2018 - 1/8 Lawrence Board of Education Meeting

001education to order our first item is we need to approve our agenda we approve favor I okay first item this evening of business is to administer the oath of office to our newly elected board members and we have with us this evening Jamie Shu the County Clerk of Douglas County to administer the oath thank you for being here this evening okay if you'll stay in raise your right hand and repeat after me I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States in the Constitution of the state of Kansas charge the school board member for USD 497 oh my god great thank you and welcome to our new board members okay our next item is our work session on bond construction update and I see that we have part of our

002team here we might need to hold for just a couple minutes to buy children to let everybody get in and get prepared we took care of all those stuff in record time oh here they come all right [Music] tell me when you're ready we're ready okay Kyle Hayden chief operations officer joined with Steve Clark and Jane Houston from Clark huesemann architects they're going to talk about our middle school package one what were considered B package one so our middle school package one includes south and southwest middle school and we made the decision early on that we would package these two together because we thought that was the most doable in the timeframe that we had because we were getting started pretty quickly in September and this construction on these two projects was going to start

003this summer and so there's a little bit more scope of work at West and at Livermore central so they'll be packaged two that will be talking about later this spring we're actually getting ready to start those meetings and just there fixing it so in any like any case Steve and Jane are gonna walk through south and southwest design development package at this point that's where we're at in the in the in the process they'll talk about the schedule a little bit but they've have joined with McCown gordon construction who is our construction manager on all the projects Henderson engineers to get this point and very pleased with the work they've done in engaging our design and construction committees at the building level appreciate those principles and the work they've done also with the staff and

004the parents who have been serving on those committees because it takes some extra time above and beyond what they already do so in any case Steve and Jane are gonna walk through some things here it's fairly comprehensive as far as the number of slides and details around it or at a good place and we should be on target to to hopefully bid these projects in the next couple months and I get started in May I'll turn it over to Steve and Jane all right we'll give you a overview of both of the schools individually but for starters just to kind of illustrate what Kyle was talking about about the schedule this particular pair of projects is scheduled to go into construction this summer and then West and Liberty Memorial Central will go into construction for

005next summer so we will talk in more detail about West and Liberty Memorial later we did do a quick overview of each of the schools all four of them just to sort of get our heads into it with each of the building principals and staff and tried to make sure that as we look at the specifics of the libraries and this sort of individual scopes of work that were planned for each school that we are also looking broadly at the school overall and making sure that if there are any opportunities that the work we're doing in the library might impact something else that we're thinking about that too so that's just sort of an overview that we did of each of the schools comprehensively and then specifically for both of the schools we've had committees

006at the school level that involve the principal there they have assistant principals learning coaches staff parents the the committee's at each school were put together by the building principals and are pretty comprehensive as far as who they involve and then we've had several different combinations of district level meetings to get input from the stem teaching standpoint also the special ed leadership group has met with us to talk about the spaces were designing and how those could be supportive of the goals they have as well and then thinking just from a middle school level we've met with the leadership for the middle school teams the designs that we were providing were also submitted to the LGBTQ Advisory Committee and students were involved in some of the decision-making from a survey standpoint and then we've been working

007pretty closely with the library media specialists and then in this month I think we have and the beginning of February we have scheduled and all staff presentation a student council and site councils so we're getting good input I think so far where the goals the ones that you see here they're very consistent with what the master plans or the outline for the scope of work there's been no changes to that we've been working really hard at figuring out the best way to implement the goals that were laid out and how to translate those to the middle school level and obviously creating spaces that are as enabling as possible the spaces that we have to work with from a library standpoint really include these five items and we'll talk a little bit more specifically about how

008these break down but basically lots of shared and diverse work space obviously stacks we're not talking about eliminating a whole bunch of stacks and a little bunch of books and those sorts of things so stacks will be there there'll be a library both in spirit and literally the Genius Bar is the new home based service point I think you've seen that in other presentations on the other schools it's the same concept similar concept hacker maker and then the content creation rooms content creation rooms or rooms where you might do audio editing video editing video shooting recording all those sorts of things you might also group work room where you might need some privacy or where you may be having some sound that might disturb other folks so those are the basic spaces and typical they

009break down in a series of sizes so the makerspace that's a 30 person classroom type of makerspace the collaborative Commons is a 15 to 30 person room out in the middle of the library that's could handle a class as well as they traditionally do but also other groups that might work their breakout rooms are then another scale of 3 to 8 people those spaces in there that will handle that kind of breakout space for good work collaboration and then the content creation room which we mentioned which has glass and as outfitted with tech nook alcove we are still developing the exact design of these but in general one of things we've heard from a lot of people is a sense of concern that when we open everything up and we tear walls down we connect

010all the spaces together as schools are doing now that they want to make sure there's a spot for folks who want to have more privacy basically the Genius Bar which we already mentioned and then a toolbox or resource storage or so instead of creating a whole bunch of storage rooms out of the space that we have or really creating lots of stories just sort of out in the space it supports the work that people are doing so the overall scope of work at Southwest includes we'll show you some detailed plans on the library specifically and the way we're handling the privacy at the restrooms and locker rooms but there are other scopes of work that are pretty significant that the that the money is going towards and so that particular school is getting a fire

011alarm upgrade throughout the building the stem lab and the gymnasium are getting improvements inside those rooms the HVAC controls are being upgraded to be more consistent with the modern technology that we have so you can control the heating and cooling better and then all of the lighting is being upgraded to LED which will be much more energy-efficient and that'll be throughout the whole school and the roof is getting at Southwest is getting a significant amount of repair so those are parts of the budget that are fairly significant and are part of our work but we're not going to be showing you pictures of that so this just illustrates in color in the plans sort of all the places that are going to be impacted when you come back to school in August of this fall

012at Southwest you'll have seen changes in all those areas that are in color so it's pretty exciting to think that the bond issue money is going to be spread throughout the school in such a widespread way then with the library specifically if you look at the space we've identified we're in the zone of the new library design these places are being created so the makerspace is over in the in the corner there in the room that's currently basically that same arrangement currently being used that way the whole front edge of the library is to be opened up to the corridor so if you're familiar with the layout of this school there's sort of one door into the library and this design basically takes away that whole extent of the wall so that it's open to

013the corridor so the collaborative Commons again that's a 15 to 30 person zone there will be those three zones along the left-hand side breakout spaces are also being shown in the sort of middle areas there they have different kinds of furniture to go with them that content creation rooms are over the bottom left-hand and then the nooks and alcoves Southwest already has some of those that are really prized spaces for people to go to and then the Genius Bar is located strategically not at the very front of the of the space but back a little bit it's defined by a ceiling change which you'll see in the sketches and also has a great vantage point to be able to see all around the library and even into those content creation rooms then the tool boxes

014so with the library then as Jay mentioned this is the current plan of the library so what you'll notice are two main things the front walls are being taken out and we're basically taking away as many of the enclosed rooms that you see there and pairing those back to a much smaller amount we are keeping the rest room that's currently there and so you can see the change they're basically expanding the presence of the library in the school if you take a view then from the hallway everybody I'm sure is gonna remember that curved hallway if you take a look at it here's a computer model of that same space and then the sketch will sort of illustrate what it looks like when we take out the wall now you can see in that disk

015that you see in the back is the place where the genius bar is those sort of identifies if that's the first place you need to go to get some help you can go back there the next view then is looking back the other way as you know that library has sort of this box that sits in at this room that's defined by these big arches if you stand right there and look back towards the front door they're sort of the existing view you know it's kind of walled in back there with a lot of the tech equipment and so forth in this view is what you see once you take out those walls I'm going to open up you know shove all those walls back and these drawings depict ideas of high top work comfortable

016furniture big variety of furnishings much as you've been doing in other schools then the restrooms this concept here is that these are non gender-specific restrooms that are then decentralized throughout the school so you can have a pretty good chance of finding one of these along the way walking around the school you'll see a green there there's one two three four shown so they're not in each pod or they aren't in each pod given the scope of work we capitalize on the fact that there are a lot of existing restrooms in southwest and so instead of sort of putting in new new restrooms and even adding to that amount we chose to find a sort of decentralized pattern of those using the existing facilities that are there what we did do that was make them more

017accessible to students and really to everybody else these are two of them are in the teacher work rooms now and you'd have to go into and occasionally students do this now is they actually go into the teachers work room to get to this rest room for privacy and what we've done is we've just moved this wall back there so there's an opening in the wall you can kind of go in this little corridor and of course the teachers can still come out and get easy access to it as well but this just makes it more public access to those and that's consistent sort of throughout the rest of the school and in the locker rooms we're providing much more privacy there for students and we've increased the number of changing rooms we've created showers that

018are private and also what tends to happen is you have a lot more changing occurring than showering occurring and so we've added that privacy we've increased the number of private toilet stalls as well and then move the sinks out so that they're out in the room we've increased the number and we've added some mirrors and some other things that though folks have asked for there so how does that if they how does it work with the women's restroom or locker room do they still have to go to their assigned gender locker room giving them to matching locker rooms so in the future it gives you the flexibility of how you want to assign that usage that so there's no difference now moving forward and how the two rooms are outfitted and then what they have

019talked about is the use of the other private restrooms that are in that part of the school is also an option for the students and the PE classes they don't want to use the locker room they can use the private restaurant that one in particular is one they currently solve it that way as well where that one in the upper left-hand corner there towards the back of the school that's the one that you would go to typically to change their into sorry to clarify so it's not just for the is for any individual student who so if there are say in the men's restroom if there's a someone who had dinner you know assists male that wants to use a private facilities they will go there they don't have like and everyone else is ok

020with say a an individual who I mean I'm just wondering like you see just like okay the student who is transgender they have to go to the private restrooms all the time or I don't think that's how it's being managed and I think the way they're that we're trying to provide the facilities to support however the policy ends up manifesting itself so I think we know a little bit about how the coaches have described how they operate currently and and we've talked about how this provides some flexibility for students that want to have privacy whether or not they're to identifying with one gender or not or any buddy that needs to identify with anything right so this just gives people more privacy period or more choices and more choice and that's what he's got the

021same set of privacy options and that's really we've talked about that a good bit in the Facilities Committee about making sure that though it really is it's it's to help us with some of the issues that we've talked about for our transgender students but it's also to help us with just privacy in general for students in these areas so and it's something that we've really pushed the design teams to carry throughout all of the projects that we've talked about right it is labeled men's and women's on that's the summary of that work for Southwest before we moved to South have any other questions or comments on I guess I just be interested to know how the how the library staff felt about the wide open wall you know we've met with the library media coordinator

022at the school Amanda a couple different times she's been on our committee and she's come to every meeting so she's pretty familiar with the idea but she she went to visit Olathe West also because she was interested in seeing another example and sort of seeing it in action and hasn't expressed to us that she's that worried about it she hasn't asked for any changes or we've talked a lot about just how how the different storage things are gonna be accomplished so we've worked in pretty close detail with her on all the things that need to go into the Genius Bar so that she has access to everything that she needs since that one of the main changes with Southwest is taking away some of the enclosed rooms that things are stored in or that certain

023work happens in and so the shift to doing all that out in the open she seems comfortable with she seems excited about the potential for the students and the visibility I think she is pretty excited about having the library be more an active part of the circulation path of the school because right now it is so closed off we heard from a lot of people at the schools that they don't even want to try to tackle those big doors that go into the library they're daunting just the doors so the idea that you might just walk right in seems pretty appealing to everybody and for book checkout and secure you know it doesn't take away from you know when you walk through the door like a door right you know books are strategically moved kind

