Lawrence Public Schools Board of Education Meeting | March 22, 2021

001and i need a motion uh the agenda this is jr i move we amend and approve the agenda for the march 22nd 2021 board meeting to include the updated personnel enclosure shannon a second we're going to move into recess to executive session so 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 expectation for employer employee negotiations under coma with dr anthony lewis dr anna stubblefield samrie devin and kathy johnson invited to be present and with the board to return to open session at 6 35 with possible action to follow this is melissa ii uh all those in favor aye aye aye all those opposed okay we'll move to executive session back there's no action to follow

002after the executive session we're going to move on to special recognition and we are welcoming tonight free state and lawrence high school national merit scholars um so you ready yes we can go in that order or we can go to the pacemaker totally up to you yes with barb present okay we are excited to recognize the amazing bob dolan and her scholars the national pacemaker finalist the lawrence high school red and black yearbook so we have with us tonight uh the advisor of the lawrence high journalism the amazing barbara dolan that's um definitely behind so i have with me two of my students and sophia kaufman and kenna mcnally and they're both editors of the 2021 yearbook but um i brought them because they both worked so hard finishing up our yearbook last year and

003you know as you know i always think when you talk about it being a pandemic everyone's like i know it was really hard it was really hard for us too um they were the last people i worked with at school in person and with the help of gr gordon ross helping take a picture for us that week of a real shot of our building um but we worked all spring break last year and then everything shut down and we still have this yearbook to finish um and they did um just a remarkable job it was not an easy time and um they rallied together figure things out told some really amazing stories about just what it was like to live through a pandemic and wanted to make sure that you know 100 years from now

004when people are looking back on this yearbook as we did looking back on our 1919 yearbook we would be able to tell that story of what it was like to live during this really um difficult time so they did a great job and then we were thrilled um a week and a half ago two weeks ago to find out that they were pacemaker finalists which is a really big deal in the high school journalism award world it's um really the top recognition um at high school journalism program can get and they were one of 51 high schools that are finalists for the yearbook pacemaker we'll find out um next month if we actually win the award which would be amazing but really to be a finalist is just incredibly exciting and um anyway in addition

005to kenneth and um and sophia i our other editors last year were megan drumm and mckenna white and alex lane who also really helped and did a lot of work last year and so um just always feel lucky to work with such smart hard-working kids um who you know just make life easier even during the pandemics thank you anything you guys want to say they don't want to say anything you don't want to say anything thank you congratulations well done thank you next online we have both principals of our brick and mortar high schools principal myron graber from free state and principal dr cynthia johnson from lawrence high school we'll share with our national merit scholars principal graber yes good evening and thank you for the opportunity to recognize our finalists in the 2120 competition

006for national merit scholarship awards it is my honor to present to you the students from free state and congratulations also to the students uh from lords high so if they can join us and i would like to ask them to speak briefly so you'll have are you available to uh to talk a little bit i'm not sure whether they can join or not so i was it was i was going to try to make them talk so we could hear from them a little bit but anyhow from free state uh we do have uh gillette julia lynn isabelle loney leo inn spencer ware and ding ding yi and congratulations to uh those students as they were all met the requirements to be considered as finalists in the 2121 competition congratulations [Applause] see we have a

007couple of them on there mr graber are they able to come off muted yeah i'm not sure ding ding can you can you come off mute here we go there she is do you want to share with us sure i'm doing now i'm a senior at free state high school and then some of my future plans are that i hope to major in mechanical or electrical engineering at a four-year university excellent thank you any more spencer can you share absolutely uh so like mr grabber said my name is spencer ware uh i'm also planning to study mechanical engineering and i've committed to the university of pennsylvania so i'm very excited about that and yeah congratulations and thank you julia um hi i'm julia allen i hope to major in chemistry in college on the pre-med

008track and eventually become an orthopedic surgeon with a sub-specialty in sports medicine [Music] awesome thank you julia you are hi i'm joao i hope to major in economics and public policy and i am undecided about my college very good thank you i would like to say not only are these students great students they are great young adults who are great represented representatives of free state and the lawrence high community thank you thank you so much mr graber and free state high school scholars dr johnson lawrence high school right good evening to dr lewis and to the board um as always it is an honor to come and acknowledge the excellence and to celebrate the brilliance of scholars who attend lawrence high school and you saw just an example from the yearbook with barb tholen as

009well as kenneth and sophia so congratulations to them and all of their work i'm also here tonight to acknowledge um our national merit finalist who as myron has said has made met all requirements just as the free state students and congratulations to lawrence free state the first finalist is colin merritt colin is not able to be with us tonight um but he does um send his thanks for the opportunity to be acknowledged in this way um colin plans to attend um the university of illinois that's where it is right now and he plans to have a double major in mathematics and commute computer science our next um finalist is joe lucian if we can get him on please there he is um joe lucian um once again is um one of our finalists and i'll

010allow joe to um come on and talk about his plans my name is joe lucian i'm a senior at lawrence high next year i'm still undecided on where i'm going to go but i'm planning on studying biomedical engineering and possibly computer science congratulations um to you joe and colin and his absence um as we said um earlier as i said earlier it is always an honor to be able to come and to celebrate what students are doing every single day to rise to the top of the crop so um congratulations to colin and to joe as well as kenna and sophia thank you dr lewis thank you [Applause] thank you hey do you want to do retirement the board of education recognizes the following staff members with sincere appreciation for their service years of service

011and dedication to this community and its goals dave cunningham 14 years of service darcy krauss eight years of service julene jolene pardon me pearson 24 years of service laura chavez 26 years of service thank you okay we'll move on to the report of the superintendent of schools dr lewis thank you board president jones and good evening everyone you know the recent rise in violence and discrimination against members of the asian asian american and pacific islander community across this country you know really alarms me as as lawrence public schools and a learning community this is what we do we value equity we value diversity in and inclusion and belonging and stand in solidarity with students school families and staff who may be experiencing any type of direct or indirect trauma as a result of these attacks

012our district as always is committed to providing safe and supportive learning environments where every single student every single staff member feels welcome and feels a sense of belonging you know we even talk about in our strategic plan that focus on safe and supportive schools and effective employees and both of these are fundamental to our teaching and learning mission and so i encourage any student any staff member needing assistance especially members of our asian american community to reach out to our school counselors and to other members of our school mental health teams for support we are here for you and our staff members to consider using the resources available through our staff wellness and our eap employee assistance program it's important that we continue as this learning community to continue to listen and support one another

013this district by no means will tolerate any form of discrimination or harassment in our school community speaking of discrimination the kansas state i'm sorry the kansas senate last week approved senate bill 208 that would prohibit transgender females from participating in sports with other females again this district supports transgender non-binary and gender non-conforming youth having access to the same opportunities as their peers we support their rights to participate in school sports in a manner consistent with their gender identity lawrence board of education's policy prohibits discrimination against any individual on the basis of gender identity gender expression as well as race color religion sex age national origin disability and sexual orientation there is also some additional legislation being debated in topeka that also raises concerns senate bill 267 would eliminate increases in the bay state aid and

014the local option budget we sometimes refer to as our lob and eliminate high density at-risk weighting in effect supplanting state funding with federal covet relief funds and so they're wanting to supplant our state funding with what we often talk about our esser funds and also house bill 2039 um well let me back up a little bit first of all the um kansas state department of education they don't believe that this is even allowed by the federal carers act that's the planning of our state funding another bill house bill 2039 requires students to pass a civics test in order to graduate from high school i don't think board member shannon kimball for her advocacy in crafting an email to kansas center senators and in her email she referenced the gates foundation funded research that found high

015stakes testing resulted in lower graduation rates had no positive effects on labor on the labor market on labor market outcomes and most alarmingly resulted in a 12.5 percent increase in incarceration rates in those states that did use them and so we joined other kansas public schools in sharing concerns about overreach by the kansas legislature into matters of curriculum and basing students graduation on a high stakes test the district has completed its staff vaccination prioritization plan we have offered each staff member indicating an interest in the vaccination at least two opportunities to get the vaccine while our you will notice on our dashboard it doesn't tell the full story you will see around 80 percent of our staff who've signed up have received their first dose it's probably more a little over 90 percent that that

016data is also dependent upon staff going in and updating that information so we're probably a little over 90 douglas county unified command will be moving to phase three and four of the kansas vaccination plan this week with the percentage of available vaccines set aside to continue to complete phase two and so we encourage any staff member who wants to be vaccinated to sign up through the douglas county's vaccine interest form and with any other local pharmacies offering appointments we're happy to report that many of our elementary staff and some other staff received their second dose just this past friday we felt some of the same excitement last week that we typically feel on the first days of of school our elementary students returned to full in-person learning last week we know that there have been

