacy meetings with our delegation and it was very helpful and i appreciate the time that you took to help me with that kasb board met last friday and saturday it was our meeting in our state president's home district which was usd 306 southeast of saline this year it's near salina i was really pleased that the kasb board is continuing to work on an initiative that i began during my year as president of kasb to help the association craft and adopt an equity statement

026to guide the kesb board's policy and planning work also dr randy watson our state commissioner of education spoke extensively at that meeting his message was that despite the challenges we have faced kansas schools have made great improvements over the last four to five years including raising graduation rates and district effectiveness effectiveness rates at the same time that they have that we have closed gaps in that data for students in poverty english language learners and other subgroups so his message was really even though we all want to be honest about the challenges that we face and that we all focus on continuous improvement for all our students we need to make sure that we celebrate the good things that we are doing that we proclaim them loudly because we are not failing these students and that

027we need to vehemently reject the false narrative that that public schools are failing and he he presented some great data around that and i really appreciated his message that being said both dr watson and one of the speakers at the nsb advocacy institute the chair of the house education labor education labor committee bobby scott of virginia hammered on the point in their in their remarks that the additional funds that we're receiving through our other funds from the federal government and also here in kansas the money that we're getting through the gannon settlement the expectations by lawmakers are higher than ever that we show results in the form of improved student achievement from those extra funds congressman scott called it a once in a lifetime opportunity for districts to close achievement gaps and make progress in

028areas that we haven't been able to make progress in and he fears that if we can't show data that we've done that that it'll be a opportunity that's never repeated so our kasb staff emphasized that point as well focusing some on some of the challenges they expect that we're going to face in the upcoming legislative session regarding a push for accountability around greater spending and so we just need to be laser focused on student success and on sharing those successes with parents our communities and our legislators also just one last thing i wanted to mention i appreciated the air quality and validation the air validation and hvac systems report that we had as a written report at our last board meeting i did want to mention since it's an issue that i've spoken a lot

029about this last year that we do have some ongoing problems at some of our buildings that are going to require some additional professional assistance to to correct and i i know that that our facility staff is working on that and that we have the possibility of using semester funds to make those corrections so i appreciate that we did that study it did show that we had some needs and um and it identified those areas and i look forward to working on a plan for those repairs so thank you very much thank you that was very long but i appreciate your patience as well other board members i do so i've attended um some board committee meetings since our last board meeting um so i talk about the academy all the time whenever it's in full

030swing and we are in our third week at the academy and so on the second day of the academy the students with very little prep spoke to the foundation board and they did an amazing job doing that we're having a great time with them as they explore various areas of of healthcare and what it has to offer and we meet regularly on the students and i and they all say that their brains have grown since they've been involved in the academy so i just wanted to report that they're doing a great job and i hope to see more programs like this in the community with other industries so thank you thank you erica um i'm grateful for that work and i hope other people build on it it's it's just really oh it's always a

031joy to hear about it and to think about where they're going to go after this so thank you for your work uh other folks oh dr lewis paul i'll just say a couple of things um thank you for a thorough report out for the policy committee and i attended a meeting with the negotiations but i also wanted to recognize that i also attended the adult learning center and diploma completion program and just wanted to say congratulations to those folks that are going above and beyond and achieving their dreams thank you paula we appreciate that you were there and and able to congratulate the graduates okay and now dr lewis two more brief items um one in your personnel report i'm excited to announce the promotion i guess you would say of west middle school principal

032doctor i'm not doctor but kathy brenson as interim principal of west middle school as well as becky river who was a fifth grade teacher at courtly to an interim principal at courtly kathy has 28 years of service as an administrator and a math educator and becky has been a part of our district for 20 plus years including 12 years as an educator at courtly also a math and social studies teacher at liberty memorial central middle school so both of these schools leader school leaders will do an excellent job of stepping in while we do a thorough job of engaging the community to find the next principle of those buildings and then lastly this just came in we're pleased to learn that this afternoon the kansas state board of education did approve our plan for federal

033covert relief funds under esther to master two grant and uh kathy is going through that as soon as possible well those were two things worth waiting for i hope both of those candidates apply for the job i'll just put that out there they're both really great so i was glad to see that that's who um you all have for the interim and that's really exciting to hear about esser funds so great okay okay so we'll move on to the approval of the consent agenda and actually i'm going to ask i had two board members asked to pull an item is one of you prepared to uh yes this is carol and um i move that we pull the um what is it the safe routes to school mou just for closer examination i think it

034bears them that we give our due diligence to this mou before we agree to it i agree okay so um i'm gonna do you mind if i amend the motion just a little bit to okay let me find the item here to make sure we're clear it is safe process 2.6 okay i um at least is it okay if i am in that okay um i move the board of education adopt the items listed on the consent agenda with the exception of item 2.6 which will be discussed under new business this is grl second jones yes hill yes could do blackwood yes gordon ross yes johnson yes kimble yes smith yes motion passes 7-0 thank you um we'll now move on to recognition of pal cwa and and we'll return back to the mou in

035a moment so i believe we have joining us ron may director of human resources and safety and kevin harrell executive director of student services is who's listed do you want to give us just an update of the item while they're approaching the podium i just want to acknowledge that we we've approved free state's redesign plan and that's very exciting it's our first redesigned school to launch so congratulations to the free state staff i'm excited please good evening um anna stubblefield um deputy superintendent i actually stepped in because ron and i worked on this and because i'm transitioning out and kevin iran will be taking over their names were on it but basically pal cwa got enough signature cards and then it was verified by jamie shu and so that is what's presented they have the