024of back in the space a bit and and there we're also having some decentralized checkout stations as well so it's a pretty open access plan self-serve kind of plans so the service point can really be more focused on the other part of the genius bar is the tech team is a group of students that help other students and so we've talked about having that be their home base to so they'll have a place to write so the area's illustrated in light blue are primarily furniture changes that we're making to create collaboration you've heard the other projects talking about learning pockets and so that's sort of the idea of what's happening in the pod centers and then in the back corridor where we have nooks that we're carving out back there for collaboration so that as

025the teachers in those back classrooms inside classrooms let students come out for breakout that's where that can happen there'll be some furnishings there to facilitate the collaboration what you see now is students sitting on the floor out there when they're sent out of the classroom they go out there and they love being around those courtyards they'll like line up along the windows there and they'll just lay out in the floor there do their work we're basically just providing you know sort of better facilities to enable that happen now actual work services we can move on to south any other questions on Southwest ok ok well so overall it South similar scope of work from a library and collaboration standpoint and the privacy of the restrooms and locker rooms there is a little more impact to

026the lockers at South than there was at Southwest we are also working on a stem lab redesign for South that just enables more flexibility in that room for for things to change over time there are roof repairs at South and the lighting is also getting fully replaced and so it's illustrated here just from the standpoint of where the work is happening within the school so same outline of spaces the makerspace is here some subtleties there's a content creation room in the front of that we've moved it supervision was really tough from the library to their current hacker makerspace because it was behind a room behind a room so we've now brought that to the front and put a full glass wall there the collaborative Commons are now grouped in those locations again rooms for classes

027that are out in the open as well as in the hacker makerspace the small breakouts there's quite a bit of opportunity for those throughout this sort of expansion the content creation room you can see up there and then the nooks and the genius bar located strategically sort of in the middle there if we got great sight lines all the way around and then the storage so in that case what we've done is we've removed that big thick wall that's sitting in there and then modified the lockers so the impact there is to open that up and basically connect the library across and into that zone so it becomes the sort of center of the school now with everybody passing through that wide area their lockers are still along the edges of those spaces but we've

028made the space in the middle much more usable than just that few moments in the beginning of the day in the end of the day and occasionally when that whole those two whole areas were solely just for locker use let's see so the view then if you take a look if you're standing so at the bottom of the stairs then you're sort of looking back these are gonna be a little hard to read but there's anybody who knows South the window there on the left-hand side is the current entry to the current library now then that solid wall is the solid wall that has the lockers a locker bays define there and so if you take a look at that we're now opening the wall opening the entry up the genius bars by the disk

029there and then you see I always was taken over that area out there for more collaboration space change the lighting there pretty dark both those locker bays are very dark kind of spaces we're changing the lighting making that a much more lively area another view as you sort of at the base of the other stairs she just come around the main entry there and take a look back towards the place we were just standing here's the head view with the lockers on the left and the wall on the right there and then there's the view of it opened up lastly I think we have one more which is kind of that the main entry currently and that's what that looks like now with the circ desk sort of built in right there and the storage

030behind and we open that up privacy restrooms similar approach but not exactly the same we've modified again places where their plumbing already mostly existed and in this case the privacy rest rooms are more centralized to the building we didn't get them as spread out as we did on Southwest but they're super accessible and we've added a really good number south is restroom pour from a private restroom standpoint so in this case we're actually adding them so that they have a similar number to Southwest so we've taken these two rooms the room where the mailboxes are now we're moving those back to the main office that was the first thing on their list we may have the billing committee has get those mailboxes where I can get access to them in the office and then we're

031also taking the one restroom in the same strategy as Southwest back on the bottom there and making it publicly accessible so you can see here we've added three privacy restrooms and that one pod up there next to the other restrooms and we've added access to the one that shows a door but they actually just an opening it's a fire door that's on a hold open so that's actually just sort of open corridor back there then in the locker rooms a similar strategy we've been we've changed the layout there and made showers private changing rooms along the way we've done some things for example South was without a mop sink or access to water to clean either those locker rooms other than the little sinks and so we've added a janitor's sink to there so along

032the way as we've talked through committees we've been able to sort of address these things that you know and their everyday work in the school will make a huge difference and so for a little bit of a little bit of money we've been able to sort of solve a lot of those things that they've asked us for throughout the design I just have an overall question you mentioned that you met with district level sped staff but I'm are you working on any special races good question so what we found in doing the utilization study among all for the schools is that those programs run pretty differently partially because their population changes quite a bit over time but but they run fairly differently and that they're always looking for places to go to separate kids to

033go to a quiet corner to find a spot to work to focus to change the environment they're doing a lot of those sorts of things every day and so part of our work and having that conversation was to make sure that in the areas where we were doing work that we were able to provide the kinds of places that they were seeking once they left their resource rooms and kind of went out and we're looking for other places and so that's basically what we're trying to make sure that we have covered so can you point out what types of spaces you think you've created that fit those needs mostly they're almost always the three-person small spaces that are away from the rest of the classrooms and sort of you know look like I guess so

034that they're visually removed from traffic visually you know sort of back back in a corner or something you'll see them in South actually you'll see them at the ends of those quarter at the at the ends of those right holy cow for example these kinds of spaces they'll go to the ends of those corridors kind of you know a way and spend a lot of time there so they're finding these nooks and other places and if there was a table there sometimes there is if there was a table that was accessible and some comfortable furniture different kinds of furniture I think and I asked because we did you know several renovations at the elementary level and then had a lot of feedback from sped teachers that rooms weren't private or there wasn't that space to

035go you know kind of sort of clear glass doesn't really work necessarily in those situations so I just wanted to make sure that that was being thoughtful but it sounds like you're not necessarily creating sped space you're kind of working it into yeah that's that's true that's not part of the scope but I think we are trying to make sure that whatever we provide can serve the whole student body from the standpoint of internal to the library we're just trying to give a lot of choice for the kind of enclosure that you might be able to utilize so these are details that will come a little bit farther down the road in our design work but three-sided things that have a little bit more maybe feeling of shelter and enclosure even though they're still visible

036and accessible for everyone to see and to but just tucked around the corner those sorts of things I think we're trying to provide for everybody to use when they want a little bit more less distraction so that's been one of the space types I think that the sped teachers have talked to us about being advantageous I think when we meet with the committee's just has an overview they have super excited about getting new lighting and having that next and most are the majority scopes of all of our work the work that we're showing you with the pretty pictures is a really small part of it but I think we know that those other pieces of work are really really important and the teachers are going to be super happy when those things are done but

037I think we've we've really been able to eke out some fairly significant changes in the lives of these schools with these library remodels in the collaboration spaces I think of the scope that we have to work with it's been really really effective use of dollars to make a big change for you any other questions for Steve and Jane thank you very much for sharing the work with us this evening we appreciate it so one of the items up for approval tonight is the GMP for our college and career center project so Shannon had asked me to come in and speak to this a little bit because it been several months since we talked about this project and also with several new board members it was probably important to kind of update you on this because

038it's kind of a unique project so back in August trainer architects was here they're working on this project with the Marland construction and so in August we had hired them to be in those capacities as architect and construction manager they had already had a relationship with the Boys and Girls Club in constructing what was going to be the Don and Beverly Gardner Center for great futures which is the Boys and Girls Club Teen Center so that project had gotten underway months ago so we're talking over a year ago and the agreement that the school district struck what the Boys and Girls Club would be that since we had the college and career center existing there we would allow the Boys and Girls Club to utilize the property adjacent to that connect the Teen Center to

039the college and career center they would fundraise for the project the Boys and Girls Club would fundraise for the project over a four million dollar project that would be a 13,000 square foot addition to the College and Career Center and then they would donate that building to the school district so that was approved by the board back in August so what we have been doing is we've been working really closely so I we treat this the construction meetings just like we treat all the other construction meetings so basically I'm helping to oversee this project - even though because basically is going to be our building so we've been part of the design process and and obviously our part of the construction process also but then also in addition to this what the voters had approved

040as part of the 87 million dollar issue was $600,000 worth of improvements within our college and career center so within the existing College of Career Center was to be built a culinary arts space so we would move the culinary program from Holcomb to the college and career center and it would be located in a space that's currently kind of a raw makerspace type of area we'd recreate that space in the teen center that's so we didn't we weren't losing space and we were only enhancing the space that we had so I wanted to kind of give you the history piece of that show you these images but then also show you just briefly where we are with that project pull these up individually sorry this gives you an idea of the site plan so if

041you're looking up here you can see in white right here is the existing College Career Center this blue is the second story to that this would be the footprint this blue area over here is the new construction of the Teen Center this line right here is actually right where the existing College and Career Center and the new building exist so you can see the existing parking you can see some new drives and sidewalks that will be constructed to ease with the traffic because it will be an increased volume for sure but it kind of gets you the footprint of the Boys and Girls Club teen Center this is what it looks like on the bottom floor so you can see that kind of orient you here this is the East Side so this is where

042the sidewalks and parking are going to be the existing college and career centers this block of space right here so the main walkway up is right where my cursor is to the College and Career Center the main entry for the Boys and Girls Club is going to be on the second floor adjacent to the College and Career Center entrance so it's going to use that same walkway to to walk up there's a downstairs entrance that would go into this gymnasium for outside of hours use for the for our teens you could also see some just some multi-purpose areas one of the things we really focused on was building areas that could be used or a variety of function ends could be very adaptable so flexible type of learning spaces that are open with flexible type

043of furniture this would be the second floor of that building and this is mainly the Boys and Girls Club office space so once again orienting you here main entry for the college and career center this will be the main entry right here for the Boys and Girls Club that would go into their office areas sweet they have a kind of a flexible room off of that and then actually a patio area included with that too and then last but not lease at least this is our space this is the culinary art space so tonight for board approval is the GMP which is the guaranteed maximum price for the construction of the culinary arts area only and the connection to that so that's a $585,000 approval the other cost that we had budgeted for that and

044the bond issue go to your soft cost so with the architectural fees furniture different things like that but to kind of orient you here also over in this area is where the existing commons area is so that's that large open space you've come down the stairway right here we have a little cafe opening if you can remember that - what's almost like a concessions area so that area that will now be connected to the back hallway to the new culinary arts area so this is the hallway main hallway that comes from the commons area there's two different entry points now these little stations here will be the culinary class stations demonstration and productivity stations you can see all the industrial kitchen equipment over here along this wall we're reusing some of our 20 yard stuff

045moving it from Holcomb but also purchasing some new you can see this is kind of the demonstration area teaching wall a lot of this stuff back here storage on both sides and then there's storage underneath which would be underneath the stairs in this back hallway also so we're doing a pretty good job of utilizing the space that we really have allocated for the program we'll be able to accommodate not only the current student population but growth in that program which is exciting too because there is interest the makerspace I said is relocated into the new Boys and Girls Club teen Center but this is what that looks like so questions about that project any questions for Kyle great thanks Kyle's that is that all the work that we have for the bond construction update piece

046tonight yes okay all right great um we will go ahead and move on with our agenda and the next up is the report of the president of the board so if you'll give me just a moment I had several things I wanted to share the seeming okay first of all I said it earlier but I'll say it again welcome to our new board members ger Gordon Ross and Kelly Jones they along with Melissa Johnson were sworn in earlier this evening and I want to thank you all for your willingness to serve and I look forward to working with you since our December 11 regular meeting the board has had a special meeting on December 18th to review applications for the superintendent position we selected six applicants to bring in for the first round of interviews

047which will take place next week the finalists will then be determined and asked back for final interviews during the week of January 22nd we anticipate having a public meet and greet session with each of the final candidates on the day of their interviews and we will have more details available for that once we have finalized some other schedule items I'm very pleased with the number of applications that our search firm brought to us for the position and the quality of the pool that we were able to consider in selecting candidates for our interviews thank you the board members who were able to attend the board lunch at Quail run on December 12th we heard from a number of fourth-grade students about their stem learning projects which was really fun in some cultural exchange that they're