017some traffic backups and along the pickup and drop-off lines so adjustments have been made during our first week and we're hoping that that is a little smoother this week our early childhood classrooms at kennedy also are back to their regular four-day week in in-person schedule and speaking of our early childhood education the district is reviewing a proposal to develop an early childhood community center center at kennedy on next fall this would enable us to explain our expand our current pre-k offerings there and also join with other community partners to offer much needed services to young children and their families i think we all know the and understand the value of high quality pre-k experience to a young child's cognitive and social development as well as their success in school and beyond the research is clear

018there still there are many children who enter kindergarten without the benefit of a preschool experience douglas county has also recognized a gap in these services and have included um expanding early childhood in their douglas county health plan our budget and program evaluation committee has discussed and indicated i'm sorry indicated support for the early childhood community center proposal this committee meets again on march the 31st the district boundary committee also started to review the proposal in terms of accommodating the transition of students from those k-5 classes to a few neighboring schools where space is available the boundary committee will meet again on march 29th in addition i will also be hosting two kennedy conversations to discuss the proposal with staff and families one on march the 30th and one on april the 7th and so we

019will get this information out in terms of times and how to sign up to provide your feedback the district also plans to use thought exchange to provide all kennedy staff and families the opportunity to share their feedback and we anticipate bringing this proposal to the board at our april 12th board meeting and we do recognize uh anytime you you do any type of shifts in whether it's boundaries or schools we recognize and we do appreciate those strong feelings from kennedy staff and families that they have for their school now this proposal would provide economies of scale and enable the district to maximize staffing resources for more consistent delivery of services to our students it also would have a positive impact on our budget as we face funding shortfalls from a declining enrollment district-wide including at

020kennedy both of our high schools are discussing plans for hosting graduations at schedule we will likely have to limit attendance per our public health regulations we will also need to identify inclement inclement weather plans since ku's allen field house which is normally our backup for inclement weather is not available to us this year my superintendent student advisory council heard prom proposals well they called them promposals prom proposals from a group of free state and lawrence high students this afternoon members of our executive leadership team participated in the meeting i want to thank dan partridge and dr scrimsher scrimshaw are also participating in that meeting and as we continue to discuss student celebration options we will make sure that both high schools including lvs which i talked to my teacher today and they're looking at an

021online option to offer similar opportunities to those students and our students did an amazing job they did the research they had some survey data to support their promposal the district continues to carefully review karazhak and esser funding requests and expenditures to address the impacts of the pandemic and to support student learning and success we are recruiting teachers now at both the elementary and secondary level for our summer school programming the summer food service program has been extended by the federal government through september the 30th and so we will again be able to offer free summer meals to all children ages 1 to 18 throughout the summer our elementary schools have announced that their kindergarten orientation schedules for this spring so if you know of any child that's eligible for kindergarten next year please encourage them

022to register online at usd497.org forward slash new student registration and to also contact their neighborhood school for more information about orientation we have welcomed our new nas coordinator kelly walker to the district educational support center the nasa office has been moved here from moved here from the college and career center kelly will be my new neighbor kelly is a licensed master level social worker and she previously worked as a rap therapist at free state high school through our partnership with burt nash we announced today the resignation of prairie park principal shannon harrison who is who has a position pending in another district and we appreciate shannon's contributions to the prairie park school community during the past two years and then finally although he is absent with us this evening this would have been his life

023technically his last board meeting i'd want to publicly thank dave cunningham for his many years of service and support and expertise and legal advice to the district uh dave has been a tremendous asset uh despite the rumors of the of what the bow tie means they really truly will be missed and just to have that that that legal expert that you can pick up the phone or shoot a text to and get some advice the good thing again he's he will be our partner at kesb so while he will be removed from these walls he will hopefully pick up the phone when we call so congratulations today we will miss you thank you thank you dr lewis um it's now the report of the president of the board much of what i have to say

024dr lewis has shared but i'm going to go ahead and just affirm a couple of things um to our asian staff students and and lorenzians the board extends our commitment and affirms what dr lewis uh shared in his statement to enforce our equity policies and to strengthen them even further the board anticipates bringing a new district equity policy for a vote before the end of the academic year it includes expectations from staff and students regarding creating inclusive culture and fostering belonging we will not tolerate hate in our schools along those lines we continue to see momentum at the state level regarding transphobic sb 208 this bill is not consistent with lawrence public schools equity policies and values as they stand today and certainly will be not in the policy that i anticipate the board will

025pass as such i would expect the board any kansas school board to honor those policies guiding principles and values above senate bill 208 and any discriminatory state statute every time similarly the board continues to be alarmed by sb 267 which would cut kansas public school fundings by more than half a billion dollars this cut is frankly outrageous and has elements of terrorizing this district and districts across kansas it is a heavy thing to hang over the heads of teachers staff students and families who are just getting down to the business of making up learning loss from the pandemic the notion that one time sr funds should supplement should supplant the purpose of igniting recovery and be applied to ongoing district expenditures is not in the best interest of kansas children and will harm efforts to

026eliminate the opportunity gaps for students of color and students from low-income families who suffer disparities and outcomes related to the pandemic i want to also extend my gratitude to david cunningham who i hope is watching somewhere or maybe will spend his um tuesday watching the recording of this particular board meeting he has been uh um in so many ways a mentor to this board and particularly to um shannon and i and paula and vanessa sanburn before us on the policy committee um i've learned a great deal from you and and i appreciate how you have enhanced and approved my policy work and what i love about dave is that even on the many things we disagreed on he found this way to collaborate with me that just demonstrated integrity i feel the same way about

027darcy krauss who i also want to extend my sincere gratitude she is a brilliant educator who i have learned a great deal about elementary education from and i don't know that she'll remember this but when we used to get to go to breakfasts in the elementary schools darcy was among the first staff members that i met and in about five or ten minutes that i spent with her i felt like i knew infinitely more about elementary education than i than i could have imagined your service i can't imagine the number of children that you have impacted positively thank you uh finally i'm really glad to announce that i've had one vaccine i waited until i could say like dr lewis that our staff members have had that opportunity um it makes me feel so much

028better that that's happened because now when i think about how much joy i see when children go back to school i know that there's an extra element of security and safety for our educators my congratulations to carol cadoo blackwood who has entered a new position and i'll let you share that announcement in your turn but i also witnessed you again serving the state in your advocacy with your daughter georgia and uh representatives and other other members of the indigenous community on your work on house bill 2008 for missing and murdered indigenous peoples you really are an example to board members about how to live the equity work that we purport to do thank you okay that's longer than usual for me um other board members the patreon commentary oh yes we get in the same

029room and i kind of forget what goes next okay so gr would you do the thing that you have been doing for the last few minutes while i meetings while i find the list the usd 497 board of education welcomes patron comments and thanks you for taking 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 opinions however complaints about specific staff or students will be heard by the board in executive session in order to protect the privacy of the individuals to be discussed while you are not required to share your contact information we ask for that information so district staff or the board can follow up with any specific concerns you may have

030the board president will invite comments on topics not included on the agenda at the beginning of each meeting comments related to agenda items are welcome welcomed after the board has had the opportunity to discuss the topic please limit comments to three minutes thank you um david day are you with us to talk about high school graduation i hope okay david has been in communication with the board and has been a strong advocate to ensure that our students get to have a graduation we appreciate his advocacy whitney schneider regarding masks whitney if you're ready we've got oh i see you now great guys sorry all right well first off i'm so glad to see the kids and staff back in person thank you for your efforts in that regard um i'm a mother of a child

031with autism who would have been a kid in kindergartner at ufc 497 this past year we chose to homeschool them because of the foreseeable inconsistencies of the district and that was a good choice putting our child in front of an ipad for his education was just incomprehensible however by law he is still to receive his services from public school we do those remotely because the district in our particular school will not honor his medical exemption from wearing a mask i was told early on how inclusive our district is and up until this year i would have agreed you all just recently uh talked about that um i've had countless phone calls and emails uh with the district and uh staff only to be passed off to the next person without any resolution so you know

032just as all of you i'm tired i'm tired of having the same conversation about him how inappropriate and particularly dangerous it is for my son to wear a mask and not in terms of transmission more so in terms of communication and language expression as well as absent seizures which could be exacerbated by any sort of uh oxygen restriction so this isn't the fight i would have chosen but it's the one that needs more of a voice as i know countless families who have had no other choice but to mask their special needs child the point is that there are exceptions to masks and those exceptions need to be honored if you're truly following the guidelines of the state and the cdc then you will not only allow i please supply you with references to those