036information so they have the required majority as of the date that it was certified and so it's just presented if the board wants to recognize they allow them to recognize the entire classified group are there any questions from the board around the addition of the full classified unit as opposed to the more limited unit we had prior okay so ron i think you came all the way up here for no reason at all but we appreciate your work on it thank you okay would okay this is carol i move that the board of education recognized the personnel association of lawrence communications workers of america as the recognized employee organization for all classified employees is there a second this is shannon i second hill yes cadoo blackwood yes gordon roth yes johnson s kimble yes smith

037yes jones yes motion passes 7-0 um congratulations to the personnel association of lawrence and we appreciate your service to the district and look forward to continuing negotiations and working with you okay so we moved 2.6 which is from consent which is the safe routes to school mou there were uh some issues and i believe um jessica are you hi um we might we might need to come back to this item again but we would love if you would come up and we can kind of tell you where things are would you mind introducing yourself and saying what your role is at the city sure my name is jessica mortinger and i'm the transportation planning manager for the lawrence douglas county metropolitan planning organization thank you i appreciate that you were here tonight because it turns

038out we do have some questions so um i think primarily the questions were around some we that we had the presentation from folks in january and then there's been some additions to your plan since that time in mark i believe or at least we didn't see some of the information presented around the number of crossing guards for example and some requests around curriculum so we just wanted to look at that mou a little bit closer and maybe have additional dialogue to make sure we fully understand what the what it is that you're requesting of the board and then additionally there may be some updates related to the boundary shifts for our elementary students as we transition kennedy into an early childhood education center i think those were those are issues that have been raised is

039there anything else that anyone else wanted to well i just wanted to get more because like i said this deserves our due diligence because um i i actually grew up here and there's a stoplight that really concerns me it's um in place that athen castled and it's there as a result of one of my classmates he was hit and killed by a car at that very intersection so i i think that we need to look at this a little bit more closer and i know i appreciate dr lewis meeting with the city and talking and and discussing these safe routes but i want to make sure that before we approve this mou that this does include the intersections of 23rd and haskell 23rd and harbor and how many students that will impact and how many

040families are going to actually cross those streets okay so have a chance to respond to a couple of years yeah so i was going to say absolutely so we um i think if you could help us understand a little bit more about the issues that were raised particularly around carol's questions around specific areas and then also the broader dialogue that seems to be some shifts charlie before we we go there do you mind if i because i was the other board member that had requested this behold and i had some very specific things um so it might be helpful to you to hear them before so when when we started this process um a number of years ago i think even going clear back to 2016 when we were just talking about the traffic control

041policy of the city up until this latest m plan the safe routes to schools plan really was just a route route maps and so previous drafts of this mou really focused on um creating a process by which the district would be able to provide input into those route maps through either district administration in the board or at the at the site level and that made a lot of sense um i think the thing that caused me uh to really be concerned when i dug into this agenda item for tonight um well one is the obvious the obvious change since you all put together the plan around kennedy and the fact that we now have four four schools that are talked about in that plan that that that information no longer applies the way it's set

042out in the plan so that's a concern that it's not up to date as far as those go but i think even more so there has been a lot of language added to the current version of the plan that directs decisions about crossing guards and decisions about funding and decisions about curriculum that the the district by the plan is is directed we shall do and those are things that are new to this plan since previous iterations and until i read the mou language in conjunction with that plan it really when i did that it became very clear to me that the language in the mou that says that the city and the uh and usd497 agreed to support the implementation of the plan that i feel the district would be obligating itself through all those

043shells to implement curriculum programs start clubs at schools that don't have them you know uh assume assume the burden of funding for crossing guards um that there would be there would be actually a really massive shift in the the number of crossing guards that are being provided in the potential locations and all of those things are really kind of new new to me as of as of this iteration of the mou and the plan and i have concerns because up until now i have not seen in our budgeting process or our curriculum planning process that we are prepared to do all those things and i i have concerns that if we approve as a board that entering this mou this evening that we're committing to things that we may not have the funding or capacity

044to do and we are also tacitly approving a plan that was presented to the to the um traffic planning group last week getting rid of crossing guards in at least 11 or 12 different locations some of which from personal experience i really questioned how the warrants that are being used to make that evaluation are actually fully supporting student safety so that's that's that's where i'm coming from on this and i think it's i think it's because the mou says that we are going to implement this plan as it's written right now um i don't really think that's feasible at this particular moment based on what i know right now okay i can respect that i think the reason we're coming today to you to entertain an mou and a four is to formalize the working

045agreement that we've established as part of the safe routes to school planning process which nationally really works towards a five or six ease approach to safe routes to school planning engineering is one of many of those components it's also the most popular and the easiest one i think that people point to in terms of routes and available infrastructure and comfort and safety for crossing of kids i think our goal in terms of the mou and maybe we need to reevaluate the language is really to bring together that formal group that we can begin working on relationships recognizing that every implementation decision regardless if that's city or school board is going to require specific board or budget action if it includes budgeted or items or changes to current protocol so for example the safe the school

046area traffic control policy so that's not that's what was that's what was presented to multimodal transportation commission in march and again at their meeting in the last week they've asked for more information they did not take action on that policy they want additional information and that's in relation specifically to school crossing guards part of the planning process that we did when we evaluated routes because you're right the first time we proceeded in a safe routes to school planning process all that we ended up with was routes and route maps and it really didn't recognize or document the more collaborative and collective approach that we had taken to school safe routes to school including the bike lessons and safety education that the school board implemented by implementing bike education in classrooms and other work that we've

047begun doing around pedestrian education and developing more robust curriculum in partnership with public health so there are many of these initiatives like bike and walk to school days that were already happening as part of the previous plan the plan hoped to document that and advance recommendations around strategies that can be taken so for example in the crossing card section of the plan you can see there are a variety of options that we proposed as a team that could solve some of the challenges that we evaluated as part of that process all of those are going to have to be individual conversations that we continue to elevate as policy conversations whether that be with the school board or with the multimodal transportation commission who makes official look as an advisory body to the city commission so

