2017 - 11/13 Lawrence Board of Education Meeting

001the November 13th to 2017 meeting of the Board of Education our first item of business is to get approval of the agenda all in favor aye aye thank you we're excited this evening to have a special recognition of staff jennifer attacked me our coordinator of Native American student services is has been honored with the National summit leadership for learning award and here to present that recognition is Kevin her Elle executive director of student support services and special education and Lea wisdom our assistant director of student support services and equity I'm Kevin hall executive director student services a special education we've kind of said whatever I want to say but I am here to recognize Jennifer talked me I've had the pleasure of working with Jennifer though for the last 11 years and I can honestly

002say it's been a pleasure and a learning experience Jennifer although Jennifer also is an integral member of our district equity leadership team and what she brings to that team is it's it's really hard to talk about because there's so much and in helping us with discussions and challenging us so thank you they wanted me to bring the actual physical award so I think it a box so I'd put it in my backpack in this bag and it was um interesting going through security with this so Hamid awake huh the nanny it said Jennifer a-talkin II he'll everybody here tonight my name is Jennifer I'm an enrolled citizen the Comanche tribe I'm also criticism van Potawatomi and Muscogee Creek I graduated from both universities here in Lawrence I have a AAA and liberal arts from Haskell

003in a BA in theater from K you when I found out I was receiving the award I attempted to minimize it it because I felt like it was just do my job that was just this is the gig you show up show up for the students and that's the gig in fact I didn't even realize how big of a word it was until like the day before like twenty literally 24 hours before I received the award at the conference well that's watching all the other people get up and I realized that I was going to do that as well in front of a thousand people and give this speech and I was like do I have to do that too and they're like yes you're deaf yeah so we were taught or I was I

004haven't taught that everyone every being is on a circle that we're all the same they were all equal in balance and the only thing in the middle of the circle is a fire you don't wanna be the most circle that's fire so to put yourself forward is to like be bragging or not humble and that's against my nature and it feels weird even say that out loud like it's not even being humble saying that so so but than I thought again some more and I realized that as an indigenous person in Lawrence and in the United States I'm often invisible and that my students are often invisible and so I decided to receive the accolade and receive the award in a way so that it can make my students more visible and what we do

005here in Lawrence more visible we don't even show up in the pie charts on USA Today newspaper you look up data nationally it's really hard to find us because many times we are invisible and so even in my daily work my affinity group or other staff of regularly other native staff and so for me to be recognized as just doing my job but also be an indigenous person doing my job hopefully that y'all or the over culture or other people can see that we are actually not invisible we are very present in here today the thing that resonates with me the most about the courageous conversation protocol is that as an inward journey to enact systemic change on an outward scale and so I was told I received this award for the work that I

006do individually now going to summit and beyond diversity and trainings are all important and doing great things but the actual work is for oneself and within oneself and examining oneself and finding where I show up in whiteness and fighting that and fighting the system of whiteness that corrupts and is permanent and so for me to embrace this and share it is a huge huge step for me I hope you guys appreciate that but also that the external system that we are trying to disrupt will eventually help everybody not just the students of color it actually will look everybody up so by disrupting the system and examining ourselves and where we have our fear and what we're referring to do then we can raise everybody out so hopefully this will help every do that thank you

007[Applause] the well-deserved recognition for the work that you do for our district and thank you so much okay um the next item on our agenda is the report of the board president and I have a few things to share tonight first of all I want to say congratulations to Melissa Johnson on her election to or your term on our board and also to and also to gr Gordon Ross and Kelly Jones on their election as they will be joining us on January 8th and I am looking forward to serving with all of them there have been a few things going on since our meeting on October 23rd first of all thank you to the board members who were able to attend the board lunch at Pease leeteuk on October 24th it was a great opportunity

008for our board to get to know the staff and board members at peasley and to hear from them and the city in the county our partners in that endeavor pursuant to the discussions at that event the peasley tech board is preparing to amend their bylaws to add a member of our board to their board of directors if you're interested in being appointed as the board representative to that group please let me know I'm gonna be reaching out to our newly elected board members to get their preferences about committee assignments we'll have to do a little bit of reshuffling come January 8th when Vanessa and Marcel are leaving us and so we I'll be reaching out and I hope to get information everybody sometime in December to get that accomplished on November 1st I had the

009privilege of attending to celebrate Brooke Nash breakfast it's a fundraiser for Bert Nash but it's always a very powerful event because of the stories that people share about the impact of Bert Nash services on their your lives the district has a strong partnership with Bert Nash and supporting the mental health needs of our students and I'm very please that we're continuing that relationship for our current and our incoming board members if you want to learn more about services that Bert Nash provides outside of our partnership there is a discover bert nash session on december 14th at noon it's slated to take less than an hour they're going to provide a light lunch if you're interested in attending you can email Emily Farley or Cindy Hart at Burton ash to RSVP we may also have according

010I talked with Cindy today we may also have an option to do some type of event like that either as a board lunch or some other fashion after the first of the year we'll be working on the format of their discover sessions and it was suggested that maybe that could be something we could do in a board lunch kind of fashion so I'll get some more information about that on the second we had a facility planning committee meeting normally Marcel would report on that but he's not here tonight I just wanted to share that works moving forward with our design committees at our high schools and based on conversations at that meeting we're recommending that the board have a work session before our December 12th regular meeting with our F&O staff to get an update

011on the preliminary design discussions that are that are ongoing so they can get everybody on the board up to speed on the work that's being done so far weekend of November 4th I had a K ASB Board of Directors meeting in Topeka a couple of things out of that discussion I wanted to share the ksb advocacy staff gave an update on the recently released revenue estimates unfortunately even though revenue is up it's not real great news if you're looking at what they anticipate the court is going to ask the legislature to put into the system in order to meet the the requirements the of the gamin case they're still there would still be an estimated deficit in 2020 kind of projecting out and that doesn't their estimated deficit of about 145 million doesn't include ending

012sweeps from the highway funds or any other increase in spending on state services or capers funding so it's notable that the legislature has decided to appoint a special Committee on a comprehensive response to the school finance decision that committee is being charged with identifying options and consequences for those options regarding how they want to respond to the court's ruling the legislative Coordinating Committee which is the basically legislative leadership has decided to spend upwards of about $400,000 to hire it yet again another set of attorneys and a school finance expert to advise them on their response to the lawsuit there's been some discussion that that group may float the idea of amending the state constitution to remove the article six language requiring that the legislature provides suitable funding so I wanted to highlight that for our

013board members that's an issue I think we need to watch and be ready to advocate it around once that committee starts meeting and as the legislative session gets underway also had the privilege of attending the dinner recognizing our current and past Bob's Award Dinner or Bob's award recipients I'm sorry I think probably all the board members know but for the for the public the Bob's award is an award given by the Lawrence Schools Foundation every year it's a $10,000 award to a teacher there's a group of anonymous donors all of whom are named Bob have provided funding for that award for 21 years I didn't realize that had been that many years what was really cool about the event was that the the prior award prior year's award winners that attended talked about the impact

014that receiving that award had on their teaching careers and also on their endeavors some of them after they left the teaching professor profession and retired and just what a lasting impact it has had so that was a really neat really neat event so with that I have to report for tonight we'll move on to the report of the superintendent of schools good evening I just have a few things I have two certificates of recognition to present from the Kansas Association of School Boards honoring Shannon Kimball and Jessica Beeson for achievement honor roll level one status at the kasp Leadership Academy training program so congratulations to both of you I also want to say congratulations to Melissa on her successful campaign for election to a four-year term we look forward we look forward to Kelly Jones

015and G R Gordon Ross joining the board in January thanks to all the school board candidates for their support of our schools and willingness to participate in the election process this is an American education week we want to thank all of the certified teachers and classified staff who make up our team each plays an important role in ensuring all students achieve success and graduate future-ready we invite the board in the public to attend our annual American education week celebration of school volunteer followed terrorism the Friends of educational reception will begin at 4 o'clock on Wednesday in this room each school and community partner who supports our teachers students and schools in a variety of ways will be recognized these volunteers are mother's father's grandparents and community partners that help our schools to be the great

016success that they are the Laurens Education Association on Thursday will host this annual American education week scholarship mixer to raise funds for scholarships for high school seniors and classified staff interested in becoming teachers the district the Lauren Schools Foundation and leap our leap partner Trudy credit union will again help to sponsor this event at the Doubletree Hotel beginning at 4:30 p.m. this event is not open to the public but all district staff and board members are welcome to attend I had the pleasure last week of meeting with the Lawrence high school student council and lion's pride parent group I also enjoyed about on November 3rd shadowing a student at Lawrence High School I plan to do the same at 3 State in January and also at our College and Career Center but I just wanted