033who are exempt from mask wearing um lastly i'm just i'm hopeful that soon logic will prevail over fear sun will be able to return thank you for your time uh thank you whitney can i would you stay with us just for um one moment so uh dr lewis is it can we um we can ensure that someone that kevin or someone is back in touch with you yes yes i can see dr lewis taking notes right now um we will make sure that someone reaches out to you um to to find a resolution to this issue i really appreciate that you brought it to the board thank you i'll tell you though that i've my last uh correspondence with kevin too was uh march 9th and i've not heard anything since um that's also included

034with i believe laura and dr lewis i included you on that email as well so been as patient as i can be um but you know this kind of goes back to even i mean it's certainly not the same sort of discrimination but it is in a sense discrimination against not only a person but a child with a disability yes the board supports your um assertion and definitely believes that you should be followed up with quickly so we will make sure that happens i appreciate that you came tonight so thank you i appreciate that thank you very much okay uh now uh kylie luckett who is among my um favorite social workers in the district are you here kylie i am here hello is it possible for me to share my screen please yes yes

035can we get access to share the screen because i should be able to present but it's still not my share is not live looks like someone is working on it right the second i can see them in the back of the room kylie they're they're there's now two people looking at it kylie so just be a second doesn't appear to be working and i don't want to take up too much of anyone's time so um i'll just go ahead and start talking um my name is kylie luckett i am the counselor at schweigler elementary and i wanted to um come speak to the board tonight for several reasons um it's always important for me to say firstly that i am speaking from my own perspective this is not anything that's been necessarily like spoken on

036behalf of schwagler i just felt the need to share things that i've been seeing at schweigler through hybrid and remote learning um both things that have worked really well and places in areas where we could have improved and heaven forbid we are in another global pandemic and have to go into remote learning but um ways that we would have learned and things that we've done um so first off to start with some things that i have students saying i went in um and just talked with students and i asked them how how was this for you what what do you think of it what was good what wasn't um and so just some quotes um i liked it which was remote learning because there was more flexibility in my day and what i worked on

037um that was a fourth grade student i learned how to take breaks sometimes things don't work or go your way but you can't get upset about it that was another fourth grade student a third grade student said i like that i learned how to do more things on the ipad i like the amount of technology we got to use um a third grade another third grade student from a different class said i like doing work on seesaw and hearing how i did and getting that teacher feedback a fifth grade student said my teacher was creative and tried to make learning fun another third grade student said i like that i had a smaller class during hybrid learning things were quieter which i liked so while there were definitely ups and downs and there was stress

038and lots of change schedules my schedule's changed probably 10 times by this point um i think the thing that overwhelms me is is the amount of persistence that the staff at schweigler showed and our students and the flexibility and being open to change and always always always just putting students first i am it makes me emotional when i think about how lucky i am to work at schweigler and how great leadership i have and the co-workers that i have that are just really passionate about the work that we do and as we talked and started getting into fully in-person learning we knew that kids were going to need more it's it's been a full year since we've been fully in person so schweigler came up with something that i thought was really cool which was

039schweigler spring training um and for the week before spring break every day we had a um a different day and it was all baseball theme so like monday was um catch up on sleep and try to get eight hours tuesday was strike out negativity and choose positive actions wednesday was hit a homework home run complete all your remote assignments thursday was step up to the plate and eat a healthy meal friday was take me out to the ball game get outside and do something physical and then we had opening day on monday also over spring break um all students got sent home with a bingo card um which i was going to try to show you um that had all sorts of different activities that could be done for students to prepare them to be

040back fully in person so it was charging your ipad getting enough sleep setting out your clothes working on those strategies and skills and i'm super proud to say that we had over 150 students bring back those bingo cards and turn them in to show the work that they had done and we really work to make that accessible for all students and make it um if maybe you don't have a bed so you can't make your bed it's you are able to clean your space or do whatever you can also some other positives that i saw um the collaboration uh personally that i got to have with elementary counselors and i got to give a quick shout out to them the elementary counselors in our district are spectacular uh the guidance that we have from jose

041is amazing um and being able to meet more often um was really helpful and beneficial to me i've learned a lot um i've seen people struggle per personally professionally students and staff but no one ever gave up and there was always someone there to listen come up with creative solutions pd-120 was great and being able to have that time dedicated to professional learning and personal growth is something that i personally got to lead about 30 minutes of pd every week and then i wanted to end it's it's sad that you can't see it with some great pictures that i took over the time um one of which being my personal favorite which is a game that they adapted for in pe called pizza delivery battle in which you have a frisbee in one hand and

042a noodle in the other and you run around and try to knock off people's noodles um because it was a safe way to to play a game um so as in this time there was a lot less comments than you're used to hearing and i just think it's important that even though we're back fully in person that we we pay attention to where we came from and we pay attention to that growth um because we did a lot of good things in this time and um and students and when it comes back to how students felt about things they had a lot of positive great things to say so um that's probably longer than three or five minutes but shout out to schweigler staff for being great and shout out to elementary counselors for being

043awesome so thank you for letting me to share that with you thank you nice to hear some um positive reports from what's going on in the district we appreciate you and your work and and the folks at schweigler thank you and can i uh kyle if you want to send that presentation of those slides or a pdf for what to at least and we can make sure we get it to our board members i'll absolutely do that dr lewis thank you thank you thank you dr bliss okay now it is time for board commentary all right i've got i've got a couple things i actually wrote them out so um just because it's been so long since we've met so good evening everybody i had an opportunity to participate in a lawrence high walk through

044on february 24th with the facilities committee and construction teams and architectural teams that was a lot of fun and it was impressive to see all the changes that have been made to the building since i had been there last it's impressive the work that's been done and the progress that's been made thursday march 4th we had both a facility planning meeting in the morning and then a negotiations meeting that that evening that unfortunately i had to miss both due to a work-related issue um but they were on my calendar so i did make note of them and then last week we had a pal cwa negotiations meeting on tuesday and then on thursday evening we had a boundary committee meeting where we discussed a proposal for repurposing kennedy as an early childhood learning center and

045so busy couple weeks in there i want to echo the the comments about both dave and darcy i will miss them both very much i learned an incredible amount of information from both of them and lastly i just want to take a moment and address something that's kind of personal to me march is colon cancer awareness month so i got this wonderful t-shirt from uh gi associates at lawrence memorial hospital and so i'm proud to wear it tonight my mom is a colon cancer survivor and so i just want to talk a little bit that medical recommendations are for people with no risk factors to get a colonoscopy starting at the age of 50. if you have risk factors and you don't know what they are or if you're not sure talk to your doctor

046about when you should start getting colonoscopies roughly 60 percent of all colon cancer cases can be prevented by regular screenings if you combine both men and women colon cancer deaths in the united states are second only to lung cancer they're one of the most preventable bioactive screenings so go get screened march is colon cancer awareness month i'm happy to wear this both because it's educational and i laughed when i saw it so it fits my personality in multiple ways so it's not the first time you've quizzed me before you've said hello yes exactly um other other board members shannon thank you kelly um i too wanted to start off by saying thank you to our retiring staff uh darcy krauss who has been um just a positive force in in the eight years that i've

047known her she is one of the most positive people and i um numerous times over the years she has reached out with a kind word and just always been someone who who who can see the good in every situation so i really will miss working with her david cunningham i have worked with david the entire time i've been on the board um on the policy committee and i i love i've loved working with him we speak lawyer speak together it's it's been a great working relationship and i will miss working with him very much i know that he has provided wonderful guidance and mentoring to the policy committee over all these years and as i would echo what kelly said i've learned a lot from dave and i am just very thankful for that relationship

048through this work so congratulations to him on his next step i'm glad that we will still get to take advantage of his expertise as an attorney at kasb so he's going not too far down the road and will still be available to help guide us when we need um when we need guidance so congratulations to david as well um a lot a lot of things going on in the since our last board meeting we had a policy committee meeting at the end of february the work product from that is on the agenda for further discussion later tonight so i won't go into that um any further i did also attend the lawrence high construction tour with gr and our construction teams and facilities staff really excited to see where we are and the progress on

049that project it is um it feels like a decade of work finally coming to fruition and it's so gratifying to see where we are at with that project i'm so excited for it to finish and for us to hopefully be able to share it with the community next year once we are through the the restrictions that have been placed on us by the pandemic i'm excited for our community to see that facility um i wanted to say thank you to dr larry englebrick for attending our facilities meeting at the beginning of march even though he hadn't yet officially started with the district he came and um and introduced himself we got to know him a little bit and then listen to the update that we received on construction projects at lhs the capital outlay program

