Lawrence Public Schools Board of Education Meeting | May 24, 2021

001hello welcome i'm going to call the meeting to order in our new board room and we'll start with approval of the agenda this is gr i'll do it i move we amend and approve the agenda for the may 24th 2021 board meeting to include the updated personnel report and an additional executive session was shannon i second jones yes hill yes cadoo blackwood she may be in the um can we check and see if she might be in the there she is okay well she's online there she is carol are you with us okay gordon ross yes johnson yes kimball yes smith yes motion passes seven zero okay so we are now going to start with special recognition and dr lewis would you like to yes good evening everyone it's good to see people and have

002people in in the space it's been a while since we've had a public board meeting so welcome to all of you in attendance for our first special recognition tonight i want to publicly acknowledge the amazing work of our technology team led by executive director of data and technologies dr dr zach conrad and director of technology david vignery would you all come forward as well as your team while i talk about your team give them a hand as they come we have all had to make adjustments with the pandemic and most if not all of these adjustments have been involved in an increased reliance and dependence upon the use of technology and our tech team has done an outstanding job with all of the heavy lifting necessary to ensure access to technology and connectivity which is

003essential for ensuring that all of our scholars could continue to learn anytime and anywhere and that all of our school families could continue to stay connected with their children's education they worked with sprint t-mobile midco to provide connectivity options for families this team has assisted all of our staff with devices and training for successfully teaching and remote hybrid and in-person models including implementing the webex video conferencing system which was new when the state held firm on its requirement that all distance learners take the state assessment in person uh this team went went to work setting up a parallel network at allen fieldhouse first they secured allen fieldhouse which is unheard of and then they set up our own network so we took our own network into uh allen fieldhouse so you just imagine you have

004about 500 students in allen field house socially distance of course taking an exam that's heavily dependent upon wireless connectivity they literally set up a network there and just imagine if there was a glitch in the technology where there was no wireless it would have been embarrassing and it would have been a huge delay for our students on taking the exams but did not have um a glitch at all we had this these team members going around with their laptops in hand walking around allen field house just checking the connect connectivity uh towers inside of allen field house with what do you call those devices that sits on the towers oh see look at these guys access points but it was truly remarkable the work that they they did there i also want to thank this

005our tech team uh for its work to prepare us tonight in our new board room uh for tonight's meeting as well as all of our meetings in the future these are just a few of the ways that this team has certainly demonstrated our effective employees initiative and our strategic plan in action i definitely appreciate their remarkable service and it's always serviced with a smile and if you can imagine sometimes if you're not as tech savvy as some they have so much patience with you i don't know what's what they may be saying inside their heads but they're so patient with you and i just want this entire team to know how much i appreciate them and i appreciate the work that they do on behalf of our scholars and families so please help me congratulate

006again our lawrence public schools technology team [Applause] i just in our next special recognition we would like to call um interim principal of lawrence high school dr cynthia johnson to the podium as she highlights some lawrence high scholars with some honors and awards good evening to dr lewis and to board members it is my honor to stand here tonight for the last time as official interim principal of lawrence high school has been a beautiful two years and i did not want to leave out without recognizing once again the brilliance of the students that walk the halls of the home of the chessy lions first of all i'm going to begin with an acknowledgement to photography and the arts this is written by angelia perkins she says in the visual arts this year most of the

007exhibitions were canceled competitions placed on hold senior solos did not happen and most art and photography was created without the hands-on experience that is so critical to the arts through all of the chaos of the pandemic year young artists photographer photographers persevered and used their skills to communicate visually that which was nearly impossible to put into words lawrence high school photography students won 85 honors and awards this school year these students were able to have their photos exhibited in new york accepted trophies ribbons medals virtually a couple spoke and presented their work internationally and received multiple emails from teachers about how the visual arts helps everyone make it through these tough times she also goes on to say i am so honored to have taught these students and been able to encourage their creative minds

00885 students from photography alone also in the area of arts we have mr todd petit who is a graduate of lawrenceville high school students won in the scholastic art and writing awards and also one student received a congressional art award for 2021 school year in ceramics and graphic design miss dina amont and mrs ajin dixon perkins had two students that earned an honorable mention and a silver key you can see that even though there was a lot of things going on it did not stop the greatness of our students who attend lawrence high school and now i'm going to introduce two individuals that's going to tell you about our students that are here present tonight the art students 85 students we couldn't get them all in here so ms parker well we could have we've

009got a lot more room now um i said miss perkins said you give me the list and i will read whatever you put me put together for me but i wanted to acknowledge our students at this time i'm going to ask mr zach saltz to come forward to tell about a special award and then after mr saltz i'm going to have coach mcdonald to come to the podium thank you good evening i'm zach saltz i teach video and digital media at lawrence high school tonight i would like like to recognize lauren's high senior connor jones and connor could stand up last month connor won first place at the imagine media fest competition for his animated short film the little hitchhiker this competition is open to all high school digital media programs across the kansas city

010metro area connor has been accepted into the animation mentor program for next year and plans on pursuing a career in animation connor as far as i know is the first lawrence high recipient of this award and what makes him all the more impressive is that he won this award in spite of lawrence high not offering a course in animation now that will change next year due to students who are creative and self-motivated like connor so if it's okay with you if it may please the board i'd like to share his animation with you and i think we have it here and this is the little hitchhiker [Music] do [Music] foreign hmm [Music] [Applause] coronavirus kova 19 covet vaccine in every state everyone's 16 plus eligible to get coach mcdonald's coming at this time i know

011you see mr mike jones standing back sitting back there proudly hi my name is kent mcdonald i'm the lawrence boys and girls swim coach swimming and diving coach and i'd like to today we're recognizing the girls swimming and diving team this year we finished second at sunflower league meet and then last friday we finished third in our state meet we have a pretty small team this year usually we have 40 to 50 girls this year we had actually 15 go to league and 10 go to our estate meet a lot smaller we didn't have a season last year so this was a big big deal for us we missed second place by two points so it's pretty close uh i'd like to read out the names of the girls um please stand when i read

012your name um coach can we have them actually come up sure come on up okay emily brandt's our diver on the left aubry fisher maddie heckman irish sharon abby jones lillian derby carmen braden and ali jones i think there are a couple not here but um this was the main part of our team not a whole lot against some of the big schools that uh competed but they did a really great job uh this season aubry fisher has set two school records 100 butterfly and 100 backstroke carmen braden finished first at state in the 200 freestyle and everyone else placed very high we did did a really good job so like to recognize them thank you one other thing they're these the team grade print average is 3.83 they're a national scholar team wow okay

013when you um thank you all for coming many congratulations and i wish you would stay and make a lot more noise because it was really nice to have you in the room talking and to be around students so thank you for coming congratulations oh okay so we are now going to move on before we do to retirement to retirements the board of education recognizes the following staff members with sincere appreciation for their years of service and devotion to this community and its schools christina stice 27 years rebecca chapel 35 years david frye years david ludwig 14 years thank you so much for your years of service thank you i will now move on to the report of the superintendent of schools dr lewis yes thank you again for president jones uh good evening again first

014i want to welcome our student board member this evening wendell kamara who's also a member of my superintendent student advisory council when there is a junior sophomore i'm trying well you'll be a junior here shortly uh sophomore at free state and you've been this is year two for you on our um superintendent student advisory council so welcome wendy would you like to say anything um i really appreciate the opportunity and i'm really grateful for to to be able to sit up here and just have this experience so thank you thank you for being here i remember when i first met window at um south uh southwest uh middle school during the listing and learning tour and uh she shared some very good feedback that we collected that evening i also asked some really tough questions