017to share a few observations from specifically the experience of shadowing the student I was just reminded like I know but reminded of close-up how resilient our students are how they adapt especially at the high school lab they make huge adjustments to multiple personalities and like a four or five minute transition period and as I went through the day and I was in some pretty rigorous classes and I saw some amazing teaching I also was in a class where they were taking a test and I've never seen that much positive energy around the test so that particular teacher I was in awe of because the students were pretty excited about taking the test so I applaud that individual for just engaging our students at that level but I will remind at the end of the day

018I was pretty exhausted and I think about our students day every day and they do that and they gone to do things and activities and work and I as I work with our team I just want to make sure that we are providing whatever supports our students need to be successful and we continue to engage all of our students but it was a very insightful it's day and I do encourage our and I've encouraged our district staff it it does take a lot to commit to that much time but it's very insightful and will impact the decisions that we make regarding students the board will host the first of his two townhall meetings this school year at 6:30 p.m. on December 14th in the Lawrence public library auditorium we will provide more information in the

019next couple of days with specifics but we do just want to let everybody know that we're planning on that event the board lunch tomorrow is that 11:00 a.m. at Free State High School and include and it includes Lawrence 12:00 sorry the board lunch tomorrow is at noon at free State High School and it will include Lawrence high school as well our fall break is coming up November 22nd through the 24th and there's no school district wide on those three days all district offices will be closed November 23rd and 24th thank you dr. Stubblefield okay the next item is patron commentary we have several commentary tonight some of which relate to one of our agenda items so those will take place after the report for that is presented at this point we have a couple of

020commentaries that I'm at so I'm going to read the audience participation guidelines for this it applies to this and the later comment times the USD 497 Board of Education appreciates patrons taking time to talk to us about our policies and procedures we set aside this time during every meeting to hear from the public this is your time to share your opinions but we ask that you avoid making comments of a personal nature about any district employee or student including the use of personal names while we while you are not required to share your contact information we ask that you do so in order to follow up with any specific concerns you might have in such cases a board member the superintendent or another staff member may be in touch with you to refer your concerns

021to the appropriate administrator for investigation at that time we encourage you to share as many details relative to your specific concerns as you are willing to share we ask that you limit your comments to 5-minutes thank you for sharing your thoughts about policies and procedures with the board so the first comment is from Jack director and did I say your name correctly okay good evening my name is Jack Richter and I know I've talked to you before about teams team robotics and the wonderful program that we have today I'm here to talk about the Kansas cup an event we had this weekend on Saturday November 11th and it was fantastic but first before I talk about it I would just like to thank the the district for letting us use all their wonderful facilities and

022the wonderful help we had from the custodial staff at free State High School but what is the Kansas cup the Kansas cup is the first ever of FRC event to be held in Kansas this is not only a local thing that is great for us but great for the state of Kansas it held over 700 people and grossed over $10,000 in a single day this is no small matter we had teams come from the far west in East of Missouri and Kansas all to come to Free State and join together we had 14 tirant teams from Kansas ranging from of 50 all the way down to 8 we sold over 240 pizzas in a single afternoon which is fantastic the the field that you see playing it took 12 hours to set up on an

023afternoon on Friday the second school got out we all rushed over and you can see all our friends in maroon working hard and this was wonderful but what are the educational benefits of such a crazy event teamwork each team here had to work together to craft these box put them together and by this time this is the this has been five months and there since the original creation these things are falling apart and they had to work together and make sure that they could do wonderful tasks such as climbing this rope every single round after being beaten by each other we saw a leadership not only for my team getting this to happen but from other teams helping us get this to happen we saw professionalism everyone there was there to help learn and get

024better as people and as per and as sorry but most importantly we saw respect everyone on that field never bumped into each other everyone was kind patient and waiting and that is exactly what I wanted to see but before I go the PERT to exemplify what this program means to us there was a seventh grader named Gary who all he ever wanted to do was be an engineer and be involved in first and it just so happened to be his birthday upon this event and I mean the whole crowd seeing him the happy birthday song handing him one of the gear pieces which is one of the yellow parts of the field and watching his face light up with just your happiness and look at his dad and say thank you dad this is the

025best birthday I've ever had knowing that an educational event that will make his future brighter could do that was the best thing I could ever have done thank you very much thank you so much for sharing that with us our second comment from Johnny paradise let's see what happens here first off Gary sat the entire event in the very first row and wore the largest safety goggles the entire time that kid was ecstatic I apologized my IT mistake earlier I connected to the display and then when I attempted to disconnect it kept reconnecting me every so often I didn't want to be distracting though so this event that we had last weekend was a huge success I'm a lot more successful than I would have imagined and that we planned for is the first event

026I've ever been to that actually ran ahead of schedule which is absolutely amazing at events like this the bus drivers hate you if you don't the amount of district support that I got out of this has been amazing I definitely need more district support don't get me wrong but LSF finance team LCC and the superintendent have all been amazing to work with facilities and operations especially really if you look at the flooring all right there all of that gray stuff going on right now is all facility on operations underlayment to keep the floor safe from our 300-pound carts and robots that roll over everything during the event we played a giant 700 person game of the floor is lava on Saturday essentially and that was thanks to ethanol so we have hundreds of students that

027were engaged in stem over the weekend it took my students and about 30 to 40 volunteers 12 hours to build this field we did that all Friday and I had left at 12:30 got back Saturday morning at 6:45 to open the doors prep for volunteers get ready for the day and then we worked until about 9:30 at night at which case I realized I made a logistical mistake and did not plan for enough storage for everything slashed over so that was a fun one but we grossed over ten thousand in one day it was an amazing win for us I need more community support I need more board support I have 45 students across four high schools that I work with and with those students I have one coach myself I need more coaches I

028need more help I need more support from the board that being said I get a lot of support from the district itself in my 28 months as an educator because I came from IT I've got 22 years in IT which is makes my earlier mistake all the more humorous I've raised about $30,000 and again that's finance and LSF that have made that possible for me to do that the work and the underlayment that they've allowed me to do that night Kathy Johnson especially has been fantastic you told her to nap years ago you're gonna have a teacher coming who's gonna raise 30 grand and pull it from everywhere it possibly can shoot her on streaming from the building but she has been fantastic but if I have your support that 30 could have been 45

029very easily I've left money on the table and money on the board and I don't like that I would like more support so that I could get more money for our students these programs the large teams average about 40,000 annually on their budget I'm nowhere near that my goal is just to get to ten to fifteen thousand events like this could easily net me a good third of that with their proper support that being said everything has been fantastic thus far so I want to thank you for that let me look at my list here I think I've got everything fantastic so thank you very much I hope to see you all out there for our second anyone has done very much one of the perils of using your laptop for the agenda is that

030when the log in the screen comes back up you have to login so my apologies just a second okay all right board commentary is next Jessica I had the opportunity to attend Lawrence highs talk to think they had they hosted last Wednesday on what it means to be transgender and Jade prior and Stephanie mock came and told their stories and it was a really great event I took my two kids I have an 11 year old and a 16 year old and we listened to them talk about their challenges and their successes and just their their struggles with with being their authentic selves and they also offered up some suggestions on how to be a better peer and a better supporter of people that you might know that might be having gender identity challenges in

031their life and when we went home we ended up having a conversation and you know on the sofa for like 45 minutes and I think that any event that can get you to go home with your eleven-year-old and your 16 year old and have a really great follow-up is a good event so I want to thank Lawrence high and everybody that was involved in putting that on and Anna and the superintendent and Central Admin for supporting that endeavor thank you other board commentary I just want to say thank you to everyone for your support thank you for believing in me and I'm gonna work hard these next four years and campaign II was quite the experience especially sitting on a board and thank you to everyone who helped with the campaign great okay um that

032will go on Tork cent agenda consent agenda items are those that are considered routine and are adopted by one motion unless any board member or the superintendent requests that an item be removed the item or items for manager voted on separately I move the Board of Education adopt the items listed on the consent agenda I can Ingram yes Johnson yes Kimball guests Sandborn yes beeston yes yes six-zero thank you all right our reports tonight our first report is a student on student performance and socio-economic and equity audit data with Kevin hall our executive director of student support services and special education and Terry McEwen director of assessment research and accountability Terry McEwen director of assessment research and accountability had to think about that last two weeks ago you all asked us for some additional data

033and some longitudinal views of some of the information that we presented to you at that time and so we've put together a few pieces of that data for you initially I'm going to show you co-curricular participation data and athletic participation across 2014 15 16 and 17 on the left-hand side of the slide you'll see the the representational demographics of the entire population and then the percent of participation in each event so co-curricular things are those which are part of the school day most often so band choir debate music of any kind drama art etc so as you can see the percent of what the graph is actually showing you on the right is the racial demographic and then the percent of the population of that demographic who are participating in one of those co-curricular activities