050and an update on where we were at at that point with the ordering and delivery of our air purifiers and i'm so excited that that um was completed over over the break that we um have those out in all of our classrooms so um thank you to all of the um staff who made that happen um a couple of things outside of school district work i'm on the governor's council on tax reform we had a meeting at the beginning of march got updates on the economic forecast for the state and the progress of some of the accounts the legislative recommendations that the council had made last session and had re-upped for this session um where those those proposals were at um in the legislature um a little bit of a rough year legislative wise as

051both dr lewis and kelly alluded to um you know both on the education front and on the tax and finance front but i'm i'm pleased to still be a part of that work i also concluded the work i've been doing for the national school board association as part of their strategic learning and strategic planning process i had multiple days of meetings at the end of february and beginning of march to conclude that i'm i was very thankful for that opportunity i learned a lot about about the ways that an sba supports school boards and school board members all across the country and the needs you know we have a lot of needs in common but we also there's a lot of a lot of differences across the nation and so that it was a great

052learning experience to really hear what the challenges are for an organization like that to try to support all 90 000 school board elected school board members across the country and how they can do that to the best advantage to try to elevate the role of local governance of public education across the united states um and then finally we had a coveted advisory committee meeting last week and i appreciated the updates that we we heard there and continue to thank the people who are participating from our community and from our staff on that committee um dr lewis and kelly both touched on the big bills that i was going to mention as far as legislative updates just really want to echo everything they said i'm proud of our district's work on our anti-discrimination policy it's something

053that we did a number of years ago when vanessa sanburn was a board member to add the language to our our policies that kelly referenced and uh senate bill 208 is just um i don't have words for just how how hateful that piece of legislation is and i i really hope that that it does not make it past the governor's desk i am equally concerned about uh the funding bills um there's uh for board members there's great updates from kasb on the progress um and and the discussions going on in fact there's a free session this friday i believe that you can sign up for if you want to hear the latest that's going on this week um in a webinar from them so definitely encourage you to follow that and i was happy i

054want to give a shout out to one of our staff members mr barker who has been working on um the committee that rewrote the social study standards for the state and he um he emailed me some really helpful information um that i used in the advocacy that dr lewis recommend mentioned on house bill 2039 which is the trying to impose a civics test graduation require requirement that you pass a civics test to graduate i'm all for improving civics education it's something that i've actually talked about at the board table a number of times over the years how can we improve civics education and social studies education in our district but the problem with this legislation is that it is as dr lewis said an overreach it's an overreach and it imposes a requirement that lots

055of people looking at the the course of these high-stakes tests over the years have said has no no positive impact on outcomes for students and has a lot of negative impacts so i really encourage our community to continue to monitor these legislative developments reach out to the people on the senators and representatives on the committees and also to our douglas county legislative delegation to let them know how you feel about this these uh pieces of legislation so thank you that's all i have thank you shannon uh carol okay thank you uh let's see this is carol for those of you who are who are at home but i would like to thank dr i well um i would like to thank darcy krauss and david cunningham for their years of service and welcome kelly walker

056as the new nas coordinator the native american student services coordinator and um yeah as kelly mentioned i am very fortunate and blessed i accepted a position at the kansas city indian center as a therapist because right now ever as as evidence as everybody knows that it will be all hands on deck for mental health as the schools reopen businesses reopen so yeah i'm very blessed and fortunate that i get to follow my passion and uh yeah and i did um my daughter and i did advocate for the missing murdered indigenous people's bill again it was reintroduced again this year's house bill 2008 and it's something that we've been my daughter and i've been pushing for years and so we are we are excited that it's to this level when we we're crossing our fingers that

057it will you know we'll cross the governor's desk but yeah we're excited you know hopefully we'll start getting a database collected and we can start getting data and find out getting to the root of the problem and yeah it was it was her fifth time advocating for you know five different bills so it's exciting to watch you know watch her grow as a maybe hopeful maybe a lobbyist thank you thank you carol kelly i have to i have to correct i uh misspoke when i mentioned uh tom burker i said mr barker and i should have said dr barker yes that's what i get for speaking off the cuff and not having that written down in my notes i apologize dr barker um just wanted to make sure that i um appropriately uh recognized him

058for his contributions yes i'll be brief so um since our last board meeting i attended a number of district meetings and he also had the opportunity to attend the coffee chat for board presidents and board vice presidents for ksab now is really really good um and what i really want to say is congratulations to darcy and dave both of them have always been willing to answer the million questions that i usually have and just take the time to teach me the process and help me understand and i just have a great appreciation for all the work they've done for this district and how they've invested their lives into our students and staff and and the board and taking the time to um to teach us so thank you congratulations to both of you thank you

059erica just extend my congratulations but i don't have much because it was spring break for usc 497 and i just came from spring break so for 501 i just been kind of relaxed i'm sorry it's a couple of things i mentioned one i know we're congratulating darcy and dave and i definitely appreciate the comments just for the record i'm saving my comments for darcy until her last um day with her last board meeting she'll be with us at least through through june and then um secondly this is dr um shannon you mentioned larry englebrick he's here with us this is his first board meeting so i definitely wanted to publicly uh welcome him uh and introduce him to the board members he have not he has not met so dr larry englebrick is here with

060us today thank you dr lewis and i'm sure darcy appreciates you reminding everybody she's not going she's still working okay thank you yeah okay all right so um moving on we will now move on to consent agenda is there a motion to approve the consent agenda this is melissa i move the board of education adopt the items listed on the consent agend this is jrl second thank you okay we're now going to move on to a review of the board governance manual uh paula and shannon and i have been working on this jessica beeson who was the former board president also played a role on it if she's listening there's a shout out to her um and vanessa as well and vanessa yeah it's been a long long long haul um hopefully we can get

061it passed and i've been saying to properly set erica up so that she has a good manual for when we have new board members coming in in january in her role as board president so with that shannon and i are going to lead a conversation informal conversation about the governance document we will highlight a few areas we want to make sure that we have consensus on and then elise will come this is first read so we'll it'll come back april 12th right april 12th for a final um vote so if there are concerns you have with the manual this would be the time to voice them and they'll go back to the policy committee and shannon paul and i will work on them okay so initial um initial uh feedback or any major concerns and

062then shannon and i will jump to a couple areas we want to draw your attention to and kelly kept for our new board members um can i just briefly touch on the why of why we're doing this i know we've mentioned it a number of times this idea came from a session that i attended um at a kasb convention in december of 2016. so that's why uh so many uh so many years and so many board members that have been um involved in working on this um the the the impetus really to to move forward with this was because uh we need to have um some some better kind of framework for us to share both um with each other a shared understanding of how some of our procedures work that are things that we've

063done by tradition things that aren't in board policy but this is just the way that we've always done them but also to provide some context for those in the community who might be interested in joining the board um and also to um you know third reason uh being to explain to the community you know how we do some of the things that we do and so so all of that kind of put together with this uh with this uh session i attended a district that had done this um kind of shared their journey and how they put it together we used their framework as a jumping off point and then began working on it as a committee first with vanessa and jessica and then later with the members of the policy committee and um you

064know kind of off and on as we've uh as we've had time in our policy work trying to pull this information together sort through some things that we wanted to have a discussion as a full board about and then kind of start polishing it up and getting it ready for this discussion so um you know i'm excited we're at this point and i know kelly you had some things particularly you wanted to kind of start the ball rolling on discussion so yeah and i also just want to highlight that the manual can be like board policy generally can be amended as needed in terms of practice so we'll certainly adopt it as a working framework and then over time there may be things that we amend or edit but this is really a good structure

065that we haven't had previously so any um so back to the facilitated question are any our facilitated conversation are there any um anything that jumped out at anyone or any primary concerns we tried to be pretty to be very close to what we discussed at the retreat no major concerns well this is very well put together so i can tell a lot of work went into it i like operational things this is great um and i know it um it's touched on in this document but is there any reason to like could we expand like board conduct like how we um interact with each other making sure we're always being when respectful communicating with each other and with district leadership um i guess having some guiding values yep i think would be helpful i think

066we actually looked at some models similar to that didn't we shannon are we disgusted paula definitely brought it up i think we did um so there's kind of two different pieces to that one would be um kind of the ethical piece of it and one would be more the the cultures and norms around how you how you uh do your board business right how you interact with board members how you interact with staff the the ethics piece of it we actually do have a board policy on board member ethics and so that's that's referenced in the manual just so again some of this is kind of outward facing toward people who might be interested in joining the board want to know more about our work they might not go to the policy manual but if