048based on that evaluation all of those crossing guards over time we realized had been placed but with little regard to the reality that none of them were gone back to be re-evaluated so some of them had built environment changes some of them were in locations where we don't even have proposed safe routes to school routes based on student densities within boundaries because boundaries had been changed over time since too and it was really the process of developing something in the school area traffic control policy which the mou specifically states the city of lawrence will implement once they once they finalize an approved one and we're just working on the development of that as part of the implementation of safe routes now so i don't think that in my mind and i don't perceive it this

049way and if it is we can we can work on the language in evaluating that um but you're not adopting that policy you're saying you will work with the city to give input to the implementation of safe routes to schools one of which element that the city of lawrence will be responsible for implementing is a school area traffic control policy so i think that hopefully addresses your thing i'm also i'm also a little bit concerned because i didn't the i mean we were the primary drafters the mpo was in the safe routes to school plan and what we presented to you at a really high level because we get we're given very little time to present there has been no content change in that plan since we presented to you um it just might have

050been that plan is very extensive yeah over 100 pages it's 197 pages and on page 38 there is a document i think it's page 38 but somebody else might want to find the citation where it says that we will um the mou actually says that um the city and usd 497 agreed to support the implementation of lawrence safe routes to school plan and then on i believe it's page 48 let me look it up here for you are you looking for the piece on programming or funding yeah the programming piece is on page 42 42 can you read the bullets um i don't have the page pulled up but i have a couple excerpts usd 497 shall institute marathon clubs and girls in gear girls on the run at each of the schools which do

051not already have them usd 497 shall develop an incentive program for walking and bicycling to school and hold bike rodeos to give the students the opportunity to learn and practice safe bike handling skills usd 497 shall integrate biking walking and public transit education into all subject areas not only teaching it in pe class so you know mike i have no i have no concerns about the ultimate goals of the plan at all and i am supportive of the efforts what i have concerns about is that this plan which is not a usd 497 plan it's a city plan and a plan that's been developed by by outside groups because of the because of the specific language in the legal document we're being asked to approve the mou we are in essence um agreeing to all

052the shalls and that was not something that became super clear to me until the language of the mou had been finalized and i read it in conjunction with with that plan you know to go back to go back to the funding piece historically uh crossing guards have been funded by the city because crossing guards perform a service on city on city streets not on usd 497 property and the funding portion of the plan says either usd can cost share with the city of lawrence to provide them or we can cost share to contract out this service as a shared expense i think that's a substantial deviation from previous our previous relationship with the city on this issue and given the the budget uh posture that the district is in right now i don't feel like

053i can in good conscience um agree to that at this moment in time so by having the language in the mou that says the city and the usda 497 agreed to support the implementation of the plan as it's been permitted presented at this point i think that's that's to me what's problematic about the mou i agree that we need to create a structure to formalize our collaboration and i you know i i know this is kind of uh i wish that this issue had really kind of um i kind of put the pieces together a little bit before this evening's meeting so that we could have had time to talk about this outside of this context but just that's just what's happened so um you know that's that's my personal concern i don't know if

054other board members share those same concerns um but i just i wanted to make sure that they were brought to brought to discussion thank you shannon and i can hear in your um i think what you're running up against is a couple of people that are um policy nerds and when we see words like shell it sort of unnerves us so and i'm hearing you say that really this is a plan that's still being developed and analyzed and looked at and that i think really what we need and you also mentioned that you maybe didn't have enough time in january to give us all of these details um so i think we just need additional dialogue and i do want you to hear i mean for me specifically i really value the importance of this

055in terms of safety for our students but also just for the quality of life for lorenzians and to have this structure in place so i think we can come to to an agreement after we just look at these specific areas and discuss them further and see where you guys are at where we're at and then come back i would imagine um without much issue we'll have an agreement uh and and um certainly we can allow you more time to explain those issues too so i thank you so much for being brave enough to be put on the spot and to provide us feedback and input and just how much we value that our partnership which i think is good stewards we better is it our right to table this for now and then absolutely come

056back we can take that direction and staff can work with it on both sides and figure out what language how we want to approach working together okay it's an iterative and collaborative process and i think the reality is it never ends it's just going to be one plan that solves the problem right it's going to be a continued collaborative approach to making sure our kids can get to school safely yeah and encourage them to walk and and bike and to do and to get there in a mode that is also good for them as well so yes i do want to say i i really do appreciate the effort that the city has made to tie its infrastructure decision-making process to this planning process i had you know you can see improvements um i mean

057they're visible in the community i think it's noticeable that that this process is working better than what we had in place even three four five years ago for sure um so i i would echo what kelly said i'm please don't take this as a rejection of the plan it's just it's for me it's more a technical issue related to the language and the mou and what what we as a board are obligating the district potentially obligating the district to do in the short term versus you know what i think we intend to do which is to create an agreement that describes how we're going to work together and i think we look forward to that collaborative opportunity we're also welcome always to the conversation of getting involved with any of your policy structure that you

058feel is appropriate in the next planned development and in fact you talk about you know the plan is adopted yes because we adopted it at one point in time but the plan has a process that we are currently working through to update three schools safe routes to school routes because of boundary changes and so that's the value of the plan also is that it has process built into it um and we can do that now where we never had the means to do that before yeah it's really extensive i actually did read all 197 pages of it once i took it took some time to look at it's really it looks like exciting work and i look forward to us being able to partner with you thank you so kelly do you need a um