034across the four years so the blue is 14 on down to the yellow as being 2017 for the most part what I kind of noticed as I was putting this together is that there's it's a pretty I don't want to say static I can't think of a better word participation right so it's it's pretty equalized across the years we continue to have pretty good pop participation in all of our co-curricular pieces but you can see where the demographics aren't necessarily always representational of the percent of demographics of the total population next well it's the same the same concept but this is athletic participation so this is all named sports that people would do after school and not during school so again you kind of notice that it's a it's a pretty stable participation rate across

035the years within the racial groups next we're going to move to be hey our behavioral peace in school suspensions across those four years within the same demographics I have a question about this one and I guess it would probably apply to the to the other charts as well but when you're coming up with the percentages is that percentages of encounters with the student in that circumstance or is it you know one student represented one time in that number no matter how many times they may have been involved in okay so the percentage that you're seeing there is not the percentage of the total population the percentage you're seeing is the percentage of the number of students who were in school suspended so it varies from year to year it's somewhere between three to five hundred

036incidents of in-school suspension and so it's a percentage racially of that none of those three to 500 and correct okay okay quick question insurance that's okay um so my question is so when we look um previously when we looked at graduation rates and seeing discrepancies we've actually kind of gone in and kind of coded what we know to be the issue with that student not graduating and then focus efforts around that are we using a similar strategy for this like are we coding and aware of what is causing the school suspensions and are we developing any kind of strategies around helping I mean I assume what the positive behavior supports stuff we are I'll let you talk because there's a question is yes we are and one of the things is we still talk about

037our data carousels it really is going to looking so we look at you see it here on a district level so we break it down by building that's one the reasons we break it down so so what we tend to do is focus on building so if you think about some of the things we're doing is some of our buildings for example one of our buildings and looking at their data that's where they said we meet restorative justice practices in this building because that's what they needed another building may need specific another specific intervention so when we start looking at CRT the on diversity the trauma-informed type of things so there's several things we do and it really depends on the school so we do break it down look at a building that there's specific

038things that a building is coming up in a building then we focus on that yeah I believe so the other thing to think about in this particular portrayal in school suspension would be any any amount of time that would be classified as that so it could be as something like you were sent out of mrs. Jones room halfway through the period and sent to the office for an in-house suspension so it might be a 45-minute event or it might be a full day so we don't we are capturing the data based upon how this efficient is coded so it could be a very short term or it could be longer just to really break down that data determine is this a problem is the all-day type of thing or is it a lot of one-hour

039type of things and then what do we do about it because it's not the text okay but if that's happening a lot then there's some issues and something that you take care of now is that I'm sorry I want to pick you up off of that now if a student is now that is that if a teacher sends the student out versus so I know there's a difference in say an IEP or IFSP is that the student that was part of a plan okay hey the next would be then out of school suspensions and by demographic and this range is much smaller than the range I told you before this is closer to somewhere between 50 and 200 events it's an attached video agenda it's public yes okay so just to get an idea because

040you know one of the things we talk about Terry when we when we do our look at like our graduation data is we talk about n sizes and how some of our some of our grips are small so you said in some years the the total number and this one would be somewhere around fifty and then some years as much as 200 so so say if you're taking one of the subgroups on here are we talking about n sizes for those groups of less than ten incidents in a year and does that because I know that that can you know a difference of one incident when you're talking about small ends right it really makes the a big difference in what shows up in the in the chart so I'm just I'm trying to have

041some context around what we're looking at yeah it could be small numbers and then typically when we look at out-of-school suspensions you're also mainly talking about your secondary building so you're talking okay that replay 6012 not that I can't say we don't have any elementary but most of out-of-school suspensions will be 6 through 12 and so and then again we look at specific buildings and look yet is it and more important one building to another and what type of situations are occurring okay we also have and keep I assume trend data about the number I mean I guess that seems like a fairly large window and so our like are we looking at how that number fluctuates on the whole from year to year yes if there seems to be a large number then we

042try to look and see what the issue may be and so we know at one point when we start looking at data one year there was a high rate and and in school suspensions were different things we also noticed that that year we changed some of the reporting and teachers started to report things instead of just the administrators and so in looking how that was reporting and making sure people were trained correctly because as we trained better those numbers went down so looking at that a dybbuk sometimes it may be artificially inflated and so we've had to figure out why it's not and when we myself and the other administrators hold our school improvement plan meetings with the individual principals we do have conversations specifically around this type of data and what are they doing

043to address any things that are coming up as trends and patterns and and then when we visit with them just ongoing we do continue to have conversations to see if there are particular if it's coming from the same classroom is that a particular if the teachers are consistency consistently implementing the positive behavior support plants and those kind of things and then we recalibrate and have conversations with the administrators to support their staff and try to intervene on the front end when we're looking at it this year we started providing this information monthly to the building and so that we are looking at we're not waiting until the end of the year to say oh what happens so by looking at it monthly we can see if there are things occurring and intervene sooner and and

044when you report that do your do you report it to the building do you report where the other buildings are at so that they have a comparison so if this school is suspending a high rate do they understand that others or not we we typically don't and it's not that it's not a secret but typically we're talking about what are you gonna do if you're if you have it's not it just because someone else is here does not mean yours is okay so we typically don't but but we have had discussions and like an administrative meeting we may have everyone together and then look at all the data together right and again I guess the reason I but probably the reason I ask that is that if there's a building that's doing something right you

045know we don't want to keep that secret and and I don't think we intentionally do that but I think sometimes it's easy to kind of lose sight of that and and I agree we've had those discussions about and I think we've started to do a lot of with a lot of our equity work and talk about some of that how things are happening we don't share us so we also know the with those suspensions are there suspensions in in or out of schools similar is there enough data to show why like group why students are getting suspended because it's heard from like maybe some families of color meeting colors mean that sometimes students of color are getting maybe in-school suspension for maybe more minor things versus so I guess their way to say okay this

046is the typical reason why or they're not enough they're kind of weakened I mean we look at it more broadly and it really is I mean getting down to the building level because in the policy it is there's discretion about if you have it's as though it is a code of conduct and so a lot of its code of conduct so it is it's getting down into the dirt with the buildings and trying to be that I don't know that it that we have in our system that way usually it's anecdotal so you're pulling it and reading was easy to just click a button pull it together but it is easy to look at even a library I think um in the Delta meetings and the meetings that we've attended some of the you have

047a standard coda cotton but when you look at handbooks there's some differences amongst them so I wonder if that can be a direct correlation between different schools and we let me get that data in I do think that's a reasonable question that we can look at and I do think we have had some early conversations about standardizing those policies and practice around certain things like disciplining those kind of things and then yet trying to balance allowing schools to have their own culture but as we dig in down in the data with individual schools we can see where there are differences and make those adjustments and that's our hope of what we are aiming to do by looking at it monthly and having the conversations that we can catch some of those things before it's like

048the end of the year and it's just too much data to look at but we can we are looking to be more consistent so that we can compare apples to apples and not you know the anecdotal component so Vanessa so and I understand for like student privacy concerns some details are not shareable but I do think some broader kinds of information about what these suspensions relate to if that is available I do think that would help the community to understand and also hold our district accountable for making sure that we're you know using fair equitable practices when applying punishments and other things I mean certainly I think you know bringing a weapon to school or something of that nature is much easier to understand or can't fathom safety student issues but I do think having

049some of those broad categories if those are available to be shared publicly would help and I do believe that out of school it's pretty consistent I think the in-school suspension is really something to so to follow up on Melissa's comment one of the things that has happened in policy over the years that Vanessa and I have been on policies we have talked a lot about the building handbooks and we've we've looked at then not just for this issue but kind of more broadly to make sure that our policies are reflected accurately and appropriately across the handbooks so there has been some attention paid to that I think it is something that because the board approves those every July if it's something that the board wants to take a closer look at ramping up to our

050organizational meeting that's coming July that we would need to kind of back up from that and spend some time talking about it so if that's something that we want to pursue let's have some further conversation about that I wanted to just point out for the audience and the public if you want to see the slides that are being presented if you go to the USD for 9700 RG click on the school board link at the top of the page there's a link for the agenda you click on the agenda scroll down to this report and this particular set of slides is hyperlinked and after the board enclosure as report so you can take a look at these slides at your your convenience and then we can move but Vanessa I do think we can get

051the a specifically for the out-of-school suspension we can look at I think there's a box that they check and we can say these are the most common reasons we can definitely I think we can I'm almost certain you can get that information at a high level it's not another area of data reporting that we anticipate that PowerSchool will yeah help us improve and standardize yes okay one of the things that's we are we are now we're like you need that piece of data and as we're creating PowerSchool we can make sure those things is that true for both in-school suspension and out-of-school likely I mean because I do think that our district has made gains in a lot of areas by using data and by you know mindfully engaging around goals and I do think