015so thank you for being here window secondly it's my pleasure to introduce you to miss jessica bassett please come forward will be beginning her career at lawrence high school um here in lawrence a career in lawrence as principal of lawrence high school beginning july 1st she is completing her fourth year as principal of south southeast high school in kansas city missouri where she also served as principal vice principal and elementary principal at all three levels elementary middle and high during her 11 years there as well as a vocal music and reading teacher for 10 years she earned a bachelor's degree from the university of kansas and her masters at avila university she is currently working to complete her doctorate in education at the university of missouri in kansas city welcome ms bassett we're excited to

016have you join our team um we do understand that there was supposed to be a meet and greet at lawrence high school this evening at about 3 45 i got a phone call said ms bassett's not here and i knew something had to be wrong um so ms bassett was involved in a i don't know it was mine or a major it was a car accident and she said she's still kind of sore but she definitely wanted to be here um this evening so as soon as you're done with this please feel free to leave welcome ms bassett thank you thank you i am so excited about the opportunity to come to lawrence high and just to actually be a part of this awesome school district i have worked so many years in an urban

017setting and i've always been the type of leader whether i'm the educator in the classroom or the leader in the building that's been really committed to student achievement and really making sure that every place that i lead and i say lead even when i'm in the classroom because that's what teachers are they're leading in that classroom every place that i lead i want to make sure that when when i leave it's better it's grown it's uh it's um every person that i'm around and with they are they are better at what they do and so i'm very excited about coming to lawrence high and one of the things that i am looking forward to is this idea of making sure that we grow in our craft every teacher every leader every staff member they have

018to i'm hoping that we grow to the place where we see ourselves like as artisan and each day we're learning how to do what we do with our students with our families with our community better and so it's this idea of always improving on what we are and how we do the work that we do and so the idea of coming to lawrence high is really exciting because it is not just a good school it is a great school but how do we improve our craft in the way that we become an exceptional school that other schools look at us and we continue to be the model it has such a rich history i sit and i've talked to students i've talked to alumni i've talked to the current staff and there's a deep love

019for lawrence high and just hearing all the accolades over the years and being able to step in this place of leadership and and be a part of that history and be a part of such just a great community it just excites me all the way down to my core if you can see my my face i'm literally smiling from here to here so i just want to say thank you for this opportunity and i am i know i'm still a little shaky i'm from the car crash but i couldn't miss coming so i want to say thank you for having me and thank you for this opportunity and i promise you that i am totally committed to the community my son and i will be moving here and we just really want to embrace everything

020that lawrence is and um just to be a part of just this new setting this new time and just this new era as i see all the work done i can see that there's a new era of moving and improving and i want to be a part of that and i'm glad that i was chosen and i can do the work with you so thank you so much thank you so much speaking of dr johnson as part of the personnel report tonight i asked the board to prove the promotion of lawrence high interim principal dr cynthia johnson's to executive director of inclusion engagement and belonging i'm really thrilled that dr johnson will hopefully remain as an integral part of our leadership team we've seen positive changes in the climate and culture during her tenure at

021lawrence high she has a proven record as a district leader and working successfully with many school districts across the across the country as a matter of fact there was a and i found out there was a matter of fact it was the nevada state department of education was trying to get her to come back to nevada to work with them and so i'm eager for her to utilize her experience here her knowledge and skills here to support all of our staff and better serving our scholars your personnel report also includes billy mills middle school principal dr andrew taylor's selection of katie carson as assistant principal and athletic athletic director effective july 1. ms carson is a lawrence resident and a math and robotics teacher at ottawa middle school and we're pleased to add her to

022our team i enjoyed celebrating um yeah we're pleased to have her add her to our our team this past saturday i was really excited about celebrating the graduation of our lawrence virtual school students alongside our board members kelly jones shannon kimball gr and paula missing anybody kind of trying to look at the picture that we took that was despair saturday and our young adults in our project search and ctran program or our community transition program their ceremony was on last week we announced today that we have secured ku's allen fieldhouse as a backup site for our lawrence high and free state graduations tomorrow and wednesday evening in the event of rain we will make an announcement by noon the day of the event if there is a decision to move indoors traditionally we always use

023allen fieldhouse however during our early stages of planning and obviously due to covet they told us no that we understandably that we couldn't use it but since things were improving in the community we approached them again and they uh so great just graciously allowed us to to utilize their venue native american student services will co-host with the indigenous community center a senior drive-through celebration for all native american graduates and their families from 1 to 3 p.m saturday at broken arrow park as you know the douglas county commission decided last week to let the current health order including the county mass mandate stand it expires wednesday we notified staff and families on last week that the district will continue all of our covet prevention measures including masking in place until the end of our summer learning

024program we will reevaluate public health recommendations and community needs prior to the start of the new school year i appreciate the efforts and sacrifices of our school community and helping us maintain safe learning environments for all of our students and staff i want to thank our lawrence schools foundation and the generous group of long-time donors called the bobs we had a great time presenting the ten thousand dollar check that bob's award to susie mishka lawrence high reading specialist interpersonal skills teacher and unified sports coach last week her outstanding leadership of these programs benefits students with disabilities their peers and the entire lhs community it was a beautiful celebration and you can just tell the impact that she's had on that school community by the band being there and the large number of students and families

025and former students that just came home from college but they were eager to support mitch mishka so congratulations lawrence douglas county public health will provide covet vaccines to students staff and the public from 11 to 1 at lawrence college and career center tomorrow sign up on the lawrence douglas county health.org forward slash get my vaccine website walk-ins are also welcome human resources is planning a june 3rd teacher hiring fair here at the education support center from 8 30 to 4. we will host on-site interviews for elementary special education teachers and interventionist positions at all levels thanks to cans for the community for presenting 250 checks to each of our elementary schools after exceeding its april challenge goal of recycling five thousand pounds of aluminum cans and then finally you can catch our very own executive

026director of curriculum and instruction patrick kelly performing on the outdoor stage at theater lawrence in some enchanted evening the song of rogers and hamperstein this will be june 4th 5th 10th and 11th and 12th tickets are available online through theater lawrence that's all i have thank you we'll move on to the report of the president of the board of education um dr lewis hit most of the things that i wanted to mention and certainly wanted to extend my congratulations to the students of the lawrence virtual school and congratulations to the staff on running what was a really lovely ceremony we have i got stopped at the farmer's market and had an update on free state high school's redesign and i was wondering dr lewis if you could share if you knew a little bit about

027that update there i believe they presented to the state yes thank you yes they presented their plan to the state team the local team here and it has been approved to move forward the next step is for them for the board to approve their plan before the june 8th state board of education meeting so we will we will be calling a or asking the president to call a special meeting on june 7th has some things changed it's july okay so we have some time okay so we will not may not need that special but the exciting news is the plan was approved and it's going forward so congratulations to them and we look forward to supporting that as a board um and continuing to see what what work um uh what comes of the work

028that they've done thus far i met ngr in parliament as part of the negotiations team with pal cwa and the lea since we last met negotiations are moving along a little slower pace than we'd like due to just waiting for some updates from the state and around our audit so we look forward to continuing our work with them over the next couple of weeks and then finally i just want to also take a moment to welcome uh principal bassett and say that we're just really delighted that she's joining the the district um not so delighted that she incurred a car accident on her first um day up here to as representing and meeting her staff and hopefully that she'll recover soon from that and then just also wanted to extend to dr johnson how excited

029i am that she will be taking on this leadership role in the district around inclusion engagement and belonging so many thanks to both of them for for stepping up in those leadership roles okay so now we will move on to patron commentary and do we have any patreon commentary this evening one okay i'm going to go ahead and read the audience participation make sure actually i need to check and make sure that i have that it's not related to something that's coming up okay michelle is here okay okay so the usc 497 board of education welcomes patreon comments and thanks you for taking the time to talk to us about our policies and procedures we set aside this time during our regular meetings to hear from the public this is your time to share your

