2020 - January 27 Lawrence Board of Education Meeting

001I'm going to make the motion to move to I move the Board of Education recess to Executive session to discuss oh oh I'm sorry thank you thank you thank you friend um you gotta get a motion to approve the agenda I move we approve the agenda for the January 27 2019 uh Board of Education meeting or the special meeting special meeting all those in favor aye okay now I move that the Board of Education recess to Executive session to discuss matters affecting a student in order to protect the Privacy interests of the individuals to be discussed with Dr Anthony Lewis Dr Anna Anna Stubblefield Dave Cunningham Rick Henry and Dr Cynthia Johnson invited to be present and with the board to return to open session in this room at six oh so we and um

002let's do it again oh and and Mark Pruitt um with the board to return in to open session in this room at um six o'clock 29 minutes with no actions to follow second all those in favor aye thank you I'll call it good evening I like to call the January 27th oh yes sorry thank you Dawn um I move we adjourn from executive session with no actions to follow second all those in favor aye now I like to call the January 27th 2020 board meeting into session a movie for the agenda for the January 27 29 2020 board meeting a second all those in favor at this time I will call um Julie Boyle and Dr Lewis for a special recognition good evening of course this is School Board recognition month do you all know

003that yeah well as part of school board recognition month thank you for staying I just saw one of our I just left I'm sorry I just left our um superintendent student advisory council meeting upstairs prior to this and I encouraged I was really joking encourage our some of my council members students to stay for the board meeting and we have one on the front row thank you so much for staying I really appreciate that um okay back to what I was saying as part of school board recognition month we are pleased to have a performance this this evening by members of the quarterly Elementary choir and I will let Denise Johnson introduce them good evening I feel very honored um to be in front of you today and congratulations Board of Education Month and thank

004you very much on behalf of myself and and our fine arts department um we are showing our very best tonight this is the quarterly Honor Choir in front of you um I would like to um to talk a little bit about um introduce their teacher Lizette Deboer is the choir teacher and she also has responsibilities at cordley and at Kennedy she shares two buildings um corby's choir was chosen to perform at the Kansas I was going to say you guys may want to get up and go around via seats in the front row always cordless choir was chosen to perform at the Kansas music educators Association conference on February 28th this is the second time that cordless choir has been chosen to perform this year um what they have to do in order to perform

005is they a year in advance they have to perform and and submit a recording um only three elementary schools are chosen to perform at this at this conference so it's quite an honor so we're really proud of each one of you and that's in this choir Lizette has taught in the district for 13 years and she has been in seven different buildings in Lawrence cordly Wakarusa Kennedy Broken Arrow Woodlawn New York and Langston so she's definitely seen half of our 14 elementary schools so we're blessed um blessed to have her with us and to continue touching each one of of our of this children's lives lizette's choir on meets in the morning and this is before school so she does this outside of her Duty day so we're again very pleased um to have this

006choir and and very lucky for her to be a part of our program for Fine Arts I also want to introduce Miss Linda and she's going to waver from you from the she is our the accompaniness and she also teaches reading it at cordly so I think um Mrs Deborah is going to talk to you oh we have a student that's going to talk okay and I wanted just to present just some flowers to her [Applause] truly put um they've been performing and practicing this but I just reached out to her last week to see if she could possibly do this um and I want to also I would be a mess if I didn't think the wonderful parents that put it into your schedule to be a part of tonight [Applause] here he's coming

007up and talking Zoe good evening my name is Zoe and I am a fifth grader in quarterly in the quarterly choir our choir is composed of third fourth and fifth graders from Corley Elementary School her rehearsements or twice per week with their music director Mr board and our accompanist miss Daddy Stokes thank you for letting us perform for you this evening we are very excited to be here our first song for you today is called Winter Walk the pieces written in a meter or four four but feels like the meter of 12 8 because because of the use of triplets in the accompaniment parts the lyrics of Winter Walk help us help help remind us of the wonders of the world around us on a winter day [Applause] [Music] for a walk [Music] to walk

008oh [Music] sunrise [Music] see those people [Music] are three eyes [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Applause] good evening my name is Kinley and I am a third grader at courtly our next song for you this evening is called got coffee got coffee is a spirited original Melody and light-hearted humorous lyrics are partnered with the traditional Puerto Rican folks on uh Puerto Rican folk song El capotin [Applause] foreign [Music] chicken house [Music] thank you [Music] then [Music] it will keep you warm in a winter storm look at my coffee today all right [Music] coffee [Music] if you want to have a break [Music] on me [Music] today [Music] thank you [Applause] good evening my name is Elliot and I am a fourth grader at quartley our final song for you this evening is called Erie Canal

009the original American folk song was written in 1905 and it has been arranged many times since this version is rhythmically interesting Arrangement full of syncopation and spunk thank you for allowing us to perform for you this evening foreign [Music] and we know everything [Music] to everybody down the whole Christmas will come into attack and you'll always love your neighbor you're always on your problems [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] thank you very much cordly that was wonderful you are so ready for that competition can you give them one more hand as they walk back down through the aisle thank you foreign [Applause] [Music] thank you again I spared my colleagues the embarrassment of dancing so thank you you're welcome oh also again yeah thank you you don't have to leave definitely thank you to the

010parents for for getting our Scholars here for this performance tonight uh in honor of our board recognition month also as board members may remember Rachel Thomas interviewed you earlier this month for a video that we are releasing publicly tonight you signed the consent that was not clear at the time not only will you watch it everyone in attendance and all of the some thousand people I'm sure that are watching I want you to make Rachel clear that that was the last time she gets to interview US night just introducing our school board to our community and Julie would like to definitely share this video with the Rachel Dunn with board members tonight my name is gr Gordon Ross a school board member this is starting my second year my name is Shannon Kimball I am

011getting ready to start my third term on the law and supportive education my name is Erica Hill and I am a first time board member my name is Paula Smith and this is my first term as a school board member hello my name is Blackwood and I am a school board member my name is Melissa Johnson hello my name is Kelly Jones and I am the vice president of the school board hi I'm Henry from Billy Mills Middle School why did you choose to become a school board member I wanted to be on the school board was because when I was in junior high my mom ran and got elected to school board she ended up being the first woman ever elected in Kearney Missouri served for seven years and because of that set an

012example of public service and really of what it means to be on the school board and ever since I graduated high school it was always something that I wanted to do become a school board member because I really care about the youth in our community well I grew up in Brooklyn like it was it it was I was at the Tipping Point as social workers I felt like I needed to do something to improved the lives of our students and our community I wanted to become a school board member because as a parent and as a teacher I feel like I understand both aspects of it and I felt like I would be a good member to kind of offer that perspective hi my name is Jenna I am from Sunflower Elementary what do you

013not know about being a school board our job is really supposed to be vision and Mission and setting policy and oftentimes that means a much different thing than what people think school board members actually do it's a lot of work it's a lot of work and what I what I didn't know as a parent was how much policy work and focus that they have and supporting teachers as best as we can one of the things that people don't know about being a school board member is that we get to go to school lunches and to school breakfast which I love I particularly love when there are kindergarteners involved but it's equally as fun to talk to seniors in high school but one thing I think that people won't realize is that the food is actually

014quite good and I look forward to the lunches with the kids in part because I get to hang out with them but also because the food is very good well being a first-time School Board member I'm learning the ropes myself but I do know what school board members do they care about the students in our community and I'm excited to be a part of that team I'm to be shorter and I go to LHS what are you excited for this school year I am excited to advocate for mental health and in our schools I as a clinical social worker that is one of my that was one of my top priorities I want to support mental health and destigmatize issues around Mental Health the Strategic plan continued progress on Lawrence High School I served on

015the facilities committee with board members Shannon Kimball for this past year and that has been a great opportunity and so to watch the transformation of that school has been great and so to see it to continue to transform is something I'm really looking forward to one of the things I'm most proud of is that we've centered our work on diversity equity and inclusion and moving forward I'm really looking forward to expanding the work we do around supporting students emotional health I am very excited about implementation of our strategic plan it is something that I have been advocating for for a while as a board member and I'm excited that we have adopted one and that we now have an opportunity to really see some improvements in our district tied to that plan I think as

016a whole I'm excited for the the relationships that are being built with with Scholars with parents with the staff and with the community [Applause] please help me I'm thanking all of our board members for their tremendous amount of support and service to public education but most importantly we are to their service and support for Lawrence Public Schools and I want to say to each one of every each and every one of you thank you so much for what you've done those board members that have been on the board for quite some time and new board members thank you for what you're about to do thank you thank you oh that's kind of tough to follow um first um reporter the president um good evening I'd like to first introduce the student board member Nola levings

017yes a senior at Lawrence High welcome during this meeting we you are encouraged to share your thoughts um if there are items that are not on the agenda you can share it even during board commentary but similar to the patron commentary like if it's a complaint about a staff member or a person we won't say their names so um again welcome Nola um since our last meeting I had the opportunity to listen to the scholars at Lawrence high as they shared their narratives on safety in schools and uniting the community it was the first of their series um and once again I left inspired by the youth I'm hoping to continue these conversations between our Scholars and the board in the near future vice president Jones and I kind of discussed the potential the the

018potential of having a meeting like uh some type of joint session or work session with some Scholars at the high school level and the board it's hard to believe that it's the end of January um what that just means to me is we're closer to warmer weather so last Tuesday the budget and planning committee um met to discuss some of the results to the SRO survey which we will hear a report on later later in the meeting um thank you to the one dream Community Committee for inviting me to do the welcome and introduce the master of ceremony it was um it was pretty a pretty great opportunity I know lots of board members were there I was unable to stay for the entire program because I had a date with my kids but I

019wanted to extend my congrats to the nominees the recipients including our board member Erica Hill who received the community award um I think that's about it but before we have Dr Lewis report on the superintendent report out we have a special recognition ourself so the board is extremely appreciative of Elise and all the hard work she has she does for our board and the patient she has shown us as we forget our passwords and become long-winded during agenda setting when we say just one more thing or a quick question and it ends up being an hour um at least we can't thank you enough and we understand that this is your last board meeting before C3 arrives we want you to know that we will miss you and know and we wish you a smooth

020healthy successful delivery and that you and Craig will enjoy this new journey of Parenthood so with that said the board would like to present you with a small yet big gift to you and your family congratulations once again [Applause] you have to open it you'll understand what I mean by small yet big it's all good [Laughter] you're welcome you can blame it on a pregnancy okay no we we appreciate you at this time we'll have a report from Dr Lewis all right I may recall board members on last board meeting you approved the hire of um Maya Lou Grant and I'm happy to welcome and introduce you to My Lou Grant who has selected as a new principal at Pinckney Elementary thank you mile brings four years of experience in school administration in 12 years

021in the classroom I had present she's an assistant principal in the Kansas City Missouri school district at Wheatley Elementary she previously serves as special education coordinator director and teacher and a behavioral therapist in Hickman Mills Kansas City Center and North Kansas City school districts all on the Missouri side she earned her bachelor's degree at Central Missouri State University and master's degree at the University of Missouri in Kansas City with her excellent record of mentoring teacher shaping positive School culture and and guiding students to achieve academic and personal growth we definitely think and know Maya is a great fit to join our leadership team and the family over at Pinckney I do I would like to ask you to invite you to the podium and share a few words laughs [Laughter] this is a lot for

022me I apologize and Dr Lewis knows this this is a lot for me but I just want to thank you guys I think I had the opportunity to be at Pickney today after school to meet with not only staff but family it is a fantastic school before I even applied to Pinckney I made sure I looked at the school I went through the website and really looked at some of the things that they needed to see if I was the person that could help provide that leadership for that building fantastic School fantastic families fantastic Community I had the opportunity today to just embrace the kids and the family we had great conversations about what's next to come and I'm excited I am very excited to be here thank you Dr Lewis and thank you board

023for giving me this opportunity um go Panthers yeah thank you thank you thank you and welcome [Applause] you have one of our parent committee members that was on the parent interviewing Committee in the audience is as well I think we did receive a stamp of approval as well so thank you samri um I think to all board members administrators and staff who attended the community volunteers event that involved our one dream MLK celebration on last Thursday it was a wonderful Showcase of the many contributions that many of our staff and students and community members make to this entire city congratulations again to Miss Erica Hill on her receipt of the 2020 MLK champion of equity award Eric has been instrumental in our partnership not only just a solid partnership with lmh health for Beyond diversity

024training of hospital staff alongside our teachers and staff and of course she spearheaded the development of the lmh health Leadership Academy a paid summer internship program for traditionally underserved students to learn about careers in the health care field these are just few the few of our many contributions to this community and definitely into the areas of equity so congratulations again to Erica I would also like to publicly thank Thomas Thomas John Griffin foundation for its donation of 7 500 to the tiny k early uh intervention this is made possible um by the annual TJ 5K and Family Fun Run This brings the Thomas John Griffin Foundation combined contributions to Tiny K during the last several years so the total of 32 500 uh we definitely appreciate the generosity we have two inclement weather days so

025far this winter let's all keep our fingers crossed that we don't have any more so this means currently that our school will be in session on Friday April the 17th which is our designated inclement weather makeup day because the board planned for and will use this makeup day the state of Kansas forgives the loss of instructional time on our second inclement weather day uh even though she's not here I know she's watching she always is watching it seemed like I was making the speech last year too so we have to look at the calendar next year but my wife is celebrating her birthday today and so happy birthday Tiffany [Applause] great foreign at this time we're gonna move make a motion to approve the consent agenda patronage oh my goodness it's ready I had a

026three-day weekend I'm kind of off my game oh sorry at this time we will have Patron commentary um I will read the particip audience participation the USD 497 Board of Education welcomes Patron comments and thanks you for taking the time to talk to us about our policies and procedures we set aside this time during our regular meetings to hear from the public this is your time to share your 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 um please limit your comments to five minutes

027thank you so at this time we have um Topher I'm gonna get your last name right Anakin thank you hello um hello I'm usually I feel like I'm usually standing up here so I know when you're done but I'm not um uh man uh they're not always like this we don't always have a choir but that's a good first board meeting um so uh today I wanted to you know I've been doing this because I think it's important to develop intent relationship um we hired the KC MO principal we got a Casey most superintendent so I wanted to come share a little story about my relationship with Kansas City Missouri um I spent some time in the historic Mannheim neighborhood on Troost Avenue I did a 40-day fast from Finance where I didn't touch money

028or make any monetary exchanges for 40 days I just gave myself and my art to the community to see what would happen um while I was there there was a lot of attempted Community uh they're trying to gentrify um and a lot of things happen one of the things that happened that kind of brought us together as a community was that they started cutting down all these trees the the thought was we can make clean straight sidewalks and then developers will want to come in and buy up these properties and um well there was an abandoned school to bankrupt School Brad Pitt's make it right foundation renovated into low-income housing and so that had been like kind of the impetus for that neighborhood so they but they had been like jumping from neighborhood to neighborhood