052if we're going to make improvements then we're gonna have to benchmark ourselves and we're going to have to watch that happen and that's really the only way to do it and so making sure we capture and making sure we have consistency I mean that's what we're gonna have to do and so whatever we can do to kind of build that in the system and not make extra paperwork or extra report I think our school allows us the flexibility systems have been built around what's required to report her to the state and we looked at more than what so I wanted to move to some achievement data so this is again four years of map data measures of academic progress and I broke it down by a five and then six eight there's not enough students

053who take this at high school for any kind of meaningful comparisons just a few things about terms we are we are using spring scores from every year so that it's consistent and then I am comparing it to the national norms and I did a mean of those norms because there's a different norm for every grade level so to make this not last until the Sun comes up in the morning I went ahead and just combined k5 and then combined six eight and so plus or minus four is about correct for the 2015 norms to be statistically significant and we are using the RIT score which is a Ross interval unit it's an equal interval measurement scale so this is reading map across 2014 15 16 and 17 and then the mean national norm you see

054the line going across and so you will see the different ethnicities or races for trade and how those scoring patterns are across those four years at k5 in reading so I'm sorry Terry yes so do you have data in this group somewhere on al al kids you know I would imagine that certainly if some of these kids are English English language learners they're reading data would be lower yes for map actually that it we don't identify in the data set DLL or student or free reduced lunch so I would have to pull that a whole different way which I can do but I'd have to do it through using skyward to come back at it that way which I can absolutely do yeah and I don't know I mean maybe that's worth doing and maybe

055the numbers are small enough that doesn't really matter it's unfortunate that we only have data on free and reduced lunch because I suspect that if you look at intersectionality certainly socioeconomic status is gonna play a role but I will say at the building level they do look at it at that level like Terry presented it here at the district level but in the building school improvement plans they do look at it free and reduce vol yeah population is particularly at the gray levels because the teachers you know know the students that they have in their classroom yeah right so this is map reading grade 6 through 8 and again the mean of the national norm is the line going across and so you can see the scoring pattern across four years then in mathematics this

056is k5 again and the national mean national norm is going the line going across and again you can look at the scoring patterns across the four years okay so now we've had a step down and so my question is when you're looking at this and you're looking at 15 16 17 what has the district done to intervene in what is pretty clearly a consistent lowering of the scores and looks and I think my question tied on to that my question tied on to that would be if if this statistical significance is four I mean obviously there's statistically significant differences like on this side between black students and Asian students or native students and Asian students but when you're looking at the data year to year to year and your range is somewhere between like in

057the multiracial group 207 to 210 how should we interpret that given the statistical significance that you mentioned earlier because because graphically it looks really dramatic right yeah because if you look at the accident the axis it's 190 to 225 so all those bars look a lot more dramatic but if they're within plus or minus 4 of that mean we would consider that statistically to be equalized so in other words this it's no difference statistically speaking would we pay attention to it anyway absolutely but statistically we would say that's about the same as being on the line so so in terms of Jessica's question how do we how do we evaluate that I think maybe need some help to walk through it so actually I was just a part of a conversation with a small group

058last week looking at our multi-tiered system of support and specifically looking at how we ensure at the core that all of our students are receiving literacy instruction math literacy and digital literacy and how it relates with these scores and partnering with Kathleen Lane at K U and Topeka as well because some of our data looks similar to leverage some resources to intervene to address although it's not statistically significant we do we're beginning to see you know if it's dropping one each year if that pattern were to continue it would eventually be statistically significant so we are having conversations around that but also as our teams again with their school improvement plans I know when I meet with the principals in their building leadership teams they are looking at this and evaluating the curriculum but we're

059trying to layer that with also looking at the curriculum from culturally relevant perspective to see when you look at this our students being engaged do they see themselves in the curriculum what adjustments do we need to make in the curriculum and that honestly is a process that I think we just started really putting specific things in place to address that we've been having conversations around it and some buildings if we were to look at the building data I've been doing this more consistently and systemically than others and that's where when we look at the buildings we are trying to address those differences to ensure that all of our students are having an experience that would allow them in our instructional practices so when we started looking at CRT because resident teaching and and looking at

060what are we doing differently what what is different in how we instruct our students and that's something we have to look at and we just started CRT you know the beyond diversity is looking within now we're really looking at the CRT what are you doing in the classroom here's your instructional practice are you doing these things and and we up it's not showing in the data at this point but we just started this unit so did you get any answer to your question yeah I mean I think it's important to note that we do have two categories that are falling below that four point margin and so I mean you know we can pat ourselves on the back all day but we need to be really mindful of that especially when you're talking about mathematics

061and we all know the math gets harder and harder and so I'm just I'm glad that there are interventions that are occurring maybe that are new this year but it's certainly something we need to revisit next year and see where we're at and go from there we've actually and looked and I don't work with the State Department education Casa de came in and also asking some of the questions and offering suggestions so not only working with Deepika will work in the State Department and again it's not just our problem and they understand and so they've all threat assistance also as they have other districts also that really we're taking another one has the cultural relevance of the tests been discussed in any of those meetings so after you all asked that question the last time

062I did some major research and digging on that the test is absolutely held to bias reviews and they are the biased reviews are at a variety of levels one is racial one is gender and so any any item that does not meet the bias rule that it that it is to all ultra culturally dependent upon one particular race or two particular races and not all or appeals to one gender and not another they throw those items out so it is because it's nationally normed acrost about a 1.5 million student base and it's pre normed every three years they are but they are always reviewing they're always reviewing each item to make sure that they do meet that bias so that that is an ongoing piece that they that they are committed to at map and

063they do consist continually do that bias review so just to kind of circle back to because I think I'm the one that asked that question last time and really involved the fact that we as a as a district could choose a different test potentially right this isn't mandated that we use map and so thank you a for doing that research but did you also kind of look to see if this is really the best version out there that is the least biased from what we know that's available on the marketplace because map actually does major growth in it because it's an adaptive assessment and actually responds to how the student is answering it's an individual response theory based test so it does respond to how the student is answering the question it gives us probably

064the most accurate data that that a test like this can give us and because if we are pretty comfortable with what they told us about their bias reviews etc and because we've been using it for a you know a while we we have a pretty good understanding of it there's nothing really else on the market that quite comes up to this level not meaning that there isn't we just haven't seen it and then grades six through eight and suyog again the patterns are similar so you all asked also for a comparison of two different years of the Kansas State assessment we can't really go back too much beyond 2016 because as you recall the Kansas assessment was not particularly stable for a couple of years we've now theoretically stabilized the assessment and it will sort

065of stay about the same but I think you can see from the 2016 to 2017 there's not a great deal of change across the state we did note an increase in level one performance across all groups all grades across the entire state without exception and so question was on the Kansas assessment Advisory Council and we grappled with this question last week what do you think caused the increase in the ones we can't really answer that question except for I think there has been a intended or unintended kind of the emphasis of the state assessment and so when you do that you might get the results that will come with that D emphasis across the state but at the same time it's being emphasized in terms of our plan to the to the US Department of

066Education and I was having this conversation earlier this evening you can't both be emphasize and emphasize something simultaneously that's pretty difficult to grapple with but I think now that the test has stabilized in weight is more predictable I think we will we will start seeing improved results not only in Lawrence but across the whole state Jerry do you want to briefly explain for people who might not know what level 1 2 3 & 4 means sure so a level 1 means not at grade level performance okay there's not really much language around level 1 except for that level 2 means performing at grade level but not yet a level that would that would constitute college and career readiness level three is that you're performing at grade level and at a level that constitutes college and

067career readiness and then level four would exceed that level three so this is mathematics and then this is what I just do there we go the this is racial and ethnic differences the first slide was the non racial groups and again the patterns are very similar a slight increase in in the level one performance this is the same comparison of two thousand sixteen to seventeen in English language arts and then the racial ethnic subgroup performance the next thing you'd all ask for was so how did we compare with the state of Kansas and so in 2017 on the left hand side you would see our non racial or ethnic subgroups compared to the state in most categories if you just look at the data table at the bottom you will see that in the upper

068levels we are most not always but very often exceeding the state levels that's not our gold standard though by the way that's just pointing that out so this again is mathematics and then this is our racial and ethnic subgroups and then this is English language arts the non racial and ethnic subgroups comparison us on the Left state on the right and then finally our racial and ethnic subgroups so like anything like this whenever we dig into it it always brings up more questions must most often than it brings up answers but we are we are continually playing you know not playing with this stuff but we are I am they nobody else likes it but I love to play with this stuff I think there's there's a lot of really great answers within the data

069but again these things are much more more viable at the school level where they can where they're actually designing what they're going to do and they know with this they know the students names on all those bars which is a big deal and I think that's that's where we get our most bang for our buck okay for members quite any further questions for Terry for Kevin I think a big takeaway for the board is that we need to revisit this next year yes and I'm probably more frequently than that and just keep talking about I think as Vanessa made the point that the way that you we hold ourselves accountable is actually looking at the data and understanding what it means and so thank you for walking us through that tonight and look forward to

070doing it again soon all right all right our second report this evening a South middle school name change update Keith Jones principal at South middle school Lori Steph a Stethem assistant director of special ed and district liaison to South middle school and Carol could do blackwood a community member right and while Keith is getting set up Julie I wanted to check in and see if you've received any additional of these okay thank you now this one didn't matter good evening and I guess well speak good evening know what one I want to thank you for allowing us to give some time to report this afternoon this evening about our process in the school name change first I kind of want to just kind of tell you a little bit about the process tonight and then

071I have some presenters that are with me that will come forth and speak miss curl could do Blackwood will come up and talk about and you come up with me if you want we'll come up and speak about the proposal request from her perspective and then I will kind of share with you the survey data that we that we gathered over the last two months and then we'll kind of talk about where we where we stand now as a site Council so so what I have you know to the right to the left on the slide kind of talks about the proposal process we were given a proposal I think maybe the first week of school I remember receiving like on the second day that I was on the job receiving this proposal from dr.