059i do you need an official motion um for the board to make a decision on tabling this for further discussion at our next board meeting i was just actually going through that in my head i believe we do um i i move that we table this item to allow our staff and city staff time to um take another look at that mou language and then bring it back to the board at our next board meeting this jr a could second blackwood yes born and ross yes johnson yes kimble yes smith yes jones yes hill yes motion passes seven zero okay the next item on the agenda is usd student services update and it is my pleasure to recognize kevin harrell executive director of student services jose cornejo mental health facilitator and dr johnson executive director

060inclusion engagement belonging i think it's oh it's kevin hello kevin yeah hello i'm kevin harrell executive director of student services and special education um as you look at this quote it just shows educational research is clear the relationship between academic outcomes and the social and emotional wellness of our students and that's in every moment or more evident if you consider this last year with code 19. a positive this is that you know lawrenceville the school has continued to support this behavioral health for its students and staff so eight years ago the district approved the mental health facilitator position and i will tell you as i work throughout the state with special ed directors for a district to have a mental health facilitator that is not supported through special ed funding is is an envy of

061many so it just shows our commitment i'm also three years ago at our board of education approved full-time counselors in every every elementary building and then we continue to support for developing community partnerships so tonight you see we received a written report that talks about the supports we have in our buildings um that outlines outgoing ongoing supports interventions and partnerships on our buildings and so tonight we're going to cover some of the additional supports that have been in place since uh covert 19. we're going to talk about some of the highlights the challenges and then as we transition some of our responsibilities at the district level dr johnson is going to discuss the next steps as we move forward and so as jose comes up to present i do want to say that that not

062only has jose been a great resource for our staff and and students in north public schools but he's also been busy on the state level he's been part of several task forces and most recently the what is the statewide bully anti-bullying task force he's been on so thank you kevin thank you board for this opportunity to give you an update on student services and things that we're doing at the building level to support our students everything we do we we lean on our mtss our ci3t model the comprehensive tiered intervention three-term intervention process so when we look at our student needs we look at it from the social behavioral and academic lens and then through those tiered models we look at what supports are needed for that particular student at that particular time to help

063them stay fully engaged academically socially emotionally behaviorally and so when we look at our mental health our student supports and that lens we also overlay this on our ci3t model and at the tier one level with our students we we have our scr our social emotional social skill curriculum if you will at the grade school level it's the positive action curriculum and at the secondary level it's the connect with kids curriculum at the elementary level they have morning meetings where they have an opportunity to live to deliver the social emotional curriculum as well as check in with students to get a gauge on where are they emotionally in terms of readiness to learn at the middle school they use advisory to deliver the social emotional curriculum and at the high schools they kind of spread

064it out throughout the day so that one one month and maybe third period the next month and maybe fifth period so that it's not always fallen during the same class period for the for the high school students and we also our counselors and social workers school psychologists and our rap specialists go into classrooms and deliver lessons on anxiety deliver lessons on depression educating our students on what is anxiety but then also what are measures in which you can take to control those anxious moments we all have levels of anxiety and so they may go through various practices that work for some students and then kids that may need additional supports maybe refer to a group that gives them additional support to mitigate some of their emotions or some of their issues that might be interfering

065with their ability to stay engaged at school and then we also continue to work with various agencies across the district like deca for example to look at what are some substances that students might be using across the board that may be interfering with their ability to stay engaged at school like vaping for example and so they come in and educate our mental health professionals on the impacts of vaping and and then how it may uh the the psychological but also the physical impact it has on the student and then at the tier two level the students that need those additional supports again our counselors and social workers continue to engage and provide those additional supports for those kids that have been identified that need additional supports we have mental health teams in every one of

066our buildings that meet regularly depending on the building some buildings meet every week some buildings meet every other week but minimally they're meeting at least every other week to address the needs at their particular building whether that be the student needs or the faculty needs at that particular building and then we continue to partner with bird nash they've been a great partner with lawrence public schools for 20 21 years and providing wrap specialists in all of our buildings who give us that additional therapeutic support for our students that truly need those tier two and tier three interventions they help us navigate that path or they help families navigate that path from school to possibly services at bird nash we also continue to rely on headquarters to help us with our suicide prevention interventions across the

067district but also working with headquarters to making sure that our best practices are staying current when it comes to services and supports for our students and then we have a great relationship with ku child and family clinic dr paula fight and her staff continue to provide us professional development opportunities every august and then sometimes mid-year where they come in and give us professional development opportunities on anxiety or depression and best practices on how to support students in a school environment that we can align with our tiered system of interventions and then also the college and career i mean heartland i don't want to leave them out as well we we continually refer families to heartland as a community agency that can support their needs if needed and then our college and career academy if students

068are needing an environment that best meets their needs and we have that opportunity for counselors to refer students to that to that program and then at free state we obviously know that they have the uh their in school programs star and soar where students can be referred to those two programs and we also partner with the sexual trauma of youth center they come in and they do the safe touch lessons for our students across the elementary buildings in our district and and that's that's been a wonderful partnership and having layla mcnairy come in and facilitate those classrooms lessons along with the school counselors and teachers at the various grade levels and then obviously at the tier three levels you know the students that need those intensive interventions we continue to lead on all the agencies

069that i just talked about and figuring out ways of how we can collaborate as a community to support our students because we have those students from eight to three but we also want to make sure that those students are getting supports that they need from 3 30 until the beginning of the next school day and so we continue to work with work with burt nash on fine-tuning those processes as we not only move into next year but also as we we prepare uh to return to school in august we'll see and then as we we build on i think shannon has i'm sorry i just could you please remind me what the um seo curriculum is that we have adopted for um primary and secondary connect with kids connect with kids is that k-12 now