030opinions 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 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 this topic not included on agenda at the beginning of each many meeting comments related to the agenda items are welcome for after the board has had the opportunity to discuss the topics michelle if you would limit your comments to three minutes that would be helpful but welcome you for letting me talk i'd like to begin with a quote from condoleezza rice education is transformational it changes lives that

031is why people work so hard to become educated and why education has always been the key to the american dream the four study races arbitrary divisions of race and class and culture and unlocks every person's god-given potential i watched the last school board meeting on youtube with interest especially miss wisdom's presentation of equity in action and csrc culturally sustainable resource criteria first of all i want to acknowledge that the academic achievement gap exists and it has been well documented that there is no difference in intellectual capacity between races or ethnicities forbes magazine says despite increased well-funded and targeted interventions little improvement has been seen in decades you have my sympathy i am not an expert and i don't have a solution just some questions i want to share two potential problems that i saw in

032equity in action csrc criteria criteria that the board adopted on may 10th one of them is its similarity to crt otherwise known as critical race theory equity along with culturally responsive sustainable marginalized power structures advocating for inequality social injustice microaggressions transformational change are all red flags that smack of crt all those words were used repeatedly in the presentation and on the slides i don't have time to give examples but you can watch it on youtube the school board voted to implement equity in action in the culturally sustainable resource criteria and i assume continue forward with training of staff and administration vetting and or reviewing curriculum resources and partnerships through the lens of csrc the other problem that i saw or potential problem with this presentation is that crt and crt type initiatives are on their

033way out since 2012 12 or since 2018 to 12 lawsuits in states including new york which has what's called what they call culturally responsive sustaining education which sounds very much like csrc is in court upon a quick review of states with governors or local school board initiatives to stop crt and crt type curricula are eight states which i just happened at a glance and there was an article on may 20th detailing how 20 states attorneys general including kansas are petitioning the us government to backtrack on their endorsement and funding of crt and crt type equity and diversity initiatives there is a resolution in the house right now that aims to restrict these types of programs because of their divisiveness and among those who object to race-based education or many notable people of color i'd like

034to put one of them dr wyatt walker in conclusion today too many remedies such as critical race theory the increasingly fashionable post-marxist postmodernist approach that analyzes society as an institutional group power structures rather than on a spiritual or one-to-one human level are taking us in the wrong direction separating even elementary school children into explicit racial groups and emphasizing differences instead of similarities i said i'm not an expert and i mean it but i just have some questions um one how is it different than crt and two thank you thank you okay so we're now going to move on to board commentary i've got some i'll be quick um like to reiterate what uh kelly said over the last two weeks we had negotiations meetings uh paula kelly and i with both the la and powell

035cwa and those are going going well this last week had a boundary committee meeting where we discussed as a committee different different scenarios that we'd like to explore as a as a committee and and like to have the district provide some data and input for got to attend the lvs graduation on saturday which was a lot of fun [Music] looking forward to lawrence high school and free state graduations this week going to graduation is one of the um one of the things i look forward to the most um so congratulations to all the 2021 graduates including my my own son who i didn't know that he would make it but he did so that's good and then um just like two weeks ago uh i also like to welcome douglas travis and nate to the

036um candidates for school board i'll make the same offer that i made two weeks ago if any of you would like to sit down and have a conversation about school board and running for school board um as odd as it is because i'm running as well i'm more than happy to sit down and have a conversation with anybody about what it is what it takes and and what it's like so that's what i got thank you gr jen thank you kelly i wanted to just report on the policy committee meeting that took place on may 12th we reviewed we're doing a regular policy review schedule where we're working our way through the policy manual so we reviewed the remainder of our section k of the policies and all of the section l policies as part

037of that scheduled policy review uh we have a couple of policies that we pulled out of that group to have some further discussion at an upcoming meeting i also had the pleasure of attending both the ctran graduation and the lawrence virtual school graduations at the end of last week i would echo gr's comments that graduations are one of the things that i look forward to the most as a school board member it's wonderful to celebrate the culmination of our students accomplishments and congratulations to all of those graduates who have had their ceremonies and to those students who we will be honoring in the next couple of days i am a member because of my role with the kins association of school boards i am a member of the kansas attorney general's open government training advisory

038group we had a meeting last friday that group provides advice to the open government attorneys at the attorney general's office on training for public officials and other groups in compliance with coma and cora no big thing to report we we typically review um upcoming trainings and uh legislation that's been passed so that's that's what we did on our agenda this time around um i also wanted to just take a moment if i could um to uh on a personal note you know every year we have a lot of excellent staff who leave our district either because they're retiring or they're moving on to another opportunity they have a variety of reasons and i don't always have personal experience with all of the staff but in my role as a parent but on our personal report

039tonight there is someone that i wanted to publicly thank for her service to our district um kim jennings she's been the counselor at langston hughes for the entire time that i've been on the board and my family we were we were a langston hughes family for a number of years she was a rock solid support for our family when we went through some very difficult losses and some other challenges during our elementary school years there and i have always been grateful for her expertise her professionalism and her care and heart for students and for their families and i just wanted to thank her from the bottom of my heart and i will very much miss her and to thank her for her service thank you shannon that's all thanks um other board members oh this

040is melissa i want to again i want to extend my um congratulations to the graduates and i did inform ms stewart that i was unable to attend because i was at a relative's graduation unfortunately it wasn't movement to indoors so we had we were sitting on the big umbrellas but it was still a wonderful thing to watch so other board members don't have anything to report outside of what kelly and j.r had reported but i just want to say congratulations to all the graduating seniors of 2021 he made it and i'm looking forward to seeing what you do next and i really don't have anything to report but i would like to say congratulations to all the 2021 graduates kelly we also had a number of staff that received their graduate degrees as well over

041the weekend so congratulations also to all of our staff that have graduated i saw lots of pictures on facebook so i know that's a big deal so i also extend congratulations it was fun to see how many people had gone on to get advanced degrees and it's it just kind of speaks to the caliber of staff that we have so it was fun to see them as well i uncle that i probably attended about four virtual graduations and two in person so far so all right so we will now move on to consent agenda do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda this is shannon i move the board of education adopt the items listed on the consent agenda sgrl second jones yes hill yes kadu blackwood yes gordon ross yes johnson yes

042kimball yes smith yes motion passes 7-0 thank you okay so we'll move on now to the review of the it's old business and we'll move on to the review of the board governance manual shannon and i did some work over the weekend to address some of the issues that were we were working through in our last two meetings i really appreciate everyone's attention to this i think that if we get this manual right at least it's a good starting place and we can always work to improve it as we move forward but hoping that we can approve it this evening so shannon's going to lead off thank you kelly um so there there's at least one amendment that we need to make to the manual that's sort of a technical amendment related to some language

043that we presented at our last may meeting so there's some printouts on the table if you pick up the sheet that has page 12 at the bottom and take a look at that we added some language to the section of the board on board ethics and and expectations to address some of the comments that were made at the um at the april meeting that we when we discussed this the first time and if you look at page 12 there's some orange language highlighted in the middle of that paragraph that was placed in the draft last time in what's on board docs tonight that was placed in the bulleted language above that which actually is quoted from one of our board policies so we just need we need to make the technical amendment of moving that

044from the board policy section because we haven't added that to board policy yet and putting it in the place where it's shown on this um on this amended page um we didn't change the language at all we just are moving where it goes and so if there's no objection to that then i would make the motion that we amend the document that we're considering to make that change and i'll add to that that the board um there are a couple areas where we wanted to do a deeper dive conversation with all of us collectively this is one of those areas and then erica had mentioned perhaps around the values really honing in on those in the retreat too so we'll look at both of these areas during the um uh upcoming retreat so all we