072Stubblefield and so what we did so we looked at the at the process of how do we handle these situations and then when anyone makes a proposal we get together as a site Council and so we scheduled our site council meeting and we met we talked about the proposal but then we formed a special committee with individuals that wanted to be a part of this committee of discussing and gathering information about the site about the school name change so we met and we kind of had a working session where we kind of shared our own we did an activity where we kind of shared our perspective about the proposal each each person that was on the committee was seeing the proposal we went through it what the actual name changes were they were being suggested

073and then we talked about putting a time of timeline together about what needed to happen so one thing that we discussed was putting a survey out to our students into our stakeholders and our stakeholders consists of parents community members teachers that type of thing and so we went back to the district office the district office created the survey we and so then we went back to the site counseling where we met the site counsel reviewed the survey and so we voted we voted that everybody approved what was taking place far as the questions and how they were worded and so then we put the timeline that we would send the information out but before we sent our survey out we tried to kind of educate our stakeholders and our students about what the purpose of

074the proposal was for so we kind of talked about how our schools land was given to us by high schools donated we talked to them about this kind of we had it we created a fact sheet and it went out to the stakeholders as well as to our students and and even in our school we had we had we donate when I we we put some through our advisory time we had set aside some time for teachers to discuss with that before students before they took the survey and so but not all students took the survey we it was their choice to take it or not we did not force them to take the survey so you'll see that in the data later on when one hundred percent of the students did not take the

075survey as well as we sent it out to our public and stakeholders as well giving them I think a full week to take the survey and we collected the data then we met as a site Council again and discuss the results of the of the data as well as really talked about the one thing that was not decided was not decided if we would because the group was kind of split between our individuals who were parents and teachers and staff members as well as community members and so everyone kind of talked about where they stood and we looked at the data and from the data we did not decide if we should make a recommendation or not we talked about if we were allowed to make a recommendation what would some of the possible names

076be and so we talked about the names I think we even discussed how KSD has given us some suggestions that we should name a building by a living person you know kind of some of the the pros and cons with that you know it's kind of best practice that if you were to name a location of a building by someone they would be deceased at least for 10 years so the committee talked about that piece of feedback that we have received from KSD about what was best practice regarding naming a building as well as getting some diversity on the list of recommended recommended names for us getting a woman's name or getting a name there was not a person's name and so what we did was we sent out a Google sheet to the committee

077members and we voted we voted on if you had to just rank them what's your top four choices of what what you feel is an appropriate name for the name change and that's how we got our five recommended names and so but there was a large part I would say half the committee were some were teachers there was two teachers as well as some parents they were on the committee that wanted to keep South the name the same but they also voted for if if it was recommended to be changed what would be their other options so so people have the choice to to vote that way as well so the the five names that we have is one is to remain a South middle school to Arrowhead middle school three Konza middle school which

078is named after the the tribe that donated the land and then you have Jim Thorpe middle South middle school and then Billy Mills South no school so and you have your turn what I that is great information for us to add III think what sometimes gets lost is that the committee's had this information we all voted on it so it was kind of one of those things where I know that there's been several times where we've we've made decisions as the committee and then the next meeting people would bring up other things about whether it's the questions but it was it was everything was a consensus of the people that was on the committee and things were sharing and communicating with them so you know yes ma'am quick question so with all of these sometimes

079you said it sometimes you didn't so I'm just trying to get clarification is will it have if it's Kansas South middle school gym South middle school South was that a feature that was gonna stay with each name or no yes ma'am South was after the everyone today Billy Mills South middle school so that is a correction so that's the process that we went through to get to this point tonight and some would allow miss miss Carroll come to talk about the proposal I just want to thank everybody for coming and I just want to give us a special recognition and thank you to Jennifer for all of her work she does for our students because we see there that we can clearly see there's a lot of work to be done okay um my my

080name is Carol Cody Blackwood for Joe but uh but a snow-clad Nadezhda new cos I'm a member of the Kickapoo gym and I'm an enrolled member of the Kickapoo tribe in Kansas I'm also a prairie band Potawatomi nation member I'm not a member I'm affiliated with the program in Kansas okay well I am here today I'm just gonna read my letter you have to pardon them just a bit nervous okay I'm here today to address equity issues within de Lawrence USD 497 school system and to confront the credit crisis faced by students of color our name-change proposal is about our youth our tomorrow as parents we love and have concern for all of our youth and our future in published reports and most notably in the Gannon versus Kansas Supreme Court decision students of color

081in our schools are at the lowest in achievement scores in all categories the decision goes on to cite the disparity of unmet she needs in our racial groups for example african-american Hispanic and Native American students the large school districts assessment equity audit and behavioral screening Data Report mirrors the findings of the Kansas Supreme Court decision the Kansas Supreme Court decision and the USD 497 a career report is alarming and signifies an impending crisis in the education achievement of students of color in our Lawrence College System the alarm in crisis is especially concerning to parents of colors I am a Native American mother of children enrolled in the Lawrence school system a crisis must be averted with determination in action resource driven goals to overcome the unmet needs of the students of color in our USD

082497 large school system a letter was given to the Lord School Board during the community conversation in January of this year from the Lawrence High School intertribal club students they expressed how they felt like their voices or needs were not being met hurt or met as parents we love and care for our children and strive to provide for the successful futures as any other loving and caring parent we strive to support our children to the greatest extent of our available resources it must be noted here as a friend in the Kansas Supreme Court decision poverty is a negative factor in the success of students of color funding for programs to to defending for programs developed to assist at-risk students has fallen short and students of color continue to suffer the consequences of a discriminatory practice

083it is critical that the Lawrence public school system engaged the students of color to ensure greater success there are 566 federally recognized tribes in the United States nationwide we are 1.8 percent of the American population our numbers are strong within the Lawrence community in Lawrence we are 5 percent of the population Lawrence public schools boast that there are 501 students who represent more than a 100 tribal affiliations South middle school has a native population that it comprises 11 percent of the student population in the ganon versus Kansas decision the Rho standards were cited and pointed out that the unconstitutional and disparate amendment needs I just get so emotional and a spirit unmet education needs of students of color african-american Hispanic and Native American students we specifically cite the number-5 capacity the road standards which is

084efficient grounding in the arts to enable each student to appreciate his or her cultural and historical heritage heritage to address the unmet Native American cultural representation of students of color in the Lawrence School District at a recent site council meeting we were we were reminded and acknowledged that the native population was high at eleven percent but we were told we were not the majority that's true we will never be the majority however that is not a reason for Native Americans to continue to be marginalized the noted poet and writer Langston Hughes whose name was selected for our neighboring Langston Hughes Elementary School wrote in his poem titled youth that we have tomorrow bright before it's like a flame and inspires us all all youth need positive role models and we have a rare opportunity to

085bright Langston Hughes his vision of a flame with an outstanding American we can honor former student of Haskell Institute the University of Kansas United States Marines Olympic gold medalist and humanitarian named Billy Mills he was a champion among all the world at the Olympic Games and represented all those entities therefore we now submit to the US we've now submit to the USD 497 large public school board they propose named changes of South middle school for your consideration and vote of approval we believe that the recognition of a notable Native American high school alumni for the name changes South middle school warrants USD 497 would recognize the historical significance of the Native American people that to this land that became South middle school by adopting this proposed name change the significant Native American contributions including land

086donations that were made didn't put that were made to the Lawrence community and the United States of America would be recognized by the Lawrence School District such recognition impacts the daily lives and serves as an inspiration for all students in the Lawrence School District not just Native American students but it's important to note here that we as Native Americans we we honor our elderly in our warriors while they are still here with us and I'm I'm gonna my husband Dennis is gonna come around and give you every everybody a folder and it's gonna include culture card it's from SAMHSA's a guide to build culture a guide to build cultural awareness American Indian and Alaska Natives and it's pretty handy you can just put it in your purse and it purse a great case you can