048doing as part of their stem projects as well as from student leaders that are participating in the school's student council group many things to all the community members who attended the board's community forum on December 14th at the Lawrence Public Library we had all the board members had an opportunity to engage in some great substantive conversations and small groups around issues of equity mental health special teaching and learning and the achievement gap and we have we're compiling the feedback from those conversations and I'm not sure when it will be we plan to share it out with the community I'm not sure what the timeline is for that but we'll work on that I anticipate it'll be fairly fairly soon and the pleasure of attending the open house helped our Native American student services on December

04919th and learned about karke happenings in their program and really appreciated having the opportunity to visit their space at Centennial last Thursday we had our first Facilities Committee meeting of the new year thank you to gr for stepping up to serve on that committee we've received updates at that meeting on items discussed during tonight's work session as well as the capital outlay plan that we'll hear more about later this evening earlier today also we had our first policy committee meeting in the new year and thank you to Kelly for agreeing to serve on that committee we had a lot of great discussions and are working on some follow-up from some issues that we talked about related to the fundraising policy as well as some new items we're going to be looking at our gifts and

050donations policies at all kind of ties together so we're going to be working through a number of issues related to those items on Friday last week I presented our legislative priorities at the annual chamber breakfast with our legislative delegation and we also had the opportunity to sit down with most of that delegation of Friday afternoon thank you to Jill and Jessica and all the district staff who attended to share information with our legislators I think the biggest issue that they're going to be facing this year is how they're going to respond to the Supreme Court's Gannon decision and I know that our from those conversations that our delegation understands a lot of the the concerns that we have regarding proposed constitutional amendment in those items and so I'm I'm pleased with some of the feedback

051that we got from them thought it was a good conversation this evening I have copies for board members paper copies of our superintendent evaluation instrument I'm going to share those with board members we are using the tool that we adopted earlier this last fall we have had some discussion about revising our superintendents job description to align with our tool that work is not quite done revising the job description so we're going to use the tool as is to do our evaluation of dr. Stubblefield which has to be completed by February 15th so we are going to put that on our board agenda to do our evaluation executive session and meeting with dr. Stubblefield at the February 12th board meeting please fill out the tool and return it to David Cunningham by February 5th so that

052we can compile the information and have it prepared for our meeting on the 12th in the past we've if you have comments to share the plan is that we'll share those with dr. Stubblefield but that we're not going to remove them from the instrument and make them anonymous I think that's a difference in the way that this process works that from past processes so I just wanted to highlight that okay I think that's all that I had for this evening Boorman we'll move on I think the next item on the agenda is dr. Sobel fields report good good evening I just have a few things this evening first of all Kansas Commissioner of Education Randy Lawson called both of our Horizon Award nominees today at their schools to inform them they have been selected as

053Kansas Horizon Award winners they are Brandon Daley from Woodlawn fifth grade teacher in Bernice why so Southwest middle schools secondary therapeutic classroom teacher they will join the Kansas exemplary educators Network which offers statewide networking and professional development opportunities there are only 32 teachers across the entire state that are selected for this and we had both of ours to be selected so that's a huge honor for both them in our district congratulations to Lawrence High senior Bell arrayed who has who was has been named a national young Arts Foundation merit winner and photography she would receive a cash prize of up to ten thousand dollars and participate in Young Arts Los Angeles in March free States debate team continues to earn honors coach Kelly Thompson was named the Kansas debate coaches invitation coach of the year

054this past weekend and the novice squads performance at the sunflower novice state championship earned them the number two ranking among novice squads in Kansas our school district offices will be closed on Monday January 15th due to the Martin Luther King jr. holiday I want to invite the community to join us for our annual one dream MLK celebration on Thursday January 18th at Free State High School the gallery opens at 5:30 p.m. in the commons area the program featuring the annual MLK Awards and cultural tributes and performances follows at 6:30 p.m. in the auditorium the Lawrence Schools Foundation invites the public to purchase tickets at the lead Center box office or on his website to ovation the second annual district-wide talent show our talented middle and high school students will perform at 7:30 p.m. on January

05521st on the lead center stage the Boys and Girls Club of Lawrence will honor its youth of the year on January 25th at 7 o'clock p.m. at Liberty Hall this is a free public event congratulations to this year's candidates and finally I wanted to remind everyone that January is school board recognition month it's a great time to focus on the crucial role our elected officials play every day in our schools in our community and I also personally want to take the time to tell you I appreciate each of you for your dedication and volunteer service to our schools it's one of the most important things that happened so thank you thank you dr. Stubblefield okay we will move on to patron commentary do we have any patron commentary this evening no we do not okay

056board commentary welcome Kelly all right great all right so we will move on to business items the consent agenda consent agenda items are those that are considered routine and are adopted by one motion unless any board member or the superintendent request that item be removed the item or items removed are voted on separately and I would like to ask that we remove the memorandum of understanding with the Lawrence Police Department from the consent agenda placed on our regular agenda so that we have an opportunity to just respond to a question that we received earlier this afternoon to share that information with the public and I believe we have some retirements to recognize this evening we do we have three retirements today Valley Valerie Peterson who had four years of service with our district Marc Robinson

057with 25 years of service and Romo read Douglas or is it Douglas Murray what's mr. wrong okay Syrah me who has 28 years of service of our district so thank you for all of your hard work for Lawrence public schools and with that I move that the Board of Education adopt the consent agenda with the one item pulled all right yes yes yes yes yes thank you all right I think this is the only time I have ever been at the end of any alphabetical list at Kimball all right all right so um at this point hang on just like David if we want to reorder the items on the agenda at this point do we need to make a motion to amend okay so I'm going to move based on the fact that we're

058a little bit ahead of schedule of what we thought we would be [Music] Patron inside it is Ken here already he's not right he won't be here that's that's the issue he won't be here till 6:45 so we're going to reorder the items on the agenda and move okay we're going I I move that we reorder the items on the agenda of the capital improvement plan discussion up in the order of reports to be before the patron insight survey results report second all in favor good evening Kathy Johnson executive director finance so now I'm gonna start by just kind of giving you an overview of the capital outlay fund just a little bit about that part of it and then turn it over to Tony who and Kyle I believe who are going to go

059through the list that's actually on the capital improvement plan for the four year plan and some additional information at the end that they'll take from there so I'll just kind of go through please feel free to ask questions or have any so a little bit just as an intro and I won't read this verbatim but basically our capital improvement plan is to provide kind of an overview of our school facility maintenance and renovation along with purchases of equipment and furniture we look at safety security educational effectiveness efficiency equity availability resources and the plan we try to look at current year plus three years out and it's a it's a living docking living breathing document and that things happen emergencies happen and sometimes those things have to shift but we work through that and currently with

060our bond issue that kind of adds another layer that balances with the review we tend to do a lot of our improvements in the summer and ultimately the board sees those final bids from the plan before they're approved anything over 20,000 has to come in front of you for approval in most of our projects are large in dollar we do try to plan those as cost-effectively as possible and efficient efficiently within their statutory bid requirements during our bond construction a lot of the bids you'll see come to you potentially have alternates with the part that's the bond and that might come out of capital and part of that is as they bid those and do those with existing projects they can find efficiencies than if they were to kind of pull it out and be

061all by itself some later date while people are in the building you know they can they can do some of those projects so you we'll see some of the board enclosures come that will have an alternate or a piece that is bond issue and then also a capital improvement maybe a roof or something along those lines our capital outlay fund just kind of some background about that it's a mill levy fun we're allowed to put interest on idle funds a transfer from general fund miscellaneous income sale of property reimbursements those are allowable revenues in that fund our mill levy is at eight Mills we have the maximum Authority approved districts have the ability to have approval for a maximum authority but do something less than that and the district has done that maximum authority of

062eight it is for perpetuity so that we have that forever as far as an authority probably in the last eight years or so we've done the maximum authority particularly during kind of our bond issue times if you go back in history prior to that you'll see some years that might have been six some years that might have been seven or eight and that is just kind of something the board has a choice to do I think on occasion we've done it because of a mill levy across the district kind of not wanting it to increase too much you could lower this mill levy to help offset that it could be that there's not projects and and so you don't don't need the levy but of recent years it's it's been used for the maximum and

063a lot of that's been due to technology in the need to make sure that we have the one-to-one devices and things like that so those are some things that's kind of a loud revenue we are new as a district in getting state aid we've never had state aid probably in the spent until just a couple of years ago and that's just because it's a wealth factor the determines state aid in capital outlay and so the last couple of years we do have about six hundred and seventy eight thousand in 1617 about 621 so not a lot of the percent of what the levy brings in as far as what we can get and so that's some revenue there you can see here kind of that history of our capital outlay and it's been kind of

064at at a level you publish at a when your certification of assessment or assessed evaluation kind of happens that levy can adjust slightly so you'll see the publication of a but it might round down to seven nine something which is kind of what you can see in the history allowable expenditures in this phone mostly our equipment but it's basically acquisition construction reconstruction repair remodeling those kinds of things when you look at this list the state very specifically says these things are not eligible balls bats shoulder pads those things are not considered equipment they're considered supplies it used to be some things that now aren't it'll be on the next slide so I won't jump there but you can kind of look those are more supplies they're consumables capital outlay is supposed to be for those

065things that have kind of longevity if you think about in the corporate or the business world they'd be depreciable type items typically they have a life and you would typically replace I'm sorry repair versus replace when you think about capital and let me go back real quick recently when we did our item to perpetuity and did this mill levy there were a couple of additions to eligible expenditures out of here and I'm on the next slide you'll see that list but performance uniforms is is kind of the one that that is new so here's eligible for the state you know you can kind of see what some of those kinds of items are the things that are new computer software related to like an operating system repair of equipment and vehicles is new that used

066to be considered a general fund item salaries for maintenance of district property and equipment is new in the expanded Authority and we have kind of minimized what that is but we do have our trades salaries coming out of here you've seen that kind of in the budget document so carpenter HVAC electrician those that are physically doing a lot of things in our buildings those salaries are coming out of here the other new one that performance uniforms and then upkeep of grounds and streets so upkeep of grounds such as landscaping used to not be able to come out of Capitol that is now something that that can and lease of school facilities so those are just some eligible ineligible a lot of this is more for your reference if you ever want to kind of have

067a cheat sheet of that based on questions so a little bit about cash reserves because this fund is so reliant on mill levy and tax money and our tax money does not come in on a regular cycle it comes in in January it comes in in June and then not again till December so what you see in your budget on July 1 you might see a high cash balance all that cash balance has to live and pay for everything through December 19th and so what what I've done here on this slide is to let you look at where our cash balances have been as we have spent down our cash reserves and this is a fund the high level was in December 19 of 14 last year we got down as low as a hundred

068and sixteen thousand before that tax revenue came in so we really have to monitor what happens between July and projects and what happens December 19th so that we don't get a cash basis violation you can see that this year we were down to 442 we started July 1 of about 4 million 3 so that is just saying in an average of the last 5 years we spend between July 1 about 4.6 million so just giving you some information about you know we strategically have to watch for this we have to be careful that we don't deplete these cash reserves too much because of the cash flow issue of when our timing comes in worst case you could transfer from general fund to help kind of keep it flush but then transfer it back when the