045need for now is just to move that language out of the policy language into the manual into the middle of that bulleted list on page 12. so i'm gonna i'm gonna make that motion um that we make that change and um elise i will send you specific language basically to move the language highlighted in orange on page 12. it's currently on page 910 we need to move it down to the location shown on page 12. is there any issues with that before we do it the motion and just that yeah this is just um to move the language um in the draft under consideration all right i'll second the motion we haven't made it so yeah i'm just getting you ready for your upcoming uh campaign so helping you out well you made it i

046did make a motion yeah you did yeah i did oh okay then everybody's getting ready for me to leave as board president erica to step on okay um so we have a motion in a second and then it's elise's turn thanks kill yes i do blackwood yes gordon ross yes johnson yes kimball yes smith yes jones yes motion passes 7-0 thanks for everyone's patience with that so now we're going to move on to page 22 and everybody has a copy of that at the board it's also for those of you following along at home in the board docs agenda so what we now are doing is trying to address the issue of honoring the tradition in lawrence to [Music] elevate the candidate with the most votes to a officer position on the board to do

047that we've suggested adding this language which i'll read in addition to considering candidates ability to fulfill these duties board members should also take into consideration the support the candidate received from the community and the most recent election of that candidate as this factor is an indicator of the community support of that candidate as a leader so it would be one of the factors that the board would consider and then just to back into that i'll say that right now the it is the board's responsibility by statute to elect the president so when erica goes up for the presidency in july at our organizational meeting we'll all vote to support her underlying that support is our recognition that the community really overwhelmingly er saw you as ready to lead the board so that would be one

048of the factors that we take into consideration but it's actually the board that votes on who the who the leader is so what we're hoping will happen is in the case where the person receiving the most votes is not in a position to be president that we now have this new policy that would allow us a way to select the next leader that follows a board manual prior to that we didn't have a procedure drafted so this will be the procedure that we follow if it's agreeable to everyone we did look at one of the reasons we were looking at utilizing this method was to open up the possibility that a person might serve for more than one year as board president and we tried to look at if there was a way to just

049unilaterally use the tradition that lawrence has recognized which is let's say in using erica as an example erica takes a year to do this job and anybody that's done a job for the first year knows that you learn a lot and that you're more prepared to do it the second year i just finished my first year of my job and i'm going to be better at it next year so the idea being that if we wanted to have that opportunity as a board and it opened up to us and we wanted to utilize just the community's vote to make that decision i sent to you all an excel sheet that shows some of the challenges and some of the areas where we might not have issues if we did that the primary issue really with

050the timing of having someone serve more than one year as president has to do with the state legislature's decision to move the board election to november so if you look at that excel sheet you'll see we run into trouble we run into trouble actually in the in the model that we use right now every january we have to make a decision to elect people in july instead of right after the election so this is what we've come up with as a possible way of addressing the issue i think that lawrence is a community that will hold us to that if we write it in our manual in terms of when we come to elect a board president it also allows us a little bit of flexibility when the person with the most votes might not

051be the best fit for that moment so i'll be quiet now and open it up for discussion or any questions people might have so i'll just i'll just say that i uh um so i was i was in favor of the change as it was written two weeks ago i and i i like this edition because i like the flexibility that it that it adds um so uh i like that it that it gives some that it gives more weight to the vote but i like the i like the way that you framed it that in the event that that person who has the most votes isn't in in the position it then gives us a framework to use so a that that person may feel like that they had to do it now that

052there's a framework with which we can work within that they don't have to do that anymore and then there's written of what what we're going to do and so i like that it it seems to be a good a good fit for both both processes for me i like that it it the comments around making sure that we are honoring the direction from the community um for me serving in this role based on the number of votes i received has been [Music] an honor but melissa you beat me by a lot a lot of votes i don't know if you remember and you know thinking about you serving in a second year i i would have been happy to see you serve for two years if you had had time this year to do it

053hello this is carol hello can everybody hear me we can carol yeah and i do apologize that i'm not there in person but um but i'm just i'm just not that comfortable with this proposed policy because i i do believe that the person with the most votes always has the option to decline to serve as board president so they can i think in my mind that they should they should be able to decline and then just we could as a board just move down the line so the third person who got the third most votes they could be the vice president and that's just that's my thought thank you thank you carol other board members i thought you were leaning in i feel like you're looking at me i can kind of say something no

054i agree with gr um when i first read it i was kind of huh like what are we doing um but the way you framed it and how jr put it i appreciate working within the framework um that was the way it's currently written so i appreciate that working with you and have done on it i like the idea of the two-year if the person chooses to because i know that i feel like sometimes you know it's like oh okay i had that reflection time even like when dr lewis came on he observed for quite some before he made some changes um i'm still but i like what carol said too you know there's still that option to decline and and i don't think that i don't think that someone who goes onto the board

055um or runs for a board candidate will be afraid to say no i agree with you so we prepared a couple motions to move things along um kelly i i would be glad to read the first motion and see if it gets supportive a second yep okay i moved the board of education adopt the board governance manual as reviewed from the march 22nd and may 10 201 2021 meetings with an effective date of may 24 2021 as amended and with the following paragraph inserted on page 22 immediately following the bulleted list that ends new board member onboarding process in addition to considering candidates ability to fulfill these duties board members should also take into consideration the support the candidate received from the community in the most recent election of that candidate as this factor is

056an indicator of the community support of that candidate as a leader end quote in addition the board clerk is authorized to correct page numbers and formatting as needed and insert missing appendices as indicated in the document this jrl second could do blackwood no gordon ross yes johnson no kimball yes smooth yes jones yes hill yes motion passes 5-2 okay we're going to move on now to reports and we'll hear from dr anna stubblefield zach conrad executive director of data and technology dr stubblefield's title is deputy superintendent and we will be discussing school resource officers good evening dr anna stubblefield deputy superintendent and i'm going to start this report dr lewis will also be sharing a component of the report but we're here this evening and i'll give a little background as you recall earlier in

057the summer there were some community members who came forward and requested that the board consider removing sros from the school building and from that request the board charged us to visit with or collaborate with our equity advisory council and our parents of color on how to examine that from those two groups determine and created a subcommittee that made the determination to do some additional surveying which we'll talk about um to get a better understanding of where the community was now versus where they were when we did the survey about a in january of 2020. um so i just wanted to provide that background and that's the purpose of this report is to provide the old survey data data at a high level dr lewis will share some information that came from the governor's task force

058and we'll give some information regarding the thought exchange and then our next steps but as we are providing this report i also wanted to remind everyone that this aligns in our strategic plan on number three safe and supportive schools and making data informed decisions so the background just a reminder in july where how we started this entire conversation and on july 10 2019 there was a joint board of education and city commission meeting where at that time chief burns proposed that the board take into consideration in the future of potentially covering some of the costs of the sro program since then the board members requested a program evaluation and we did that but since then the city has not at this time requested us to pay any portion of it at this time there are

059four sros and our high schools and they support our middle schools and elementary as needed and we are not paying any portion of the salary of those individuals who work in our buildings this is just a longer history we have um with the city received and been a part of the eso sro program since 2001 and it's had a few different iterations as their grant money has gone out and right now we have four sros at both of our high schools so with that i'm going to turn it over to zach to just remind you of the original data the first survey only went to students current high schools i mean at that time high school students and staff one of the requests from the parents of color and equity advisory council for this particular

060survey was that we survey more more a wider spectrum of people which this time we sent it to every staff member regardless of their level that are in buildings we sent it to all parents and we surveyed all of our students 6 through 12. so the results that you're seeing here are from the original survey you saw these results earlier in january this survey was created by the budget and program evaluation committee i went through multiple reviews we like anna had said we sent this to high school students and staff so at that time you could see the total count of students who filled out this survey was 1064 students and the total number of staff that filled out the survey was 133. you could see the breakdown of the respondent's gender and the respondents