087just read it when you get downtime but also in the folder I'm including the Lawrence the South large Trafficway Haskell wetlands timeline and I've highlighted in tabbed where Haskell donated the land so there's no question about how much and when the land was transferred over and I'm also including the naming of facilities in the folder as well and there's nothing in there that mention it mentions that the person has to be deceased and I'm also including the inter tribal club statement that was delivered during the community conversation Thank You Mitch thank you again so I would like to quickly share with you some of the data that was gathered through this process so the first report that you are looking at on the screen is from our stakeholders from our community stakeholders and so like

088I said there was about a week that the parents community members could take the survey there was a total of 931 people who took the survey and this is kind of a breakdown of who took it you know when they had the choice to identify themselves they were a parent they were a community member and so on and so if you look at it about 50 percent of the people who took took the the survey were from are from the community as well so we kind of look at look at that now one thing that the data did not provide is that when we look at the questions when you keep moving further on the data what those subgroups shows and so that's kind of something that we talked about as a group because you

089know one thing that keeps coming up is that is it's it's very important to kind of see we're worried subgroup kind of lies where they stand because as you'll see in the data it looks it kind of falls to be neutral so I'll I'll move on to kind of share question sorry question one so SOG little school should change the name of the school was the question so if you look at the results you we kinda broke it down which strongly disagree disagree neutral and then agree and they're struggling agree from perspective it's kind of you look at it from a agree so if people who agree that that we should do the name change you're looking at about forty two percent forty four percent if you if you add the tune so as well

090as if you look at strongly disagree you're looking at forty one percent so those are kind of they kind of break even with the law a good twelve percent of the population is neutral and so we talked about it we just said there's a lot of people that have an opinion but they're kind of we kind of equal on both sides it's kind of what we left with from question one if you look at the breakdown question to the current name of South middle school represents a rich tradition and should remain as as is South middle school it's kind of very similar to looking at that same thing we have about forty three percent of the people who strongly disagree with that statement but then we have thirty eight thirty nine percent that agree with

091it and then the other disagree so then we have a like sixty eighteen percent that are neutral so it's kind of split and so as we look back and reflect on you know the value of that neutral not knowing where people kind of stand was something that kind of made the survey kind of hard to kind of really dive into the third question is changing the name of South will be a positive change for our school and community and thirty five and disagree with that statement and then we have for the forty eight percent they agree with the statement and once again we have thirteen percent they're a neutral that's particularly interesting because that means that they didn't want to change it but they think it would be good for this I mean there are

092some people that think that the change is better but don't personally think that should be changed that how that was interpreted yeah that's why we talked about it we talked about those subgroups because you know just as we've you know and we're part of here some of that in the community comments you know where we've talked about it especially on that site council group we did have teachers and we had parents that were openly not for it and so therefore we talked about the value of whose opinion you know holds more weight and so I mean obviously we can't we can't know what that is but when you look at community stakeholders that are making it I think one of the concerns was you know you know the South community and the the staff that

093works there and the kids and the parents that go there what were their initial thoughts and so that's the data that we do not have here broken down where clearly you know where we can see what what that now you can see that through the student data and I'll talk about there in a second but from the South community we really can't tell what that voice is just because the the survey had everyone had access to it you know far as the you know was online I'm sorry there's gonna be an opportunity for public comment and if you would like to sign up to make to make a public comment there's forms at the back of the room and you can do that because we would like to hear your opinion but we'll we'll get

094to that section of the meeting as soon as we're finished with the presentation thank you I appreciate that just and one again I want to entry iterate that these questions were formed by the district which were approved by the committee so this wasn't something that we just kind of you know regardless of public opinion thrown out just threw out there this was something that everyone saw and approved before we sent it out you know I I appreciate that you went with the survey that you got but I but I think you missed a real opportunity to identify that group and I'm supportive of this change by the way so but it would have been nice to have seen what that community that people are actually affected what what they know what their views were because

095Isis well I mean to that point though I do think the whole community is affected right I mean just the students that attend or the parents of the students that attend that's not the only people touched by a school or by the name of a school it is interesting to me and like I can hold this and tell we talk about the student opinions but I'm not going to I'm going to say now um we passed a bond issue recently with our Elementary's and refurbished those buildings and I still ran into a lot of young people I'm sure you do too Jessica just because your kids all were touched by Courtley specifically but also Woodlawn was really changed a lot and I started into kids who went there as young people through that system who

096go back to see the building changed and new in some ways and are really offended by the change right and as someone who you know we have a lot to be proud of as a community for how those have been improved I mean looking just at some of the bathrooms that cord Lea initially before the remodel in fact that it's 88 compliant I mean there's lots of really impressive changes but I think as a culture and as a community and especially for young people you get really like attached to things the way they were and changed can be hard but I mean take the elementary bond-like change is really good that was all very good modifications in order to make spaces more functional and to make them improved and so I do think we should

097recognize that while change can be a really hard thing for people sometimes we have to push past that in order to make progress and generally speaking like people come on board right but but if I could just sure I respond we have the data on on the community as well as all I'm just saying it would have been nice to have and had the opportunity and this wasn't it's not a criticism of how you did it just would have been nice to know what that community believes right so so I'm kind of curious though about that point then because you did ask people to identify their their role right right so and I don't know what what what tool did you use to give the survey is was it Survey Monkey or Google Google Docs

098Google Docs okay and this is where my knowledge of Google Docs or my lack of knowledge of Google Docs is going to show so if if we know that a certain portion of them answered okay thirty five point five percent of them I didn't pied themselves as parents couldn't could you not remove the 49.3% community members and then kind of get a picture of people who are parents or fill our teachers granted they might be parents at a different school but you might be able to narrow it down a little further and so looking at our data and testing Terry still in the room you know he's still in the room I guess I guess I just I'm just wondering if if with a little bit more time to kind of parse it out that

099you could get at the point that but is making well Brooke was making a kind of a journal point I'm not asking for more data I think there's plenty of data so all I'm saying is it would have been nice but I don't think we have to go back and try and parse that out okay all right but I do want you to know this was housed by the district office not housed by myself or I mean I just kind of want to make that clear that way I was in my office looking through Google Docs and so this was information that was given to me by the district off and so I I just kind of make that clear I've been trying to be the facilitator of this process which I have both sides

100kind of really you know as I try to stay you know be fair be consistent and go with the process sure okay and I'm sorry to interrupt you I appreciate that you're trying to be in neutral and fair but you know I I read through some of the comments that people made and some of them were offensive but I was really struck by one that said you know I thought this was kind of a dumb idea and I wasn't inclined and then I got the email from you who explained it and just totally turned that person's view around so I think you did a really nice job of communicating to people being transparent about what this was all about I tried I tried I mean it's one of those things where we have we have

101people that stand on both sides the of the fence with with this issue and so you know I've always said this I want to do what's best for kids as a building leader we want to do what's best for kids and we will you know speaking as a black man you know a person of color I definitely would it know what it feels like to wanna have a voice and so in in one way I can relate to that as you know trying to find your voice and find your presence and so my thing is how do we go about doing that and we had conversations in our meetings about we changing the name is one step the other step is building those partnerships to make sure if it's about educating people about the Native

102American culture that we need to build those relationships with high school and get them in our buildings have them as speakers put things up in our building to start educating people about the land that was donated to us and even the history of our Native American culture so we did talk about it's more than just the name change it's about that action piece and and that's where I'm I guess I can say as a good and leader I I would be dedicated to say that it would be great you know whichever decision this happens but it's the action piece that I'm more concerned about versus just changing the name but so here's this the I want to show quickly the student okay so we have our student report and so what was interesting and and

103I'll be honest that what was interesting we have six hundred six hundred and twenty six hundred thirty students and fifty percent of the students took the survey about fifty percent so we have three hundred twenty four students they took the survey so keep that in mind that this is only half the population itself they took the survey which was optional it wasn't mandatory even though we gave it through a mandatory time which was advisory so again you see the breakdown by race you know who took the survey as well as look at questioning one South middle school should change the name of the school and so we have strongly disagree we have a good 57 percent of the student body felt disagree and I think and so I'll just leave it that you know but

104I but personally I when I look at the data I don't I don't know how much the students were like I said we try to educate them of the why beforehand but you know people are kids they're brothers and sisters are you know alumni of South and so I don't know if they had influence or whatnot but kids were attached to the name it's what we kind of saw the that this the current school of the current name of South most school represents a rich tradition and should remain as South middle school we had twelve percent disagree with that but we had it's kind of similarly it was 61 percent agree so you can see the student body was more in tune with one to keep the name the last question is changing the name