029so you couldn't see them coming you know literally walking down the street and the day before you'd see three generations of a family playing under a tree and then the next day that tree is gone um and so we Sim I think you guys have kind of caught my vibe so we protested I wrote a poem um and so along with a couple other people and so this is uh my this was my protest poem um so yeah this is real um you can build a pretty sidewalk make it right around a tree are you an architect or a lumberjack who owns city property we know you want your cut but we need our canopy engages in the process that is all we're begging please oh please oh please I ain't gonna make that quarterly

030choir go don't take away our trees like knowledge given Eve or that fruit she did eat money gives us knowledge that we grow economy but it's just a gamble you see an investment in greed and our community grew before you under the shade of a tree oh please oh please don't take away our trees the roots of our neighborhood stretch deep and stretch wide but you refuse to stop and look across the truth divide you drive past too fast to come and walk by our side yeah you tell us you know what's best for us no matter what you decide oh please oh please don't take away our trees are you a John Rockefeller or a Johnny Appleseed are you motivated by growth or is it simple greed will you fight like John Henry against

031the faceless machine we don't have to fight alone because we are community oh please oh please don't take away our trees welcome to the show thank you Topher and um we have Sarah Russell Lynn wrestling okay um good evening my name is Sarah Cillian and I'm a teacher at Pinckney Elementary School and I also have a student at Lawrence High School I want to say ma'am I am so glad that you're here I'm so excited to work with you so thank you um I'm here to talk a little bit about the Leaky Roof situation in our buildings and the shortage of custodial and professional staff and the need for a better classified compensation rates when I started working at Pinckney in 2013 we had roof leaks on several occasions we were told that those issues

032would be addressed during our renovation we came back to a lovely renovated building and quickly discovered that Not only was the roof still leaking in the same spots but our new addition had issues at well as well we had paint bubbling under window sills and water that would trickle down walls and the support pole when it rains even our library has struggled with leaks which is stressful for a librarian as she strives to keep all of our materials safe over the last three years we've listened to HVAC people blame the roofers and roofers blame HVAC systems for the leaks and then following an incident last year when a wet ceiling tile fell down on a student we had to move an entire class to another room for the rest of the year I was rather

033frustrated to hear the similar situation happen in art room at LHS last week and they're now displaced to an old weight room and in fact my daughter said that when they opened up the hallway there were leaks at the beginning of the year so there's always been trash cans so it's just um anyhow sorry I didn't address so why are we having so many issues with leaks are these leaks being allowed to progress to the point of fading in on students with an already tight budget how do we ensure that our contractors are being held accountable and completing repairs we have materials being damaged by ongoing leaks who is paying to replace these items as a teacher I often purchase items on my own to make sure that we have what we need in the

034classroom but I'm not buying photo paper and Specialty art supplies that surely aren't cheap I've been trying to figure out why these leaks have been allowed to continue for so long but I don't have a good answer however I would like to alert you to the shortage of custodial staff in my building while we have two full-time custodians our building size supports the addition of a halftime person last week I found out that Lawrence high should have 20 custodial staff but are operating with only half of that amount similarly while free state has increased its building size it is still operating at the Staffing level from 10 years ago there are currently only four custodial vacancies posted on the district's website there for Lawrence Virtual School Lawrence High School Deerfield and Free State High School

035the custodial job description has a purpose statement which is that the job of the custodian has done for the purposes of maintaining an attractive sanitary and safe facility for students staff and public providing equipment and Furniture classroom activities and then minimizing property damage loss and liability exposure there are nine essential functions listed for this position and the fourth on the list is that they inspect school or District facilities for the purpose of ensuring that the site is suitable for safe operations maintained in attractive and clean condition and or identifying necessary repairs due to vandalism equipment breakage weather conditions Etc um I'm building our two custodians are busy just trying to keep up with the basic duties necessary for the purpose of maintaining a sanctuary safe and attractive environment they're you know trying to keep floors

036vacuum they're trying to keep the surfaces everybody's touching we have kids whether you're sick they're cleaning tables they're doing all those essential things um and um for doing nine essential and one other function the salary range listed is 11.62 cents per hour I am concerned that the custodial staff we have will burn out if they had don't already and the situation will be exacerbated like other classified staff positions it may take a significant raise in pay in order to attract and retain the staff we need to keep our schools safe as of this afternoon I counted 41 separate job listings for preparers I don't know the actual number of pairs needed because we have two openings at our building but oftentimes they have more than one opening but they only have one job listing flight

037custodians para Educators also have a detailed list of job responsibilities and pair Educators working at a title one building or District y require a minimum of 48 college credit hours or the successful completion of the state approved per educator assessment which I'm sure they pay out of their own pocket for all of this they are paid 10.74 an hour if they are providing supervision that is non-instructional such as lunch supervision the pay drops to 918 an hour in my opinion these essential positions help us meet the needs of our students at previous meetings you've heard about how important it is to meet the federally mandated IEP minutes of our students we need to explore other methods of attracting quality candidates and compensate them with a living wage they will return year after year as a

038form of para I know how hard it is to pay the bills without working additional jobs and or having a partner contributing to your household some previous classified concerns other than Sally have started to be addressed so we had iPads added in the problem we've run into that I found out about today was that our pairs are able to log on to check email which was one of the concerns that they are not able to access employee online and print pay stubs or any of that so I'm not sure if it's just a something we just haven't figured out as a building or if it's something Tech can fix I'm not sure on that one yet um so I'm working on that and then we also there's been a little confusion I asked Mrs Devin

039to clarify um we run an impression that classified staff was going to be paid on snow days and our employees logged in and when they look at their time clock it's showing that they're getting paid but it's also deducting it from their leave time so I wasn't sure if that's just the way it's being listed for pay or not so I was going to try to find out more about that but I did want to thank the district for having Alpha roof income complete repairs or Pickney I was just kind of cautious that all the issues have been resolved to level asserted and consent agenda item 3.8 today I took some pictures of some ceiling tiles that still seem to be wet and I went by just now on the way here and in the

040dark you can actually get a better contrast I've got those pictures and in one of our classrooms this morning before school the student or the teacher had noticed you could hear water dripping still and so um we did notify our head custodian he's filled out a work order so we'll find out about that so we're not sure if that one really is a HVAC issue she was told that by the people who the HVAC that when we run the air conditioning that it will leak but we're running heat so I don't know how that works but anyhow so thank you thank you you have four commentary at this time um I just wanted to update the board that the policy committee met Paula is going to be joining us we're super excited about that so

041there'll be three of us on the I hope you are super excited I keep telling her it's awesome um so it's going to be really nice to have your voice there and you just welcome I really look forward to working with you more directly every other Monday um over lunch we'll get uh coffee so um the policy committee most importantly I wanted the board members to know and and for our teacher staff to know our and all staff to know that we're working on a investigating model policies or looking at what other districts do around bullying policies for staff and seeing if there's something we can do to enhance um protections for the people that that serve our kids every day um in addition to the policies we have protecting children so this would be

042for the grown-ups and the um in our spaces that work for work for the district um and as we're going through that process if there are any questions from board members you can talk to Dave and he can provide you any context that might be helpful gonna I just wanted to share a couple of items on the 14th gr and I met with the facilities committee we've reviewed some upcoming items that will be coming to the board in the next month or so that are related to the draft Capital Improvement plan and also our bond construction projects and I will just say that many of the issues that we just heard about in regard to roof leaks and custodial Staffing those are issues that we have been talking about on a regular basis in our

043meetings and we feel like we are making some progress on some of those issues and just know that that we are we are paying attention to those things and trying to get some resolution to some of those ongoing issues um wanted to share with the board that on January 15th and 16th I had the opportunity to attend the kasb advocacy and action event in Topeka so that is a day of a day and a half of learning sessions about issues that will be before the legislature this session around public education in Kansas and also an opportunity then to use that learning and go visit with legislators I used the opportunity to visit all the offices of our Douglas County legislators got to meet with most of them and follow up on the legislative priorities that

044we had presented that we have presented Melissa had presented on our behalf at the chamber breakfast at the beginning of January and I was really excited that um they they have a lot of openness and support for some of the issues that we are talking about we also in conjunction with uh that event had um our quarterly kasb board meeting I don't have a lot to report from that it's sort of typical business stuff um I am getting ready to go to Washington DC as part of the state association's advocacy contingency to the National School Board association's advocacy event starting at the end of this week and next week and we will be visiting with our Congress people and Senators next Tuesday so I'm really looking forward to that as well as I will be

045attending the nsba equity Symposium on Saturday and representing the State Association on the policies and resolutions committee for nsba so a lot of a lot of things coming up around policy and and advocacy work related to that and then uh asked I wanted to just share that had the great pleasure of being able to attend the kansans Kansan of the Year ceremony last Friday evening at which one of the great names in public education in Kansas was honored as one of the kansans of the Year Dale Dennis was presented that award by the native Sons and Daughters of Kansas and in recognition of his selfless public service over the past 52 years to the students of Kansas Public Schools and it was just a very it was a very moving tribute and it was I

046was very inspired because I see him as someone who really is a great definition of a public servant he does it because he cares deeply from his heart and he does it with integrity and it was nice to see him honored for that work so just wanted to share that thank you thank you any other board members yes I like to share that I attended the listening and learning Lawrence Lions series on safety and it was really encouraging to see leadership in action with those students and one of the recurring themes was the request to have a caring adult they said that over and over again they also mentioned how they appreciated Dr Lewis's visibility and accessibility so that was really really a key takeaway and I also attended the success Place six breakfast on

047the 23rd of January which is a coalition for Early Childhood Professionals in development and also on the 23rd to have the opportunity to attend the MLK one dream it was great seeing the students in action their passion you can see that they poured so much hard work into what they were doing they are phenomenal it was great um seeing that and also like to congratulate the people who put it on the community members the committee and all the scholars as well and um I also had the opportunity to begin my week connecting with the Leadership Academy students so that was a great Kickstart to my week I'm always connecting with them making sure I stay visible and that caring adult in their life beyond high school we had that conversation yesterday as well so I'm

048enjoying that as well thank you well I would like to add in that you know I've been Eric and I've been going around town together because we went to all the same events but um I would just like to read just piggyback off what she said I just the common theme that I keep seeing is that you know our community is improving our communication is improving and you see all these young students who are they um I was encouraged at Lawrence High School to see the students stress being kind and they stressed that it's important to just grow the the connection to the one caring adult so I'm seeing that out in the community yes uh well mine's very small short so um I attended the a lot of orientations with the district site committee

049committees I attended our district site Council it was a very our first meeting I believe and with the discussion around that was that team would like to be more action oriented with some of the district work here and then I also attended our community partner on peace lead tech director orientation meeting so that was a long Saturday meeting so I'm excited to have joined Peasley Tech in that I also attended the student voices the first series around school safety and I really appreciated their concerns and their challenges and really was engaged with each other around those issues and bringing that to staff and administration and the board also I attended the ksab boardmanship leadership training this last couple of weeks and that's thank you Paula and Nola um so of course Shannon I had a

050question concerning the leaks at Lauren's high so me and another student at my school had um done a bunch of reporting on Monday and Tuesday with our teacher who had those problems and I didn't even know like what's do you know what's going on with that because I went in there this morning like looked into his room and it still is like just a little plastic tarp over the hole that has like through the roof like you can see daylight in it so so um gr and I as members of the facilities committee had our last meeting prior to the events of this last week we have reached out to our staff in our awaiting some feedback on what has happened and what the what the plan is to address that so if it's all

051right with you once we have received that information we can share that with you okay I I don't I want to give our staff an opportunity to inform us of what conversations have happened with our construction managers and our design team around those issues before we um before we can really give you a better answer to that and um do you know like this is just a question I have who um because there was um I know there's like some art supplies that were damaged and um some books in his room that were damaged do you know who comes out of I think that's probably a question for Dr Lewis in terms of uh yeah certainly if there was anything that was damaged whether it was materials that he needs to teach we will replace

052those I think Jennifer is nodding her head out of her curriculum budget so we'll definitely and and we did and you'll get some information from of course our team to get some information to our facilities committee and I think Julie will reach out to members of the budget team as well it's kind of I think there's a misconception that that was a new roof that was but it is certainly not a new roof but we're uh we'll definitely get you some communication good questions anyone else I do want to update the board on the work um I've just completed my second meeting with our superintendent student advisory Council and the first meeting was more like just an overview I kind of reviewed our strategic plan and began to talk about what our role is as

053a um what their role is as a student superintendent student advisory Council in terms of what we want to work on you know what do we want to focus on and today we addressed um several issues we've got some really good feedback from the students around sros and how we can improve the relationship there we talked about um our Equity work and identifying some barriers there I was really eye-opening to kind of hear from their perspectives their lived experience in terms of looked at our AP thanks Jennifer we looked at some of the data that you're going to share tonight but um and also um safety we continue to talk about safety so this group is really allowing me Insight in terms of like I said their daily lived experience and so I shared with

054them that the work that we want to do there again is Legacy work I want them to be able to say that when they come back 10 15 years from now that I helped impact or improve Lawrence Public Schools so very good group of students I'm super excited to to work with them thank you Dr Lewis anyone else hey now I'm ready may I have a motion to approve the like you got it you're good because it agenda um are we I move the Board of Education adopt the items listed on the consent agenda second did you wanna no good we're good right okay could do Blackwood oh yes Gordon Ross Yes Hill yes Kimball yes Smith yes Johnson yes Jones yes motion passes 7-0 great at this time we will have all three um

055Sammy Devin oh yes now you do it sorry I've been yeah we've been the vice president since July I think it was yesterday but I would like to honor um the folks that are retiring um so um thank you to Daniel's May for 20 years of service to our district and Devotion to our community and schools additionally I would like to sincerely thank Jennifer Kennedy for 27 years of service to our community and District we hope that you have a lovely retirement and enjoy the well-earned break mm-hmm yes at this time we'll have a a report on this 20 20 21 and 21 22 school year calendars with um Sammy Devin JC Rob Robertson and Jill Anderson report okay well good evening and thank you for allowing us this time this evening to be able

056to share the work that has come out of our uh the calendar committee we've met several times the this past few months so I'd like to introduce Jill Anderson and J.C Roberson and they're going to go over some of the highlights of the calendar for those of you don't know me I'm Jill Anderson my D.A job is Kennedy I do early childhood at Kennedy um so we co-chair this committee just to put a few of the perimeters around there so the new people in this room can understand we do go with the Kansas statute of 1116 hours for the school year that's how we we start there our Master agreement is student instructional days the number of contact days parent-teacher conferences recording reporting days professional development days Elementary planning days and then holidays and vacations

057I time Jason Robertson principal at Woodlawn this is my first year on this committee I was gifted this from Miss friedel but it has been awesome I'm learning a lot yes learning a lot and that's always lovely so um along with the state statutes we adhere to the traditional parameters that we are not required to so the first semester is completed before winter break graduation is not in conflict with KU graduation which is on May 17th High School graduation practice is the Monday before graduation and spring break coincides with ku's spring break on both of these calendars new this year that's a little different than in past years elementary students will begin on August 17th which is a Monday with a half day in the past Elementary has always started on a Wednesday and we