061race on those two charts the staff and student race percentage mirrors closely to that of our district population let's go that way there were a few items that we wanted to display that again was presented earlier and these items are school resource officers help keep students from being bullied and school resource officers help keep weapons out of my school you can see that the students and staff responses across the board where the percentage underneath is the percentage of students that strongly disagree disagreed neutral agreed or strongly agreed with the statement on a few of these items you could see that there is some disparity between students and staff but overall with the agree and strongly disagree uh the majority of students and staff are in agreement okay i can go back i think i just

062i thought about the numbers differently let's we will use the button were you just saying i'm sorry were you asserting that can you say the last thing you just said to a zack that you when you look at these numbers what you see majority of students and staff so there is some disagreement when we look at our school resource officers help keep students from being bullied if you look in the far category i strongly agree our staff at 28 strongly agree whereas our students at six percent strongly agree but where our students end up is neutral we have a high percentage there and so but the strongly disagreeing the disagree categories are very similar and so it's just highlighting that they agree and strongly agree are somewhat similar there compared to the strongly disagree and

063the disagree i don't agree with you but i'm okay i think i'm okay to move on the the same thing happens with keep weapons out of my school we see similarities with the strongly disagree and disagree where most students end up is is the neutral that's where the difference ends up being oops here's a couple other items that we showed we see similar patterns here between students and staff how they respond but with the helps keep students from bringing drugs and alcohol we see a different pattern we see here where students strongly disagree and disagree at higher rates than the staff good here's a pivotal question because it's the focus of our our strategic goals of making sure that students and staff feel safe in their environment and we'll see the follow-up question on this

064as well so i feel safer with a school resource officer in the building we see that staff at a rate of 68 percent strongly agree with this statement and although we have a majority of students at 57 percent that either agree or strongly agree with this statement we do see a lot of students that are neutral now dr lewis and rick henry followed up with students and these statements were also presented in the january board meeting and we see a wide range here where the opposite ends of this spectrum of i feel safer and i don't feel safe we also have the last bullet point bullet point number four at first i did not feel safer because i felt targeted after i got to know our sro and understood her role i felt safer and

065that i wasn't being targeted and so we do have that wide range on here again something that came out of this meeting with students and that students want more opportunities to connect with sros and here's one student being quoted in her comment about auntie shelby so we'll hand it over to dr lewis because during this whole process the governor also um the governor's commission on racial and equity justice also weighed in on the role of sros or whether sro should be in schools so um shortly after that survey the the survey and focus groups that jack and anna mentioned happened in january of 2020 shortly after that we know the unfortunate incident of george floyd's murder happened and i appreciate governor kelly's swiftness in terms of assembling this commission and so june 20 i'm sorry

066june 24 2020 she signed an executive order forming this governor's commission on racial equity and justice and she first of all just asked the commission to study issues all issues related to race and equity and justice across all systems in the state of kansas but initially she wanted us to tackle the policing and law and for law enforcement and the commission includes perspectives from the criminal justice system education health care and advocacy groups and i want to be clear that this is not a commission on criminal justice reform it is focused on those broad issues of race racial equity in in kansas so when we released the first report there were a total of 11 meetings of the full commission and those meetings were held every other week since july and in those first in

067those full meetings we've heard from a number of experts relating to policing and law enforcement and many of them are listed there on the screen and so we listen to those individuals ask questions sometimes we requested additional meetings or additional information from those individuals that are listed there on the screen we definitely appreciated the research help from the national governors associate governors association where they were able to give us previous federal or state laws that related to the work that we were wanting to do it's very interesting to hear from our kansas law enforcement training center or what's also known as kletc and that's the training center for all police in this in the state of kansas and so it's very eye-opening in terms of just listening to what those individuals had to share with

068us at those sessions in addition to the general set sessions of the full commission we also held 26 learning sessions um with with community members and so obviously that was a virtual environment during that time so there were some community sessions that were held in wichita dodge city hutchinson topeka and nkck and those are some additional folks that came to just kind of um that we wanted to listen to the kansas association of chiefs of police the national organization of black law enforcement the kansas chapter the kansas mental health co-responder program leaders and those additional [Music] people that that really came to just kind of share their perspective but also it provided us an opportunity to ask them questions as well so in terms of the timeline as the commission heard from those experts and

069stakeholders we began to build those recommendations for the report to the governor the commission then got feedback from stakeholders about just basic content in language and then finally the commission presented the final report to the governor on december the 1st so there were several recommendations 12 recommendations that came out of that report i'm sorry over 60 recommendations in these 12 different areas here listed on the screen and as you can see school resource officers was a a separate area that we provided some recommendations for state agencies recommendations for legislators and recommendations for a local government and so what i want to kind of just share is some of those recommendations as related to school resource officers and so again these are reckon oh these are recommendations for local legislative and state agencies and so the

070first recommendation was to explore alternatives to sro such as counselors the second one there is revise training requirements for sros to include implicit bias training and ongoing requirements the third is a third and fourth are all local as is one a school district should should seek to implement alternatives or complementary programs to address issues of student conflict and violence and then finally sro programs should include elements that demonstrate the school district commitment to an inclusive and welcoming environment for students what we know is that the presence of resource officers or law enforcement officers varies among schools across the country with approximately close to 70 percent of all high schools having some form of either police officer or true school resource officer in in the schools education public safety human services officials we also consider the

071impact of those officers in the in the building so if you look at one explore alternatives to sro such as councillors as you know prior to becoming this district made an investment in in counselors in our in our schools and so currently we employ 52 guidance counselors mental health professionals and social workers in addition the district employs 13 school psychologists who support our special education services and we're also appreciative of our partnership with burt nash where they provide rap workers to assign schools and as we look at down to three those evidence-based programs so number three speaks to um alternative programs or complementary programs to address student conflict and and violence and as you know those evidence evidence programs such as restorative justice we are obviously have trained as we started our last meeting trained

072all of our middle schools and our high schools will be trained um this fall and all of those programs should be utilized um alongside uh as sros and we'll share here in a moment some of the action steps from our original survey we'll also talk about some action steps going forward and then finally in order to ensure that sros the sr program has a positive impact on students and create this inclusive environment it's it's incumbent upon school districts to create programs with with elements including but not limit to a focus on strong building strong relationships which is what we talk about in our strategic plan not only with school resource officers but with all staff clear agreements between school districts and police departments and i appreciate the work that this district has done around the

073mou in terms of really looking at that mou to make sure it is a good fit for our school resource officers program here and so you can view the full report at that website that is a clickable link on in in board docs so that was the first report our second task is broken down into three different areas economic development health care and education and so with an education we are continuing to look at school resource officers and so this is a rubric that we're currently looking at and i think i did link that i didn't link it lisa linked it in in board docs uh this is the united states department of education in the um and the department of justice they've designed this secure which stands for safe school based enforcement through collaboration

074understanding and respect they've designed this this rubric and local this local policy rubric to provide additional information for states and in local governments looking to develop or either revise statutes regulations or any type of written agreements and so the goal is to prevent the unnecessary and inappropriate arrests referrals to law enforcement even contact with the juvenile system uh in violations of of civil rights um laws and so more to come on this but i did wanted to share this work and this was just um discussed at our meeting last last thursday so we're continuing to dive deep into this and then lastly i want to just share some current and enhanced training and practices that are currently in place here in lawrence um here here in lawrence all of our sros are trained nazro train

075which is they consider themselves a world leader in school-based policing it's the national association of school resource officers so they're all trained there they all have gone through the alice training one of our sros are an alice trainer they all go through bias-based policing i'm sorry they was formerly called bias-based policing but didn't kind of sound too well but so now they refer to it as bias-free policing mental health first aid crisis intervention training or cit conflict resolution training they go through crucial conversations as well as an upcoming event that's going to be a statewide event that's held here in lawrence that focuses on juvenile juvenile officer well the sponsored by the juvenile officer association and one you think one unique thing that is really unique to lawrence in terms of our sro program and