070no connect with kids is uh middle school and high school okay what's the what's the um the k5 positive action positive action okay thank you you're welcome which was a nice segue thank you shannon as we look at our seo curriculums we lean on castle's framework of making sure that systemically we're looking at the seo curriculum so that it meets not only the needs of the classroom and the students but all but also how is it applied at home so we want to have that collaboration with family so that students have opportunities to practice those skills in other settings and the community our community partners how do we provide them opportunities within our community system to practice whatever the seo we may be working on with the particular students but making sure that we're addressing

071self-awareness with our students in self-management social awareness relationship skills and responsible decision making preparing them as they advance in our school system for for life beyond lawrence public schools some of the highlights i'd like to share with you that we would like to talk about this past school year i kind of want to think about this past school year i think of like 18 months you know since we've been navigating the pandemic but the icann fund we would not i don't believe have been able to navigate the pandemic as well as we did without the support of the lawrence school foundation and the icann fund they supported over 280 families with grocery certificates uh this last year and a half if you will purchase over 5 000 worth of bus passes so that students and

072family members would have access to bus passes to get to school or get to their jobs or get to appointments or wherever they needed to be in our community provided over fourteen thousand dollars in support to student families that was classroom supplies hygiene supplies water bottles making sure that students had water bottles when they returned to school and then a total over 365 thousand dollars was used as part of that fund to for the community meal program reimbursement and so through that funding and that partnership we we were in a position to continue to provide supports for our families and our students as we all navigated the pandemic this last 18 months or so and continue moving forward and throughout the school year i just want to really emphasize that our district social workers and

073counselors continue to share community resources with our students and families and continue to stay up to date with who had resources and and where families could go for specific resources like rent assistance or utility assistance and trying to stay on top of where the funding was shifting across our community so that our families could maintain their homes they also continually regularly or regularly joined our teachers classrooms through webex sessions you know counselors and social workers made and wrap specialists make themselves available so that the student needed additional support in that environment the teacher could create a breakout room for them to join with that student and help them navigate whatever emotion they were experienced at that particular time as well as the building mental health teams they stayed engaged with teachers to offer to provide

074support for students and families all of our mental health professionals throughout the school year created virtual classrooms or virtual rooms for students to pop into so that if students needed to request some additional support those virtual rooms were there for them they all on their signature line and their emails provided in the event of an emergency here are the numbers you can reach out to so that students had that information after school hours as well a lot of our elementary counselors shared emotional social emotional choice boards for students and families so that after they they logged off they could at least have some activities that they could share in practice as a family unit and then last summer we added a no i'm sorry this school year we added student support facilitators at each middle

075school to implement restorative practice processes this past school year and so they continue to build on that at all four of our middle schools and then again our rap specialists continue to provide that support to all of our students at both high schools all four middle schools and the six elementary schools where there are rap specialists and then summer counseling support for students and families at the seven elementary summer learning sites this summer and so we have counselors at those seven sites so that if students or families need some guidance those counselors are available to support them we also this last year worked with bird nash and tazzan on a school school mental health initiative we had the privilege of sitting in the same room with bird nash and and and received some training through

076bruce perry and the tazzan support staff over there on how to integrate services and and what the processes will take to to continue integrating working with bird nash and how do we some data points that we may want to start looking at as we continue the rap program and other other programs that we're working with bird nash on we also developed the building bridges program with bird nations last school year and that's a community-based case management program and as of the end of the school year we had 55 students referred to that program that were actively participating in the building bridges program and that's a county-wide program so it's not just lawrence public schools it's baldwin it's eudora and it's perry lecompton and so those case managers continue to work across the county providing families

077with community-based case management we also work with deca on the mid-american health mental health technology transfer center network mhttc to strengthen our mental health supports within our school system and through that framework we have an opportunity to evaluate what processes we currently have in place and one of the things i'll be working with dr johnson on is using some of those processes at the building level so that we can align some of the practices that we are sharing out of the district office but also making sure that they align with what the building needs in terms of best practices in supporting our students social emotional health we also saw a 36 percent decrease 36 percent decrease in student suicide interventions by our mental health staff now keep in mind that number's a little skewed because

078our students weren't physically in school the first half of the school year and so traditionally you know we have about 263 suicide interventions every school year and this last year we had just a little over a hundred and so without the students physically in the buildings we weren't physically doing those interventions but there were interventions going on uh virtually as well and so not every intervention may have been recorded as well both high schools completed the sources of strength training this past spring as a matter of fact free stages completed the training last week so their staff and students came in after school was out to complete the sources of strength training which is the best practice student-led suicide prevention program and this next coming school year the peer leaders will focus on hope help

079and strength and lawrence high has already done a launch where they were promoting it at their building level through chalk hard and various posters hung around the building raising awareness about the program and that the program will be coming in the fall so lawrence i had eight adults and 14 students and the goal is that they're going to expand that in the fall and free state had 10 adults and 26 students trained as well and they'll continue to expand that and the goal i believe is to expand that into the middle school so those students will get the same training build the same support framework within their building and then those students as they move into high school would have that group or that club that they could easily align with as they transitioned to

080high school during the summer and fall of 2020 at the height of covet the human resource department personally engaged with over 200 staff members individually in order to support their needs for the 20 20 21 school year and so that was human resource staff are actually meeting with staff and listening to them and talking to them and engaging to them and trying to collectively figure out okay what type of supports we're going to need in place to support our staff when they come back to the buildings in august so although we have some highlights we also have some challenges and we understand that you know utilizing the professional skill work that our social workers and counselors have to support social social emotional behavioral mental health of students and staff making sure that we have a