058included two inclement weather days into the calendar next year traditionally we've had one so if we have snow days then we would first attend those two identified inclement weather days and then the next two days missed because of inclement weather will be forgiven and that's about it yeah question I have a couple okay I think I um I told Dr Lewis I was going to ask this so hopefully he let you know um so I have a high school graduate coming and hopefully another one in a few years um uh the um graduation date is on Tuesday this is a hardship for families who want to celebrate their kids graduation because they're having to take days off in the middle of the week or family are traveling and they can't come for those celebrations I

059don't know if this is traditional if there's some I mean if it's like traditional across all high schools everywhere or or do we have to do that or it's not traditional of all high schools everywhere in the state of Kansas and it's not set in stone that we have to do that I have Mark Pruitt in the audience and he's going to give you some history behind why it's through the week and not on the weekend okay okay thank you so traditionally for several years before I arrived in the district we had back-to-back graduations on Sunday then I think it was probably 2012 or 13 there was a conflict with the ku's graduation and it was going to bump ours to after Memorial Day so we met with parents at both free state Lawrence High

060to look at options and that's where we selected by doing graduation midweek it allowed us to keep it sort of in the same time frame of Before Memorial day knowing that it created obstacles for some but it also created opportunities for others and so we've kind of looked at that we've had some parents ask and I I've not heard personally that there's a big push to change one way or the other okay I'm the first big push I would love to see it happen I just think it would be I mean yeah I mean I almost not just from not I just think for a lot a lot of families that there could be some value in that but I agree that anytime you change a schedule somebody wins somebody loses I appreciate it and

061let me add to that since I've been on this committee forever okay so that was a board directive um the board um participates in both graduations so the board then had a two o'clock graduation oh please don't tell me that's why and then they had a 4 30 questions and if it was really warm then we had some medical issues that came up because they were so hot outside okay okay and at that point and maybe this has changed but we rented chairs so it was you had to rent a set for free state and a set for Lawrence High which was a cost right so doing it on two separate nights was cooler right and that that there was one rental because then we could do that for a cost preventive for that way

062it also is because um you have teachers that you also want at graduations and with that being in their work week instead of Sundays that was easier to do okay sure plus all of your custodial staff that has to it's a it's a production yeah yeah so with all of that but that's just a side note that it came from a I mean teachers have to come outside of their work day period I mean when they come in the evening it's not like that's the time they would normally be there I mean they're they're and they're um okay I'm going to digress that yes thank you that's helpful it was awesome I can probably provide some context so I was on the board when this changed the reason that I know no and actually this

063it was not a board driven it was not a board driven thing um but when it was presented to the board kind of this whole set of reasons some of which um yeah Jill had described some of which um you had mentioned the calendar reasons conflicting with KU are need to be able to use Allen field house as our backup location um it was all of those things together that at the time the recommendation came from the administration to move it um we did have a lot of conversation about that trade-off for um some families um and we heard kind of positives and negatives on both sides um so just just I wanted to reassure you that it was not because board members complained about sitting out on the hot in the hot sun although

064I will say that the one year we did it on the Sunday afternoon I was um several months pregnant and it was really miserable that was not that was not um a factor in the decision at all it was it was really a whole lot of other things that's cool thank you [Laughter] yeah are you trying to tell us something yes yeah lights out I do have I don't know if it's a question or a suggestion but someone mentioned that a lot of the activities or what we do is in alignment with the University of Kansas so I was wondering if and and I'm sorry colleagues that I didn't get the opportunity to bring this up earlier but if we also check Haskell Indian nations University because their programming is similar um to and they

065they go out of their way to check our district and the University of Kansas timeline so I think it would with our other university in town that we pay them their respect to also recognize even theirs is a lot earlier than the rest of us it their graduation ceremonies are about a week ahead of us they are and I'm meeting with Dean chuckle up here next week so great I'll ask her sorry can I so along those lines I'm also going to say the second most controversial thing I could possibly say um I do not think that spring break should be aligned with ku's calendar uh and this is why because it me and and I could be and I know not everyone will agree with me and certainly my KU colleagues are probably would

066not agree with me but um the the KU spring break is so early in the year and one of the things we explored in the negotiations committee was the gap between when when teachers get a break in the spring so while I appreciated the snow days that were built in and Anna kind of explained to me that you looked at is there a possibility of adding solidly adding in another days that teachers know they're going to have in the middle of April that would do things like perhaps help with attendance or or I mean for teachers needing a mental health Break um and you know just looking at um when the timeline of spring break as as a tradition of of correlating with with KU certainly has a value add for this community I would

067not say that I wouldn't argue that it doesn't but I am thinking about our staff specifically and for them um there does seem in the calendar to be this long gap between when there is the the break from March to end of May and we've heard from teachers that it's too long so that that would be one other thing I would ask you to think about I know that we are going to approve a two-year calendar um so maybe the next time that you all meet to do this uh I will not be sitting on the board um but um I would ask that you consider that the graduation dates maybe being Thursdays and Fridays or um spring break looking at the the possibility of moving it um so anyway just a thought so you

068can approve both years but as you know you've approved modifications well that's helpful Anna thank you one that I'm just going to put out there that we may have to modify it is as we're working on um making sure that the nine o'clock option for students will not have a negative budget impact we may have to come back and add a plan day or someday for a high school staff some of the not necessarily graduation but we can share those things with the calendar committee and okay um if there is some compromise they may come back yeah Anna was explaining to me how you all do your work and that I mean thank you so these are just minor observations not um it seems to me like it must take a good a lot of

069effort and conversation and compromise and I appreciate all that effort that goes into it thank you anyone else hey so I moved at the Board of Education adopt the recommended calendars for the 2020 2021 and the 2021-2022 school years say that five times fast I know oh this is unanimous oh no yeah Johnson yes Jones yes could do Blackwood yes Gordon Ross Yes Hill yes Kimball yes Smith yes motion passes 7-0 thank you for your work thank you we will have next uh curriculum update and the 2021 course proposals with Dr Stubblefield Deputy superintendent and Dr besselow director of curriculum into everything oh Dr Kelly I mean Kelly Patrick Kelly all right good evening Kelly sorry director of Career and Technical education I'm Jennifer Beth Lowe I'm glad to be here very excited anytime to

070talk about curriculum and instruction um as Ms Johnson mentioned we're also here tonight with Patrick Kelly director of Career and Technical education so he'll pop up quite a bit to share a few slides with us tonight really the presentation tonight's just going to discuss a little bit of focused curriculum work that we've done with our English at language arts social studies at the elementary level and Mathematics as well as the course proposals and we'll also plan to share some data from our advanced placement Advanced courses and jail blueprints so we have a lot of curriculum work doing that we're doing but we'll focus on that for tonight as in accordance with our timeline as that's where we're putting a lot of our budget and our leadership hours this semester or this year so this is

071just a quick reminder I heard a lot of reference in the board video to strategic plans so we have a strategic team that is comprised of several folks of the teaching and learning Department as well as special education student services so we meet periodically to talk about how we're working and progressing through the plan but essentially both of these items identified in green are really in phase one so we bundled them very intentionally together but as we work through curriculum with any content area we're first trying to identify what we want students to be able to know and do so essentially we're talking about getting back to the standards and we're talking about a rich scope and sequence so that no matter if a teacher has been a veteran teacher for 20 years or they're

072coming brand new to the district they have a sense of impulse of what they're expected to be teaching and then the second item that we're really focusing on is using our instructional resources that truly and authentically honor and preserve students backgrounds and diversity and so that comes the easier part of that is adopting new resources and vetting them but the other side of that work is as we review those content areas ensuring that the curriculum materials that are out in the field are appropriate and diverse and relevant to our students so last spring you heard a very detailed report of what was happening in our English language arts curriculum so we're really in year two of English language arts and so I do want to give credit to Rachel Smith she is our secondary English

073as a language arts curriculum coach so she kind of has a duality of a learning coach and specifically that Ela content area she's worked a lot with the teams specifically to middle school and high school and so out of that rich curriculum that you saw last spring we're continuing some very intentional work this year in finishing those units specific to 9th and 10th grade at the English language arts we have a very very different thematic approach now to our content as we're teaching to standards first and then we have broader larger themes and then we are focusing now on creating a vertical alignment plan so six straight writing writing is easily easy to get lost within a Content area and become content focused or novel focused and so we just did at our last January

0747th High School professional development a calibration with both middle and high school teachers as far as how are we seeing our different papers come through the sixth straight writing so it's really neat to see our Middle School and High School colleagues in the same room talking about some writing we are bundling that next year with the work that our elementary folks are doing to create a 612 writing progression document that we can really dig into and make sure that that scaffolding of skills is there American lit 2 1 and 2 you heard a little bit about last year this is our first year at the high school level of some successful integration and implementation of this being a choice option last year in previous years you may recall American literature one was a required and

075controversial course and so we've done a lot of work and they're continuing to finish what those units look like but essentially students have a choice of enrolling they have to take either one American lit one or American lit two but we've also done some very intentional scope and sequencing so that the time period of American what lit one is not focusing on a very oppressive years for certain populations we're incorporating Renaissance period and some other positive contributions so even if students opt to take American lit one which can be heavy from with everything from puritanism to some slavery and components that chronologically are fitting that time period we're also seeing celebrations of some of those same groups so that's a been a big milestone and we've been adopting new resources that are going to be

076supporting that as well as an anthology American lit 2 we've actually increased the number those the chronological years from like 1920 to present because there's a lot of contemporary novels as well we don't want to think about American literature has always been something in the past so really good work is coming out of that group a lot of new Progressive ideas very relevant curriculum so I'm excited about that and that work should be completed this year we talked a lot about novel adoptions even last year so we're excited and we have the pleasure of having a little bit of budget resource to really be looking at that 9th and 10th grade already adopted new Anthology so those are actually in circulation now we're being very focused and intentional as we build curriculum scope and sequences

077with having novels that have been vetted and approved that teachers have to select from so they already have some vetting and some background and how to use them we've also partnered excited about a partnership with our parents of color and our Equity advisory Council so we actually have parents and stakeholders in our community that have offered to vet and provide multiple perspectives to our novels so it's not just an internal component and I'm really proud of our teacher teams and Rachel Smith's work in that they came forward and said even though we're using this really rich tool which is what we call our csrc our culturally relevant resource criteria your sustainable resource criteria it's a document we've had many eyes on including some external stakeholders and and making sure that when we're adopting resources they're

078appropriate but it's exciting to hear our teachers say you know largely we're a white female based instructional group and we don't feel comfortable saying that this is the one and only perspective even if three or four of us fed it so it's been really exciting we've had a lot of awareness and a lot of shifts in that and then we've been taking that work and pushing that into the field during professional development with the colleagues not on the leadership team so a lot of shifts of movement in ela but we're excited at the outcomes that we're getting go forward there we go um last thing with elas we've had some really rich conversations about calibrating our definition of what general education and advanced education courses are although it seems that something that would come very

079natural we did do a deeper dive in what are we really saying is Advanced courses and so really we're trying to look at the same curriculum it's a deeper dive into rigor higher autonomy and then there's additional writing components the diversity of materials are spreading over into both classes so no longer are we necessarily saying a student half is is now ready to go if they read a certain Canon of literature so we're hoping that opens doors in terms of equity and who's feeling that that curriculum may be applicable to them and so that has been calibrated over both high schools and we're really excited that it was a teacher-defined definition and that's going to be something that we continue to be pervasive in in all the curriculum decisions we make as we adopt new

080resources switching over a little bit to math so secondary math this is the first year of our curriculum timeline that we really launched with with working through essentially aspiring a leadership team that got together and then that's math and special education and ell voices and all of our curriculum models it's a teacher-focused team so we have kudos to Dr shakia Bland she is our math curriculum coach really supporting 6 through 12 and then we have been lucky to bring in Melissa fast she was the former Kansas department of education math consultant who's branched out to do some independent work so she's been working not just on the standards and familiarity of the standards but Focus standards so Kansas really has a 70 2010 weighting to the standards so when we are defining a scope and

081sequence we want to make sure that we're aligning to those percentages otherwise what is maybe transferring into State assessments and different areas that were being evaluated on that waiting might not be equal so as we write our scope and sequence we're working with her and she's brought a lot of really good support in terms of how we're thinking about instruction how we're scaffolding how we're maintaining rigor and then of course that transfer of knowledge so one observation we've had is that our students can Master it in isolated skills isolated lessons but are they performing on those state math assessments and other bigger higher tasks assessments so those are some really good conversations we've had not just with our math curriculum leadership but also largely with our math colleagues in the field so she's come out

082and done some work with us we're excited Dr Lewis came by and was our celebrity visitor for January 7th to see us there so really good work all these pictures that you're seeing throughout the presentation is work that that has us that has transpired this year and if you see you always see like teachers at the board so we really try to have a facilitation model and then when we have a consultant come in we put our teachers to work so we want them to own the curriculum and feel a part of that we also have specific housing structures for any curriculum documents that have been made in the instructional shifts so that we realize not every math teacher has a has the pleasure of being at the table or writing that and we don't

083want to lose anything on transference to the field so we've been very intentional not only with providing professional development space for what does that mean and how is that communication happening into the to the other teachers but also that they have this housing structure so that two years from now new teachers coming in have a place that they can access scope and sequence and some of those instructional shifts and we are almost to the point of looking at resource review and adoption so this would be our textbooks we're really proud and excited that some of our teachers are looking at open education resources so no one's asking and clamoring for books in fact Algebra 2 I have to give them some Kudos that they said even last year they were they were working ahead based

084on Eden said you know what would it save us money if we just held tight because there's nothing out there that we really like right now and that's when we know we've got some mileage that they understand and know their standards so well that they're not necessarily going with a textbook that's trying to just parcel it out for them so really proud of the work that the teachers have put in and the knowledge and capacity that they have bringing to the table and then the last thing is our common formative assessments so you heard a little bit about that that's still in the works so we can't say that it's happening absolutely with Fidelity but what that is is a teacher practice where they are writing a common assessment giving that Common Assessment based on

085certain standards that they're essentially I call it dip sticking it's like checking the oil then they come back together as a teaching team and plc's professional learning communities and then they start to discuss what worked what didn't what's the data telling us and it's a great opportunity to share instructional practices so they're getting more familiar and comfortable with writing that being very specific about the standards that they're aligning through the scope and sequence so Elementary is just getting started on their math alignment work because they finished some social studies trimester work that we'll talk about in a second so we brought Melissa fast in it was actually last week for the first time so you could see we were writing two-step word problems so we have teachers highly engaged in pulling away from just walking

086through those resources into this deeper instructional methodologies and really getting into some state level resources and just really working through those Focus level standards and then really we need to look at that bottom Point intervention tools what do we do if the students are showing gaps and how do we slow down and re-teach Concepts while making sure our other students are ready to move forward so we're really starting to get richly more familiar with with the actual math practices and what that needs to look like and transfer into the classroom we had an upgrade that thanks to you guys we had an upgrade to the 2018 math expressions that's the core math resource it's currently rated as one of the top programs in the nation but we have very intentionally stayed with one and two-year