069tax revenue came in but to wait and keep it there permanently because that authority is is really in general fund so this is something that we have to monitor we've not had to worry about it getting so low until just the last few years expenditures over the past 5 years our average has been about 11 and a half million in this fund we had a high of 14 million on June 30 2014 fiscal year and the year prior to that was our kind of our low and that's because that was about the timing of that 13 bond issue we didn't spend anything till that issue came into play and then we started doing some project our planned expenditures you'll see this that we share with you for 1718 is about ten point three which is

070right a little bit below with that past averages but because of the way cash balances are going it that's about the most we can we feel comfortable as far as a planned expenditures and to remember to on this list when we talk about the planned expenditures they are estimates hopefully bids come in less hopefully the some people get you know some under spending some things like that so when we plan this we try to look at it as far as that's kind of that maximum so just a little history of the fund revenue expenditures and kind of where that's going thirteen fourteen you can see what our beginning unencumbered cash was our tax money this come in local revenues this could be and and in this particular year I believe there may have been a

071sale of property or yeah sale of property and then you have total resources what we spent and that cash balance and it comes back up to the next year that's where you start you get your tax money you had this rare little bit of state aid due to kind of a blip in the block funding this is our lease capital lease reimbursement it has to show on the revenue side it also shows on the expenditure side and brings you down to this cash balance and then back up and you kind of see how the years have gone and you can see that that balance has sort of declined when we publish we have to publish with an authority high enough that if you get a revenue you can actually spend revenue so if I had

072limited this budget Authority at publication to what we think we're going to spend and we happen to sell a piece of property or have something happen where we have revenue we would feel comfortable spending it but this number is too low for what I can spend I can't spend it I can't republish a levied fund so you're stuck with whatever you publish so traditionally and based on best practices that the state shares with us to do you would publish that high you would never get a cash balance down this low as you can see then we have a plan to column and that's kind of taking out that revenue that we don't know if we will or won't get kind of thing which helps bring the cash back up and allows you to plan for

073what that expenditures would be for the current year and again it's a little bit below what we would like but as we thinking like I said earlier hopefully they understand hopefully bids come in we can kind of manage some timing and work our way through and this would be very similar to what we've done in the in the past couple of years and then in the plan you'll see us go to 18 19 19 20 and 20 21 and try to maintain it then again these are living breathing you'll get some revenues that you don't know about taxes could come in slightly different this is based on what we published and what what we planned on getting but you can see sometimes they vary a little bit so any questions on that kind of where

074we're at and what that looks like before I move on I'm gonna turn it over here to to Kyle into Tony here and they're gonna kind of drill into the the document that's going to share what the detail is but tying those big numbers for the years planned out and we can circle back around if you have any questions about the numbers as we go we just went over before I turn it over okay let me give it to them okay Kyle Hayden chief operations officer so we started this plan actually seven years ago it was my first year here and with the help of Tony and Kathy we keep getting better at it I think over time in particular we get better at I think when we look at our allocations that we have

075that go to each of our different departments and in particular F&O holds a lot of different line items in here that you'll see that that Tony's able to work with his staff and to identify things that need to be done whether it's the purchase of vehicles or what-have-you and actually strategically develop a plan to spend those dollars so and become more efficient at that and then also we've gotten more efficient I think it also communicating with our principals building principals finding out what their needs are and then systematically attacking those with the money that we have available when you look at the plan altogether you only will see about 2 million dollars in new projects that we have in place this year and and that's because the allocations themselves that you would see and what

076I'm talking about is like we give about building allocation to all of our schools if you looked further down the plan you can see the district-wide F&O these are all the different line item allocations that our annual allocations that go to Tony and his groups so that makes up the bulk of the plans you're talking about really about 8 million dollars that go toward the annual allocations just a few things I wanted to point out and I'm not gonna walk through this line by line but this is a four year plan so you said this is our current year that we're in ending June 30th and so there are some items in this list that the board has already approved in particular if you go down here to the 7/11 East 23rd this is our

077new facilities and operations site off of Haskell already approved some additional expenditures for architectural services some additional costs for the construction of that that came into play and so those things that had already gone to the board the original approval for that was done through a lease and so you'll see as I scroll down here the original approval for the warehouse and the facilities and operations project is an annual lease payment for the next ten years of five hundred fifty four thousand seven hundred twenty dollars so and that makes up for the total cost of the project so point out another a few other things so Tony last year gave a report on roofs and we've done a comprehensive study with our roofs and and that was kind of been a nemesis for us for

078a number of years and trying to solve all the issues that come up with that because we have miles and miles of roofs and in this plan alone we have four and a half million dollars worth of roof improvements over the course the next four years and a lot of things that are even could have been on here aren't on here because we're taking care of those within the bond projects also so but just right here at Broken Arrow here's a four hundred eleven thousand dollar project or almost four hundred twelve thousand for next year you skip down to Deerfield in 2020 and in 2021 they'll have a total of 1.3 million dollars with the roofing improvements scheduled for Deerfield so those things are just going to happen on a natural rotation sometimes they happen

079quicker than others but most of our roofs are 20 to 25-year roofs and they reach a point where their end of life especially when you have 26 different facilities so there's a roof project that needs to happen on this building itself so some of the other things I want to point out Kathy mentioned the F&O salaries you can see that right here in this line six hundred seventy eight thousand four hundred dollars goes towards trade salaries so some of our maintenance people including plumbers electricians are paid from this line item that helps relieve some pressure from our general fund so that's something that we put into place several years ago and the other thing I wanted to really point out is the district-wide leases Tony's going to talk here in a second about an item

080you see on here the least high school outdoor athletic facilities and it has 2018 next to it we have a current lease that's 2009 so that included turf replacement our turf installation on eight fields and other athletic improvements and we're at a point where where we need to replace that turf like I said he's gonna talk about that more specifically the second another big piece of leases in 2014 we started leasing our devices and so we had our first lease that went towards teacher devices a laptop specifically and we're at the end of that four-year lease with those devices and built into this plan you'll see a new lease 2018 those would be to replace many of the teacher devices it's coming at a much lower rate at this point in time because we get

081a trade-in value if we do it at a four-year increment so the technology department will be coming to you probably in March to talk about a new lease as this one as this one expires so the other leases that you can see here in 2016 this is the iPad lease for one to one middle school devices 2017 as predominantly than high school one to one initiative for our MacBooks we went ahead and put in a placeholder because after four years we'll need to think about what to do with those devices and whether you continue with the same thing or something different but those would be the renewal of those two leases so a lot of dollars are going into leases the advantage of doing the leases is you are usually able to do it at

082a very low interest rate it helps us with budgeting because we're able to take really large expenditures and put them into a plan and put it in particular with technology you're able to cycle that the same thing can happen with improvements to athletic facilities because there is a life cycle to turf and it's usually about eight to ten years and so we're at the end of life and that ends up being a renewal copiers the same thing we have a placeholder there and there's a lifespan for those how are we actually are you saying we actually lease our turf er we're just like plugging numbers into okay it's a lease purchase okay yeah so yeah it's basically your your borrower the money it's just it's it's like a car loan a home loan yeah the

083same thing some other things just kind of point out some bigger items that you'll see on here for this next year or for this current year facility improvements at East Heights and also some facility improvements at Wakarusa Valley so East Heights we've talked about moving our C Tran program which is our adult special education program from Holcomb so much like we're moving the culinary arts program we're looking at moving that seat ramp program the building is under sized in need of repair we could better accommodate those programs at different locations and it actually leads to some more efficiencies because we end up not leaving really utilized that facility if we move those programs out at least at present time but some improvements need to happen in East Heights to make that make that ago and

084so those are the things that are there for that approval later on you're also going to see some improvements to the we have it labeled here Laurence Virtual School which is Wakarusa Valley former Wakarusa Valley Elementary School so building building improvements for roof interior finishes we are looking at having a tenant actually in that space and so we'll be able to gain some revenue off of that but that's something we can talk about a later time - those are the big things really a lot of other really small items like I said there's really only a handful of projects in here because a lot of those dollars are tied up in other places as part of the plan at this time I'm going to turn it over to Tony Tony he's going to talk to

085you about the turf replacement and other athletic improvements that need to need to be up for consideration can I ask a question yes I'm just wondering about the seat ran moved to East heights that seems unusual to me when I think about that program and how it would work inside of that building is that a how has that been decided when he says you can dress that probably more articulate than I can so only very executive director facilities and operations what we're doing here we're basically building two studio apartments in some of our large classrooms to make it a life like setting as you know right now with you sounds like you're familiar with the program I'm gonna speak to it at a high level I can't give the details that that our student service

086department can but what we're doing we've been working closely with the assistant director to program a studio apartment that includes a kitchen it also includes a restroom anything that you'd have in an in a studio apartment roughly I think we're roughly 850 square feet we're gonna finish out one we're gonna make a second one that can easily be added to if we need it also we're having a training kitchen I guess is what you call it which will have four workstations and four then we'll have a stove top and then a dishwasher and the other two will have and they'll all have seen I believe the sinks are going to be separate but it's going to be a kitchen like setting where they can be trained and how to prep and and do food also

087one of the rooms are going to have a laundry facility where they're going to do whatever they do with with that and then if you're familiar right now they have a trying to think of what they call it the closet the clothing closet that they currently have which is gonna be housed in the same area okay and then the great place that's great thing about East Heights is room they just have room to spread out and so they have a little bit room for flexibility and some other areas they have the gymnasium available for activities that they want to do in a large space and so those are some of the things that's not going to take the entire school it'll only take the noise portion of the school so okay yeah we're going we're

088still working on programming the other half and there's probably another report you later they might talk a little bit more about some other things that are going on at these times okay I appreciate that yes and just to clarify 24 locations 1.87 million square feet of roof and 364 sections thank you for that study two years ago that really has been good that as Kyle said the roofies are very important and this plan has helped us to to get that I think somebody told me when I came into this job in 2013 they said keep your schools dry and you're golden and I've learned that that's four years he said that was his first I was only a bit of advice to me he's like keep the schools dry so I'm learning four and a

089half years in but it's been good so what I'm going to do I want to speak specifically let me back up here to the as Kyle mentioned the district-wide leases here to the high school athletic outdoor facility 2018 typically what what I've been told is when you when you put an outdoor facility in with synthetic turf the replacement is going to be roughly half of what the initial cost was and if you look here our initial cost of the stadium and some of the turf and the build-out was the lease was one point one five four mil excuse me a million per year I'm not gonna get into the details of the original cost and all that that's ten years ago was before me and I have some high-level information that I'm familiar with but

090I want to talk about moving forward of what that $600,000 means what we want to do is replace the turf and do some some upgrades to the some of the facilities that I'll walk through with you here the turf we have gotten we're playing our 10th season for free state baseball on the turf and the ninth season in other places so how we feel like we've gotten some good use out of it it's been a great Community Edition in my opinion for the for the community to have open access to our football and soccer stadiums so let me back out of this real quick and I'm gonna get into a few other slides I think I wanted while he's doing that touch highlight something that Tony just touched on which is that we don't have

091our football and soccer fields gated off and locked off from the community and that in the research that Tony shared with the Facilities Committee is almost unheard of that that we allow such open community access to those facilities and it's we've talked about it in Facilities Committee what a real benefit that is for our community but it's it's definitely different than a lot of other districts have handled the way that they allow access to those fields yeah the fields have been a great addition to for community use and I think about taking trying to take care of a natural grass field versus in versus the synthetic field it's it's night and day prior to 2009 as from my research shows that all Lawrence high school activities were played off-site I believe football played at a