067it's if it's here all in one place they can take a look at what this adopted policy is around board member ethics um the the you know we tried to talk about some shared expectations um in uh you know kind of that good governance how you so so i think i think we've touched on some of the things um we can take a shot at expanding it for sure yeah so it's more intentional i think it might be a little helpful yeah and i see what you're saying and i think it's it's great i think we might yeah i think i think that's something we can do if they're um if there are specific like parts where you you read through it and thought okay this is where i really think this should be addressed

068um it would be helpful we have a policy committee meeting actually this wednesday um and so if you have some specific thoughts um it would be really helpful to share those with the policy committee um yeah okay beforehand i can kind of i'm actually kind of envisioning some spaces where i think it might work too but definitely if you have time to shoot us some suggestions that would be great yeah i have some all right thanks thank you um other comments are you addressing the highlighted item yes yeah um so the uh actually i think one of the items i wanted to jump to and probably the the biggest change for the to in my mind the biggest change in the manual is um how board leadership is uh established so in lawrence there is

069a tradition to um uh the board president is determined by uh the number of votes that the individual gets from the community and we are proposing that instead board leadership is elected at the board table and the reason for that is there have been a couple cases where individuals who received the most votes actually didn't have the time to be the board president not to alarm the well shannon knows it takes a bit of time so you want to make sure that you have someone that has the time that's available to do it and then additionally we have found that and you have kind of talked too about making sure we have continuity and leadership it does take a while to learn this job i remember jessica beason saying um you know i just figured

070well i probably shouldn't quote her like that she did i think she'll forgive me i that it took her a year to figure out how to do the job and then she was stepping down to to move on um so certainly i i concur with you know that i've learned so much and um the opportunity to do it uh again would create you know i would just have more knowledge in how to do the work but we did want to balance that with a term limit um and so we have we're proposing two-year term limit i think is it is what we is in there right now is that what's in there right now shannon it's written in such a way that you could only serve two consecutive terms as correct in a board office

071and then you'd have to to take time off um you could you know if you were on the board still in the future you could run again just to just to you know it's interesting boards across uh the state that i've worked with um or that i've gotten to know about through my state work um you know there are some districts that have had the same board president for a decade or more and that's just that's what works for them and that's fine in the discussions we had in the committee there was a lot of [Music] a lot of discussion on this particular section and really wanting to make sure that that we kind of balance that idea of having continuity continuity and experience with an opportunity for other people to learn how to do

072the job as well and and to step into the those leadership roles um because we tend to be a board that does have a lot of turnover um especially recently um and so you you you want to make sure people are getting um that leadership experience as well um the you know the other notable piece about how we drafted it is we were trying to draft it in a way to um make the transition happen um with the with the set of people who would be elected this the board that would be elected this year right so keeping um having the full transition to to this process not happen until i think we wrote in there um got to have the glasses to read it um selection of the board vice president in 2022 and

073the board president and vice president in 2023 and that so there would be kind of a transition time um that this would go into effect um so i you know boards do this in a lot of different ways i would say we are in the we are a little bit unusual in the way that we've we've done this by tradition in our district in the past it's more common to for for for boards to um kind of have people volunteer who want to hold these roles and then elect from that group of people than it is to do it the way that we've done it in the past so that that was also kind of part of the research that we did in putting this together was really to look at um practices in other

074districts um and even you know talking to board members in other districts to try to understand how they do this what what works for them what's been what have been challenges um you know before we put together a proposal like this to to make this big of a change and then i would say along those lines um some melissa um when you were board president one of the things i i really needed your advice and guidance coming into my first couple of months and we talked about how do we formalize the the um how do we make that uh institutionalize that so that the past president has more um of a role in the executive committee and what we have done this year which we would like to see continued and reflected in the manual

075is um having uh um and melissa's as melissa is doing right now which is helping erica and i um with the superintendent's evaluation and also just being available as a mentor to the next board president which he has more than been so what are your thoughts melissa having been president in this way well my thinking is um a couple of things um how would it impact the community because the community is obviously voting and voting for for that significant person um and that's the reason why those individuals have those higher number votes because they want them to represent the other thing is um i mean i know the city commissioner just does that so is it a matter of having someone elect like the the board elect the president vice president or is it a

076matter of proper like properly assisting the vice president the next three in line you know and then the other thing is um [Music] i lost my train of thought um goodness love to my mind oh um it was right there i should have wrote it down i will um yeah i have to come back can i address the other two while you're thinking so i actually think um for the first the first one should the community oh i got it no no the other thing was it was my understanding that even if the individuals felt like you know there were times in the past where those two there are two individuals who had received the top votes in it and they stepped they didn't want to do it so yeah so we formalized that that's

077the easiest one of the three points that you made so i'll address that first the um we did we did uh at the last or a couple board meetings ago formalized the process for when someone has to step down yes so those procedures are in place in there um to your point of the that's available that's an option if somebody gets elected and they don't want to serve in that role they can do that that's well taken and we have a we have examples of doing that um and then the the the question around should the community appoint the president or should the board elect the president um it's i i struggle with it because i see your point i think the point you were making which was the community has identified this person through

078numbers of votes no no it's that too but it's also like my understanding is we have both so you have the top votes but the board does not have to necessarily vote for correct for it so uh-huh but it's something that is a consideration when you are thinking yeah about it so that's that's it's a concern in the future potentially like i know as much as we try to say laurencian's uh you know like this community is equitable and things like that it does pose some potential concerns yeah yeah that's well taken okay um the the so i'll come back i'm gonna come back to that for other people to weigh in on that first point and then the second one second point you made around um the continuation of leadership making sure there's mentorship

079there i think that's almost a separate issue and really we just identified where can we begin to formalize that and then i think we'll build on that um so that that to me is is an area where there could be some growth within the manual in terms of how do we formalize the past president rule more more thoroughly but the starting place was the superintendent's evaluation um i think it's um i think it's an important thing to think about um maybe we go back and take a look at the section in in there about uh board member orientation um because because there is there is kind of that uh knowledge and mentorship uh role and actually something that we didn't put in the manual yet um kelly that i just realized was the the the

080mentorship um uh kind of the informal mentorship that mentoring relationships that were established with our new board members last year that was something that that was new for the board and i thought i feel like it has been a really good opportunity both to get to know new board members a little bit outside the scope of of our work at the board table but also to be available as a resource so that we may want to um yeah look at adding that in more formally i've got that down uh but that that was part of part of what we were trying to do um is to to just provide some structure and framework around a lot of you know we know we're going to have new board members um and it's it's you know it's

081really been every couple years and so um having more structure around how we how we bring people on to the board and and provide them with that support um and and kind of getting them up up to speed and ready to to to feel like they they've got the knowledge and resources they need and that that's been it's been done but it's not been formalized in any way so that was one of the things we were really trying to to address through through some of this um framework yeah and i think that was melissa's leadership actually as president so we can definitely get that added into the board around the mentors that you identify i think you did enter identified for incoming board members so we'll get that in there and then can we just

082have a deeper discussion about the leadership election building on what melissa has said if other people want to weigh in on that i think i think from my perspective i think changing to the new plan i think it makes a lot of sense i think there's a lot of i think when you run for school board to begin with i think um i'll speak for myself and and a couple people that i've talked to i don't know that a lot of people will run for school board with the intent of being the board president or being the board vice president i think you run to get on the board because you have a passion for public education and you want to support the school district and and to implement things and and i think when

083you end up in that position your life may be in in in such that that's not an added responsibility that you can take along with your passion for being on the board to begin with and i think i i think that we certainly have a mechanism that that you could decline the position or you could choose not to do it but um i think that i think that it it it allows people on the board um for continuity or for someone who who is in maybe a better position to take on that responsibility for a given year it doesn't preclude the person who got the most votes from being the president it just may not be in the standard timeline that we've that we've always done it um i think it's it's a more reasonable

084rotation and a way to do it just looking at some more unknown factors and and some other things in involved other thoughts i know just to melissa's point that you know this has been something that we've been having this discussion as we've put together this manual for the better part of four years trying this particular issue has been one that we've gone back and forth on and really really thought a lot about for me where i kind of came at this issue from has been that the role of board president is is far far more than a figurehead um as as those sitting at the table who have done that job know very well um and so i do think that it's important for the board as a whole to be deliberate about the selection

085of the people that fill that role and so that it doesn't preclude you from looking at you know who who was been highly supported in the community and saying you know this is someone who um you know really the community really holds in high regard and we think would do a good job at this at this in this role it doesn't preclude you from considering that as one of the considerations but it allows people to express an interest in being a board leader who might otherwise be completely shut out from the process the way that we've done it in the past um it also allows uh for the board to weigh a lot of things around um who who has interest who has capacity um who um who's maybe maybe you have a particular year