076we were able to look at different sros programs around the state and around the country is that four year commitment and these are officers that apply to be police officers i'm sorry sro so these are not people that are taken off patrol to do this sro duty they actually sign up and commit to this but the commitment is a four year commitment and the purpose of that is so they can again the focus is building relationships so they can really bring in a freshman class so to speak and see them through their senior year and with that i will turn back over to zach to share our results of our thought exchange well one thing dr lewis forgot this year we were able because of yeah and it's on there the the way that beyond

077diversity was offered online we were able to train at the sros that were in place at the time when we offered it to our staff so they did participate in that training this year yeah that was that was something thank you anna for reminding me the logo is right there they did go through the beyond diversity training and dr tuberfield and myself had a meeting with craig owens to share a little bit about that and he committed to the sros going through that training he also was thinking about having all the police officers go through the beyond diversity training is it possible to get that in the mou that training yeah is that a process something that could be negotiated as part of it i think so yeah because and i think we should use

078general language around whatever training we've provided so something that would just be consistent with what the district does in case we're doing something in addition to or different from beyond diversity is that okay yeah so with that we wanted to gather additional perspectives so we ended up putting out a thought exchange and we're going to go over a few of those results now we really wanted to include parents in the conversation and community members so we ended up having 771 participants in the thought exchange and they offered up 786 thoughts and we had over 20 000 ratings and so the way the ratings work is that a thought is put up there and everybody is able to see these thoughts and then give them a rating one out of five so these are the key

079thoughts these are the top thoughts as they were rated just as teachers counselors etc build relationships with students so should sros so the number one thought was around relationships the next thought was teacher safety is important so the thought number two was around safety and that's how they they grouped it together and number three they need to have strong crisis intervention training so some of the follow-up data that we dove into is related around relationships and safety and so one of the questions we asked is how would you describe your past interactions slash experiences with school resource officers you could see the choices they had were very negative to very positive including an option never had an interaction slash experience so we could see here that percentage-wise the very negative and negative is around 8

080percent have had a negative experience conversely the positive and very positive or close to 40 percent we dove a little deeper with a cross tabs to figure out if this varied by race and ethnicity so on this chart you'll see on the top of the chart going across the race ethnicity starting with american indian alaska native going all the way across to white and preferred not to answer or prefer not to respond then down the side you see very negative negative neither negative or positive going all the way down now in the box you'll see very negative and american indian alaskan native 2 represents the n count 13 in parentheses represents the percentage across that category so those that had very negative experiences we see that white students at 12 make up about 75 percent

081of those that do that had a very negative experience we also wanted to explore this looking at gender to see if there is a difference in the interactions or experience by gender this chart is set up very similar where you have the responses of very negative on the side with the genders across the top of male female non-binary and prefer not to respond we are seeing that there is not an interaction between race and your race ethnicity or your interaction experience the same can be said for gender so that was the relationship portion of it we also looked at the safety and with school resource officers in the school i feel and they had three answer options of less safe neither more or less safe and more safe about fifty percent of the respondents said

082more more safe only eleven percent of the respondents said less safe this is closely related to the survey that we sent out prior so the data that we saw earlier in the slides is reflective of this data as well we broke it down by student staff and parent guardian this chart just contains the end count so where it says student and less safe there's 12 students that reported going over to more safe there was 30 students that reported that they felt more safe with sros in the building parents and guardians also felt overwhelmingly end count more safe with sros in the building we looked at this by race ethnicity as well to make sure that there were not discrepancies between specific race ethnicities we are seeing that the pattern holds true that there aren't disparities

083between race ethnicities and feeling safe with sros in the building so with that in discussion with the parents of color and equity advisory council the next steps were actually identical to the next steps that came out in january which are here some of those steps pre-pandemic and then as we start to bring staff back the uh and staff and students back the high schools were able to implement them in some way but moving and looking forward to next year they will be able to do it more formally just because as students came on at different times we had a couple of different times where the sros weren't fully staffed and so with the pandemic with some transitioning at um with the sros um this some of these steps were done at some level but not

084um to the level that we can fully say yes all of these things happen so we'll work with our high schools and our middle schools to ensure that the introduction and those kind of things happen one of the things that did happen was that the principals did communicate with staff about what the sro sro roles are as far as what and why they should be contacting them and they'll continue to do that on an annual or basis minimumly so those are our next steps and with that any questions we can try to answer if we have the answer thank you does anyone want to i have some questions but i can save mine if anybody wants to start shannon um dr lewis i had a couple questions i appreciated all the detailed information about the

085governor's commission and the recommendations and also that the secure rubric that is being looked at i was wondering if you could speak to what you think the evaluation is of our districts how we compare in terms of implementing those regulations or recommendations from the governor's commission in our district um i know uh the in the presentation you talked a little bit about the things we've done in each category um you know do we have a lot more to do to fully implement those regulations those recommendations are we most of the way there um kind of getting your evaluation of that and then the second question i had was um do we intend to use the secure rubric to evaluate our district and or have we already done that and if so you know how did

086we how did we compare on that rubric so i can answer that last part we just received though i just received that thursday okay um that was one of the things that's going to be my topic um as a follow-up we always do a follow-up meeting tomorrow at our executive leadership team um meeting so yeah we will look at that as a alt on tomorrow to answer that that first part and this this goes for um just the the listening sessions that we had um those individuals that came to speak with us that were researchers on this topic um based on what we've done and i appreciate the board asking us to look at sros prior to the george florida incident prior to this governor's commission on racial equity and justice and when i was

087able to share in in spaces that we had already looked at our um or began to examine um um and assess our sro program here um there were some some people that were wow you all are are ahead of it and so the short answer of your question is i would if i had to to to gauge how well we are performing against other school districts around the state and around the country i would say we are ahead um because especially one of the things that came out of the recommendation was to instead of police officers increased counselors and social workers and i think this board this community has held us accountable and has approved funding for us to do just that in our buildings and i increase counselors at all elementary schools and then

088obviously the social workers and the partnership with bert nashville we have taken a i'll say a proactive approach in in that regard and and that was one of the things that was not so much evident evident at um some other school districts around the country great thank you um i have a couple things but i'm going to take this opportunity to build on the social work piece if i can is there anybody before i jump in that would is that right okay so one of the models that you i'll just in terms of positioning um i think when i ran for the board and then we've had this conversation as you've mentioned a couple times um at the board table and in in community meetings and my professional experience i worked at an organization called

089operation fresh start where we worked with transitional aged youth who were interacting with the criminal justice system it was formative to my professional experience and it informs my position related to sros and for the people that i worked with and served their interactions with sros in a college town that was considered itself quite progressive in the midwest resulted in long term interactions with the criminal justice system that started in their high schools so i am uncomfortable with the sro program to start based on that experience the social work component it's true that we hired additional social workers and and mental health staff we increased the number of those staff at the elementary level so we have 14 elementary levels and we decided to make a decision and next year we'll have 13 to to host

090a um each to each one of those elementary buildings to have a social worker or a counselor there and i really appreciate the board doing that at the high school level we also increased some some mental health services for the general edu for what we call the general population as opposed to those that were receiving services for special education but even in that case we really don't have enough mental health workers for where the need is at and particularly where the need is at moving into next year when we'll have this transition moving from a covid world to a fully in-person [Music] school year so we expect some bumps along the way and a lot of trauma coming out of this year i do not believe we have enough mental health staff even though we

091have done way more than any other district so i agree with you but i don't think we're quite there yet the co-responder model has a collaboration between a mental health worker and a police officer does the when an sro is interacting with a student how does the district support that student if the sro is there in a punitive for a punitive reason for a criminal investigation who is the district advocate with the student when they're with the police officer is a perce is there a procedure we follow that might look like a co-responder does that make sense it makes sense and i think it depends there i don't there's no say if a student is interacting with an sro um we follow the general guidelines like their parents are contacted but i can't tell you