092school soccer played at ysc and then baseball and softball were at Holcomb park for free state they still play played football Hospital Stadium also I believe they had a soccer baseball sophomore the played on site but they did have natural grass fields the thing with natural grass fields is it's hard to accommodate you have two fields you have a practice field and a varsity field and Plus you anything time you have natural grass you you kind of lock it up and say I'm sorry nobody we really prefer that nobody be on it so go into synthetic turf in 2009 was a great investment it was approved October 13 2008 we got right on it the the whoever the the contractors began immediately played our first varsity game on district on synthetic turf in spring of

0932009 which is free State baseball Presidente 2017 2018 as I said Free State will complete their 10th season at the end of the year on the turf all their sports will complete their ninth season which i think is a pretty good pretty good shelf life for that turf so there's just a few pictures I put together some quick pictures just to show some comparisons as you speak to the left here this is a nine year old field you can see that some of the fibers are kind of bent over a little bit you can even see a little bit to the left of the white line where it's really minimal on the fibers and then also between the white and the green you can see where the seams starting to come apart a little bit

094and that's usually that's kind of typical of a field that gets a lot of use like ours and Plus going into its ninth year you look on the right the ideal this is a after one season ideally you would want the fibers to stand straight up and look like that of course it's like a new car for the first three or four years anything it's gonna look great and then it's gonna start to deteriorate after that for baseball and if you if you can look in here we have patched and patched and patched our baseball field and we've been fortunate enough that when we did the original install they saved a roll of this terracotta color for our for our repairs so it would kind of match and be the same as you can see

095we finally ran out of that roll and so this is a kind of a minor this picture issue it's not very it shows a good it's good to show the difference in color it also is a different type of carpet which makes the playability of the surface a little bit difficult for the baseball players especially at the level that we play out here in Lawrence the highest six six eight level we have the best athletes in the state on the field would want to provide the best surface to the right you'll see this is going to be our new concept here and we're gonna do more of a terracotta cutout so the whole concept would be instead of trying to patch in patches of the terracotta color we would just remove the whole panel and

096put a whole new panel in which would make repair a lot easier installation a lot easier the aesthetics will look better in place you don't have a lot of little patches in there you can also see if you look closely you can see a line right here here and alone in the back and there's there's another patch right there first and third base or the same way we have patches on all three locations and plus the batters area it gets a lot of wear and tear one thing in Laurens hi is the lack of height on the backstop if you're familiar with the baseball field it's interesting a lot just south of Centennial school behind the picture on the left you will you have the shopping plaza there the Louisiana Purchase Shopping Plaza if you're

097a right-handed batter hitting a foul ball several foul balls go over in that lot so what we do have priced in this renovation is to put up some new back stops that are higher and as you can see we're going to go from 20 to 50 from the day I arrived we've been trying to come up with a good solution to save those balls from no there obviously we want to be good neighbors and and try to minimize those as much as we can a 50-foot backstop will definitely help well not totally prevent foul balls from going over there but it would be a great asset plus from The Spectator standpoint as you can see on the left trying to look through galvanized fencing and several poles versus a net with a few cables strung

098through it will provide a better spectator experience the athletic field read renovations present a status as you can see they your warranty has expired and it's very I haven't found a company they'll give you longer than eight year warranty it's very typical because of the UV degradation on the fibers everything just starts to break down I feel even at seventh and eighth year our consultants told us come years nine and ten it's going to go downhill and it's probably going to go fast because this the UV degradation on the nylon and the backing on them that holds the nylon in is going to start to wear out and that is kind of what we've seen in our grooming we've pulled up a lot more of the green turf when we groom it and then just

099going and physically pulling it out it is coming out quite a bit easier than what it was years previous and they they call that tough to bind so I the next bullet point she was about tough buying and one thing when we start to lose when we start to lose nylon the rubber that the infill rubber starts to move a lot more making more of an uneven surface so we have a lot of rubber migration that's what they call it as you saw on the picture some of the Hydra extremely worn so that's a concern of ours plain arity is just the fact of is if you can see where they do calisthenics you know and by no means am I putting a blame on anybody it's just something that happens where certain grills are

100done and you can see some some dips in some of the areas if you look really close and so that's something that that just over time just happens baseball softball back stops you saw the picture of those one thing we want to include in this project also is improving some of the stadium sound and make for a better experience for the for the fans and the players a scoreboard replacement we have a scoreboard every state that is in need of ridden needs to be replaced it's been there I believe it's pushing over 15 years and then we do not have a maintenance contract right now so that's something we do want to add in to the next next purchase so athletic renovations a selection process we treated it similar to kind of like a cm

101at-risk process the Union in July I started to engage an interview and it kind of gave some criteria to - for consultant for companies contractors that we felt very comfortable with they could do a job of our volume and it can accommodate it within a timely manner and so we received proposals with estimated costs are estimated budget was between five and five and a half million is what we wanted to work with throughout the process I stepped foot on over seventeen synthetic fields from four different manufacturers and vendors and talked to a lot of people about what they liked what they didn't like who's been successful who hasn't and for me what was important was relationship and service and quality I believe that somebody put something in I want them to be back to say

102to stand behind their product and help us with repairs that's from a fiscally maintenance standpoint that's really important to me to come back because we just don't have the staff to take care of something if it's not installed right or low quality product so that was very important to me the ages of turf I was on I always asked shall be a new product and show me your worst product and so they did a pretty good job of saying hey go to this school this is one year old go to this school we got a five year old and then we got a ten year old I even stepped foot on a 13 year old turf field and so I got to see a little bit of everything so it was good for me to

103have that experience and then what's important is extremely important on all of our fields particularly soccer and football it's what they call it G max test which is a is what they used to measure how the impact of the absorbs impact and right now acceptable level the G max test ranges from anywhere from probably in the 70s to two hundred two hundred is the top and once you go over 200 on a G max reading it's unacceptable and so what we do is we want to keep max level low one of the criteria I asked and his contractors was initial install and longevity what is your G max want to be because as I said we want to provide the safest environment for our athletes so one of the companies all of them were in

104the 150 Ranger below on initial install and one of the companies as you see the next statement says with the board approval we're gonna recommend to proceed with Telus construction they had a G max of less than 1/10 after installation and and consistently say that they can keep that under 130 do the life of the product so that was a very big deal for us with all the concussion protocols going on we me and our staff know as the facilities department want to offer the safest environment to our athletes that we can so what my proposal would be or our proposal administration would be that with your approval of the capital improvement plan that we proceed with Hellas construction which can accommodate all of our improvements they also not only do they do a turf

105install they are a construction company and we would like to secure that through the National joint powerlines purchasing co-op and work directly with them so any questions for Tony questions for Kyle a lot of information tubes or we've had we've had multiple conversations in the Facilities Committee on this turf replacement process and kind of Tony's given as periodic updates as he's done his research and and it's been from my perspective it's it's been a very thorough vetting process to figure out which which direction we wanted to go with which companies and and that we're gonna best meet our needs gr hasn't been involved in a lot of those discussions being new so but I think it's it's it's important the the purchasing cooperative piece maybe you could explain just real briefly how far our new

106board members the importance of that or what that allows us to do in this context that's maybe a little different or Cathy Kathie's probably better speaking to the purchasing cooperative piece of it I know just from a pragmatic experience I guess and when Tony mentioned being able to select the people you work with based on the quality of the product the quality of the installation of whatever work they're doing and then the quality of the follow-up is significant it's hard to put a price tag on that so when you're able to go to somebody who has a basically a state contract on our regional contract on the product and the set costs associated with it why you gain a lot of value I guess as a community entity so Kathy can speak to I guess

107from just like the technical standpoint from finance but pragmatically that's the advantage to the owner competitive bid law in the state of Kansas for school districts is that you have to do sealed bids and take low bid period what the purchasing cooperatives or the state contracts you'll hear those kinds of things those have been bid and they have been bid through different and a different government maybe a different School District has gotten a low bid on turf under the purchasing co-op then that low bid other districts can piggyback off that without having to go out and do another sealed bid and try to write specs and do that themselves so you will see school districts a lot of times and for things like this go and kind of piggyback on something that has already been

108been bid and as part of a purchasing co-op and a lot of times those will be for a four or five year period and districts can can piggyback off that you'll see the NGA pae you'll hear us communities is a very common governmental purchasing co-op lots of vendors have done been awarded bids and then that is considered a low bid that districts or other governmental agency cities and counties can piggyback on and state has some state contracts that we piggyback on you'll see a lot of that with technology that this is per state contract that it at it and so we're able to piggyback of those and take advantage of what has already been bid in a in a big way that just helps other districts do that we're not obligated to do that we

109could could do our own seal bid but a lot of times it's it's more beneficial for us to do though that purchasing co-op of theirs there's a variety of them so do we do we belong to the co-op itself do we just belong to the one or move on we have several Sorokin part of yeah we've there's the state doesn't require one and JPA we've been are a member of and there's two or three others I can't think of off the top of my head but we've tried to reach out and look at those different ones related to playground equipment related to technology related to roofs related to and trying to find ones that have one work with construction or contractors that that are good to work with and then where they have gone to

110get some of that good pricing for us so that's kind of how that works we can get more details if you want it but it does it's been advantageous to us in a number of ways to be part of those co-ops Greenbush is another purchasing co-op that we participated in that it's common with school districts so thank you mm-hmm thanks for that explanation any other questions on this one nope okay great um all right our next item of business in then is to move on to our report with patron insight on our survey results wit and Ken to see cart is here to present those results to us and while Ken is getting set up I'm gonna have you take one and pass it down good evening ladies and gentlemen and congratulations to the new

111board members for your installation this evening now you know the secret handshake I teach it to me sometime because I don't know I'm kin to C card and I'm with patron insight and we've had the pleasure of working with the school district many times on research projects like the one I'm going to be talking about tonight and I will I know you have a full agenda Julie warned me you have a full agenda so I'm going to hit if not 3,000 feet maybe 1000 feet and be happy to answer any questions tonight and of course Julie knows my phone number so if there are issues that come up I would like to have the opportunity to answer them as you look through we're going to concentrate mostly on the phone survey tonight because that's the

112one that has the statistical reliability to it but that does not mean that the online survey was of no value because you will see that particularly from a staff and a parent standpoint we had a very active participation count there so see if I can do this a little bit about the details the phone survey we had 400 randomly selected landline cell phone calls that were completed we divided Mena quadrants using 15th in Iowa which we have done before with very successfully the idea is to try and kind of gauge the approximate population distribution so it wasn't 100 100 100 100 but it was close to that and so this is our primary data statistically reliable I will be the focus of our conversations tonight the online version is identical to the phone survey with

113some exceptions and that is the phone survey we have questions okay as I just mentioned well obviously there's no I when you're taking the survey yourself so we have some wording changes there to make that fit we don't do the information source question which is where you get your information because we have a good cross section in the phone survey that gives us that information and we limit our demographics people get a little nervous when you ask them to many demographic questions in an online survey still the links were sent directly to parents and staff the community survey was posted on the district and promoted it's not uncommon for only a handful of folks from the community to participate they have a choice between watching the new season of The Bachelor going online and taking

114the survey and many people choose to watch The Bachelor but look at those parents and staff members that says a lot about the interest level so we call this supplemental data so we always start on the phone survey after someone qualifies that is we know that they are a registered voter we know that they are 18 or older we tend to ask about registered voter status just because those folks are more engaged and in in the community and we know they live in the district but they have to confirm that information if they don't know that either we really don't want to talk to them if they don't know it or we have a bad phone number and sometimes that happens and so once they confirm then we ask them to grade certain facts related

115to the district now we had a much longer list the last time and the reason it was shorter this time is that some of the factors proved to be a little bit kind of onerous in terms of asking the typical resident to judge the quality of the middle school facilities you know when we look at the number the percentage of people that we talked to think about how what percentage of people who live in the community have a current student in a district school right now how it's you typically about 30 to 40 percent so we're asking 60% of the people who never step into a school to rate the quality of the facilities so we pulled those out we saw that we had a lot of don't knows last year so that's not very