086where there's a particular issue and somebody has a particular skill um around that issue you would like to to be a leader in that in that regard so i think there's just there's so many different things that you can look at and weigh and you know kind of stepping back from just saying this is the way we've always done it we have this rotation and this is how we're going to do it and making it be a more deliberative choice of the body um i think that's really where where i ended up after you know just some really deep discussion of this issue so i just want to share that perspective yeah and i don't think i think like i said like it's more of a necessarily disagreeance but it almost feels like you know

087i think that's something that could be like like all the things you said can be something like as we're nearing that let's take this into consideration if someone else thinks that that you know hey let's have a board meeting and have this discussion we're getting ready to transition these are the topics you know ask the individual and i'm just my thing is um like i said somewhere down the line you hope that it it will remain equitable is not like a necessarily like well i like this person so and i don't like this person so i don't want that person to be president you know like hopefully it's not something like that but i'm just thinking because unfortunately there are some boards that are like that um and what the city commissioners isn't it similar

088to what we do now and then what i mean it may or may not it may be probably just as deemed like that these are the problems too and that they want to visit so like what is what makes it successful if it is i don't know i don't know how other like the mayor or the vice mayor their experiences have been so that's another thing that i'm wondering so i um they they do we follow the same model that they follow right now i know they're talking about they i know um former mayor ananda talked about some changes some potential changes there um i do want to get i'm gonna i what i think i'm hearing is that there are two there are really two distinct positions that have both have some great merit

089um so i would propose that we um maybe separate the two things pass the manual and then have a separate vote just around this particular issue so that we can be really clear about where we are on how we elect leadership that would be a way for us to both move the manual forward and to be really specific and we're not voting today no no next next uh next time so that would be one possibility um other thoughts could we perhaps um have that be kind of in the alternative either we can approve it yeah as a whole or we can separate them out yeah i don't i wouldn't i would i would like to i'm kind of thinking about um what you said melissa and wondering if one way to kind of get at

090some of of of that would be to um to kind of talk about it not in this section but in the section about being board president being a board officer um maybe some of the considerations um you know things not only not only does it right now kind of say these are all the things you do but maybe we also express some thoughts about these are some of the considerations in in thinking about you know if you're interested in doing this job and yes things for the board um to think about in the selection process yeah i would agree i've been reading like bored leader board president manuals you know and i think it'll be helpful yeah i'm gonna speak like that um so yeah i think it'll be helpful if we could have something

091like that i'm not suggesting we add that in right now because yeah the manual i'm reading is like 30 pages long but i mean i think they'll be it adds a lot of specificity around what is required to do the board president job and that will have a really good idea of um and also you know manual too for um operationalize yeah cause things that we're wanting maybe that's not the that's not the initial hey i'm gonna be oh i'm going to get the top votes i'm going to go president that's not the the idea but it is something that you know like erica said having that guideline so people know solidly like this is what i feel like i can do but without just having some extra protections in there okay i can do

092that anything else erica from reading or anything i think it's just all right other um thoughts about that particular issue or we can move on um i'm noticing that we have to um we have other items we have to talk about on the agenda tonight so um shannon is there anything else that you felt like was particularly you really wanted to highlight within the manual that might need additional um feedback from board members for edits or changes that was the big one for me i wanted to make sure we discussed you know i really feel like that is um that is an area that is perhaps the would be the biggest change in the traditions that our board has followed a lot of the other things that we put in here were things that we've

093done we've just done them we've codified them in a way to say okay this is how this is how this happens or these are the expectations um one example of that would be working with the media um you know our district has a tradition and a culture where um any board member is free to speak to the media um the board president still is the only person you know this just kind of procedurally the board president is the only person who can give a statement of the board um but anybody can you know and we all have spoken with members of the media there are districts in in this type of manual where they say only the board president talks to the press that's a cultural thing that they've chosen as a board to do

094um that's not what we what we have proposed we've kind of stuck with our uh the way that we've done things in the past but i think that's just one example of how we've we've looked at some of these things that other districts do do differently talked about um how we have done things in the past how we want to how we want to express that and kind of clarify in writing what that looks like um i think that the section on social media used by board members this may be one that if everybody would take a look at it and if you have thoughts or further input you know we we tried to write it in a way to just highlight some of the the things that have come up as areas of concern

095um that we've heard in some of the trainings that we've been to and and things that we've seen happen in terms of making sure that board members are aware that your use of more eyes on that particular particular topic could maybe help us come up with a with a stronger end product around that that would be the only other area i that was on that actually was on my um my list as well so i think that with that um just in the interest of time we'll go ahead and uh we have some to do's from uh some edits that we'll make to the manual based on this conversation um i think at the rather than add the manual to the consent at the april 12 meeting we'll just take 15 minutes to make sure

096that everybody's on the same page and if we need to have a separate vote on the how we select leadership we will retain that option to do it so just really kind of center yourself around where where your position is on that particular issue uh and i believe that is it i'm really excited about um about getting this passed so all right great so we will now move on um with the uh discussion on um esl services and we'll invite leah wisdom who has patiently been waiting to address the board and thank you for coming leah yes and you also have with you cassie van dyke yes good evening leo wisdom director of equity instruction student services we casey and i have prepared a brief just program update really focusing in on a couple things

097um so if questions come up for you we'll have some time at the end we can also follow later in written format there's some things that we're not touching on tonight that you're interested in because we won't get to everything and we want to just start really quickly reminding you all um as we think about meeting the needs of all of our students but in this case particularly students who have um english as a second language we're really looking at those three areas of your of our strategic plan one two and five as we think about providing a cohesive curriculum centering the learning for our students around around the students and making data informed decisions i just wanted to bring us back to this slide um i've shared this a couple times with the board

098but these four pieces are huge and integral in how we think about um the services that we're being offered and how we're engaging families and students so we're always thinking of access representation meaningful participation and then having high outcomes for all students um we usually start with this just as a quick reminder there's a lot of acronyms associated with english as a second language so some of them are listed here different groups use them for different reasons in the state of kansas at our ksde you will hear esol quite a bit when you're talking about programming so you'll see that um in hours we try and would like to shift to really using cld culturally and linguistically diverse um as a that is an acronym that's frequently used you will also hear english learner english

099language learner ell esl english as a second language and then home or heritage language which is a language that's another dominant language given in a social context so just throwing that out there if you hear even us use different terms um we're working towards consistently using cld but you could possibly hear some of those others as a quick reminder we have at our pre-k through fifth grade levels we do have six certified teachers in our early childhood four-year-old at-risk program at elementary as you know we have two cluster sites hillcrest and quarterly so where our students cluster in if they're accepting esl services with the exception of students at schweigler and sunflower which are neighborhood sites at middle and high we service at all of our middle and high schools and at middle and high

100we've got 10 certified staff and four para educators and so these are individuals who are working in support roles and we'll talk in a little bit about what sometimes that service model can look like just like to make sure we put the funding out here um so we are funded with title iii funds which are federal dollars that are specifically meant for professional learning it is a much smaller grant between 50 and 60 000 sometimes a little more and that's also where we pay for parent involvement facilitators and activities to support our ell families and then we have um our bilingual dollars from the state and are at risk dollars so if you look at this chart you can just see our bilingual dollars are the lighter blue and that is the money that we

101get from the state based on the number of students that we are serving but it's not nearly enough as you can tell to cover the cost of salaries resource allocation we also use the state dollars to help endorse our teachers at all of our our elementary buildings along with um if we get any resource ell esl resource teachers who need their endorsement so we do rely very very heavily on our at-risk state dollars to supplement what we don't get with our bilingual state dollars this is just kind of a breakdown of the languages that are represented in our ell or your students who um have english as a second language so you can see the percentages there um with our top five and we're going to talk in a couple slides about how we have

102responded especially in the pentamic and learned some things about parent communication interpretation and translation so i want to spend a few minutes here and my esteemed colleague casey is going to take over to talk just a little bit about the why because this is what often comes up for us um as we engage with parents and i think even sometimes for you as a board maybe when you hear um about families um and students who are being offered services so introduce my colleague casey thank you so much so my name is casey van dyke i'm the esl facilitator for the district so i help and support the teachers and staff at all of the elementary sites and then i also go out at two non-ell sites and support those students as those needs arise on

103a consultation basis or work with them as needed a couple things that i wanted to address and make known part of the reason that we wanted to an additional reason that we wanted to put the slide regarding acronyms up is because the term english language learner encompasses an incredibly diverse group of population students so we have students that are the sons and daughters of immigrants we have students that are immigrants we have students that are newcomers we have students that come with an interrupted formal education we have students that come with an advanced education these are all and they're all from different cultures and they all have different heritage languages and as a matter of fact english right now is the third most common language for first language foreign english learner so a lot of