087contracts because we want to make sure that we do our curriculum work first before we find resources and get ourselves locked into a longer contract so those are conversations that Dr Stubblefield and I have had along with Darcy our elementary curriculum director but through some of the work with math expressions we've been intentional about building teachers capacity and how to use the tool and so you'll see a lot of professional development that we have already offered as well as a separate group pilot we have 60 elementary teachers and some of our learning coaches out in the field that are receiving additional instruction and additional resource training so that we're making informed decisions these are math and English language arts and to be the most expensive curriculum adoptions so that we're making the right choices so

088meanwhile we are looking at other programs and talking to the Consultants who are out in the field but what we are currently using right now is ranked really high so we're excited about that upgrade there's also a personal math trainer component that has an Adaptive components so that we're really looking at what do students need individually instead of a group group instructional approach before you switch gears to social studies I have a quick question about the secondary math so one of the things I read and heard about recently is a shift in focus with the College Board testing tools to um have a greater emphasis on statistical skills and I've read some commentary that our Traditional High School Math course course sequence doesn't do enough to teach students to be successful on that so has

089that come up in the discussions that you're having I know I know we have our state standards and they may not have moved to that place yet so how how if it all has that come up in the conversation you know so we've we've had kind of in the background a lot of conversations just about acceleration and where our students ending up and where do they need to be and so in some Partnerships with the University of Kansas they actually said the same thing that you just mentioned that if if math departments and colleges had their way they would actually prefer that we not push into calculus one and two and instead hit more statistics and so if you look at the workplace trends that field is a little bit higher in terms of math

090concepts is in that statistical area and working with stats versus that the other of the calc 1 calc 2 and even some pre-calc so what you're saying we are hearing over and over again we have talked about course alignment there wasn't a whole lot of um I would say teacher interest in in moving that course alignment but I think it's something that we need to Circle back around and continue to talk talk through what we are trying to do is look at our numbers of students that are starting with acceleration practices which is essentially skipping sometimes the sixth grade math class and jumping in if they're actually still Landing in those higher level math classes do they not take that last math requirement that you have to at the end of the of the year

091so those those are things that we have talked about trying to track so that we can see if if we're getting our students where they want to be parents inevitably will continue to to push um one thing that we're doing differently this year is trying to provide some more parent information we have one of the first parent information nights that I've had since being in the district six years that we're getting our fifth grade parents here February 27th to start talking about where do you want to be but I think individual plans of study would be would be a component of that they have as a heavier stats component in the upper level math classes but not the Standalone classes so we could look at that as a math team and and look at that

092for next year we don't have any shifts in the course alignment though okay but but you're right okay thank you foreign you've heard it already last year our veteran board members the social studies curriculum we essentially had an older resource it was publication date of 2003 so that's where we kind of shifted off a little bit from our timeline initially social studies wasn't supposed to be until last year but we had concerns about relevancy diversity and just the the timeliness of the resource so we have worked a lot last year with the consultant Glenn wiebe and then finished those the third trimester unit this year really good example of the teacher created curriculum framing out and coming back through the teacher feedback loop so we have professional development that we've laid out we've done a

093lot of very intentional like onboarding with teachers of what that looks like and then the feedback loop of three times a year we asked principals to do a pulse check of hey what's working what's not working and then that feedback comes directly back to the curriculum team and then we can tweak and provide a revision process this March 20 E6 we have plans to where our all of our elementary teachers K5 will get to sit down with their grade level curriculum writers and make any kinds of suggestions or tweaks to the curriculum so we're excited about that work that's been done this will give you an example this is just a snapshot out of one of our grade level elementaries of what teachers are seeing it's typically four to five pages accessible through an internal

094essentially it's a unified classroom page so teachers can access it but this is a quick glance and then it opens up into a lot of different frames lots of choices for teachers or a veteran teacher we don't want to get in their way they can take the frame and run but we are just really opening up more how questions essential questions that supporting those big Ideas so this is an example of how do environments and circumstances influence indigenous groups so we're asking students to do more critical thinking skills they're using more open education resources and primary documents versus reading one version in a textbook that's pretty canned we have amazing resources in this community between Haskell and Watkins and so we're really working on reaching out and what does that look like to bring make

095history come alive here in our classrooms so really exciting stuff here but we have really good legs underneath it for the first time and if you notice there's no we're not asking for any textbooks this is all built-in resources that are out there already at the teacher's fingertips there's maybe a few books that we've purchased focusing on community for first grade and they're little readers so so really excited about that work but always curriculum's always a work in progress so we're going to listen to our teachers and make changes as needed so this slide just touches base a little bit on our focus of visibility of learning and student Clarity so when we ask our teachers to jump into the different curriculum and the shifts and curriculum we're just wanting to be very intentional that

096we are providing CR the visibility and Clarity for teachers but that the teachers are providing that Clarity for students so what this looks like is is by capturing and posting essential questions and big ideas on the board or in a very transparent way so a student walks into a classroom they should be seeing an essential question posted on the board still work in progress I believe our Digi coach walkthroughs were showing principles we're saying 64 percent of the time they're seeing essential questions posted but the accountability component is coming from Principal walkthroughs and our Digi coach walk through tools where we have some data that's capturing is it happening we have provided professional development on our side and continue to talk about how do those essential questions and Big Ideas come through our plcs and

097become part of the teacher conversation after the curriculum teams do the work these essential questions and Big Ideas are already vetted and provided for teachers through the framework so that's how we're getting some continuity of what's happening at free states happening at Lawrence High but these are again teacher created essential questions but we don't want it to just be a question that's on the board so the other piece is the instructional alignment so as we look in the class we're training our principals and asking our principals to make sure that the essential question is actually aligned to what the students are doing and so we love to walk in classes and ask them hey what are you learning about and see if the student is is paralleling the two but we're also really focused on

098instructional alignment with our state standards and then our tasks and the depth of knowledge so is the rigor really happening the role of common formative assessments we've talked about as a t at the teacher level for having those conversations about what's working for you is is Ms Kimball's data looking like my data and what's Miss Kimball doing different for her students to be more successful and then those public scope and sequence documents have that transparency of what teachers essentially should be teaching one of our goals as we get this up and running and continuing to add more content areas is to have that transparency to our community of what the scope and sequences are so every once in a while get emails from parents especially at the elementary levels asking for those so we've talked

099about making that a transparent component of communication that that parents can look that up and see what those essential questions and what those Frameworks look like not the best though what was really exciting today in our um looking at our superintendent student advisory Council I'll just opened the floor and asked him you know share some exciting things that were going on in their building and some students shared that they're seeing essential questions up in their classrooms and um I know one said Dr Johnson comes around and checks to make sure that they're up and so it's really good to see that the work that we're talking about and doing here I didn't even mention essential question they just brought it up that those were some of the things that they were seeing in their classroom

100and so that's where it really gets down to the classroom level and and for them to really see the importance of while they're on the board I appreciate hearing that I a little funny story from Dr Johnson that she said I think I'm going to have to get a quieter cart because what's happening is sometimes as she rolls the cart down the hallway sometimes the teachers are writing that this is the question at the last minute so but that's a great example of how this is principal Partnerships are so critical because if we just think that we're writing and excuse me and it's happening we know that that's that's a little bit of a dysentopian thought so um we want to make sure that not only our district folks out in the classrooms which Dr

101Lewis has us out in classrooms but we also want to make sure that our principals are supported and and that level of accountability is happening I'm gonna pass it over to Patrick for a minute just a quick update on current technical education I'm Patrick Kelly director of career and tech ed we had Updates this year to health and bioscience finance and architecture and construction if you're not familiar for new board members career and tech ed changes a lot and that's to keep up with the changes that happen in industry and with technology and so each year we probably do revisions of curriculum for at least three to four Pathways as mandated by the state they'll change courses on us through their Advisory board so we have to make adjustments we do district-wide career field plc's

102once per semester remember some of our career and Tech teachers are going to be the only teacher in their building that teaches that content so we use online digital platforms to be able to meet face to face during plc's it's really helpful you may be the only agriculture teacher in your building and you have nobody to really bounce ideas or instructional practices off how do I do this I'm thinking about an aquaponics lesson what does that look like so that's been great we have completed our two Advisory board meetings that are required we're actually going to do a third one this year so we're pretty excited about that that's part of your strategic plan is to have those Advisory board meeting some of you are on those Advisory board meetings so we thank you for

103your service there and those advisory boards tell us what we need locally what are businesses and industries looking for locally how can we make changes they also help us in the development of improvement goals every pathway must have a three-year Improvement plan that's updated annually on four areas that would be Partnerships professional development physical environment and instructional resources and practice so our advisory boards can tell our de teachers hey this is some professional development that you might look into so for example in the automotive area they might say hey we're making a big shift this year to a while back it was hybrid vehicles and so our teacher needed to go and get some training on how to how they would maintain hybrid vehicles so that when our students went out they would have those

104skills so those are just some of the curriculum updates we're going to go in for a few more here in just a little bit but I wanted to give you some of that what you're looking at here is a revised Elementary curriculum resource timeline I know the board from last year and the year before has seen kind of a different version we've cleaned it up made it a little more simplified but essentially the big change that we have put out there is we've slowed down with some intentionality we essentially hadn't created the curriculum timeline based on the State Board of Education how they approve and revise State Standards so that the year after the state makes any kind of changes we can jump on it and make sure that our curriculum is relevant and standards

105based so that's how we initially got the first version what happened the last two years ago is we've created tidal waves of curriculum shifts for our elementary teachers that probably we need we need to slow down a little bit so between that and then the state having a science essentially science was supposed to be an area Focus this year the state doesn't have a science consultant this year they have re-adopted the ngss the which is the same Integrated Science standards that we're using so because of the work and where Elementary's at we have decided through group conversations to push that back into next year and excuse me the year after next and the next year we're really focusing on English language arts not just a resource adoption Reading Street does fall off which is our

106big primary reading curriculum resource but to also focus on the state you may be familiar with the changes that are coming down the pike with dyslexia requirements as well as the shifts in just reading instructional practices so we've talked a lot and had great conversations with Darcy and our elementary principals about just focusing on instructional practice as we pull in those curriculum resources so so you see a few those are the biggest revisions is that elas put pushed on there again and then we push science one year back it's allowing our teachers to breathe and do do the work and and really feel like they can actually implement the work before like I said another tidal wave comes to them as they try to manage all four of those subject areas together I do do

107want to give a compliment to Esther who is our early childhood learning director and coordinator she has jumped on so early learning is actually on the standards for next year she's already working through some of our curriculum design process to identify prior to standards with their team she's been wonderful to partner with so instead of saying K-12 we're trying to say pk-12 and so we're talking a lot about kindergarten Readiness standards and how we can tightly align that partnership so exciting things there foreign secondary curriculum resource timeline looks very similar what we've shaved off is this phase three the essentially teachers are navigating curriculum those curriculum structures happen at the leadership level we have to provide professional development to the teachers out in the field who may or may not be a part of that

108curriculum team and then phase two we talk about full implementation of the curriculum as well as that common formative assessment so when I mentioned that we're in the works come form of Assessments is a work in progress that's that phase two so as you'll see that it's kind of a stair step down and to the right as we work through that that timeline you'll we will see that Career and Technical education as Patrick mentioned is on there and they do have some waves as well of of that timeline integration so I wanted to share a little bit of data with you on advanced placement concurrent enrollment give you a snapshot of where we're at this is from this year so we wanted to look at it and I want to give Zach Kudos I asked

109him to pull some of this data for us so um so we wanted to look at it from a couple different ways so we wanted to look at race of students enrolled this is advanced placement courses on this slide and we wanted to look at lunch status and gender so what you're seeing is is um very typical to the National Norm of where we're seeing a lot of white female paid lunches in terms of who's enrolled in these advanced placement courses an interesting statistic in looking at are male to female ratio we are actually 300 more male students than female students between the two high schools so when we see that the male population is lower it's actually not representing what we have in our schools right now we have 300 more male students in

110our high schools than female so to give you kind of an idea of what that looks like and I'll come back to this so you have an idea but what we did is um I asked Zach he who's able to give us our district race totals so I played around a little bit with the numbers what you're seeing under demographic representation so that's the percentage of students per that race based on our student population at our high schools right now so that gives you an idea of 67 of our students are white 9.6 Hispanic so that column is reflective of the graph to the right what you're seeing in that middle it says AP ratio is we were just trying to break down of what of that population is taking those classes to see if

111the disparities were the same do we still have achievement gaps and so on so we wanted to give you some transparency of data here where the the widest gap of students represented to students taking advanced placement is actually our right students but that's based on a higher percentage of population so essentially that's reading 23 percent of white students are taking an advanced placement course so we still have some smaller population groups that we're keeping an eye on and we're going to talk in just a second about what our action plan and answer is for that but this gives you a little bit of a of a of a pulse of who's taking the classes right now just to give you a brief core a brief glance this is our Advanced courses so where we don't

112control our advanced placement curriculum that's dictated it from from national board we have we do have advanced courses so we write the curriculum for the advanced courses so if you're if you look at this we're following a very similar trajectory as we did the advanced placement courses uh is there so the advanced placement courses that are taken that's including Avid students correct correct yeah that's correct um okay I'll think of my next question so then we also wanted to pull our Jayhawk blueprint so Jayhawk blueprint is our concurrent courses so these are courses that students are taking and it's a partnership with the University of Kansas right now where they have a class that they're taking that they receive upon successful completion High School Credit as well as University Credit so this is the statistics

113for enrollment for them as well so again we're mirroring the white paid female even increasing the gender gap a little bit more in terms of who's taking those Jayhawk blueprint courses so we still following this the same same patterns as we're looking at which isn't unfortunately unique nationally but we are talking about our next step is we want to Grapple with last year's data and see are we closing some gaps and then we want to look at some State and National Trend data and unfortunately with the even advanced placement I was able to locate Advanced uh where where advanced placement students were taking the exams and it was following that same trajectory but it doesn't really give me any kind of data on who's actually taking the classes because as we know you can take

114an advanced placement course and don't have to take the exam um so what are we doing about this so we have a few action items and this is I love it Dr Lewis says the best this is where Equity work lives right and this is this is where we can start to move forward so we're doing a couple things differently we did with Jayhawk blueprint last year we did a big parent night I know some of you came and we really talked a lot to the parents but in having some good conversations with our counselors who work with the students every day they had talked about some students just hearing that there was even a fee associated with Jayhawk blueprint courses just kind of shut down and said I can't do it even when councilor

115said well there's a scholarship it just seemed mentally that there was another hurdle there so we talked about in some brainstorming getting KU and myself out to those schools and talking about the formality of the Jayhawk blueprint scholarship and the money that's there because it's not a scholarship that right now is very hard to obtain it it's aligned to if you're freeing reduced lunches so there's literally essentially a form that we need permission to check for in reduced lunches so that we can obtain the scholarships so we think with more communication to students that that would increase numbers we did have over 350 students at free state taking the j-hop blueprint courses versus 109 at Lawrence High School so we've been having some very intentional conversations about how do we build capacity and make sure