081clear communication on what those supports can look like concerns for student safety and social emotional well-being was at the forefront of all of our minds not just our mental health professionals but our teachers our administrators and we know we're going to have to forecast on what needs our students going to need when they come back in august as well as our staff not just our students and then meeting the basic needs of families was a major concern for all of our district staff not just the social workers counselors school psychologists and rap specialists and then consistent use of our social emotional curriculum making sure that we're consistently using it in all aspects of our learning day not just at during morning meetings or not just during advisory but making sure that we're integrating it into

082other aspects of curriculum and and giving those kids additional touch points throughout the school day and then how do we measure the effectiveness of our social emotional curriculum i think is something we're going to be addressing moving forward some work that dr johnson i'll be doing dr johnson is already having that conversation with teaching and learning how do we look at the impact it's having our students grant gain grasping the concepts from the curriculums and then effective alignment of our trauma-informed and responsive practices making sure that we lean back on those training modules that we implemented four years ago and how do we use those modules and how do we update them in some respect to actually meet today's needs moving forward and then having programming resources in place to meet the social emotional and

083mental wellness needs of students and staff when we return to school in august is going to be something that we all will collectively need to work together on to make sure that we have a team approach about how we support the needs of our community whether it be our teachers our custodians our cooks our students and even our families as we move forward with that i'm going to turn it over to dr johnson and she's going to visit with you about next steps and we have questions for you at the end if you have them um dr luce is suggesting that if we have questions for jose before he steps away would anyone like to jump in with a few questions i have a quick one jose it's okay for me to go um i

084was wondering about the lessons we learned from the for example like we had challenges of course in meeting the mental health needs which were are well documented or higher right now across the board at really i really appreciate how you you talked about staff and you talked about every student level because we're seeing increases in mental health needs due to the pandemic really everywhere in the country but one of the things that you mentioned was around the and i'm just using this as an example the virtual rooms that that social workers and mental health staff created for students to pop into are there other is there a way that we are categorizing or cataloging excuse me um the lessons learned with mental health staff and the district to see like okay this actually was a

085benefit it wasn't this is a tool that we could continue to use and here's how we're going to incorporate it in our practice moving forward what does that process look like for you all yeah we didn't have an opportunity to do that at the end of the school year but i think we will have the opportunity to anecdotally bring those thoughts together when we come back to school if in august or maybe at one of our first java likes i do know that the counselors point this way because kylie like one of our elementary counselors said back there you know they collectively always talk about best practices and they're always throwing ideas back and forth but i think that's a great idea you know and how do we how do we lean into some of

086those additional resources so that maybe kids have access to those virtual rooms on days at their home uh ill or something of that that respect because i'm thinking of it as an example i imagine there are other successes that you all had or learned from particularly if you're there's you know all the challenges that you had to go through and surmount in order to get access to students even i can imagine i think one of the key things that i didn't mention was that you know throughout the year most of the secondary schools put together an online referral form and they use their building icon to put it on the go page so that students or families could click it on and say i jose cornejo would like to see a counselor and i could

087pick immediately within 24 hours or within a week so they could give us some context to how how emergent that need was and then that would go to the mental health team and those mental health teams would look at those referrals and then they would assign them so that if dr johnson was my my counselor they may send it to her first but if it was urgent then whoever received it would respond to it right away to get the support out to those things that's great the other key thing that's going to be coming in the fall is through the help of lawrence high they launched a chesty cares they created doctor not dr miss dixon perkins yep the graphic arts teacher created the chesty lying cares with a heart holding a heart and it

088listed the community resources where students could go to after school hours but during the school day it says if you need assistance or you need to see a counselor go to student services and so we put in a proposal to the esser funds to help pay for those posters and banners and we put a bid in so that it would be for both high schools and all four middle schools and then i think this fall will also develop something similar for elementary schools just so that kids have those visuals that we do care and here are the resources in our building but if it's after school hours here's the resources in our community that's great i i think she is the single reason that my child got through school this year so obviously that since

089you dropped her name i'll just extend my gratitude to her she's a really great teacher and i'm glad to hear that um we're able to use esther's funds in that way kelly i did have one question jose um on the challenges slide when you talk about the measuring the impact of our social emotional curriculum um how does that is that different from or is it the same thing as the the measurement that we have to do under kisa for our for the social emotional piece of our accreditation the ssrsie screeners that we're talking about the one that we currently use yeah it it is the that's what we'll be using so currently we use a ss ss rsie but that is the when we talk about a measurement that is what we're talking about it's

090the same thing okay okay i just i just wanted to make sure that it was not something i was not understanding it to be something different okay thank you and then i have um can i jump in with one more one one other question that might be actually for you dr johnson it's around um when we when we uh had our first sr funds approved we are dr lewis was very intentional about um utilizing some of those funds to increase mental health services for our students i think it's one of the very first things you talked to me about when you were talking about academic growth but also mental health support for our students i really appreciated that when that that that funding helped us establish our relationship with burton nash so how do we

091sustain that moving forward will that be part of um the essers fund the next uh essa ii and then additionally will it be something in our partnership with burton ash that we'll need to consider in terms of coming out of our own general funds to able to support the continuation particularly of the building bridges program which i think is pretty important the initial that partnership was not through the district esther funds it was through the county okay oh thank you um and burton nash they were creating a process because since it wasn't through the district it just it just came through this but they were talking about creating a process to sustainability because initially they had discussed a bigger project but they knew they couldn't sustain it so they had narrowed it down to something

092that once the money is the way they can sustain and then they will work on growing it okay great thank you i think you're ready right any other questions first of all thank you to the board for this opportunity to be able to talk about next steps we know that in lawrence public schools we have put outstanding programming in place that we have put systems to help support our students as well as our faculty and staff but here we are on the edge of entering into the 2021-2022 school year so what are we going to do now things are different our lives are different society is different our world is different so as we enter into this school year i want us to focus our attention on the three words on the screen rebuild rebound