104the students that we can offer services to or that we are supporting have a huge variety of backgrounds and so a lot of times especially this year with the pandemic we've been much more explicit and having to make phone calls and outreach and explaining what we do and how why we provide things and so i wanted to take this opportunity to share with you all a little bit more about why and how we serve the students that we do so when students enroll we're federally required to do a home language survey based on the results of that home language survey we are then required to provide a screening assessment to see whether or not the student would qualify for eso support if that student qualifies for support we then offer support parents have a choice

105to accept or decline um the interesting or not the interesting the um often times when we're visiting with parents about these things and about the results they'll say my student was born here or they only speak english or um or they're a citizen and at the end of the day all of that is wonderful but what we look at is how might that language and culture from the home impact the students ability to access an equal opportunity education and how are we supporting those students where they are at and something i'm very proud of here at lawrence public schools is that we have an incredibly inclusive model liam alluded to it a bit ago but we have four elementary sites and every single certified staff member in those buildings is either working towards their esl

106endorsement has their esl endorsement or is constantly receiving support to work with english language learners so for students that come in and english is their first language they don't even know that they're an ell student because it's normal but they still get to be in an environment where they are hearing the richness of language and diversity that is around them in addition to that we do have our specialists that though help and support those students that need it and even to a certain extent as they integrate into the classroom they do provide those opportunities for enrichment because a lot of times too will also um in working with families they'll feel as though it's a stigma to have that ell label or that esl label on their child so um we just wanted to be

107upfront about our process and how we offer services to students especially this time of year we get a lot of phone calls because we're doing state assessments um within the last week or so there have been many little children sitting in the seats that you're at and they've had a lot of fun with your microphones so thank you for letting them do that because we have been testing here at the esc to help with our students that are year long distance um the other thing i wanted to point out for our english learners and i will stop talking on the slide i promise is i put the iceberg up there and it refers to common underlying proficiency what you see is always what you experience so in this case it's referring to the first and

108the second language but you can also see that in terms of the first and the second culture the first and the third culture the first so every family and every ell student is very unique and very diverse and it can elo supports come in many different forms which i'm very proud to say that our teachers work incredibly hard to meet and to serve and to advocate for um yes they're wonderful so that's what i got for that one and just to add on to that um our pro the process that casey was referring to and we're talking about that first bullet esl screening and guidelines we are adhering to what the what ksde what the state requires us in terms of asking every single family that's enrolling you know those three questions around language and

109if any of those families indicate another language that's what prompts a screening so it's um it's not you know it's not just our process we get the option to choose the assessment that we use and things like that but not you know who we um who we screen so super fast um you've seen the both of these charts before and this is just um if you remember in 2016 they shifted our assessment and the requirements for how students exit out of esol services which is why we saw the dip we see a little uptick but we do anticipate that to come back up as things continue to shift at the state level and then if you see the pie chart that is just showing you as we've shown you in the past how many students

110at each of these elementary buildings are declining services um and so the numbers are actually on the pie chart and then the percentage around that we've had a lot of discussion about that but wanted you to see it again and know that we're always thinking about who those decline who those students are that are declining they don't not get support it just looks different because they have not accepted services at a site where they have all that additional layers of support so those numbers are there leah can you say more about those numbers really quickly so the percentage is of of the number declining this is dr lewis's question so at langston 28 of the students who are declining um total are from langston okay got it okay thank you and for what it's worth

111noting um oh my god never mind i just completely forgot it's okay we do offer ksd still does hold us accountable for making sure that those students are making adequate yearly progress so we are still testing and assessing these students to make sure that they are getting the support that is needed through their home schools so that even though we may not be serving it explicitly they do not wish to receive services that we are doing annual measurements to make sure they're making progress and moving forward so in that so thank you for i have a question that's a little bit um unrelated to that and thank you for making that clarification i wanted to go back to the percentage um i'm at some point and not now i would be as we begin to

112look at when dr lewis talked at the beginning of the um during his uh superintendent comments referenced looking at boundary shifts as it relates to potentially for kennedy this number 11.2 that's pretty high when they already have 24 students i mean it's a small school but i would be the hard number would be interesting to know we have charts that we're keeping track of that show like kennedy 10 students declining 30 students accepting and going to hillcrest so yeah if all those students weren't you know or if you looked at other schools yeah i was wondering higher numbers yeah cluster sites for example how did what's the what's the tipping point for prairie park if when does it become a cluster site the tipping point is um that the board has to vote and decide

113on doing that but um i mean so for example when we when schweigler and sunflower came on board it was those numbers started to hit around 50 60. okay collectively because then you can hire two staff that gives you that 30 to 1 ratio of additional staff okay um and then the other thing that we look at even in that number so you're looking here at like 25 at langston we would want to look at those 25 plus the students who are accepting services to determine what is their level of proficiency right because you might choose a different site if you're looking at a high number of really low level of proficiency versus a high level okay yeah yeah that's a good clarification thank you i would be interested in that information for the people

114to have a later chart format okay it's definitely a for um i think it's another conversation as it relates to maybe adding a cluster site and or um thinking about how that impacts boundaries yes absolutely that information would be important to me and decision making coming up so i appreciate that thank you yeah so we wanted to address and i'm going to talk a little bit about this and then casey's going to really get into um the some of the things that that we've done but as part of remote learning we've learned quite a bit we've also experienced challenges specifically as it relates to our this this population that we're of programming and students that we're talking about um so casey mentioned this morning as we were talking this through a lot of things have

115come up in terms of students mental health um when we think about our our cld our cultural and linguistically diverse students relationships are really the center of what um they're experiencing in the school and so in the absence of being in person sometimes that remote environment just doesn't give that same layer so the mental health of students and the relationships and the connection that they have with uh with their teacher and with their peers has been a challenge we've combated that in some ways through like one-on-one breakout rooms um we have teachers incredible staff at every site that have been reaching out to families you know individually so a lot of those types of things happening um access communication feeling part of the school community those are things and we're going to talk about some

116of the things that we've done as support actually casey's going to talk about that but finally also just attendance and family responsibilities so our students who have jobs or obligations for younger siblings during the pandemic especially so one of the ways that we worked on that was having some the ability of some of our students to enter into student contracts to sort of say all right how can we move past what happened you know forgive some of that and have a plan moving forward in terms of how to stay on track and not be at risk of not graduating or not um you know passing a class and so that was something casey worked really heavily actually with our special education department as well because our high school principals said oh that's a great idea

117but it's not just you know english language learners it's other students as well and so um before i hand it over to casey to talk about some of our uh the talking things i want to give her a shout out for a couple things um technology parent night was something that she spent a lot of time creating specifically for our ell families to be able to come to the high school have access to our i.t department they were there in droves we didn't have a high turnout but it was a really good first start and an opportunity for our families to have a place to come and access um so but through this and all these challenges um casey has worked a lot on these pieces and so i really want her to tell you

118about them it's been incredible some of the movement that we've made in terms of communicating and connecting with families so one thing i want to point out and just piggyback off real quick is within our elo community what we notice is that within a mainstream culture we are taught to go seek out a counselor when you need support we're talk to go talk to your teacher those are the things that we encourage students to do what we often see with our ell communities is that relationship piece and how important it is and so our elo families tend to go they go to their ell teacher and it may be the kind of thing that that individual that is their person and so they are telling things to that individual and we may say hey can

119i bring in so and so to help us out and that takes time and that takes a lot of advocacy and listening and you know so when we think of culturally linguistically diverse or language you know it's language is definitely the first thing that comes to mind but i must say that there is so much more to servicing our ell students and families when it comes to their acculturation and feeling part of our community and accessing content i mean we can say please give the student extra time but if the extra time is when they're working is when they're doing you know they're caring for siblings i mean we've had instances where the student will turn the computer around and there's the whole family holding class with you today so um but one thing that

120this pandemic really um kind of made us realize is that um we need to do better and streamline how we are managing our translation and interpretation and providing families access to the information that we are outputting and the resources that we are sharing with the community and so um things that we have done in the last few months are um we've instituted kind of a large sign up to get interpreters whenever they are needed we have implemented a language line because we realized that families we could reach out to families and get interpreted but how were they going to contact us in addition to that we discovered in looking at some of our part nearby districts that they were using an app called talking points that we can get for free for teachers individually um