116that those opportunities are there for all of our students curriculum relevance I ask a question there before you move on so um I appreciate the information about the the student contact information scholarships so one thing that occurs to me in terms I'm glad to hear you're looking at National Data and you're kind of trying you're wrestling with how do we make this easier but I wonder if it's something that's quite simple like if you didn't use the word scholarship if you I mean I'm sure that you have been exploring these possibilities about how the communication to students gets how they understand the ease of getting that waiver or or if you chose scholarship as an academic word and it means something very specific and for kids that perhaps don't see them themselves in those classes

117for any Myriad of barriers scholarship probably aligns with specific classmates they know to be anxious about applying for those scholarships as well maybe they don't see themselves within that realm I mean just a thought or it just equals work I mean to me like this this um it seems like there are just some in Dr Lewis you talked about there might be these very simple things that you could do that that would reduce um some of the barriers because I know there's been there's always this conversation about how do you reach um students on free and reduced lunch when you can't necessarily um uh identify them as such when you're doing can you articulate that piece like how you identify who might be um eligible and how you recruit them and those types of yeah

118you know that's a and that's a great point I think we if we use a different word than scholarship I think I think you have a great point that we need to think about is how we're even framing that scholarship sounds like a hoop that I have to jump through and then how are we for the identification is tricky just because right now we can we can make some sweeping judgments based on some subgroups that we're targeting and talking about one of the one of the things that's exciting about as we reach out and talk with Department chairs and our counselors is that there isn't a lot of gatekeeping happening as far as teachers wanting students of of color and and to close some of those achievement gaps so we've talked about that relational aspect

119that came up earlier today tonight of just having a conversation and feeling like they're invited into that space or that somebody thinks that they could do that work I think that's a big component um we can't share of course the green reduced lunches I can't even access it without the parent permission so those are pieces I think that are still hurdles that we've got to work through but we also think well though advanced placement has its own curriculum blueprint has its own curriculum Advanced we control that curriculum so making sure that we're writing curriculum that's friendlier and that's been come has come back as some feedback first from informal feedback from some of our students is feeling that that curriculum is a place and space that they belong or even interested in so Dr Stubblefield

120has talked about individual plans of study and how the state has been seeking that has required that we get on that particularly so that also I'm sure will be a vehicle for driving students um toward classes that maybe they could have always been accessing and were not right correct yes that's another fact to Dr stubblefield's credit she brought some of that up earlier today as we talked about um you know if if a student's going to be a junior and we're just now having this conversation we probably missed the mark so how does this back up earlier into setting some tones and levels of encouragement and expectation for all students that's happening earlier in their years Middle School elementary talk about maybe how some of our title students are serviced throughout the throughout the district

121so I think it starts earlier with some mindsets as one point and so that's the earlier conversations and the plans of study I think avid's a really good example of how we ask students to take just one advanced class and so that is starting to really open up some doors and build some confidence for some students and then I think it parents is is making sure that the parents understand that those pieces are in place and that we have some Outreach even though we've pushed out a lot of communication about Jayhawk blueprint and some of the scholarship or waivers that are available you'd be surprised how many parent calls we take over the summer of parents who are just not quite sure hey what's this opportunity again how do I navigate it that kind of

122thing so I want to make sure that there's not harder tracks in in terms of obtaining that waiver form for parents from a board's perspective can you talk a little bit like as as the university has I know um this is a very affordable credit hour and we're lucky to have and I really I'm excited about the new coursework that's coming I'm glad they're there but um at the state level there's been some conversations around making these courses free so do you know the policy is there what should we be doing as a board in terms of advocating that we don't have to talk to students about waiver because it's accessible to everyone yeah I think that that would be a dream I can tell you right now I know um KU has kind of

123hit that threshold in terms of who I'm working with as far as it being a paid opportunity but we do have tight Partnerships with like the interim Vice Provost of undergraduate studies I'll bring that up and see how close they are to those conversations I know um this this doesn't apply to anything free but we've also asked them to be considerate of our Virtual School school students and even if it's one of the current courses we offer could we offer an online component so we've been trying to kind of push and expand that partnership because still been very responsive even with the change Dr Burns Wallace left but I I to your point about the free courses I think that would be amazing opportunity and we're also trying to think differently of even providing some

124students with an online opportunity in brick and mortar schools I know Mr Graber and I had conversations about what could that look like can we scaffold and and make sure that students get a successful run if they choose to do an online class while a teacher there checking on them that kind of thing do we have that opportunity or we had it a while ago I feel like maybe four years ago there was opportunities to take online courses am I missing something like through Johnson County getting through Johnson County okay so Excel and CTE sent Bill 155 is how we access courses through Johnson County Community College you know so County Community College um so yeah that that dream of having free college courses if you will reframe your idea of what a college course

125is um it's it's available now so any of our students who take certified nurse aide or any of our courses at the College and Career Center that those are free college courses um through Senate Bill 155 and Excel and CTE yeah those are it's actually been a very meaningful I mean I love that you all do that I'm um it's one of my favorite things that we do in the district um I just want to just I don't mean to this was one of the things I was concerned would happen when we implemented this we would create more opportunity for students that had opportunity which is great I mean it's it is it's I'm glad we're doing that um and I always want to see us doing more but I also don't want to be

126contributing to disparity so I'm just wondering when you look at these numbers have you set goals um do you have Target numbers is there for you something I mean for you but you know for the each individual building this is not this standard isn't we all agree is not acceptable so um next year our Target would be I don't know how you all manage that but I'm just wondering is that an approach or something that the board could say hey did you meet that marker absolutely absolutely I know with our demographics slightly changing from year to year it's it's hard to set that but in terms of you know Dr Lewis was really invested in what last year's day to look like I'm making a sweeping generalization but I think that we have made progress

127in terms of who's in those classes I know when I talk to some of the teachers and instructors that they said that they've been very intentional about grabbing some students that they think might not have maybe found themselves naturally trying to track into those areas and encouraging them to take that and they thought that relational approach was really supportive the other thing we've been working on and we just had a big professional development with our principals the other day and they played along really nicely is but we've just had really meaningful conversations about rigor and what constitute an advance play advanced class and so we've sometimes become misinformed that rigor means harder or there's more hazing involved or you've got to do this without scaffolding and so we've really tried to reset that Norm where

128rigor's rigor we've told University of Kansas we will absolutely meet your curriculum but I'm really impressed when the professors come to the table there is not this ivy league Elite approach to the curriculum it's how do we make the students successful and that's been the most reaffirming piece for me to hear is that we're really kind of getting a grasp on what rigor and advanced coursework looks like instead of trying to say here's the bar only a few of you make it so I think that paradigm shift is helping um but I do think opening up the opportunities we've got to get students feeling like they belong in that in those those spaces okay I appreciate it yeah and we had these conversations today also um it's fresh on my mind with our with our

129students and I just ask them and some of the things that I heard is they didn't want to be the only person of color in those classrooms and so that's that's their real reality in terms of why they may not sign up for these courses also heard things like if there was a teacher that looked like me in front of the classroom teaching some of these AP or blueprint classes I may want to take those classes so there are some things that we can do internally in terms of structure to assist our students and I will say regarding the free and reduced lunch rate obviously that's private information but we've created I think Paula's created a form um that's a form right so I use example of you know how you sign up for these

130things online and say check this box if you agree to receive emails from this company so it's something similar to that where if parents give us permission then we can in turn email them opportunities um like Jayhawk blueprint or other course fee waivers that they may qualify for and call them maybe to some some extent too I mean you contact them but in addition to emailing right yeah okay great thanks for doing that I appreciate it um just just last thing notable and I want to give Rick Henry and there's a whole other team in teaching and learning that's supporting this but the EOS partnership the Equal Opportunity schools partnership is a group that we are Contracting with who really works to identify who what students should be afforded that opportunity so they also reach

131in as a third party objective partnership and make some recommendations so how cool would would it be to have that conversation with somebody at the level that you know hey you've been identified as someone who should be thinking about this class so so I think that that's a really exciting piece and we're talking about as soon as next fall I believe Rick that we would be able to um perfect perfect enrollment for next fall so that we have teacher Council advocacy kind of switching those roles as we mentioned and then the additional communication to parents I appreciate Julie Boyle we've all kind of said okay how do we rally around this and make sure because we sent out waves of communication through principles they sent it out but the conversations with parents over the Summers

132some of them you know well it was May and graduation and all kinds of things were happening at the same time so um just being able to snout waves of communication so parents are getting it multiple times I think will help so j-hope blueprint update speaking of we currently offer nine concurrent courses for our students that are Juniors or seniors that they're able to take the three on the upper right hand side are offered in the summer currently at the college career center so what we are proposing that you got in your board packets this evening is Spanish 322 which is Spanish grammar form and meaning and context as one of the proposed courses and what that would look like is actually a course that's laid over our current Spanish four and five classes so

133student can go in that sit in that class and take Spanish Forum five as they currently are no changes or they can take that same class and it layers over this KU curriculum and then over the span of the year they could obtain upon successful completion D or hire they obtained the college credit now we do warn them that this is your college transcript so we aim for a little higher than the DU as far as a passing grade but this is an opportunity that students can sit in the same class and take the curriculum where the curriculum is essentially the curriculum plus and it is it's got a grammar Focus to the actual course ku's come out and worked with us and they've built a really nice online platform for our teachers to draw

134from so there's lots of resources curriculum's already there and with our KU partnership they provide the text so it's no additional expense for students the other class we're proposing this evening is the bio we're really excited about this is the biology 100 and 102 it's principles of biology and principles of biology lab so if you notice that we had been lacking science and it was because we were trying to figure out how to involve that lab component when previously KU understandingly said we had to send students on campus for the lab and we said no that wasn't what's right for our students so we have an amazing partnership with a professor there who's come out and worked with our teachers we have our science department chairs as well as the instructors that are credentialed at

135the table and we just had this amazing meeting in talking about the curriculum the curriculum instructions what does it need it originally started with just bio 100 and a dream of adding that lab and we all got together and said you know what we can do this we can we can add that lab so what this would provide our students is a four hour KU credit option that's also a general Ed credit so again we're not just bridging a pipeline to KU we're bridging a pipeline to University and college credit so they would get their science requirements for two semesters or year-long science at the school side of things and then they would obtain the four credit hours and knock out that lab that is that's why this that's why I want everyone to have

136access to those because the people that would benefit the most from that's like a that's a huge component of the cost to go to college like that sets you up for a first year of college which is what Dr Lewis had talked about and you all had sold and KU was excited about so imagine if I mean it's the thing that I want to see happen in making sure that kids that maybe didn't see a path to affording college could have one yeah um year almost if I'm counting the credits right um uh underneath their belt on their way in the door it begins to do that thing um that we had talked about which free is not maybe what will happen but in a way if you make those scholarships available right it does

137that incredible that's why I'd like to see the increase of those scholarships so anyway great work that's awesome thank you thank you thank you thank you Kelly um one aspect of that is advocacy locally to the state because this the the kind of 15 hours free thing was a priority for the State Board of Education it did not make it into the governor's budget so it won't be funded um under her proposal and I I haven't heard a lot of real um it doesn't seem to have legs this year I guess would be the way to put it but I think continued advocacy from local districts around how important this is um would be very helpful to that conversation I think the Jayhawk blueprint is an amazing partnership with the University of Kansas and I'm

138sure you probably all know where I'm going to go with this so is there a possibility of um partnering with Haskell Indian Nation youth University to create something like a haskelling a nation's University blueprint because a lot of our Native American suits and we have the data to support that they could really gain entry into that tribal University and that will build their self-esteem and confidence to want to go into secondary go ahead no I was going to ask well and correct me if I'm wrong will they essentially be able to get Rhys money I can take this too bad you know I met with Dr Wildcat just you know what during my campaign and he said that is a goal he wants our kids to be able to graduate from high school with an

139Associates so it's there it's just a matter of you know being being able to be able to make the connection between the school district and Haskell it's all there but they just want to do that again because when I was in high school back in the night I'm going to date myself back in the 90s I had friends that would go take courses at Haskell so it's doable yeah absolutely and I want to give credit Jennifer Bonilla who's a library media specialist at Whitley Mills um she had reached out as well I had that same question she said this is great but what about what about you know high schools in our backyard and so I had asked if we could have help with con whoever that contact is he mentioned Dr Wildcat that could

140be probably our first step to partner with Dr Lewis's permission to that partnership I know Dr Lewis is really interested in um a pipeline to teaching and and and what that bridge program partnership looks like so I I think we've got a lot of opportunity that's right in our backyard so if you could help with just some contacts we could definitely initiate and and pursue that um just really quickly we touched on there's common formative assessments that are happening at the school level that teach is a teacher practice and then we have a district Common Assessment so the district Common Assessment just launched this last month it's still a work in progress did not happen without some Growing Pains um and but what initially the purpose is and the the partnership with collaboration is to

141take kind of a district dipstick of okay how are we doing in measurements with what our scope and sequence is supposed to be telling us that we've covered up until this date and so um we're still obviously we have to lean on a scope and sequence that's done and completed so like I said there's there's been some Growing Pains but um that has initially launched it's been a great partnership with Zach Rick Henry principal so it just takes a lot of communication to get it up and running but we the plan is to do additional assessments such as this English language arts also at the middle level did a district Common Assessment um where standards were given to Zach Conrad and he helped generate some common assessments and then we had third grade reading so

142we'll continue to grow in that area um but it does really give us a really a compatibility in a performance piece to the curriculum to see is what we're what we think we're teaching um transferring into Mastery um this other piece on the side is a course description book which I want to give Patrick um some some credit as well we have partnered on this so this is essentially all of the courses that live in Cree cruising which some of our parent feedback has said you know maybe it's not very parent friendly or how do we make sure it's updated so what this is we're doing a lot of work to create a one course description guide that also has a lot of parent information right now there's a little bit of hunting for what

143are the graduation requirements on this part of the website and so I'm seeing some nods so so essentially what we're doing is trying to take everything put it in one place and that can be a digital guide that can live on our website it could be printed if schools choose to print some copies for new students coming in but we're really trying to put things in one place as well as aligning our course fees in a separate line item so we have course fees and course descriptions and it sounds very technical but just bringing it all together for our two high schools is going to be a big big win so we have a very ambitious timeline Patrick's doing all Career and Technical education fields and I'm covering the other areas so this will be

144out in time for enrollment in February so this has been a big project that we are working on lastly just wanted to touch base on all this sounds really great but if it's not transferring to instructional practice the bottom falls out so we've already talked about rigor related to task but what you're seeing here is evidence of providing Focus to our teachers having a curriculum design and a process really focusing on that Clarity of student learning because for example in English language arts for our third grade teachers alone there's 93 93 English standards alone so if you're a third grade teacher that's one of four big areas that you teach so providing some clarity for teachers as we push in terms of teaching is harder every day as we know and then also building our