093renew we know that it's time to restart teaching and learning but before we do that portion of the work there are some things that have to be in place and first of all how are we going to rebuild relationships with students that may have spent the past 14 16 months remote they haven't been into buildings i think about the students that have not been at lawrence high school they're going to walk in and they're going to see a completely different entryway they're going to see areas that have never been there before so what are we going to do to build those relationships what are we going to do to build relationships with faculty and staff that are compassionate weary if you will we've asked for faculty to give and extend grace we've asked for faculty

094staff to find multiple ways for students to be successful but what are we going to do to build those relationships so that we can build and give back to those faculty members and staff members what are we going to do with to build relationships with families and the community we have been through a lot and there are steps that have to be in place in order for us to reach the highest level which leads me to the next word the rebound how are we going to rebound from the trauma and the stress associated with the pandemic we can't get to the first day of school and act like nothing happened we're going to have to go in beforehand put plans in place to ensure that students have support that faculty have support and that families

095have support in order for us to move forward and the last word is renew how are we going to reimagine our schools one thing we know for sure is that we cannot and we must not go back to the way things used to be there are lessons that we've learned from being thrown into the covet world so let's learn from those lessons and to move forward so how are we going to ensure that schools support every single students and that they have access to opportunities and that every single student is represented and that we give them everything they need to be able to reach their full content potential when we go back in august of 2021 this school year is going to be like no other school year that we've ever had in history it's

096going to be emotionally charged for students and adults and this moment will call upon us as the school community to deepen our social and emotional competencies and to create equitable learning environments where all students and adults process heal and thrive and i'm going to say those words one more time process all that they've been through take time to heal from the inside out and then we will be able to thrive so our next steps include strategies conversations exploration innovation communication forums ideas to help us move forward in this journey on ensuring that every student and faculty staff faculty member is mentally well and supported of students and faculty so thinking ahead here are our strategies that we're going to look at tonight first of all we're going to ensure that all of our programming is

097aligned to the lps strategic plan focusing primarily on the student-centered learning and the safe and supportive schools another area that could be added from the strategic plan would include effective employees because when an employee is feel supported that level of of reaching goals is is is is also reached at a higher level the next portion is to develop a plan to transition all buildings from just trauma informed jose talked about that just a few minutes ago the trauma informed approach to become a trauma responsive district so that we are putting systems in place to be preventive not just we're going to respond at the last minute we want to be proactive rather than reactive to usually identify social emotional curriculums we've already talked about those at the elementary and secondary level consistently throughout the district

098the work consistently is the most important word to ensure that we take the curriculums that are already in place and ensure that they are being implemented with fidelity at all levels to use the information from the mental health technology transfer center the mhttc shape program to improve our current mental health services to meet the needs of each building there's no two buildings alike in lawrence public schools so we're going to ensure that the programming that is taking place at each individual school will meet the needs of that school yes there will be programming that will be district-wide but how do we have to tailor that programming to support the families the students faculty and staff of that individual building we're going to encourage the development of calming rooms and areas maybe it's just a corner

099in a classroom sometimes referred to as reset and recovery rooms in every building for students to de-escalate and regulate in a safe and supportive environment that promotes that mental function of exec executive skill development and taking responsibility and integration into the academic schedule next we're going to ensure that our our elementary staff members from perry park cordley new york are receiving the training on responsive classrooms that is taking place this summer and that is a major piece as we move forward in our restorative practices trained high school staff in the restorative practice process the middle schools have already been trained in august of 2021 both high schools will be trained both high schools have identified one to three individuals that will oversee the restorative practices in that particular building we're going to work with existing

100community organizations to develop parent education program one of the first things that we're going to do is a panel discussion with mental health professionals this fall right now we're looking at a target date of september because we need to do this early so we can get the information out to our families and to engage mental health professionals we're also going to use the district mental health task force to identify the social emotional and behavioral and mental wellness supports needed for all students last week my first transition into the into the position was a three-day mental health training that was phenomenal to be able to sit with virtually with dr bruce perry for three days straight and to hear his work um there was so much that he shared and then he shared his new york

101times bestseller book that he wrote with oprah winfrey but out of all that he said he said if you can give nothing else to your students give them hope that resonated in my mind is to ensure that we give every single student hope you see the team members on the screen that attended the um training we are also going to continue to build our team with other district mental health professionals from the building level we're going to add those members to our overall team one of the things that we're already doing as i transition from lawrence high school interim principal into this role i'm living in kind of two different worlds right now we're going to continue to work with teaching and learning to integrate social emotional executive functioning behavioral and mental wellness into our

102ci3t implementation plans the beginning of that work we're going just a little bit deeper begins tomorrow at 1pm as we will have administrators in this room taking a look at ci3t plans and what we need to do to ensure that first of all our goals are aligned to the to the strategic plan but also making sure that we have everything in place to support faculty and students that is very important we're going to work for teaching and learning and assessment assessment to consistently measure students social emotional learning to inform instruction prevention and intervention we're going to continue working with our community organizations it has been wonderful these past two years looking at all the different organizations that really work and partner with lawrence public schools um burton nash is the one that i see every

103single day on a daily basis and the work that they do it is very very powerful seeing the rap workers in action working with our school social workers working with our counselors that is that is very very exciting to see provide professional development opportunities for staff and mental health professionals provide opportunities for district staff and administrators to develop if you will self-care and soul care plans we're going to partner with denise johnson who is the director of health and wellness to offer a framework for developing these self-care plans because when we are better our actions are better so we're very very excited about this partnership we're going to gather and act upon the qualitative data that started with the hr department i love quantitative data i love the numbers but i love the stories i