092like every time there's a counselor or social worker an administrator because i'm sure it varies yeah and it probably depends on staffing like the availability of folks to be there so the recommendation that that or i'm telling you this now more as a more as a social worker than a board member to be frank i that i do think that if we continue to have sros there's value in having someone in the room if there's a criminal investigation who has a mental health background and who has an understanding of the implications for that student if they're not cooperating if they are not able to participate in a way that protects them and somebody that understands their right while we're waiting for the parent to come one of the changes the policy committee made that shannon

093and i made was a little tweak that requires the district to make sure that a parent is notified before a child interacts with an sro and that's a new thing since since i've been on the board so i would like the district to consider if we continue to work with sros that we look at who is with the sro when they are working with the student because as much training as the sro might have what you listed there like cit i have done professionally the mental health training for ci it's it's it's great and the first the first you know the first aid also great very surface level stuff um they're not mental health professionals even if they're the most compassionate people in the world so having someone in the room that has that background

094i think could be helpful and might protect our students um and then i just want to point out that that data is strong it looks good people feel safe when police officers are there and i really appreciate all the work you did i really appreciate that we took the time to talk with um and engage as we have asked in the equity policy um the committees that we have set up to look at the equity work so i really i'm grateful that you did that thank you for taking that extra step since i've been on the board so that's one piece of data in terms of like the the surveys that we've got since i've been on the board there was an ask by my myself like why have security officers and sros and it's

095because those two people have different roles it's also because the sros are not always in the building they're there sometime one of the things that's most compelling to me is somebody that's been on the board while there have been guns in our schools is the response time when the sro is actually in the building is much faster is that correct and tony barron used to know that number off the top of his head i don't suppose either i mean we've shared it when they're actually in the building the response time is much faster than if you have to call someone yeah yeah but it's like significantly faster correct yeah okay um so one thing that occurs to me um in thinking about that is that if they're not always in the building and we have

096this sense of of feeling safer you know are we actually safer and another thing that's happened since i've been on the board that was well publicized in the in the paper so i think i think it's okay for me to share broadly there was an incident where a student in a special education classroom was taken out of our our out of lhs put into a police car and taken away from our building because of behaviors that they were having related to a diagnosis so we made the district made a decision that it was safer for kids in the in the behavioral health room to not be as close to sros so we moved the sros like office the space they're at so they would be further away from the children for whom they might do

097the most harm is that correct um is it lhs yes yeah we did make that call okay so i think there are people that are safe or feel safer when there are police officers in the room and then there are people for whom there is higher risk even if you have somebody that is entirely kind um and so for me i just you know i want it like i do think it's compelling that people feel safer i think it's compelling that there's a response time that's quicker as it relates to the to guns i actually think it is is um not the role of the sro to respond to mental health issues to participate in any discipline i don't think it's consistent with the equity policy that we just passed around discipline and dignity and

098discipline and if we continue to have them there i think there should be a stronger collaboration that should be documented within the mou and written out in procedures and policies that our staff follows i agree with miss jones as a student i feel i um to an extent i do feel safer in the building and the sense that like if there were to be an intruder or someone who came in armed i feel like they could they would probably do more than a teacher could in that situation except in the in in the sense that when there's an incident that doesn't have to do with like an intruder or if it's just like a student like a disc finish or something i don't think that they should be uh involved in that sense i feel

099like i don't know where i heard it from but i heard that like those sros are supposed to like keep students from being like dealt with out of like a federal level level or whatever um and i also like the idea of there being like a student advocate in the room if there were to be like a meeting um with a student talking with an sro i like the idea of there being someone else in the room to be like on the student side of things other questions or comments one more thing i wanted to just point out i appreciate it in the rubric that it talks about um how collection and evaluation of disaggregated data is an important component of these programs and evaluating continuing to have these programs in schools and i know

100that's something that we have talked about in the context of our own program and i hope so i hope that that tool we can use that as a as a way to further that conversation with the police department around collecting data around interactions that their officers are having with students because i do think it's important that we look at that data and in the past that data hasn't been available it's not only been not available they've declined to to collect it so it's the data around if you're interacting with the child who you who is you're investigating or is involved in a a um that there's might be a criminal charge there i believe i'm correct that they have said to us they cannot tell us and they do not collect what race or ethnicity

101that child is that they're interacting with even though there's a low number they're telling they're reporting to us it's a very low number of students for whom that's that's their primary role or interaction like it could it could be i mean the way that the last time they were here the percentage of those interactions versus the percentage of interactions they might have in terms of like curriculum they present is much much lower but they reported to us that they were unable to provide us that data is that still the case now if it's if they have to file a police report they collect that data and i've seen that data and share that data if it's uh incident when they call them interactions or something like that where if a police officer goes to zac

102to say hey it's your birthday they document that as an interaction but they don't collect zach is a white man they don't collect the data there so they do give to the because that's different than my understanding so i would i appreciate that clarification so your the clarification is that the city or that the the police department is giving us data around students they're interacting with be for something other than educational purposes or um to further their relationship building with students is that what you're saying so if there's a criminal activity if they're invested they do tell you how many students they're interacting with based on color thank you do other board members have so the um it's not just questions but just either feedback that you have or anything that you would like to

103see in terms of the sro programming this is carol but um i would like to um just i'm just asking is there a wording in there for a guardian because not oftentimes it's sometimes difficult to get the parent or reach the parent the if it is if they do not have a um if the there is a moment because of the system that they work with where a police officer's jurisdiction for lack of a better word is um they they supersede our ability to um yeah so so and if there's something eminent like eminent harm they might not be able to wait until a parent or a guardian comes there but if if there's not that if that's not involved the policy from the district is they have to wait but if there's if there's

104eminent harm or something they have to respond to immediately within the legal sense then the district has no purview over how that officer responds i think the question thank you i don't oh i don't know i just i miss i interpreted that differently i guess but if that answers her i think i thought she was saying like if it wasn't the parent would they be able to contact someone else as long as they're listed in the system so like a parent may be hard to contact because of work but if you know how we can list x amount of people to pick up and stuff like that is that something so in that case it has to be a legal guard yeah it has to be a legal guardian and if it's not they wait

105until the next day or the following day that and i know there are always exceptions when i was a building principal several years ago that was the common practice we would not allow them but if there was some thing that was imminent and their jurisdiction overruled us we didn't have a choice but for the most part that's been common practice and i know there may be some exception to that but now it's the policy as kelly stated i'm also wondering with that because i know when you fill out the registration form they have that check mark where you say um is this person allowed to pick up the the kid i wonder if we can add something like that is this person allowed to talk in a serious situation because i know me like myself

106as a teacher if something happened and i can't immediately run out the door i do have people that i trust to you know get the detailed information so i was wondering would that not be something you could sign a release or yeah and i think in that case we wouldn't like if if it can wait we'll just wait until we talk to the parent because there are some props possible unintentional legal components that we can run into even if you check that box it depends on what the situation is you may or may not for that particular situation want that trusted person to know and it puts the district in a difficult position so the only time we would allow that to occur if we didn't have a choice otherwise we'll say you have to

107wait until we get in contact with the parent and move about the day without them interacting with the stool student kelly um just uh the for the rest of the board members the policy that kelly is refer referred to earlier is policy jcac and i would encourage board members to go and read that because it talks about all of the parameters around the circumstances we're discussing and it does say parent or guardian in that policy and it it talks about what dr stubblefield just talked about in terms of if absent an emergency situation the building administrator can refuse to allow the interaction to occur so i think that would be helpful to answer some of the questions i appreciate that um shannon but in my personal experience with sros the policy has not always been