145principles capacity so the picture on the right is actually a nailed it challenge that they did that was quite fun but our professional development we want to make sure we get our principles ahead of things because they are our ultimate Partners to making sure things are happening in the field so we're excited about that excited about that partnership with Leah and the instructional framework but we know that we have to build that instructional practice with within our curriculum or it's not gonna not gonna stay so course proposals you have four we touched based on two one of them that we haven't talked about yet is advanced physical fitness and weight training so this came from your PE High School PE teachers who work very hard with Denise Johnson so this is what you're seeing is

146coming out of a core area of teachers who are really trying to think about how to meet the needs of the students that need something else as well as reducing some class sizes so this would actually be the advanced component to the regular Fitness and weight training course where they're bursting at the same system numbers so this is essentially the advanced version of it applicable for any student grade 10 through 12 semester class we talked about bio 100 and 102 as your other proposal so this would be science year-long course credit for our students it's obviously meets NCAA requirements and serves as dual credit Heritage Spanish I know Casey shared a little bit of this with you at the last board meeting and was so excited she said well can I share um so we're

147really excited at the opportunity to offer Heritage Spanish this has actually come out of the a group of hard-working individuals that really started and tried to propose the work last year even so this is a a class that would be geared towards some of our native speakers that I think they already mentioned sometimes they get in um rolled in a Spanish one course which is inappropriate for obvious reasons or they get enrolled in a Spanish three or four or five level course where maybe they're writing and some of the literacy skills is not at that advanced grammar level that maybe that just because they're they're fluent in it so we're looking at for a variety of SEL as well as academic reasons that this would give them an option no forced enrollment but it also

148meets the Seal of by literacy criteria so really exciting opportunity for our students has some flexibility based on the 9 through 12 range of how it would fit in and and fit in the courses so none of these uh proposals tonight are impacting FTE it's working within the current FTE of our high schools and then the last one you've seen which is the Spanish 322 this is the other blueprint class and that it's called Spanish grammar for median context so this is one that's laying over Spanish four or five if students opt to take it that it does not shift any any other options of them taking four or five they can take it without this option in the regular class with the teacher that has the credentials to teach both so so those are

149our four proposals I can take any questions but Patrick's also going to share some proposals as well for the CTE so anything relevant to these four classes these next couple proposal other to say it's a couple is not truthful it's a lot um these are the College and Career Academy for our new board members we had a presentation in December on the College and Career Academy I know some of you are very familiar with it others if you're new board members you're welcome to give Bill let me know and Bill and I'm happy to sit down with you and sort of walk you through that presentation but I did want to remind you of the mission of that group is to promote self-sustainability through academic career social and emotional skills so the courses that were

150designed here are to meet that goal um Jennifer was very helpful with me and working through sort of what these courses might look like they look a little different than they look at the high school because it will really be skill based about what skills they have we want to see where their strengths are before we put them in a class so the the classes are really grouped around a set of skills I think to the question earlier I think it's neat to see statistics and probability there you don't see any calculus there but you see functions and models and that's standard based is where that comes from yeah I'd like to see that kind of expand to our regular our general Ed curriculums I think it's I think the the rest of the world

151is going to go that direction and so we're going to have to catch up not our district but our state we're gonna have to start thinking about that more seriously um many of these courses that you see here since December our teachers have already started to work on how we can overlap some of those courses so for example welding and geometry is one that we're working on taking those geometry standards kids would have an hour of geometry and they'd have a hour of welding it's just those two teachers working together to help students make those connections another one that a teacher came up with you'll see here a little later is writing and Automotive there's a nice CTE course for Automotive Research and so we use that oop too fast uh science you'll see life

152science and physical in there Earth space and Engineering applications those are the six areas that are required for our state standards social studies looks a little different again taking advantage of State Standards so these are courses that are designed around the state standards and not how we historically teach there's nothing in the state there's nothing in the graduation requirements it says they have to take a full year of U.S history that's something historically we have done they just need to have U.S history content um health and PE we did use nutrition and wellness and we renamed it to Student Success seminar for a Health Credit and physical education in there and that is for those students who as we try to get them towards graduation we're going to need to have a credit for them

153in there and we actually had to add fewer CTE courses than we expected we were able to use some courses that maybe pass Board of educations have approved and we've just sort of put on the back burner and never used and I think that really helped quite a bit but also looking at some courses in health science and biomedicine we had to make a pretty drastic revision this year to our upper level courses to maintain that pathway so that provided a great opportunity for a course called bioengineering that I think a lot of kids will really enjoy but you can see those courses there I'm personally very excited about our early childhood classes to address a huge gap we have in this community of Early Childhood care workers so some great opportunities there those are

154the courses and I think they were all in your packet with full descriptions and all those types of things in state course codes so if you have any questions I'll stand for those great last slide I promise so on Deck although we have gotten a tremendous amount of work done where we acknowledge that we still have a lot of work to do including statistics um so computer science has been a conversation that we've talked about um the state now has a computer science standards that were just approved I believe April 2019 and a state computer science consultant so computer science standards actually span K-12 so it's not just a high school field we've been looking at how do we incorporate more computer science course offerings for our students at least starting in some of the

155middle and high school you will hear some more from us on the Middle School elective design we'll be back I believe in February into February to talk a little bit about that so we're having those conversations but that's something that we want to make sure we're expanding financial literacy is something that we have some Partnerships with Junior Achievement they would love to come in and do financial literacy with every student it's just right now it's the struggle of finding who's going to share some of their content windows with us so that that we can Implement Finance literacy with that some of our parents surveys at the middle school level had even shown parents interested in financial literacy at the middle levels not waiting until high school so we're very aware and are working at how

156do we work that in stima elementary we've made some gains with stem we have some what they're looking at is mostly after school programs which we want to pull that into the instructional components so we don't want to just say Boys and Girls Club or girls who codes after school so as we look at science classes and some natural integration into stem how do we bring that in our core fields we have a health review we've done a lot of Health work 612 new resource adoptions but doing that alongside it needs to really be part of our science curriculum so that's going to be coming up working with Denise Johnson to help lead that team so she's working with our summer Elementary curriculum team as far as what does that look like social emotional learning

157standards you've already heard from me but essentially we have two core programs one at the elementary level one at the secondary so as the new standards had come out last year we were also looking at just reviewing the standards and then making sure that our resources really match that you may hear differing opinions on some of those core resources so we want to be responsive to our teachers and reevaluate as new curriculum programs come out do we have the right components in front of our students I mentioned early childhood and some of the work that's already started with them next year is going to be a big focus on Early Childhood in terms of reviewing standards and what resources they need some exciting pieces is just maybe some curriculum Partnerships with kindergarten as we think

158about even some of our literacy and instructional methods and Handwriting Without Tears For example partnering with some of those same curriculum programs at the at the preschool levels conversations we've had so that our students are seeing the same methodologies instructional practices and just unified language of how we're teaching the students so we're excited about stronger Partnerships there and then of course we're going to dig in departmentally with science and social studies at middle and high school levels next year and then I mentioned a lot of work is going to be done with our elementaries in terms of reading instruction and then how do we how are we how are we screening and then providing a diagnostic tool for dyslexia at the elementary so a lot of good stuff coming I want to praise our teachers

159because that when we say we're doing curriculum work we are doing curriculum work and so if anything if you ask them they might say it's a lot so we want to make sure when when we are delivering a lot that we're delivering quality professional development that makes them feel supported and secure in what we're asking them to do so we could not do this work without the Partnerships of our teachers so everything just about everything you're seeing is being backed and supported with teacher feedback and teachers taking time out of their day and get subs which we all know is more work to come in and do the work so I just want to make sure that they have that credit for some of those big decisions that are due so any questions for Patrick

160or I thank you thank you let me make the motion yes I move that the Board of Education adopt the following courses into the high school course curriculum beginning next fall 2020 2021 advanced physical fitness and weight training biology 100 principles of biology biology 102 principles of biology lab Heritage Spanish and Spanish 322 Spanish grammar form meaning and context second Gordon Ross Yes Hill Kimball yes Smith yes Johnson yes Jones yes could do Blackwood yes motion passes 7-0 question um and this might be a question for Patrick um so the motion tonight didn't include any of the Career Academy courses is that because we're not quite ready to make them official additions to our courseworker because we don't need to no I need you to do that please yeah if you could okay so we

161need to we need a motion you want to we need that motion do you want me to okay I just want to make a new one um yeah I'll make a second motion um but I just I want to pull up the language so I make sure I get it right um it's the 26th slide no okay um I move that the Board of Education approved the addition of the proposed College and Career Academy courses is set out in the board enclosure for the upcoming school year second bill yes Kimball yes Smith yes Johnson yes Jones yep could do Blackwood yes Gordon Ross Yes motion passes 7-0 we covered it all now yay thanks Shannon at this time we'll have Ron Ron May director of safety security and administration along with Rick Henry director of

162secondary schools to give us a report on school resource officers as Brian gets prepared there um this is a report that we're sharing tonight that really the Genesis of it started July 10 2019 when the city uh approached us to support funding our school resource officers and as a result of that we wanted to make sure at the direction of the board that that a thorough understanding of just the program in general wanting to know what are our what did our Scholars think about the perceptions around sros staff and administrators and so what Ron and Rick is going to present tonight is just an overview of the national research but also information that we've gathered from surveys and some a couple of focus groups at both high schools right thank you Ron May director of

163safety security administration um thank you for having me this evening so as uh Dr Lewis just said we're we're going to provide an overview and research and Survey information regarding the school resource officer programs here in Lawrence Public Schools a little bit of background as Dr Lewis said in July 10 2019 we had a joint Board of Education in City commission meeting from that we there was a discussion of uh the City of Lawrence was proposing that we consider a future participation and funding of the SRO program and police chief Burns uh gave us a proposal and he gave us some proposed potential avenues that we could take the first one that he described was um providing eight secondary level sros that would be at a two sros per high school and one per middle

164school and our and and he proposed that that cost share would be at a about a 50 50 which would be about fifty thousand dollars per SRO he also proposed having a sergeant that would supervise those sros excuse me and that the total would be approximately 425 thousand dollars um half and half so the total would be around 950 000 the half to the district would be 425 at that one he also proposed the potential of just paying a flat rate of having officers when we need them and just paying at 67 an hour which is what we pay now if we need to have extra sros or if we need to have people on duty for a football game or a dance or something that's the rate that they charge and then the board

165asked us to come together with an evaluation so here we have a video that was put together by Lawrence Police Department and this is Shelby Frazier she's currently an SRO at a free state and I don't know why that just happened but we'll go with it sorry that was supposed to be embedded I'm officer Shelby Frazier with the Lawrence Kansas Police Department I'm a school resource officer [Music] first and foremost a law enforcement officer inside the school so we work cases crimes involving children and my favorite part we're resourced to kids teachers staff and parents as well you're not in trouble up to this point yeah but just by being there and when kids are having a crisis whether it be a mental health crisis or just having a bad day have the kid just

166come to our office and find a safe place for them to de-escalate that's where the line is and you've crossed it does that make sense I truly believe having sros in the school makes a difference and to be able to be successful with adolescence in crisis you have to have a relationship what are you doing the biggest challenge in my job is really hitting home to kids the choices that they're making today is really going to affect their future long term I just think being a school resource officer in Lawrence Kansas is the best way I can serve my community I'm officer Shelby Frazier I'm a school resource officer [Music] watch out sorry about that there so historically um in 2001 the City of Lawrence received a grant to provide sros we at the time

167we got six sros we had one at each secondary building in the district one each High School one at each Middle School um and in 2005 that grant money uh went away and we continued the the police department continued to provide six sros to the district um in 2012 the police department had to go through some budget cuts they had they they needed more officers they were running low on on their numbers for patrols and low on budget so they actually cut four total what they called kind of community liaison type positions they had some Community officers that were in some quadrants of the city and then they took two of our sros so when that occurred we placed two sros at each High School each SRO was still assigned to a middle school that

168they were you know if if if a middle school needed somebody to come to a presentation wherever they knew that was the officer that they needed to speak to and then we also asked them to spend you know some time that they can each week in the buildings being visible and helping out um presently we actually have three sros uh this school year the two sros that were at Lawrence High School were both promoted to Sergeant and so they both left their position so what they did was they brought one of the sros from free state officer Robinson who's actually is actually an LHS grad so he was very excited for that assignment and um and then uh we they provided officer collado who's actually here tonight um out helping us out tonight with security

169we are waiting for the fourth officer to be assigned that again their numbers were kind of down they've had an academy that's completing and once the rookies have all been trained or unable to go out on their own then they'll be able to pull an experienced officer to assign to it as an SRO I'd also like to add it's not on here but historically I just want to point out that we've had a couple of really great recognitions in our in our district in 2008 2009 nazro the the National Association of the school resource officers actually uh named Lawrence Lawrence sros as the model as a model agency award they won a model agency award that year and then in 2011 the Kansas juvenile Officers Association recognized Myron Grady as the Kansas SRO of the

170year so we've had some really nice things that have happened through that program some statistics this is for last school year uh just some of the contacts that were made over there were 195 presentations and events done by sros throughout the district classroom presentations at all levels elementary middle and high school from fourth fifth amendment duties of an SRO Internet safety and things like that they do help provide staff training two of our sros currently are also Alice trainers that we they help me provide the active shooter training to the to the district and then they also do community events and training and like again like Internet safety for parents and stuff after school they're visible things like that they had a 1815 individual contacts last year and the definition of a contact is basically

171a directed conversation it may be it may be started by a student or a staff member somebody or it may be started by the SRO but they're all they're they're individual uh conversations it may be something specific that's something that's happening discipline you know at the school itself but it also could be you know I got a ticket yesterday you know what's up with that Tom you know and just kind of working through those things so um that many contacts and there's the breakdown of where they uh of who they've had those contacts with um they don't count sitting down and eating lunch at the table with kids that's why they call that a contact these are actual conversations um in case you're wondering the other that would be a lot when I asked that

172question you know it's patrons it may be agencies like uh like one of the shelters in town or it could be uh d8 uh oh sorry um patrons agency DCF the shelter things like that um referring you know obviously what's on a lot of our minds right now in the last few years we've had five firearms that were discovered at our uh in our buildings our two high schools two times at free state and three at Lawrence High um out of those five occasions three times the SRO was directly involved in recovering the weapon investigating and recovering that weapon um just to speak to one of them at one of the buildings we had it was reported by a student they'd overheard another student talking about that this person had a weapon in their backpack

173um the SRO whenever it was reported and he got that information he knew the student he knew where the student like hung out between classes and things like that and basically just kind of wandered down to that area sat and waited found a student was able to converse with him to take him down to office and recover the weapon without any issues um we had one instance where an SRO was called in after the firearm was discovered a one of our administrators was conducting a search of a backpack on an unrelated matter discovered the weapon and then the most current uh situation at LHS SRO was not in the building at the time Administration security recovered the firearm and then an SRO from free state came over to uh do the report and do the