116helpful it also spends a lot of time on the phone that we could be spending on other things we also expanded took it out of the grading section and expanded some of them so we had eight that scored B or higher and eight that's Court B or lower now in this case it's a B C D F we use a five-point weighted scale because that's just easy to sort of compare and contrast four would be a B you can't get an A because if you've got an A that would require all four hundred people to say a I have been doing this since nineteen ninety-two it hasn't happened yet I have a feeling it never will because there's always somebody out there I'll say well they're doing a great job you know you can always

117do better and that's fine so we look at B with a margin of error figured in a score as low as three point eight oh is still big okay so bear that in mind we're not going to go through the numbers but I love I love Google art it's just perfect I don't think I got it too many a pluses on my spelling so B or higher I won't read those for you but what you can see is that at the building level that's where our B or hires are and that is really good that's what you want is at the building level that's what school is to most people okay school to most people unfortunately is not what the board goes not what administration does not a lot of the nuances of those kind

118of relationships it's do we have good teachers do our kids get educated well you look up there and you can see it's also kind of uncommon for valuing or the tax dollars spent to score in that group so kudos to the district for demonstrating and communicating effectively about how it spends its money the ones that were below a B and this is an order from almost to be down to not lololo at all but that was the lowest more than the balance of spending among academics athletics and the arts and you can see that it is it is kind of a combination of things that don't relate to the classroom as much I looked at this and I said well I would be concerned about it if I didn't know that the next section goes

119into some of the topics that probably would have been a B or better if we had left them in the grading section so 5050 you're looking at it going well it could have been better just wait because I think you'll like what you see next so here are grades for providing services creating school environments that are encouraging focus on social justice that was in the grading section last time we wanted more detail so we went into more detail wasn't just a simple statement it was a longer statement so we got a chance to really make sure they understood what we were talking about all of the statements scored it a B or higher and again I'll let you look at those rather than read them for you but you know things that the school environment

120that supports students regardless regardless of their race or ethnicity providing a system of supports beat the academic social emotional and behavioral needs of students b or higher providing a safe welcoming environment where bullying is not tolerated b or higher so we wanted to get more detail on these so picture if these had been put back in the grading section the traditional grading section okay we have two thirds would be b or higher and one third would be b or lower now so this is really exciting to me as i was looking at the results because it says what your mission which you have determined your mission to be people are recognizing that you are finding success there equal opportunities for all students like these folks a combined strong agree and agree percentages on the following

121statements this is another technique that we use where we say we have a series of statements and we say tell me your level of agreement with this statement from strongly agree to strongly disagree and we do read all the choices so strongly agree agree neither and strongly disagree so here are this is an order then there's one more that's going to kind of come in underneath the picture of the code and you can see it's all about equal opportunities and in fact to save space i put in an ellipsis on the bottom one there on the on the left side there but equal opportunities to participate in activities 81% strongly agree or agree with that statement equal opportunities to participate in advanced level courses 76% equal opportunities to be leaders 76% and finally discipline is

122addressed fairly regardless of background or personal character you character is six 57 percent the discipline is a beauty in the eye of the beholder situation in every school district yes this is something that you know you probably want to keep your you know keep your thumb on and and see you know kind of focus and maintain attention to this but I didn't make my eyebrows go up and say we 7% snow more than half of the folks strongly agree or agree I agree with the statement the discipline is applied fairly and equitably important steps to take to ensure all students regardless of background or personal characteristic have equal opportunities this was open-ended so we said we've told you what we think is important that I'm paraphrasing but we've told you about we think is important

123now you tell us what we should be doing we coded we read all 400 answers and we coded them meaning we look for common words and phrases and ideas so that you're not looking at a report that's this thick you're trying to we do that a little bit of the work there to say okay what was the most common and the next most common and the third most common idea 108 out of our 400 said I don't know that's not uncommon that's this is a tough question again remembering your percentage of households that have current students not a surprise that I don't know is number one provide the same services to all schools those are obviously not percentages this is the number of individuals who said that and it didn't 96 people didn't say exactly

124the phrase provide the same services to all school that's what coding is all about so they said that or something in that range I have all staff trained okay a little bit of common sense there good communication with students and parents always an issue that parents that people in surveys say keep that communication going not a reflection on the district it's just we really want to hear what's going on and make sure that the two-way communication is very strong and have a clear policy on how to obtain this goal interestingly of all of these I think that's the first one that has a lot of meat to it to have a clear policy as to how you will ensure that students regardless of opportunities hour regardless of personal characteristics and background have opted equal opportunities

125the others are fine but they're kind of expected situations so evaluating possible changes and start and end times at the high school level we added eight statements positive and negative and when I say negative and when I say positive it wasn't overly positive it was just a positive fact such as the American Academy of Pediatrics had to remember what aap stood for and the American Medical Association think it's important to not start a school before 8:30 that's a pot that's a fact that could be taken as a positive the negative was for example it could cost us a hundred thousand dollars in bus routes so there were equal amounts of statements and we said how is this going to impact your view on the possibility of a change the result in one sentence there's support

126for the board continuing to work on this and think about this and evaluating a change the most impactful statements in order meaning this is the most important to me as I consider this issue additional sleep and enhance well-being for students high school level those recommendations I mentioned and the potential impact on the students academic performance I'll tell you quite candidly the negative statements were like not a big deal bus through extra bus money kids not having quite the same kind of opportunities as others to get jobs after school maybe messing mom and dad's schedule didn't seem like quite the same issue so and then other topics and I was so glad that we had for other topics and I found this graphic because it fits perfectly these are topics that didn't really have a place

127so we put them toward the end of the survey day they served in the demographics to say we just have a few other questions in the in the yellow box food and security which we described eighty-three percent said that's that's not an issue ever for them a person said rarely seven percent said sometimes and there were two or three other options that were less than that in the reddish orange box ninety eight percent said their student has access to the Internet at home in the blue box the current advanced release program on Wednesday is fine for fifty six percent of the elementary and middle school parents who participated in the survey while forty three percent would prefer one day off a month versus every Wednesday that's close enough to continue the conversation I think about

128that but for right now it stays they they would prefer to stay as is and seventy nine percent think the school year calendar is fine as is we gave them a whole host of options start later in later start earlier and earlier and I told this to Julia Boyle who smacked me verbally but because three percent said it's too short now she said so they went a little longer calendar and she said oh well no we don't want that here's our demographics from our survey group you will see that forty-nine percent had been in the district more than fifteen years but thirty percent were the relative newcomers sixty percent were 25 to 54 years old I like that sweet spot because that's our parent I mean I just lost my last graduate she's off to

129college and I am fifty something so that's the sweet spot when you really have people are focused on school issues and there you can see the breakdown of current student families past student families which now is me and 81 percent Caucasian white 7% African American or black 3% Hispanic Latino the current read on the census for the city says that's representative we are within the margin of error there and these are not quota items by the way these are not quite these just information that we collect and 54 percent female which is not at all unusual because we tend to get more female participants who are willing to talk on the phone or are online as you look through those 80 some pages you will see that it's similar the results are similar on all

130the key areas for parents and staff the community numbers were just too small to spend any time on but as you do and this is not to kind of dis as the young people would say as you do remember that I'd have to say that my I have to you know find some ways to make my two daughters laugh okay self-selected they made the choice to participate even they were sent parents were sent the link staff was sent the link the link was posted on the website but even if you got the link sent to you via email you still had to make that choice so typically that means you're much more interested in the subject matter than the average person the phone survey is a cross-section geographically you get you're passionate you're dispassionate and

131that whole big group in the middle that only thinks about it when it's maybe time to vote or something like that may or may not be who they say they are if they get access to a parent survey and they're a staff member okay there's a risk there and they typically do not answer all the questions because I think if we put down the little star that says you have to answer the question we'll get about four questions and people will say the heck with this and they'll bail open-ended responses were coded as you look at the verb a comments recognize that we did what we call a light edit on those because of the fact that it's just overwhelming so you will get a chance to see in raw form what parents and what

132staff members are thinking about a variety of issues the same issues so and as I said earlier we do not do the information source question not referenced here but the journal world district districts website friends and neighbors all very high as in terms of information sources for the district news we don't do that on the online I'm sorry yes on the online and we keep the demographics to a minimum so I think that's it and deference to your sorry there is about 140 pages of content in 20 minutes did a great job of summarizing you did a great job of summer break it down for us questions where members have questions need some time - one of the things when looking at the demographics that wasn't reported that would be interesting to know about particularly

133we were asking about things like food insecurity did we ask about socioeconomic status we didn't that's it was a kind of we had a discussion about that sometimes we do sometimes we we don't that was a district decision I'm not trying to you know kind of cast that direction but we tend to not ask that because it tends to stimulate calls to the district to say why do you care about how much money I make and so we thought as we were discussing that we could get a generally good idea based on the geographic breakdowns generally good idea so most districts don't don't have us do that for the reason that they don't want to seem to be snooping I'm gonna sit with that um I guess I'm having a bit of a reaction set

134with that I guess that's done and it might be something worth looking at when we do it again next year absolutely um and then I have just one other question if it's okay in the demographics when you look at the correlation some of the perceptions where are some of the responses relate directly to equity and inclusion work that the district is working on and is there a way to correlate respondents based on when you have these large numbers of people that are saying I'm trying to think of a specific question but 25% of people saying we're not doing well in a particular area that might be related to equity and inclusion is there a way to determined the demographics of those respondents yeah and with any report you'll find that the half that we're below

135a B just as an example we want to know if there was a demographic Geographic reason that they said that caution on that is that you need to look for trends as opposed to the individual numbers because within the charts not to get too nerdy but within the charge things a little and number that says this is how many people fit this characteristic small of the end number or that four or five people just go on wacko with their with their grade and impact the whole grade so we look for trends like current student families are they always the highest even on these lower grades women are they always biased either on even on these lower lower grades and in other places where we saw where we thought it would be important to do that

136the breakdowns were length of time living in the district age gender student status and location of residents if you look through and you find something that you would like that to be done before that isn't in the report pass that word along we will get it done okay thank you if you have if you end up having requests for additional information after you've had a chance to look through the details direct those through Anna and we'll get those questions answered and as far as the online survey we will get all of those with the comments we just wanted to remove some identifying information and we have that so we should be able to post that and send it to you tomorrow I did have a comment I which I don't think will surprise any of

137the veteran board members about the start time which is something I've been talking about advocating for for two years I was actually surprised that the numbers were kind of what they were given that we didn't do really in a PR about the scientifically established benefits of this and if you look at the telephone survey and the parent online survey the plurality believe that this should be a priority for the school board so you know and if you look at the some of the other things in terms of community input now how well we're doing yeah engaging student or the community's concerns we're kind of like a b-minus or C plus I think the community is sending us a message about this so there's a lot of stuff on the agenda tonight and I don't think

138that we necessarily want to spend a lot of time on this but I would like to request that this issue be put on the agenda for the next meeting so we can properly talk about it so I think what leadership will talk about that with the superintendent given that we've been through our goal-setting process for this year we need have some conversation about how we're going to how we're going to handle addressing that I think you're I am glad that we asked the community about this this issue and I think that you know we have a clear direction that this is something that people are interested in seeing us pursue so we're gonna have to talk about how how we move forward with next steps so we'll take that into consideration well event and that's