105of South would be a positive change for our school of community and say you have forty forty seven percent disagree and then you have about seventeen percent 18 percent agree okay I think this question applies both to the student survey and the stakeholder survey so we got the survey data but did not get any kind of preamble or explanatory information that you sent out to the community so I'm just I'm curious the context in which the students were answering this questioning that in the community members were they answering in a context where they had seen a list of potential names for example like all of the names that you said came out of the rank order all include still included South as part of the name did at the point in time when the survey

106was given was any of that information out there I'm gonna try to find a fact sheet that we sent out to the public which had from the proposal what were some of the potential names so let me I'm gonna try to find that if there's other questions or comments I'm gonna try to remove look if you had more slides to go through on the student you we can there is no more slides that was good data between the two okay while Keith is looking for that oh okay and so this was kind of the one pager fact sheet that was given and this is from some of the data that you received from this could do Blackwood in your in your folder she also presented that to us as a psych console so we went

107through that kind of looked at that and this just kind of picked out some key things that we wanted to pull so when did the school started kind of some you know informing people that this proposal was not about a mascot change or school color shanks I think that was one of the various concerns we kind of alluded to the cost of the name change would be minimal because the plan would be to finish out with the materials and things that we have as south and you know we do that on a yearly basis so the uniforms though things are on a cycle so when there was time to replace those things we would replace them at that time so it would be a minimum cost for the name change just for the signage out

108in front of the school but we've talked with the committee they were willing to kind of help fund to help fund some of those costs if we had them so that was those were some of the things and as you see on the left side there's some of the suggested names okay dr. Stubblefield knew well I was going to ask if he wanted to comment about the fiscal impact piece of it given your experience going through this Liberty Memorial central so when I was the principal at Central similar thing came about when central junior high was switching to central middle school proposal came forward to consider Liberty Memorial it was a couple other ones but when we were the the board approved to change the name to Liberty Memorial Central Middle School and at the

109end of once the board made the decision it was early enough that the next year when we used all of our paper goods that had the central junior high we just switched over when it was time to buy the next basketball uniform we purchased it and changed the name at that time and so it wasn't any additional cost it was just our natural cycle to replacing there was a dish there the only cost was signage and it didn't happen right away it just actually in some places it still may say central but I think the marquee or something was changed but it was just on the natural cycle that as a school district we were placed in update information same with the gym floors when it was time to refurbish repaint that's when the floor

110name because all of those things are on a cycle it's not additional cost if you change them the signage on those things if you could maybe talk a little bit or maybe your team that you brought here can talk a little bit yes talk a little bit about how the conversations went in the site council meetings maybe a little more information about I know the last the last meeting was definitely a little more contentious I mean far as people give you their views after looking at the data I think it was really split you know I think our teaching staff and parents were not in favor of it I think I won't say the majority of my staff but a good portion which are here tonight are you know feel South has a tradition next

111year will be or 50 years of being in existence and so I think you know as a building leader I think I brought that you know up about moving forward if we were to make the change how can I get my staff on board that were not on board before and so along with the students and along with maybe some of those parents that feel that it's this is not a good move and so we kind of delve into that and we talked about that and people just kind of stood where they stood you know far as believing that and so that's it was kind of one of those things where you look at it is it is split down the middle and people have good points on both sides of the aisle for why

112this would would be what makes sense and you know why you know we might you know we might not want to do this and you know that's why the decision is yours to make as a board you know I just it's one of those things that you know I've been thinking and reflecting and even our building leadership team have been talking about you know how do we rally the troops and bridge those bridge those gaps for everyone you know because end of the day you know I want our kids to have a good experience at South I want us to have positive PR itself you know I don't want to see me in the newspaper for you know this this type of contentious back-and-forth between two subgroups you know you know and so that's where

113my mind is what are we doing what's best for kids and I know that we in they're all kids and so in in South East diverse it is we have pockets of diversity so and that's what I want you know I don't want our kids to be bullied if bullying is going I don't want anyone to have harassment those type of things and you know we look at our data on a consistent basis of suspension data and academic achievement data and those type of things and so we dive into that monthly as a staff I'm having those conversations so we're trying to be intentional about how we approach our kids and also get parents more involved I'll be honest you know I went to before I was hired I went to a couple meetings with

114dr. Besser Oversight Council it's maybe seven people what a topic like this you get it you get more people there and stuff like man I hope after this blows over we have that same type of passion for the issues that we have on a regular basis you know I need I need that same type of involvement and so that's that's my only thing is that you know is it it's just the cause or are we really concerned about everything that goes on itself so and and I hope that we you know I'm the type that will hold those people accountable when hey we'd love to see you at school doing XYZ and so but we do want to make it a place where all kids want to go and be in feel comfortable and and

115learn at high levels but that was kind of consensus of that last meeting where we really kind of people got to speak and talk and people agreed to disagree and we moved on so so do you get any sense and maybe you don't or maybe it didn't matter but if you retain south in the title but making a change which is what central compromise was does does that pacify anybody who's not too enthusiastic about making a change I'll let them speak for themselves on that one you know I just think that you know it with me being new to the community not new to Lawrence but new to South I was little feel comfortable speaking on that you know my staff have shared this you know I think it comes from my teachers that have

116been there 30 years 25 years 15 years they have some attachment they went to South they're alumni of the of the school or they have kids they went through there that feel that way so I don't want to speak on their behalf I think they're here tonight to share their story and so I've encouraged them to do so Vanessa and then perhaps it would be a good point to move to the public comment on this and then revisit questions and discussion yeah I just wanted to say that I was on the board and actually was the site council liaison when Liberty Memorial central middle school had their discussion and so there was kind of a similar concern among I think existing and current students and families who attended there or attended there kind of historically

117around the idea of not actually getting rid of that central component but you know the idea that adding to it to provide some historical significance that had been missing for a while with that school which had a historical significance you know was really important and so I think it was kind of that compromise that seemed to not appease everybody but appeased enough that it went forward and I mean honestly I have to say I didn't know that the land that South middle school sat on was land that was donated or taken from given I mean given right and I do think that having a recognition of that and having that historically lands um for future generations is important I mean it tells a story it makes it a better story than a directional name but

118yes let's go to public comment okay now that I said that though I had written down one question I wanted to ask before we did that within these discussions inside council did you bring in anyone from Haskell to participate as part of that yes okay yes we invited people from the Haskell there they were able to bring whoever they felt it hadn't been mentioned so I just wanted to to make clarify about that okay we're gonna move on to public comment as I read the guidelines earlier applied to this public comment please we have quite a number of them so please do limit your comments to five minutes or less and Don will be our timekeeper so and I'm going to do them in the order that I received them so it's not any particular

119order other than that so our first one is Mary Loveland we won't start your time until you get ready I would add to the name because I am NOT someone that can get excited or emotional about a direction I want to name it was very important to me when we opened the second high school that it had a name a directions and and I'm sorry and I all my respects to the people that are loyal to the word south or something like that I I respect that I'm just saying it's not my thing but anyway so when we were ready to open South West I had proposals taking getting Liberty Memorial back into the name for the facility at 14th and mass trail West could be trails West because it's so close to wagon trails

120and I wanted to bring the Kansa the the cans a name somehow or other into the South then they were junior High's of course junior high name when Miska do and and and her father talked me about this I had since changed from the tribe itself to possibly pulling in a word in the cans of language which was the tribe of our region and word in the Kansas language that would be significant to an educational site knowledge wisdom learning a tribute to the fact that it was a gift a generosity or gift they you know if one of those words in the candle language would be totally pronounceable etc and and attach that to the word south my concern about calling it South Kansas South middle school is that there are going to be people

121out there in the world that think we don't know how to spell Kansas you know what I mean and and and I'm I'm sorry about their lack of broad experience but but that's why I would like to take if possible I would suggest a word from the cans Alang guack being that a significant word to the educational process or to the generosity and and either either way you're paying tribute to the gift that the land was and you know the tradition of people that lived here predating us by a few decades and generations and you know you could just get a lot accomplished with that and and I think that's my main thing I have one other yeah yes but I really think ideally it would if a change happens it would pay tribute to

122the history of that acreage and because I think history is an important feature of of life and it'd be nice to acknowledge it do you have any questions for me I think that's well under five minutes isn't it write that down that I've talked less than we will note it in the minutes thank you thank you very much okay all right our next our next public comment Burnie Kish please I'm Bertie Kish I reside at 1336 Spencer Drive been a member of this community since 1988 when I returned from service in Germany with the United States Army I went a salute the people who brought this forth that there should be a name change the south and that it should be used to honor Native Americans Native Americans have had a presence in Lawrence since