174other work excuse me so what clarification can you tell out of those three times which ones were three times the SRO SRO was directly at three times a weapon was reported to somebody in the building and the building was working on recovering that and those three times the SRO was directly the person who made contact with the student recovered the student and the weapon but like at which school so two times a firearm was discovered at free state three times Lawrence High out of those times at free state three at Lawrence High so the two at two times at free state the SRO was directly involved in one of the one of the three instances Lawrence High they were directing thank you uh-huh I would give I would I'm not trying to be vague I

175just they're I don't want to identify situations in students so that's why I'm yeah we needed that clarification because I think there was sure um research so I I started trying to dive into research what what things are saying in the National at the national level and a recurring theme that I saw in many of the articles I read or you know is that there is a lack of rigorous research and statistical data there haven't been any very well set um except plans to try to find that information now we are at a point now where in the next year or two there are going to be some really good just some going to be some good data that's going to be coming out because at the time that I was reading some of them

176they were getting set up with some different ones like how to how to uh how to measure um contacts and are they positive or negative so to this point right now a lot of the research is based on survey data and some of the other things like that um in two there is a there is a study out of University of Maryland 2011 that that says that uh specifically schools with sros have 12.3 percent more non-serians violent crime referrals to police and the study shows that schools with sros reported significantly higher percentage of all crimes except the serious violent crimes than schools without police something an interesting thing that I did find in one of the uh one of the Articles and of research I was reading was that in one case they were reporting

177that some sros were taking what potentially might be a felonious offense or it was a felony and they were charging students with a lower like a misdemeanor type crime so some of those places we're seeing a bump in those reported minor crimes but it was because they were also trying to prevent charging a student with a felony instead it's it's not everywhere and like I said it was just one thing that I it was just one place where I found that um a little more uh school resource officers do tend to make arrests under the same circumstances if you know whether a principal called you know if a principal didn't have an SRO and they called the sros tend to be making the same arrests under the same circumstances um they did say and this

178is again back to what I was speaking about there was some data that showed this sros tend to be a little more lenient when dealing with minor criminal Behavior than Patrol officers and a lot of that can probably be because there's relationships being built they know the students they're around the students a lot they know the families they might know their backgrounds so they know you know they may know when a student's Eventing as opposed to being a serious threat that kind of thing so there is a definite difference in the way that sros tend to deal with the students than most Patrol officers just because they have that relationship built and then survey data saying that sros tend to see their role as that of a social worker an educator and or a surrogate

179parent to students so sorry we have some survey results that for our district and we'll let Rick speak to that Rick Henry director of secondary schools and my role in the presentation tonight is to share some of our some of the local data we've collected the SRO survey results I wanted to show you first of all the respondents we had good response over a thousand students and 133 staff members the staff members there are are certified and non-certified excuse me certified and classified staff members administrators are not included in those responses so the first chart shows the total numbers as well as gender the second chart shows the the race of the respondents and then we we went through and just selected several of the what we what we considered highlights or not really highlights

180but important questions asked on the survey and I've shared the the students and staff percentages of their response percentages um in the same charts first one our school resource officer helps keep students from being bullied and you all probably do this when I look at charts like this I tend to lump together strongly disagree and disagree and as well as agree and strongly agree get a feel for for the the positive or negative feel of the responses the next question our school resource officer helps keep weapons out of my school please feel free to not be for clarification or if you have any questions we move to the next now next question our school resource officer helps keep students from fighting our school resource officer helps keep students from bringing drugs or alcohol to school

181and then finally um pretty much a summary or concluding question I feel safer with the school resource officer in the building students and staff responses there okay and to collect some more data Dr Lewis invited me to to go along with him to both free state and Lawrence high for a couple of student focus groups um highlight of my week last week it was it was it's always good to meet with the students and and hear their voices so we just captured some of the information uh from from those meetings and I wanted to share some statements from you with you excuse me I feel safer with sros but not completely safe it's a faster response from police if an SRO is in the building I don't feel safe with sros in the building feels

182riskier for students of color profiling can happen uh yes and yes I feel safer they have the the ability to do more than security officers at first I did not feel safer because I felt targeted after I got to know our SRO and understood her role I felt safer and that I wasn't being targeted a couple more thoughts students want more opportunities to to connect with sros that was very evident in in our discussions with the students and this this last one I call her auntie Shelby because she reminds me of my auntie before I got put in the system I can come talk to her and she calms me down she lets kids get away with things I've never seen her mad he went on to say except for one time when this was

183a very diverse group of students at the end we found out that really at both schools there was um they had actually got arrested by the sros and was sharing their perspectives um there was one student that said he just doesn't feel safe with anybody with a weapon you know around him but very diverse group um uh that and they were really honest with with their perceptions but I will tell you that at free state I think officer Shelby had been there two three years maybe two in Lawrence High sros were fairly new it's evident that if you build relationships it's a much larger impact that you can have because they were kind of relating their relationships with some of their with the security officers um and so it was really interesting kind of hearing

184their their perspective right that was my number one takeaway as well it's it's all about the relationships and and uh the sometimes takes a little time to build those relationships but it is like rocket science right it's like everything else that we do it's about the relationships next steps back to Ron yeah so next steps as we continue to go down this road this path um is we or develop procedures for training building staff on working with sros that's one of the things we found in the research especially is making sure and communicating those District procedures with Administration and staff is making sure that's staff understand the SRO is not there as a disciplinarian they're not there to even make recommendations for a discipline issue they're only there to uphold the law and to make

185sure that there are well I say not that's the only reason they're that when they're taking action it's because the law has been broken okay so those are some things that you know you see that um in different districts and things that came up and that was actually one of the research one of the studies that's supposed to be being I believe it was Arizona I'd have to go back and double check it but they were actually going to do one of their setup one of the ways they were going to set up a um an experiment so to speak was they were going to have one building where there was extensive uh I say extensive there was at least a two-hour in-service basically with the staff of a building to say this is the

186SRO this is the these are the functions these are how we use an sros how we don't use it and then actually having a building where they didn't have that communication and then to see how those interactions just with you know as far as the staff meant you know I think it's going to be pretty clear that the staff most likely that's been communicated is going to be usable usable more effectively um in response to what the students were talking about is making sure that we have an opportunities to formally introduce our sros and their purposes and to the student body and the district will continue with the joint meeting meetings with the city and to discuss the SRO program I have a question sure so in it in your next steps are there any

187opportunities for parents to give their feedback on their interactions with their students dealing with sros officers or that's certainly some information that we could we can gather I know we've been talking about using the surveys and I mean that's definitely something we can gather information on yeah we were yeah we were definitely wanting to get some feedback on folks who had closer relationships with not necessarily relationships but closer interactions with with sros right because I think those interactions are very different from parents than from what what the information that you gathered from students I think those interactions might inform us a little bit more about what how those students feel I'm not sure if that's making any sense but you know what whatever I'd like to ask the question first of all thank you for

188this information it's very helpful um so I see the the responses for example the question is I feel safer or the statement I feel safer with the school resource officer in the building and then you have what the responses were do we have those responses break down by race because for example um there were what 66 percent white students and so my question is are we seeing a disparity between the students that say I feel safe I do if you see what I'm saying do we have that data um I would have to check I'm going to defer to Rick briefly just because just kind of building on that that you presented um the research around SRO at the national level but in districts utilizing school-based policing approximately 30 Nationwide of districts are doing so

189right now um research shows higher rates of suspension expulsions and arrests especially for students of color and that data was missing entirely from your report and it's something that I think we have to be key to pay attention to it doesn't necessarily mean that the other data that you pointed out isn't important but when we are looking at the contacts for example that the the LPD is is reporting they have if I'm correct and I might be wrong about this are they able to look at that contact data and tell us in particular in cases where they are taking more of a disciplinary role um how many of those contacts are with students of color or students who have an IEP or students with a mental health issue or students from any kind of the

190I mean several other demographics that we could think of lgbtq community how are we tracking how do we when we look at the data from the curriculum um Dr vestalow's information that she provided us showed us some disparities in how we're delivering education and we're struggling with some challenges around equity on our own so as we bring in the LPD how are we measuring that they are also how are they addressing what is likely inequities among amongst who who they may be interacting with um I may need a little help on this but to start with so uh I didn't include any suspension expulsion issue because that's that's not enough at a national level the data that was missing you presented some data around sros but you there wasn't any data around that you said

191there isn't a lot of information on SRO programming but there is actually a lot of data around sros and their impact on individuals with mental health and and communities of color yeah okay um so so to answer your question about the contacts themselves which are individual conversations there's no demographics to that because it's literally like a tally and at the end of the day icon I was in contact with these people now if there was a report filed you know a criminal report or an arrest or something like that that would be data that we could probably have a little easier time Gathering but the those re that that those types of contacts were quite I'd have to pull the numbers on that are small are fewer we had a total of 18 arrests in

192the district district-wide last year so 1800 contacts and 18 arrests and I and I can't even tell you on those arrests if those were students or adults or whomever I guess the larger question might not be um about the arrest specifically within the school district but in general in the Lawrence Community the most recent data shows us that six-time black juveniles were six times more likely than white juveniles to be arrested by Lawrence police officers Native American juveniles were 2.4 times more likely than white juveniles to be arrested using the data from the Burns Institute National estimates for disparities of arrest rates over the time period is 2.3 or more for black kids so we we have disparity rates for black juvenile arrests by the Lawrence Fleet Department that's almost three times the national average

193so when we think about that context and that's the most recent data available it could there could have been great improvements under Chief Burns but I'm wondering since we know that it seems almost imperative that the district is able to collect just basic demographic information in terms of what those contacts are and how we are utilizing sros I don't think they want to collect those that data those are just strictly context and they're not context in the sense of Officer approaching a child it could be a child they say look I got a ticket over the weekend what can I do about this so it's as many students approaching them as well so it's just literally telling more those are output datas and so if I'm doing a program analysis which is I have some

194background doing program analysis I would count the number of contacts I had with with community members that's certainly a valuable to report to my funders and to report to taxpayers additionally for me to understand am I having the impact that I really want to have and am I serving the people in the way that I want to serve them I also am able to collect just basic demographic information and one of the things that when when you began working with LPD was to collect SRO quarterly data and we haven't really been able to look at what those contact numbers are for students of color it's it's not exactly and my point is that it should and so if it doesn't sros pushing paper to collect data just on a conversation it doesn't have to be

195contact data though Dr Lewis there are ways in which we can capture how that how that data how how would you in any of our educational programs would you say we should exclude collecting data on that marginal marginalized groups on don't that contact data when a student approaches an SRO the goal is we want our sros to build relationships with our students and students to build relationship with them to feel comfortable talking to them I don't think I want to sros after I agree with the student to go back soon I agree with you I agree with you on that point absolutely I think that's correct I'm talking more about can we ask can we get from them data that shows us when there is an intervention where we have as a district asked for

196their ask for them to intervene or not not just to say when they're doing education Outreach but more to say when in there is potential for a interaction with the criminal justice system that might be hap that might start in the school district and end outside of the school district that's more what I'm I'm wondering if there's a way to capture that and not to say that we need to capture it in all aspects of inquiry I agree with you but given the the underlying larger issue that we see both locally and at a national level it does seem that we should be able to collect some data I know you mentioned about like um trusted adults and and Sorrows also being I mean because I know this is just that was just a small

197caption of the data but when we're talking about those other things in the data about whom they go to First and things like that that's not reported there and I think that's a key part so like why is there you know um a discrepancy so to speak between you know I if there was something going on I would go to like the likelihood of them going to SRO was the percentage was minimal compared to who will you know the other staff the other adults that they would go to and but the data shows like you know when you talk about the bullying um you know that data shows a percentage of um like saying that there's a higher number there's a higher percentage of what is it agree or strongly agree um so I think

198we have to get down to the bottom of that so um for example like you reference the maintain in a safe environment our school resource officers help keep students from being bullied that's 31 percent that agree or strongly strongly agree but when it talks about that relationship piece of who they would go to first if there was a crime witness a crime it's yeah when we're looking at sros that percentage seeing that one on there is smaller okay but uh yeah I I understand what you're saying uh that's you know that's difficult you know whenever because I do the I hear the expulsion hearing so I get a lot of the background on that and you know students are going to go to whomever they are most comfortable with and you know a lot of

199times they're going to student services or they're telling you know a counselor or somebody like that um but I can't it's it's I I can't say why positively or ornate why they aren't necessarily saying that that's the top of their list to report the crime to um and I know it also happens some of them I think even report to their parents because they may take it home and then say something at home and then it comes back to us I think too if you look at the student survey one near the question that you're referring to who when you go to First in your school if you were to witness a crime 28 said the teacher well that's who they spend the most time with they don't spend that much time with an SRO

200and then if you look at SRO and security guard statistically 16 versus 19 it's almost negligible between the two and so we're talking about the fact that part of the the response from the students was to try to build those relationships I don't I don't know that that that that data is any con is concerning to me based on what the result was you know I I think they go to teachers because they have the relationship with the teacher because they spend the most time with the teacher um and then the the security guard versus the SRO when you were reading through the comments and looking at the information they most of the students could name the security guards and they couldn't name the sros because they didn't they didn't have the relationship with them

201or they didn't have the opportunity to interact with them and even even talking to my own son um he knew who the security guards were he didn't know who the SRO was because he didn't have enough he's never had an interaction with them he's never had an opportunity or a reason to talk to them and I know this data is showing like now with these new sros but if I mean it's I mean it's almost like just speculating but not really but if we look at the sros in the past when it comes to Lawrence High School versus free state this there is a there's a difference I mean and we can't pull that information because they're no longer here um and I know we can focus on the now but I mean there there

202is for some reason we have to get to the root of that hopefully you know with these sros that are that are new there you know to be a a different line but um I have it I just I just wanted to comment on kind of the the overarching questions that really are are behind the discussion here which are what what is the real purpose of having the sros in the building in the first place um and and so I think I'm kind of with gr that I'm not so um I was not surprised or concerned by that student data about whether they the sros were the first person they go to or because that's not really their purpose in the building um so you know thinking about what is what is our overall um

203what is overall motivating our desire to participate in this relationship or partnership with the with the city and I think there's a couple of things that um that came up in the in the meeting this Summer that we haven't really talked about very much which um directly we haven't tied to the discussion tonight we've talked a lot about how um you know the sros are in the building doing education and relationship building but one of the comments that was made at that meeting this summer was that a lot of these contacts that are of a law enforcement nature would be happening anyway um whether there is an SRO in the building or not because the principal would then be calling out to a patrol officer for that contact so you know the bigger question for

204me is do we see value in having the SRO in the building to build relationships to deal with those situations so that they have that relationship when that contact is is is going to happen anyway and if that's the case I think a lot of the other things that we're concerned about because you're right there is data nationally that shows that that is not good right but we have an I think an opportunity to um through our own policies and procedures shape how how our data here looks and so I that's exactly that's kind of where I would like for us to go exactly yeah and that and that's actually why I started that conversation is how do we how do we wrestle with in the same way that we wrestle with this issue in