139exactly what I would like to put on the agenda for the next meeting we'll discuss that at agenda setting when we have our next agenda setting me okay we'll have to have some conversation about that if it's not expect some pushback okay thank you all right any questions that you saw as planned anywhere in the survey that's intentional we want people to react to the facts we don't want people to react to bland statements about you know the the balance of spending among this this and this not do we spend too much on athletics or whatever the case may be so it's intentionally bland and I am a made dog on a bone when I get a statement that's that it suggests a positive or a strongly negative because I think you need to have

140the information that really is this is the facts this is right here maybe the first time someone's heard about this or thought about this this is their top of mine response because that's all that most people will give a school district a city a police department is a top my mind thoughts so yeah I'm I'm feisty about that great any other questions all right thank you very much you okay um our next item is an executive session and I have the motion for that okay I move the Board of Education recess to executive session to discuss personnel matters of non-elected personnel in order to protect privacy interests of the individuals to be discussed with dr. Brenda Brenda dietrich via telephone and David Cunningham invited to be present and with the board to return an open

141session that in this room at 8 816 with possible action to follow we have our phone person set up for a specific time so we're gonna we're gonna get this the tiny cave presenters okay all right I need a second and an Evoque second all in favor okay thank you you okay we will move on to the next item on our agenda which is a report on tiny K with Kevin her Elle executive director of student support services in special education and Laura Basham assistant director of special education Oh Kevin Halle directed student services in special education I currently as a district we provide special services to students aged 3 to we recently approached by tiny k of douglas county to see the consideration of us being the lead agency for tiny k tiny k

142currently provides services birth to age 3 for children with disabilities so today we're going to include um what that discussion looked like and we actually have some people from tiny k to help answer any questions and explain what's ours and Laura Bassen I'm Laura hum and assistant director of special education what I'm going to do tonight is go through some very general high-level basics about tiny K what the tiny K program is we will be bringing some people up to speak from specifically from China k as you can see we have quite a large constituency here from China K we do have some providers that are here we have the interim executive director of tiny K that is here we also have some people from the state and from kits that are can help us

143move forward should we choose to make a switch with being the lead fiscal agency for tiny K okay so first before we get into tiny K I do want to bring us back to our Lawrence mission and as we think about tiny K we think about the students that from zero to three that do have developmental disabilities and delays we do feel that our mission of making sure that all students from all races and all backgrounds are getting the supports that they need to achieve so seeing that that does absolutely fit very well with our mission that we currently have and then also looking at some of our state initiatives that we have looking at Kisa and the five R's looking at results and then relationships rigor the relevance and then the cultural relevance as

144well as relationships also tie in nicely so we're looking at having access to our students that there are future students earlier rather than waiting until they're three years old for us to start working with them and then another initiative that works well with the Kisa is our kindergarten readiness initiative that we're working with right now that we're starting to make sure that kiddos are ready for kindergarten and then also our kindergarten classrooms all ready for the kids that are coming up now one of the things as you look at this next slide here we've got our early childhood program here everything that is not in the circle is what we currently have for early childhood we currently have parents as teachers which is a zero to pre or zero to three program or I'm sorry

145it's birth to three and then we also have special education which is three to five and then we have our four-year-old at risk programming what is circled the tiny K program that's what we're looking at adding on to our early childhood program within the district some of the things about tiny K it's very similar to IDE a or the students with disabilities with disabilities from three to five and tiny K one of the differences the state actually calls it Part C services difference is we're looking at working with students that are zero to three and we're working with students or they are working with students that are throughout Douglas County so we do have some students that could be transferring to Baldwin or could be transferring to Eudora it's not solely just our Florence public

146school within our boundaries students it's all within Douglas County China K also similar that it provides it's similar to special education that does provide vital developmental support that is needed to families at no expense to the families it's very similar to special education for three and up and then also similar to parents as teachers tiny K is family-centered and it is assist in empowering the families to support their children with disabilities so it's not only supporting those students that have disabilities and delays it also supports the families and working through and with and connecting with resources tiny K some of the services that they provide very comprehensive we've got our tiny K does support students with speech therapy physical therapy occupational therapy nutrition services special instruction and then also social work services really if there's

147a student that has a disability and/or a delay tiny K comes in to wraparound to help support the family and getting the student to where they need to go Beach in order to make progress these services do occur within the home that's where the students are that's where they spend a majority of their time so that's they live there and that's where we put the supports in for tiny K and then also tiny K does we I did mention this allow the students to catch up and then also to connect with resources that's kind of just a very brief overview of what tiny K services do there's a lot that's involved what's Rhynie k but just for tonight's sake and time we just kind of kept it brief just the highlights what we want to

148do now is have Aaron bird come up she is the current president of tiny Kane she's just gonna say a couple words good evening my name is Aaron Smith bird and I currently serve on the board of directors of the Douglas County tiny Kay as president I've served on this board since 2012 and I'm here this evening to offer a statement to you regarding why our agency initially approached USD 497 to absorb tiny K under its umbrella as our lead and fiscal agent our reasoning for such a merger can be summarized into the following points the first one being consistency and collaboration this merger would provide a consistent agency that provides services to children and families thus helping ease the transition from Part C to Part B services it also would provide administrative and leadership

149consistency for the staff that we employ and it would offer the opportunity for increased collaboration between providers that will ensure a continued high quality early education program for the children of Douglas County the second reasoning for our request is one of cost savings a merger with USD 497 would provide a cost savings to tiny K by eliminating our administrative costs such as Medicaid billing we typically right now we outsource that and would place that money back into our budget which would ultimately benefit USD 497 the final point that I have is one of sustainability and as a board member I feel we have a responsibility to not only look at the short-term objectives for this agency but the long-term goals as well the past 15 months of discussion and exploration of other programs to merge

150with lead us to the conclusion that merging with USD 497 makes the most sense for the children of Douglas County and the sustainability of the agency I want to thank you for your time and thank you to all of the early childhood administrators Kevin and Laura and Murray and many others who have worked with our agency on this merger over the past several months we very much appreciate the time and effort they have given and at the conclusion of this presentation myself Shelley Dougherty our executive director Heather Staub the director of the statewide tiny K and other board members and staff members who are here will be happy to answer any questions you may have thank you okay next we're going to hear from rich mender and rich works with our success local Sasak success

151by six thanks for all your work so success by six is a early childhood Coalition in Douglas County and we've invested over the years and a variety of early childhood investments here in the school district in Baldwin and Eudora and with a number of other partners in the county including tiny K so we the coalition supports this for the reasons that have already been mentioned efficiencies the effectiveness I think of the transitions are the thing that come to my mind first of all between Part C to Part B typically there are different requirements for the individuals with Disabilities Education Act Part C zero to three and those for Part B and having a school district who already manages Part B to be more actively engaged in managing Part C would really help with some of

152the misunderstandings that parents often have in that transition so that's one important thing that I see is a an important seamless transition that can come around come about because of this kind of collaboration we also have invested for quite some time families when I think when their child is born right away identified with a delay of some kind or a disability I think the kind of support that that family needs at that time is something that I I i think is needs to be attended to not just in terms of the technical aspects and the support that they need for ot and PT and and those kinds of services but just some of the emotional support the family needs when they're dealing with the kind of grieving process that naturally happens when their expectations have

153been different than what they had planned and I would sort of expect that that would be one area that we would all do well to pay attention to going forward so I think let's see those were sort of the main things that success by six you know wanted to just articulate and and our support for for this work and I think Thanks thank you thanks rich uh one of the things I do want to highlight also this evening in the board enclosure I think attached to the agenda there is a letter of support from Coleen Riley who is the director of early childhood special education and title services for the state and so we do have the the support of KSD behind us to move forward with this as well and you can look at

154that at your leisure thinking of some of the positive impacts I'm going to go over some of the positive impacts and then I'm going to work we're gonna talk about some of the things that we'll need to work through should we move forward with this positive impacts from the student and the family side of this some of the things are rich mentioned this Aaron wrench and mentioned this also thinking about seamless transition or seamless services for parents children that are born with developmental disabilities or have delays that may be identified early on will be able to start services with USD 497 staff they will be able to continue with services with USD 497 staff they'll be able to seamlessly work through that continuum starting with tiny K and then moving to our services for Part

155B when they turn 3 for our students and families that do live within our boundaries so speaking to the seamlessness of services that quality continuum that we would be able to offer families again consistent messaging I think it's big if we have all of our staff that are working together tiny K has awesome great quality staff they know the program they know the regs that they need to follow and if we are all working together and we're able to start with families early build those relationships keep those relationships moving forward right now we do a really pretty good job of transitioning and families start with tiny K and then they tradition or they transition to the big scary school district if we start them with the school district we you're able to really continue that

156messaging it's not so scary of a transition to move from your child that's to that's turning three into the school district because they're the same staff that work together they collaborate and that transition has a lot of opportunities to really be smooth for families so we're looking at really increasing the quality for families here some of the potential positive impacts for the district along with what students and families thinking about as far as district staff we're able to strengthen the partnerships with other community agencies such as success by six GCF all of the different agencies that we do work with same staff that are that are talking and that are working with them we don't have two different agencies working in isolation trying to create the same relationships also thinking about the state the message

157has been from the state about some of the funding streams looking at how do we pull programs and early childhood out of isolation from working kind of doing some of the same types of things in different pockets but how do we blend those funding streams so that we can work together we can create efficiencies being very aware that yeah we need to be tied to Part B funds and Part C funds but how do we get those funds to work together so that we can really benefit the needs of Children and Families also collaboration professional development some of these things we've kind of already touched on and then reporting thinking about Aaron touched on Medicaid billing things like that consistencies with reporting consistencies with record student records students all go into the same student information

158system so we don't have that opportunity to miss type or to pass off data in an inaccurate way just helping to create those efficiencies here are some of the item that we can work through that will have the opportunity to work through here thinking about our current structure for early childhood realizing that we've got good quality early childhood programming right now in the district should we bring tiny K in we will as a district need to look at restructuring because we want to make sure that we bring tiny K in we want to make sure that has the support that it needs in order to function so we do realize that kind of got some ideas about some of that but realizing that that that will something will need to change a little bit kind

159of within what we're already doing also items to work through tiny K does bring with it a different set of procedures timelines procedures paperwork similar to special education however it's for tiny K and so we'll need to quickly get up to speed on what those are we're very fortunate that the tiny case staff is very well versed and a lot of that it will able be able to help us with that should people choose to continue and stay on in the in the positions that they're in but that's something that will we'll have to work through and then also looking at our students that are future students that may not live in Lawrence Public Schools just working through what do we need to do with Baldwin and Eudora just to make sure that they're aware

160that Lords public schools is now going to be working with tiny K we're going to have our staff working with students that are 0 1 2 in in their communities and then some funding support here we have done some preliminary kind of high-level thinking about some things Kathy is kind of prepared a little bit because she understands this a lot more Kathy Johnson I'm gonna let Kathy talk about some of the funding evening so I kind of do this very high-level and we just are doing it kind of very preliminary because as they work through a lot of the information that they've shared the staffing needs any you know there's a lot to still talk about with that so just at a very high level the funding for tiny K kind of comes from a

161broad cross-section of funding there's categorically which is state aid that comes through the state for special education staff and categorical aid or special education funding comes from an FTE of a teacher so a 1.0 teacher is funded a certain amount of money and there's Medicaid so there's those reimbursable --zz with Medicaid students that we can get funding back there's what they continue to say as Part C which is a federal pass-through many that is is tied to this and then there's just kind of general local support that could be donations it could be other local monies that might support the tiny k program and so looking at that categorical aid we already kind of partner with tiny k and you have a contract with them and we their staff we're getting the categorical aid for