121and that sends a text message if parents consent we can text with them and that has opened a tremendous number of doors for our families the capacity to text because they'll respond to that they're not going to respond to an email they're not going to respond to a voicemail they don't feel always comfortable calling the school but they do feel comfortable responding to a text and in addition to that because it appears just as a regular text the other thing that's been really nice is that it translates it so we can designate i want this parent to receive this message in spanish i want this parent to give it in chinese and i want this parent to get it in english and i send the same message and it goes out in all of those

122languages and when they respond in their native language it comes back to me in english so that i know has been a huge benefit to some of our folks in addition to that i do want to give a shout out for the forethought that our leadership had in those beginning of the year conferences because that really did help set off some good communication and open some connections with families last but not least um getting documents translated is incredibly expensive and so we've had a vendor for a long time but as we sought to organize and streamline our process we've recently moved to a new vendor called motorword and with them we have something called translation memory so any sentence that we repeat we no longer have to pay for we pay for it to get

123translated one time and they keep a database of all of the translations that we have requested so when julie boyle requests this year's calendar yes it will change but the next year the cost to do it is going to be incredibly minimal so i think there's some definite benefits to us moving forward with them and with webex and having virtual parent teacher conferences i know that at least my secondary sites have seen a nice uptick in parent attendance participation which is great definitely a lesson to take with us out of the pandemic in terms of access um really fast and we'll leave this slide for you we talked to you about project insight last time we were here just the very quick update is that the first cohort is done with their coursework um and

124there is another cohort that is still continuing on with their coursework encourage you to read the quotes that our staff things that they're saying about their experience that's on your slide but we want to end by giving you um just an update on the ceo by literacy again something that we talked about last time and also you can might expect to see something in front of you for an approval um in looking ahead but um as you recall the kansas cielo by literacy is a way for our students to receive a seal of biliteracy on their um diploma or on their transcript and there's two different levels if you will of the seal of biliteracy um and uh students go through and basically have to take an assessment to show their proficiency in the two

125languages and so love this quote here just as a reminder to us particularly as we reflect on this whole presentation about um the the uh the power of bilingualism and multilingualism and what it means um and and what the value that we have in supporting that and our students and so we really appreciate the chance to um allow our students the opportunity to earn the seal of by literacy this year has the potential to the first year that we will have students with the cielo by literacy fingers crossed um so uh what we want to talk just a little bit about is that what you might see in front of you is potential for a cost for some language assessments so one of the things you know in all the multi languages that students might

126want to um earn the silo by literacy they there has to be an assessment to show that they're illiterate on one of those two levels um so casey has been working um really hard with our world languages committee and our world language department chairs and leadership team on their curriculum in general they're going through that priority standard process but also um they're looking at assessments and as they continue that discussion we anticipate that we could be bringing something to you in the very near future to hopefully approve but casey is going to tell us just a little bit about the heritage spanish course which is new this year um and because that is part of our ceo by literacy so um in terms of when taking on the sela by literacy one important thing that

127we wanted to ensure is that all students had access to it and so something we noticed was that we have students who are proficient in spanish orally or in one way or another but because they may not have the reading and the writing skills they're still might be going into spanish one for example or spanish two and so in trying to find a way that would be meaningful and work for them in terms of increasing their literacy in their heritage language we looked we proposed and got approved to do a heritage spanish course this year we didn't have the numbers at free state to do it this year however we hope to have them next year we do have a course at lawrence high school um i emailed miss aguirre this today and i was

128just like hey send me some pictures so you can see some pictures up there just of some student conversations that were happening um earlier this year and so um i know she's been very impressed and pleased with the students progress she's had to do a lot of differentiating because you get a lot of students at different levels and we're definitely learning in this process but the fact that the kids have this opportunity and it is something that will support their path to earning a seal of biliteracy is something that we're very excited about and happy that hopefully we can continue it and it will continue to grow and but having that atmosphere where students can just speak in their native language and talk about how those things compare and improve their literacy skills has been

129a very awesome experience so yeah um so yes like casey said continuing to build on that and and i'm sure we talked about this last time but just recognizing the um the benefit that having this uh by literacy can have for students as they're going out into the workforce or um university casey shared with us this morning that some universities will take that seal of by literacy and give you credit for having had that there of course our jobs that um if you have a scala by literacy it get it allows you a layer of a skill set that maybe otherwise you wouldn't have so we'll continue to do that um these are just some things that we want to continue to work on you heard casey talk about being systematic and that that that

130we want to have those district-wide structures as it relates to language and communication and servicing and programming which we do in a lot of ways um but but much of the work that um casey's doing with our leadership teams is supporting that uh continue to think about systematic individualized support obviously communication and engagement of our students and families is huge on our list of things that we continue to work on and improve and with that we want to share with you these lovely photos of some of our students and offer um you the opportunity to ask questions or certainly um if you want to task us with anything to send you later we'd be happy to do that as well um and kelly i making mental know of what you were talking about we can

131absolutely get that thank you my only question would be um am i right in thinking that pretty consistently that on that enrollment slide in the schools that where students are declining services that that's been a pretty consistent trend like for example kelly mentioned langston they've had a pretty high level of students declining services for a number of years right it's not a change right okay that's i just wanted to confirm that i was remembering that correctly okay and i would like to point out that the majority of the pictures you see up there were taken during the pandemic when teachers retire or leave i asked students to help out and those students did that on their own and they did that for the teacher because i will show and i met there was a picture

132of a girl at graduation i can tell you right now the only reason that girl got across the stage was because of her ell teachers and so i definitely can't speak highly enough of them because they're just incredible individuals that advocate for students and do whatever it takes to help them learn and become all that they want to and can be so thank you for your time and the opportunity this is erica i don't really have a question but i just want to thank you leah for another informative presentation i appreciate your leadership and casey you can definitely tell that you're passionate about this work and i appreciate that and i mean especially appreciative and impressed by the communication and outreach your leadership there in my mind that is what helps create a sense of

133belonging for our families and so i appreciate your work in that in that realm thank you we appreciate the chance and um and if you do see that come forward for the world languages assessment you'll have some background um yeah we hope that we have enthusiastic support for that um i'm can i say that or do we [Laughter] i mean that's been my essay and now it's in writing yeah it's like forever on the that has been my assessment from the board and my role of understanding where we're all at yeah we're very excited about it we think it's it's great for students and we're all for it thank you thank you okay all right so um now we are going to recess to executive session i move to recess to executive session for the

134purpose of discussing personnel matters of non-elected personnel in order to protect the privacy interests of the individuals to be discussed with dr anthony lewis invited to be present and with the board to return to open session at um nine let's start with 905 with possible action to follow this is melissa second all all those in favor okay anyone opposed okay we're gonna head back up session and we're going to move toward closing the meeting but is there any new business there's no action to follow post the meeting kelly i do have an announcement to add okay so i meant to mention this during my um board commentary this evening and i i failed to do so so i apologize one of the things that came up at the facilities meeting at the beginning of march

135is a discussion about district owned property and we we have uh owned property at the holcomb recreation center for many many many many years um we are no longer using that property it used to be the location of the ctran program and the culinary program now that we have moved ctran to east heights and we have built our culinary kitchen at the college and career center we are no longer using the property for any school district related purposes so there has been discussion about what to do with that property and there may be some interest um in uh from pert from someone who might be interested in purchasing that and so um just wanted to share that we've talked about it in facilities i think our recommendation would be that we pursue that avenue but

136i wanted to share that with the rest of the board um you can talk about buying property in an executive session but selling potentially selling property is an open meeting discussion so we would have to have a conversation about that at a future board meeting but just so that it didn't come as a surprise if that is the recommendation that comes out of the facilities committee that we are looking at selling that piece of property because we don't have a district use for it and there probably is a better and higher purpose uh that could that it could be used for and so we're looking into that dr lewis was there anything else you wanted to add to that no um i'll just reiterate what you said that's a pizza property we've been holding for

137quite some time and it's no reason for us to continue to hold on to it so i mean that's you know right now the maintenance is there's a small building and we and we're mowing it um so it's not hugely expensive but every dollar counts and so if it's something that we can no longer maintain and we're not using it it makes sense the facilities committee has just felt like it makes sense to explore those options so um certainly if you have questions let me or gr know and we can take those back to the committee as we continue to have those discussions thank you any other new business dr lewis no well we look forward to bringing um to the board we have a report on families in transition at the april 12 board

138meeting we also do a work session um to discuss the recommendations for kennedy on april 12. thank you earlier in the meeting i failed to um properly thank shannon kimball for her work on the manual which when we listed all of those board members that have been involved myself paula jessica and vanessa shannon is the common theme so just thank you for all the work that you did on that manual and i apologize for not doing it earlier thank you okay um so now i need a motion to adjourn move to adjourn all those in favor oh need a second oh again second all those in favor all right nice seeing you all in person tonight