205our own educational system it seems as though it's off limits when we talk about it with sros that this is not part of the conversation that we can have without igniting a lot of um frustration from the community we talked about civil discourse at um at the Martin Luther King event Dr Lewis talked about the importance of having conversations that were civil and and really looked at um how we communicate with each other around challenging conversations and I was quite moved by that um in part because my own experience in following the meeting that we that we had this summer um was the the the types of emails that I got in the um and the frustration around even raising the issue was alarming to me because it it makes it difficult to address it

206if we can't even talk about it so for me like to your point of um you know do we need sros regularly monitoring the ability for for safety concerns and um do we have to have them participate in building level safety planning as Ron has mentioned one of the highlights that came out of the equity Council review of this particular issue was that sros have increased familiarities with the facilities and they can respond more efficiently to safety concerns um but there's kind of like Iran had said there's some conflicting data around that but nonetheless there the the primary thing that they might fill the gap on is safety um and to the larger issue if we paid for it which was there's two parts what are they doing there and do we pay for them

207and if we pay for them some of the things that have come out through the review both from the equity Council and then from the budgetary committee review is that there the sros are when they are there um they're there but they're not always there I don't know that the community is aware there's often a gap in when they can be there which is part of their role as officers in our community and that's why we pay for the security officers because they are our staff and we can ensure that they're there the full time to prevent to provide security so to me um you know it I think it's to the issue of whether or not we would absorb the Associate's costs of maintaining SRO programming which interestingly I I believe is that they're

208saying we don't have to do they are not asking us to do at the moment um and I do want to come back to that yeah um because in the event that they did ask us to absorb some of the SRO costs and programming um I really think you know what what I heard from building administrators was yes we want the sros there but no we don't want to lose FTE and yes we want the sros there but yes we do want to pay teachers more compensation and reduce class sizes so those are the competing obligations that we have and I while I appreciate that across the state there are different models of funding the the reality is that the we can control what security guards do the type of training that they have how

209often they're in our building when they're in our building we can't control that for sros and so um it is it is a component of what does that partnership look like how do we strengthen it to ensure that we are we are both honestly looking at where the benefits are of having them there and that we can have a genuine conversation about where there might be risk which doesn't seem that the community is um this challenging conversation for the community to have right now particularly around when we look at gun safety in our district right now I think that's very helpful context that um this is that pushing the expense into our budget is not necessarily going to be a high priority in this next budget cycle for the for City leadership and it's it's

210interesting to me and when you think about your your partnership with the with the city um when we we're at that July meeting when we asked um when when they would be asking us to share the funding it was to me the directive was not for the 2019-20 school year but that we would be looking at sharing costs in the 2021 school year and when I asked how far out I mean could they commit to if we paid for the large percentage of that they're asking us to pay in terms of not only in paying for the current sros but expanding programming um what was the guarantee that when we look at other employees in different areas where we have a shared cost could could we be guaranteed that we wouldn't have to then pick

211up those employees as well and the the comment from the City commissioners was they could not make a guarantee fiscal year and I think that was honest it's so concerning yeah so I I do think right now to say we've got this for the next two years or it's an interesting um I'm glad that they are able to do that I deeply appreciate that we are not being asked to redirect funds in that way but it it is an interesting it's something we have to wrestle with in terms of our relationship how do we build back um a space of [Music] um you know having healthier conversations around this topic to answer your question we do have the data disaggregated so if you want it we can definitely provide it for you thank you yeah

212I mean I know some of the other things we talked about is you know as we're considering that if if that if the opportunity comes up like Kelly said if that decision that we have to make where we are funding funding um sros that that conversation has to have it has to happen and there's some some things that we need to do as a district to ensure that overall safety is met and with all of our students especially when we're talking to talking about margin not as popular pop population and um I lost my train of thought so go ahead um oh yes I know I was going to say at the same time I think we need to have some um we need to sit back and reflect as a district as as far

213as the administration down on down how do we if sros are going to be here how do we adequately use sros with the with the purpose that they are there for rather than so when we're talking about disciplinary actions and who's stepping in and even having that understanding as an SRO that should something arise and it's not something that you should typically handle how you know do we have that certainty that they can go okay this is not what we're supposed to be handling right now because we're handling the you know what officer Shelby said those those type of criminal activities so I think we need to really um as it stands now we don't have control of certain things from that side of the the the the um Lawrence Police Department but what do

214we need to do as a district to kind of Ensure and really go through that policy and know that this is what you handle when it comes to disciplinary matters and um this is what the security officers handle this is what the sros handle I agree yes you know we and preventing that you know teacher grabbing hey can you come in here and you know you're right and I think to be honest about that that's that's been happening um not and we don't know I mean so in 2018 in December 2018 there I think it's then let me look at the dates I'm getting this accurate foreign I can't get it to open but um there was there was a meeting at the EAC and we did ask for certain action Stacks to be taken

215and one of them was it's been about two years ago maybe a year and a half and this and this will be new I suspect to you um but this was um a request to develop practices and procedures that would be and this is not this is about as you have mentioned um this is more about internally what we can do this is because what I heard from the SRO is loud and clear was please don't call us if it is not a criminal activity because it is not our intention to um be disciplinarians or or intervene when there's behavioral issues but rather to be here when there's harm to sell for others some larger standard and so a couple years ago we asked for practices and procedures to be put in place and communicated

216to All District staff and additionally for for students to have an understanding of what the differences are in the roles of a security officer and a police officer and what their rights were when they were in interacting with the police officer that's been two years ago and that hasn't happened so when you talk to us about the practices and procedures that will be drafted can you give me a timeline um we're going to work on them immediately okay yes Mr may I would like to you know to that end I would like to you know add to just moving forward I would like to recommend that the sros participate in the Beyond diversity training moving forward okay thank you yes and I think that's something that we did talk we were going to look at

217if they are and where if they haven't been um included then yes I thank you you know Kelly I just want to say you know I was um I wasn't at that meeting over the summer I attempted to watch it online but you didn't have the microphones in the right place so I practice my lip reading when we did that but I remember the the response that you had from that and um it was disappointing to say the least but I appreciate your your perspective now and I think that even even though we don't have to make the decision for the upcoming budget year I I think it's a it's a conversation that we need to continue to have you know I think you know because I think I think we can all agree that

218the request is probably coming at some point and and even even if even if it's a discussion that we choose to have of um you know if the city is going to keep four but if we decide to expand to seven and split that cost as a chunk as opposed to taking a a big I mean I think it's I think it's a good conversation to not drop and and I appreciate your perspective and I think it's a conversation that that we can have and we can have a civil conversation and we can keep the perspectives in mind because I think that's what the seven of us can do so I I mean some of the things that I know Kelly mentioned when attending the EAC some of the things we've already mentioned um you

219know one of the things that was on there was the Beyond diversity workshop and uh I'm uh mentioned the when to call it an SRO um a lot of the things that we oh next steps I'm sorry oh oh well I'm sorry I think we just assumed you were done but okay we'll talk I'll let you go I think he was done but oh um just just the things that internally like we need to receive District staff have adequate training on when to contact sros I think we said that uh parents and Guardians are not adequately informed about the sro's mission and goals in the school so these are things that we can work on now um data really showed that the students don't know the difference between the security officer and uh and SRO

220which I can I can see where that would be having two teenagers at home where it might be hard to zero their attention in on any matter pertaining to an adult but it's actually critical because of the the one one person carries the weight of the district and perhaps a suspension and and you might have a long conversation with your mom when you get home and another carries the force of the Criminal Justice System [Music] so that kids have to understand the difference okay um I just have a couple things to say these were I just had a bunch of notes from when I was talking to a lot of my um peers at school earlier and something that I thought of that I thought um was a common theme between all of us was

221that the thought of a school shooting can cause us to look to not look over the criminalization of our students and I think no matter like how much communication and meetings or introductions we have it's going to be hard to show these students of color that these cops with guns are not going to hurt you or profile you yeah that's pretty much it I appreciate that can you say the first part um the first part of what you said that the thoughts of school shooting um oh the thought of the school shooting can cause us to not look of to not look over the criminalization of our students thank you for that there has been some unfortunate unfortunate uh situations involving sros locally nationally I can't control those but what I can control is what

222happens in in Lawrence Public Schools and I hope the board in the community knows that and I shared this I didn't come here to perpetuate the status quo if there was disparities I don't want to continue to see those this disparities and I'm hopeful that everyone understands that I'm not going to be a key player in continuing those disparities and putting our my kids all 12 000 for my mind in a situation where they're they're going to be targeted or or criminalized um in the purpose of Rick and I going out it was personal to me um just invited you but I wanted to see some faces that look like me I want to see some students of color and if you go to those comment slides I'm not going to call any names I

223can't call any names but that last Bullet at first I did not feel safe because I was Target this is a black female she said that she thought she was being targeted she didn't know the uh SRO but she said after the SRO came to her class and did a presentation explained her why or their why in terms of why they do what they do she said she felt more comfortable around her another student of color I can't remember the term Rick she said she's chill that's always chill what does that mean chill um but I think the one that really hit home and almost brought me to tears was that last bullet so this is a student that um this is a shelter blackmail we look at the research around how some students View

224sros that really have a solid relationship with them it said something about their family or something like that but he echoed this and said I call her auntie Shelby because she reminds me of my auntie before I was in the system and come talk to her and she calms me down and this is a challenging student that I had the opportunity to meet early on in the year and administration called me out and wanted me to meet this young man to kind of form a connection with him but this is what he shared so I want to make sure that everyone understands that these sros in our building we will not tolerate any profiling or any criminalization of our students of color and I want to make sure there are some things that we can

225do and we have to do and will do a better job of and that's ensuring that staff Administration are using sros appropriately we heard from some students that there are some staff that will say well if you don't do this I'm going to call this Ro that's not the purpose of the SRO in our building so there's some retraining that we need to do as well but also letting our Scholars know the purposes of sros about 10 of my um superintendent student advisory council members um one of them said when I showed him that quick video he said now I know the role announced like a minute 30 second video now I know the role of an SRO and when I asked every last one of them um disappoint like do you feel safe with

226SRO every last one of them raise their hand so there are some things that we will do to make sure that um they're used appropriately but I wanted to make sure that the that the board has some information should we have to make that call of well you have to make that call of funding that you will have some um inside knowledge in terms of how our students View sros and staff um to the to the point about officer Shelby specifically the feedback was overwhelmingly positive about her and her interaction the kids knew her name as an example and to have the opportunity to have an SRO for whom we can participate in in identifying to your point in identifying who that person might be and then also participating in the valuation of their practice

227one of the things that we built into the to the mou moving forward that speaks to what you're saying is being able to as a district participate in in the evaluation process for the sros allows us to celebrate things like what Shelby has done I think that story is actually quite bigger than just that comment there's more I mean I think there's more context but the other the other piece being that if they're for students for whom there may be anxiety about sros being in the building that if we could um participate in making sure we have the right person for that for that job that's one of the things I think we can really do to augment addressing some of the issues that that we're talking about and could get to the positive stuff

228that you have noted and honestly I think every administrator has said no one no administrator has said to me I don't think we should have sros not one there's been teachers and students who have had mixed feelings and parents who've had mixed feelings but that's that's been consistent so for the administration like for example for um Dr Johnson or um or other principles to have participate to be able to participate in that evaluation process I think could go a long way yeah and we did include that language yeah exactly um and I and I think that's nice for the community to know that you'll be able to participate in that um piece so I appreciate that component because you're not really talking about individual officers or individual actions of specific security guards or you're really

229talking about what Dr Lewis has mentioned um is finding the right person because there is so much power associated with that particular job and Dr Winfrey May told the story of um being in a I think she said Casey Mall yes KC MO Elementary School and the sros were helping you know tie ties and and they had just found a good fit for that particular community so on my end you know as I think about being a board member and how do sros fit into our school Community how are we participating in evaluating the programming as I had mentioned and also participating in evaluating whether they're the right fit to the extent that the police department can allow us to I know they have their own staffing issues but um that would that I appreciate

230that direction that we're going to be more intentional about that and and I think that's um the conversations we had since the summer um we know that there's a you know the community may be split but at the end of the day should we pursue this making sure we have the right people I'm I have a student um and and this is part of why it's it like really trying to think about what's what's the real what's the root cause of wanting to pursue this and to make sure that if we're doing it it's done right I I've had my own um student who was in the less than ideal situation and has different abilities and being educated when it comes to the different be you know well beyond diversity and not only that but

231just being a little educated on how you handle students who have anxiety on the Spectrum all those different things you know we have to take that into consider into consideration and um they have to be educated on how to to handle that you know or I can end up um you know under unfortunate circumstances I've had students come my own child come to me when they were trying to to use a strategy that they've learned and was threatened to have um SRA was called or or Security even called and they were just trying to de-escalate so these are the things that these are the concerns that we need to put in place to um these are the things issues that we need to address and again going back having the right people being able to

232vet the people that come in because I guarantee if something I mean you know we don't you don't know what that what's going to happen when you're fearing um and you can't process that so I don't know I'm not saying I'm not anti but it's about doing it the right way and and having those conversations that we don't want to have and to make sure that we can have effective someone who's trauma informed and someone else who is aware of mental health diagnosis that because our kids are anxious already my kids are anxious about going to school so it would be very important to have these sros who are culturally competent and aware of our students you know unique needs appreciate um our superintendent's efforts to build some strong relationships with leadership in the city

233um and also the county I think it's a really positive step toward helping us navigate those conversations and building some trust in those relationships to move some of those things forward so thank you for that work and I think it's putting us in the taking us in the right direction um about the um like formally introducing the sros to the students do you know like what that would look like I not I mean I do understand that in the past there's been some things done at the building level where you know where groups of you know whether it was an assembly of some kind or whatever I don't know if that's the most effective way that's something that we will have to brainstorm on and find because personally I don't think marching your SRO out

234to the Center Court of the basketball and saying here's your SRO and here's what they do we know that a large percentage of those students aren't going to be paying attention or absorbing that information so it probably needs to be at a smaller level but I I can't answer that at the moment but we've got great building administrators that will have great ideas for how to do that that was one of the principles that was one of the things that the equity advisory Council said like compared to previous years during student orientations um and maybe that was done on purpose like the sros had a lot had less opportunity to present their role and maybe it's because it was a larger crowd yeah it could be or they weren't available at the time that they

235were having there's a lot of I don't know for sure where that went from thank you thanks Ron yes thank you stay here too I try to get it out man am president do you have any announcements um uh do we have an am I we're having an announcements pending announcements now we have a next board meeting February 10 24th oh yes he has a board breakfast I think that's what it bought oh yes and we like to welcome Don back um we didn't forget about you Don Elise is leaving us in good hands and uh we'll miss you FaceTime us you'll miss us I know you already motion to adjourn yeah so moved all those in favor aye