162and it goes back to them so in essence they'll just be our staff and we'll continue to get categorical aid on those staff members the Part C funding will be us as the fiscal agent instead of the tiny K organization and so that grant will just kind of follow along and blend then the Medicaid is will take over the Medicaid billing or those student services and won't have that percent fee that they're paying to Greenbush and so we'll be able to kind of create that efficiency with a system that we already have in place for Medicaid billing so we'll be able to do that and then the local support will either be continued you know donations specific to that or mini grants or or just the special education fund being able to support on a

163broader level relooking at so what we did was we knew all those funding sources we knew kind of the positions not necessarily will they continue to be a bit let's we assume same kind of exact positions they are teachers they are PT ot speech-language well they're gonna have to be on our salary matrix so we needed to take those positions based on kind of the hypothetical education of those staff members where does that fit and then looked at so we looked at the cost of that tiny K tends to be all year most teachers have that 186 day contract so we had to build in what the cost of additional days would be for each of those positions and that looking at kind of administrative leave there's gonna have to be some oversight on that

164and what does that look like and how does that maybe blend with parents as teachers or existing positions that the district has in special education and and really just kind of making some assumptions to see where is this gonna cost us more cost us less how's that going to fall out based on our preliminary looks and being able to redirect funds that no longer are overhead and redirect into staff is primarily where it ends up as far as the cost to us for the additional days and where they fit on our matrix we're pretty close to a break-even up to $60,000 difference basically so in looking at how we would restructure this on a very preliminary level figuring out what that staffing cost would be with us and and how that structure would look it

165could be as much as breakeven or possibly up to $60,000 so very kind of minimal when you look at the total cost being about a six hundred and fifty thousand dollar type budget across all funding sources the grant categorical aid medicaid so very high level I don't have anything necessarily to show you although I could show you my scribbles but I think I think the bottom line with the discussion that we've had so far is that we can kind of absorb this program into what is an existing world create efficiencies and a lot of things that are maybe not dollars and cents so much as they are in just that whole work environment and and continuum of communication each of our levels of student support that makes sense what questions do you have kind of

166kind of circled around but so I have some questions that's first of all I agree with all of the ways that this fits into our mission in our in our so these these are not questions I'm asking because I don't think this is a good idea I just I need to understand it a little better so in the way this has been described as the district taking over as the lead fiscal agent but really what it sounds like is it it basically we would be bringing folding tiny K into it would become a USD 497 program with USD 497 employees okay are you currently acting as your own entity or you partnered with some other how you know you're not doing this with somebody else right now right we currently are our own nonprofit agency

167we are our own lead and Fiscal agency and have been yeah okay all right is the tiny K program set up like this with any other school districts in Kansas okay is it pretty common or more so with the larger school districts I do know that one of the schools that I in contact with is Wamego or one of school districts I that's the one that I can come up off the top of my head there are some other districts that do have tiny K under them as well as well as coops okay so okay have something that started under the school district or it was absorbed by the local school district as well okay we did we did at one time Kevin may be able to help me here but we did actually have

168tiny K under us a number of years ago and then it kind of broke off it became part of Greenbush it was part of different and had done their own 501c3 so they've been under different groups they have been under the school district before it's it's difficult when you're you're not unders an umbrella of a fiscal agent whether it's a co-op or whether it's a school district or a county and so it helps with that whole process of the grant writing the the fiscal responsibility and grant compliance auditing the administrative overhead of insurance work comp all those kinds of things when you can umbrella under a larger entity that kind of already has all that in place it does make it more efficient on some levels that aren't always seen they're sort of those unknown

169I have a related question actually so I presume these are mandated services so someone has to provide them with in the county correct and there was a comment that said something around you were looking at 15 different other and agencies to merge with or something are you is there some okay we have met with a variety of different agencies to merge with we just feel like this makes the most sense since we are most I mean we have a approximately maybe nine to ten kids and I don't know if my numbers are current that we're be served in Baldwin and Eudora but the majority of our children that we currently serve are in Lawrence proper would you guys say that that's an accurate thank you yeah so in a given year we conserve like in

170in 2016-2017 we served three hundred and seven children and then the typical number of kids who have an active IEP because kids transition in and out of the program we're around 135 and out of that 135 126 were USD four nine seven kiddos three were Baldwin and six were Eudora so I'm gonna ask a frank question all right are you looking to merge with someone because they're if you do not you will be in crisis no we are not we are operating in the black okay we can continue to move on as as business as usual we just feel like as a board that looking this makes the most sense for our program and for our staff and for USD 497 so this is really something you see is in the best interest of the

171children and not necessarily because of a fiscal situation that you can earn okay thank you in terms of Kathy since we spent some time together earlier today talking about things like audits and things like that from a policy perspective do you foresee that there's a policy impact changes that we would need to be looking at in folding in the this program into our services no it is part of the you know the idea the title 6b the part part B that we already do so this becomes just a part of that federal compliance audit that we already have that we we just recently finished and it will just kind of fold into that we already have the categorical aid that we're passing on through them that's already state audit and it's covered in that part

172so really there isn't anything new related to this and it it actually makes a little easier for us to manage okay so I'm done with my list of questions other questions Jill Jill gr and then Jill from that from the one slide that you showed with all the services that are currently underneath the the district and then Tanya K was the one circle outside is there is there any current overlap with existing services that you would have to work through administrative Lee if you brought it in or any anything that you'd have to work through to merge there I don't see a direct conflict or overlap what we do we have parents as teachers that does serve birth to three and right now parents as teachers does do a lot of working together and collaborating

173but the two programs serve their different purposes and so we do have or tiny k does have several students and several families that do take advantage of parents as teachers as well but it they work together in collaboration and so we see this is actually strengthening that collaboration and making even more of a direct collaboration and there's not a conflict there that we see it is a different service model so when we look at what we currently provide we provide currently provide all those services for our students 3 through 21 but tiny K and the way the law is written it is a different service model so it's it's we're not as likely to have staff do both 3 through 5 and birth through thank you Jill do you envision keeping your same governing structure

174and staying you're an independent 501 3 C that is I know I'm curious about the organization you know contractor agreement and then you also spoke about I guess in the same vein fundraising and grant writing to support your services would you see would you plan to continue that and or what would change so as far as the discussion that the board of directors have had we would not be continuing as a 501 C 3 it was this would be a full absorption of the agency we do have a a we don't really do a lot of grant writing we do in terms of just mini grants our big part sea grant is our grant but we do have a fundraising event that has been very good to us a local family has a run and

175I would hope that that could continue as usual I don't know why why it could not that is just our big fundraiser and we do also have a endowment there's not a lot of money in there but it is an endowment with the Douglas County Community Foundation I guess I'm wondering if you're active your board ceases to exist in the in the fundraising activities and does that add to the 60,000 or what what the Cathy pencil that rely on that our program is funded without major fundraising sources does that make sense we're funded primarily through the Part C grant the Medicaid funding the categorical aid so we we don't rely heavily on fundraising for our operating budget we just don't I mean you're talking $10,000 maybe we get in fundraising okay so Cathy the the

17660,000 represented cost that will incur in addition to that I guess I'm just trying to decide understand what what hole we have to plug to make those will be related somewhat on how we choose to restructure so that number is a high number that that's like an up too but if we don't do you know if we don't do something in an administrative level or clerical support or maybe there's something different that we can do with curtain current caseloads of existing teachers there's still that to work through so that's really when I say that that's so tightly close to a thousand is the yeah yeah it's just sixty being the high and yeah and it's a higher level and I think until we can actually hands-on get a little deeper in to that it's really

177a high level look wouldn't expect to go above that and really expect it to be closer to the break-even kind of level and and those are details that that Kevin Laura and I are just starting to kind of work through but wanted to give you at least a high level Kathy when you looked at staffing and you put it on our yeah our matrix I assumed that included things like healthcare retirement and that's part of the cost increased difference would be you know the health insurance the 403 B and the fact that you know the extra days beyond the the standard teacher contract that daily rate and what will that look like those are some things that we can decide and adjust and they would adjust than that price we move this to the January

17822nd meaning you're gonna have this more fleshed out for us to look at those numbers we can would that include like the facilities and operations of like what so so there really isn't a cost for because the they're gonna be in a building that we already have all of that and that's already in our budget for you to see those kinds of things so it's not a separate facility that we're gonna have to start funding so it those are some insurance becomes ours and you know all those kinds of things so so we don't have those overhead cost that they have as a separate entity and currently tiny K is and what about their house at Centennial so are they currently paying rent that they will no longer pay okay okay I guess I would

179like to see a full breakdown of the financial situation that we would be like I said I have a rough one on I don't know if I can they don't have the ELMO anymore I can scan it yeah so it's and it's gonna come back as everything as a report approval I have a real rough sketch of how that would okay yeah I think I think that's necessary so we can just bring it back on the 22nd as a report and approval so that you can have time to work you would be the board of other questions about how how all this would work folding into they're gonna come back to us at our next January meeting with more detailed information and ask for approval of this plan to move forward so I want to

180make sure everybody gets all their questions answered either tonight or between now and then I guess we we kind of heard abstractly how you think this will help and what you think the consequences are not consequences what's the right word the positive impact this will have good it might be helpful to hear like it concrete examples um the patterns that you see with the clients that you have and how you feel this will help streamline services because I know you by reputation and and know that your services are are considered to be pretty well integrated so just wondering really where I just I need a little bit more understanding of where you see that improvement just a couple examples might be helpful I can tell you as a past board member of tiny K yeah

181that transition that transition from tiny K to three to five is just it it's an interesting transition and I think we've improved on it but we still have some work to do on that okay great thank you all very much thank you all for being here this evening and for wading through our executive session so we we appreciate you being patient with us on that and I think we'll look for some more detail at our meeting on the 22nd right um because we pulled it from our consent agenda we need to take care of one last piece of business which is the Memorandum of Understanding item between the school district the Lawrence Police Department in the seventh Judicial District Court of Douglas County and the Douglas County District Attorney's Office and David Cunningham is going

182to we had a question come up about this this afternoon that we felt it was important to clarify for the public before we had our vote on this item so this is an MoU with Douglas County the district court the county attorney the school district the police department to implement the requirements of Senate bill 367 essentially it's to create a working relationship with these entities so that we can address those student needs and you're not calling the police for something that's really a student discipline matter that the the building should handle this has nothing to do with SROs we do have a separate MoU with the city of Lawrence in the police department on our school resource officers this doesn't affect that at all it's a separate MOU this is simply to put the the

183requirements of statute into place we had an agreement that we were working on that had included Baldwin and Eudora since it was one County and after getting that all put together the city didn't really want to include the other cities so they went their direction and we redrafted with the city's help separate agreement just for 497 and the City Police Department related to this particular agreement that includes the courts and and the district attorney's office so unrelated to the MoU with the SRO so that there's a couple of important things that we had to do this because it was required by the statute the Senate bill that was passed last year and juvenile justice reform our equity Advisory Council is taking a look at SROs and how they function in our schools wanted to make

184it very clear for the members of that committee that this memorandum is not the memorandum that has to do with that relationship just so there was no misunderstanding amongst that group about what this is that we were approving any other questions for Dave if not somebody can make the motion just just some clarification it's not really clear to me why we pulled it because because someone from the EAC group had a question thought that we were approving a memorandum had to do with the SRO relationship so we wanted to make sure that rather than just answering just her question for her we wanted to make sure that we said it publicly that no this is not that memorandum that we're talking about thank you okay all right motion second a motion understanding with the between

185the district in the police department oh here we go I am moved that we enter into an MoU in order to comply with the provisions of the Kansas estate annotated 72 - eight nine b03 aye as amended by Senate bill three six seven thank you second no okay all in favor aye okay now Jill [Laughter] second one favor I thank you geez