104love the interviews i love being able to look someone in the eye and say what do you need how can i support you how can i help you be your very best and those may not be the questions that we ask but there's something about sitting down with someone and first of all showing that you care because you have taken that time to gather that data we're going to incorporate mental health and wellness days throughout the district jose and i are um we just started last week looking at how we can incorporate these days that we have celebration and on a regular basis not just we're gonna do it once a year to be able to make it through this year and to rebound from the past 14 months is going to take more than

105one mental health day this last piece that i'm so absolutely excited about is a recommendation that came from amelia vasquez a lawrence high school graduate and she made the recommendation at the listening learning lawrence lions from two years ago to put together student mental health teams so i'm so excited to be able to go back and tell amelia that that was never forgotten coveted got in the way a lot of other things got in the way but it's never forgotten so we will have two buildings that we will focus on for this school year and they will be free state and lawrence high school and then we will bring those teams together we will meet on a monthly basis jose and i are planning a fall symposium that will be an example of what students

106can do and what students need as students lead the work if you ever want to know what a child needs to be successful ask them so how do we move from crisis to opportunity inside every crisis is an opportunity one opportunity is for us to take the time to re-engage with our emotional lives the time is right now to strengthen our resiliency and recover from relentless stress and complex traumas we've been through a lot personally professionally and professionally our efforts to rebound into strengthening our schooling in lawrence public schools begin with an investment in ourselves and in our students this time i will entertain any questions that you may have this is carol cadoo blackwood um i don't have any questions but i want to commend the district and you and jose for working to

107continue to embed mental health and well-being in our in our district so thank you my question dr johnson was on the previous slides there was some discussion about the sos programs at the two high schools how do those or do those relate to the mental health advisory teams that um that you were just mentioning you know and that's that's an excellent question we're going to work with those two teacher sponsors social worker sponsors to determine if those will be our natural groups okay because for me that's those are two natural groups that in students they have very specific training so we're very excited about that um part of our symposium that will be for students it will not just be a sit and get we're going to do a celebration of mental health and wellness

108through the arts and what that looks like and inspiration for that came from a um a young lady from from lawrence high school i won't share her name right now that did a project did a photography project and she had just received the sources of strength training and she had to do this project where she had to identify things in her life so she took a picture of her bedroom and in her bedroom she outlined different objects in her bedroom and how it aligns with sources of strength her room was full of purple because for her a spiritual connection was very important and then there were other colors and and i asked her i said where did you get this idea she said well i just had this training and she's one of the leaders

109and she's excited about the work um so that that's what gave us the idea and things to be able to look at the arts to be able to do this thank you other board i members have one but i'm not really sure how to frame as i've been going over and over in my head um so i i appreciate all of the partnerships that you all have been doing in the community and with our district one important resource for american indian youth students is native american student services kelly walker she's also a social worker i think would be a great asset to servicing to be part of or included in the efforts that you all have i met with kelly today great i met with her and i loved when she shared the fact that

110you know her background was in social work right so we talked about the presentation and things tonight and how we want to include her in the work she's excited and i'm excited i'm excited not forgotten never i have a um one i wanted to um thank all of you for con including i know this is a minor point but it's actually not um sometimes when you see folks doing uh trauma-informed care or other models of mental health services or the social emotional framework you might be using you don't often hear focus on executive functioning so i appreciate the inclusion of that because it's actually quite critical for students as their brains are developing and when they're having anxiety and trauma or not even but even just any mental health crisis they might have or any

111mental health symptoms they might be having that focus on executive functioning is a way of honoring how challenging it might be for them to organize and get through their day and providing them the support in that way can make education so much easier and such an easier environment to be in so thank you for bringing that up i just wanted to highlight that i don't know in i probably have heard it in past mental health presentations but it stood out to me this time and then i have a question about the responsive um classroom model that is that primarily just for the elementary level schools right now or is that training available to are they are they utilizing that model at other levels as well i've only heard about it at the elementary level so

112just curious and i'm going to have dr stevenfield come up and just expound upon that just a little bit more this summer say we're focusing primarily at the elementary level that training is specifically for elementary only and because of the cost associated with it and to do it with fidelity we and internally as a district have talked about what schools we actually can um afford and do it with fidelity at and primarily right now they've been we've been starting with our title schools yeah i'm really i think that's a really smart approach i just wondered if technically if it's something that we could grow into other levels or is it just elementary okay thank you all right any other questions okay thank you for the opportunity to present thank you so much for um for

113present for the the detailed presentation it was really helpful for us and i look forward to hearing how it goes in the fall so maybe we can hear back from you at our quarterly report that would be great so thank you and let us know what you need if there's anything we can do to support we want to be there for you all okay we are going to recess now to executive session i moved 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 ex exception for employer employee negotiations under coma with dr anthony lewis dr anna stubblefield samrie devin kathy johnson invited to be present and with the board to return to session at um eight i got

114fogged up glasses 8 22 32 32 8 32 with possible action to follow is there a second everyone all in favor anyone opposed okay thank you johnson okay we've returned from executive session with no action to follow and are now looking at closing items dr lewis do you have any announcements this evening i'm just excited about our next board meeting which is our final board meeting of the year the school year we'll be hearing a report from um amazing report from our college and career academy uh dr bill dewitt the highlights there and we'll also have a work session on some um end-of-year data wait dr lewis could you say a work session on wet uh end of the year data oh okay thank you okay now i will move to adjourn the meeting is

115there a second second all those in favor aye anyone opposed bye [Laughter] see you later melissa i did not oppose yeah she did not you