108involved and granted my personal experience has been several years and of course i'm always going to support the direction that the board wants to go in terms of the sro sro suggested recommendations but i strongly feel that um one that we're headed in the right direction but i also strongly feel that um uh i am kind of really hesitant on saying this because i feel like it's just gonna put myself out there but i strongly um personally don't want the school resource officers in our buildings and i also don't want to downplay the negative and very negative experiences interactions with our students and families i also want to make sure that we are elevating and highlighting those when we are thinking through those recommendations and those changes that it's not downplayed when we are going

109through this other um other feedback or carol did you have anything else you wanted to add no not at this moment thank you so dr lewis one of the things you took when we talked about this you which i really appreciated was you had talked about taking um a year and anna you mentioned that some of the things that you guys wanted to implement you haven't had an opportunity to really fully implement because of the year that we've had um so i guess my ask because i um i agree with with paula i actually think a strong the the difference i would say i i i don't know if it's a difference i'll make a distinction um the relationship between the school and the um the police i i absolutely understand why you need to

110keep strong ties there as a superintendent and why that's an important part of our connection with the city and the county is that we're looking at the those safety aspects there have been a couple of meetings we've we've well before i get to that point you had mentioned that um you would commit to implementing some of these things that we've talked about some of them you've already implemented reviewing in a year um where we're at i don't know if you said a year what was your kind of timeline for looking at um where things were at with the new implementation can you talk about that we certainly can come back next year if we want to survey again or do another thought exchange or just some focus groups just to see how things are going

111because as we mentioned in our last presentation we had some action steps there but obviously covet kind of caused us not to be able to implement those those fully um yeah i would want to make sure that we have an opportunity because those are some of the things that we heard from students and it came through through the in the survey was how sros are being utilized at our schools and so to allow us to correct that to make sure that sros or our teachers or administrators are not calling sros to their classroom or to their office um for nothing that's non-criminal you know and so allowing us to make sure that all of our staff understands and students understand the roles of our of our sros so i think for me i'm not sure

112that another survey would be helpful but maybe just a report within and it could be within some of the other reports that you're doing just like these are the action steps that we've taken and any feedback that you might get from administrators or from your student advisory board or other students would be i think helpful does that seem yeah is that okay yeah um to uh paula and i's assertion that sros in the buildings are um not where we would like them to be at the one thing that i've heard from folks when talking about the sro is that the sros in the building have a better relationship with the students the students know who they are there's more trust than if you have a patrol officer come in off of the street my ask

113to the city and to the lawrence police force is that every police officer that interacts with a student from usc 497 or any other visiting district treat that student the exact same way an sro would regardless of where they are at in our city like to say to me that our students are safer with sros because those sros are used to being around teenagers and they're not safe with patrol officers it doesn't make me feel better as a board present um any other i think that was something that was shared with me today when i met with the um sergeant v i call him sergeant v i don't want to butcher his last name and uh myron grady today lieutenant grady was around this workshop that's coming to it's a state workshop that's coming to

114lawrence that focuses on juveniles and how they respond to to juveniles and i want to assure the board that um and i've had conversations and heard previous concerns uh previous personal interactions with with sros i'm fully committed to making sure that we have sro's uh effective sros i'm committed to make sure making sure that we are utilizing our sros in a effective manner and so when we think about just a police officer we think about an sro um you know that's that's one thing but but then we think about the person behind that badge or the person behind that in uniform and from a student's perspective it's auntie shelby and so we all often talk about every student having that one person that they can connect with that can go to um and when i

115hear it's it's auntie shelby's my person then it's it's on t-shirt it's not sro you know so again and i've talked to uh our sros and our principals work closely with our um sros to make sure that um they are having that opportunity to build those positive relationships because i will tell you as a father of two high school seniors that have been in buildings with sros for the past four four years um i was appreciative of those opportunities and a definite father of a black male him having the opportunity to interact with a police officer in a non-threatening environment quite frankly when our students whether you're in high school or post high school if you get stopped by police if i can say hey i know officer frazier or i know officer collado that

116could in some instances mean whether you make it home or not you know so just to have that connection it's bigger than just in the school but um you know when we want our kids to be safe on the streets as well i appreciate that thank you dr lewis the and i this is it this is the last thing the as part of the evaluation process within the mou and um board members if you haven't seen the mou we can i think we that was sent out to us last yeah um you have you have a role in the evaluation process or um principles can have a role in the evaluation process is that yes that's what we include in our mou yeah so that's another layer of um of how you are participating part

117of program analysis might be the survey another part is these other pieces of data that you might be collecting and and that being part of that evaluation i think is really helpful in your ability to weigh in and say and influence whether or not an officer stays or doesn't say if they don't have the skill that shelby has perhaps you know in terms of building relationships with students okay you know again as i mentioned there um those monthly meetings with craig owens the monthly meetings with the supervisors of sros and i'm also on the selection committee for the next police chief so making sure that they understand our stance on sros thank you dr lewis i appreciate all of your [Music] involvement in it and then also your work on the governor's commission i'm grateful

118for your service in that area so anything else from board members do you have anything else that you wanted to add thank you thanks thank you okay um so we are going to recess to executive session um i moved the board i'm sorry before we uh because we don't want oh yeah i'm sorry window to stay here while we're in executive session to use free to leave i just want to say thank you for being here no problem thank you so much thanks for coming for having me you have to leave right now um 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 exception for employer employee negotiations under coma with dr anthony lewis dr anna

119stubblefield samree devin and kathy johnson invited to be present and with the board to return to open session at 8 22 with possible action to follow this is melissa ii all those in favor aye anyone opposed thank you see how quickly i can get it yep okay we've returned to open session with no action to follow and now we will recess again so i move the board of education resets to executive session to discuss potential litigation for matters which would be deemed privileged to the attorney-client relationship under coma with dr anthony lewis dr anna stubblefield and sammy devin invited to be present with the board to return to open session at 8 35 with no action to follow hey kelly um i need a moment of consultation with you before we vote on this motion

120just a moment there must be some procedural things and so i would need to list it we would need to have so there's five right now uh-huh happy to help trying to find my agenda are we going back into session okay i love you that's okay i get it but that i don't know that you have to have four votes you hey kelly we're good all right i moved the board of education recess to executive session to discuss potential litigation for matters which would be deemed privileged in the attorney-client relationship under coma with dr anthony lewis dr anna stubblefield and samrie devin invited to be present with the board to return to open session in this room at 8 41 with no action to follow i second all those in favor hi aye anyone opposed

121you happen to have it up shannon uh yeah i will here in just a sec okay i got it if you don't have it i thought maybe you just had it pulled up no sorry i had closed that window go ahead okay we've returned from open session uh with no action to follow so we will now recess to executive session again i moved to recess to executive session for the purpose of discussing personnel matters of non-elected personnel in order to protect the privacy interests of the individual individuals to be discussed with dr anthony lewis dr anna stubblefield and samrie devin invited to be present and the board to return to open session at eight fifty two is girl second all those in favor aye anyone opposed um wait for your dr lewis to get situated

122and actually i can kind of summarize the closing items there are there's a written report on the air validation and hvac systems efficiency report we have the technology report and the communications report and i'll wait for dr luke if there's any announcements that that was going to be my remarks there um just uh thank those individuals zach um dr engelbrick and julie for completing those uh written reports that kind of highlights the work that's been done in those particular departments so yeah okay and um i look forward to seeing you all again tomorrow night and wednesday night at graduation so your parking instructions are in the calendar invite parking instructions are in the calendar invite okay or if you like me you show up at the very last minute and you run in um okay

123so uh i moved to adjourn the meeting third second second all those in favor bye opposed thanks y'all thanks dr lewis oh thank you for sure i think we'll find these ones okay you