123we were founded in 1854 Haskell Institute was founded in 1884 and it has had been a vibrant and a great member of this community I specifically though tonight went to talk on behalf of Billy Mills Billy was an Oglala Sioux where is an Oglala Lakota Sioux he was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota at a very early age he lost both his mom and dad and by the time he was 12 he was an orphan pretty much raised by his grandfather in the mid 1950s he came to Haskell as many young Native Americans did and attended Haskell high school which was part of the Haskell Institute he excelled in track and field was the state champion in the mile run as a junior and senior and with kayuu having such

124a great tradition of track and field under Bill Easton at that time was given an athletic scholarship to come to ke u he excelled at K U in track and field was a cross country champion and an all-american however life was not a bitter roses for Native Americans in the 1950s and early 1960s in Lawrence there are only three streets that Native Americans could use Lourdes Massachusetts New Hampshire and Vermont Billy was ostracized from fraternities could not join the fraternity of his choice he also when K you took their track and field and cross country pictures they took two pictures one with Billy Mills in it and one with Billy Mills not in it despite all that following his graduation he was commissioned in the United States Marine Corps served for three years in the

125Marine Corps while preparing for the Olympic Games in 1964 at Tokyo he was into 10,000 meters and also in the marathon the 10,000 meters he was a huge underdog his name wasn't even in in the people considering it but he won the 10,000 meters he wanted in in record time and when he crossed the finish line the Japanese gentleman who grabbed him said who are you who are you he was really an unknown there has not been an American win the 10,000 meters since Billy Mills did in 1964 since 1964 his return to Lawrence several times to speak at bay at AAU runs at rim rock farm to return for the Kansas relays to be the featured speaker for the Kansas relays and just within the last two years there's been a run honored to

126honor him at Haskell the 10-thousand meter Billy Mills run he has represented since he left here and really was a member of this community since the early 1950s kayuu and Lawrence with class and dignity he has a foundation that helps underprivileged kids around the world and has donated millions of dollars to that cause Billy has received many honors since he left kayuu there's been a movie made of him running brave he's received honors from the NCAA but I feel if South middle school name change was named the Billy Mills South middle school it would be an honor that he would greatly cherish thank you yeah our next speaker Austin attorney I am again in the room where I spent eight years I'm here to support the name change for South middle school for quite a

127number of years I was first board and then community representative to the Native American parents Council led by Jennifer etat knee in the most recent years and we dealt with a couple of federal grants which the Congress has chosen to under appropriate for each year so we had to struggle with that but in the experience this group manifested the concern that Native Americans parents have for the quality of education of their children the school as has been said was built on land that was given from Haskell Indian nations University which in turn had been tribal land and the fundamental fact is that Native Americans form a distinct and significant portion of the population of Lawrence and of the diversity that we pride their children our significant portion of our school enrollment and many of them

128do attend South so just as we have recognized one portion in our community by naming Langston Hughes elementary school we can recognize another portion by renaming south now we have to recognize that this is a new idea when we named Langston Hughes middle school there was not an existing community with an established opinion it was it was done as a new decision so it may well be that the idea of renaming South being a new idea has not yet matured it's not for me to choose a name from the alternatives forwarded to you in the presentation tonight but my point of view the south community and the Native American community should come together to propose a single name but I do think it would be desirable to name a person that person will like Langston

129Hughes become for our students an example of achievement a suitable commemoration for that person can then be placed in the school building and probably without the need for public funds and I thank you for your attention [Applause] our next speaker is Jody Meyer hello my name is Jody Meyer I am a parent of three children in the ward School District my oldest son is ninth grader at LHS my middle son is a seventh grader at South and my youngest son is a fifth grader at Broken Arrow who has been waiting two hours in the hallway because he thought this would be more exciting than the LHS football banquet so I hope he's still out there not only that but I have also been extensively involved in the Broken Arrow community in the South community as

130a former PTA president at Broken Arrow as well as presently on the CBO at South middle school you know I don't say that to toot my own horn but just to give some background in to the knowledge that I have regarding this proposed change I think the first thing that I want to say is that I respect the presentation that dr. Jones gave one of the concerns that I think of a number of people is that there has been a lack of transparency regarding the proposed name change and I think that I know personally how I found out about the name change was an article in the journal world in August and since that time I think there's been an email mentioning that was going to be at site council I think about probably 95%

131of parents have no idea what a site Council is or what they do or how you even get associated with that after I think the first site council meeting it was discussed sort of a timeline associated with that but aside from the survey itself that was sent out there about three demos sent out about the survey there had not been an update about what was going on with the South name change proposal I emailed dr. Jones and Miss Carlson on Monday when we could go today to inquire about what the status of that was and the fact that parents had not been notified about that specifically I asked that a separate email regarding that topic be sent out so that people can be aware of that rather than setting it out in a general newsletter

132that quite frankly people don't pay that much attention to an email was sent out later this afternoon that afternoon a week ago today in a school newsletter with a few sentences about what was going to happen and it wasn't totally clear about what action the board was going to take tonight and last week of course was a week where it was a four-day week for our students and a two and a half day week for Broken Arrow students and so I think that people have felt like they have been in the dark about what is going on regarding the proposed name change I think a lot of people were unhappy with the quality of the survey that was sent out the survey basically was four questions it didn't allow anyone to give any opinion about

133why they were against the name change it basically just said are you in favor are you against I mean you saw the questions over there I mean that was it there wasn't a lot of discussion regarding other things that could have been added to it the district is the one who created that those questions and I don't know that they were discussed I wasn't at the site council meeting where that was discussed but my understanding from someone who was because they don't remember specifically approving the questions or asking to change the questions so just in terms of educating I would say the primary constituents that it could affect I don't think people have felt like they have been in the loop regarding that myself included and I say this is somebody who and I'm only

134speaking tonight as a parent not an enroll as a CEO person but in order to provide this information to other parents who asked and there are a lot of other parents who've asked me what is going on it's been almost impossible to say exactly and I think that's what is disappointing and that's why you may not have that many people here tonight to speak about it is because they really weren't aware of it what was going on except for about a week ago there are a and I don't have very much time so I'll try to talk fast there are a lot of people who are opposed to the name change the survey I we were not given what the survey results were until tonight that wasn't discussed we haven't had a chance to look

135at those numbers but I have spoken to a wide variety of people and ethnic groups about it and there are more people against the proposed name change then what the survey leads us to believe I think the other thing I want the board to consider is is that some people are concerned about speaking out because they don't want to appear that they are against Native Americans or against honoring people there could be other reasons why they want to do that so I would ask the board to set up another meeting where people can come in and voice their opinions about that which they really haven't been allowed to do this far so that the board can I think be greater educated about what the community's position is about the name change thank you miss Mayer

136okay our next speaker elise towie thank you very much hello my name is Elise towie I'm a mover at the Iowa Tribe of Kansas Nebraska and the Menominee nation I'm a Haskell alumni my great-grandpa went to ask on the 1890s my grandpa in the 1920s I went in the 90s and my son is there now so I have a long history of Haskell just like many of the people that are sitting in this room right now but there was a lot of maybe not so much advertisement about this meeting or the name change but there was a lot of things on social media I do know that I was at the the last site council meeting I had been invited to all of them but unfortunately I teach a class at Haskell at night and

137so I wasn't able to come until I cancelled that one class so that I could go but what I find really ironic is that we're here and it's Native American month right you know and that we're sitting her and we're talking about this and you know and I get it I I know it's hard to change and that people have a lot of buy-in to the name self which has been around for 50 years but my people have been in this state for a lot longer than 50 years you know my people have been in this country for a lot longer than 50 years so to me South is just a direction and I get it my oldest son when he went to junior high miss miss Stubblefield was pret was the principal then and

138unfortunately I did go have to go see her with my son a couple of times you guys can talk about that later but but you know when they changed the name I thought it was great they were sort of going back to the roots you know they were going back to something that meant something to people it wasn't just central it just wasn't a place you know and and I get there's still some people that talk about South about before it was remodeled how students would write their names on a wall and people still get mad because that walls no longer there you know so I get it change is hard you know Haskell I work at Haskell you know change is hard we have to you know Haskell's going through a number of changes

139its own self but it's an institution that stays you know Billy Mills was just in town on Saturday he was in town for the 10k was at the 10k run I think on the Billy Mills cross-country track over at Haskell you know I sent him a little email cuz he was a friend of my grandpa's and I asked him I said you know can you stay through Tuesday so you can come to this meeting show people who you are let them know how much people love you you know but he wasn't able to you know but one thing about Billy Mills it's not just that he went to Haskell or that he went to Kay you it's not that he won the Olympics or was in the military the best thing I think about him

140is what he does right now as he travels all over the country helping youth at risk not just Native youth at risk but all youth at risk you know and he's willing to put himself out there to you know go give talks to people if they can't afford that you know and so to me he's the epitome of what we look for in education right for somebody who will bend over backwards for four children or no matter what color they are no matter what type you know what the background they come from you know and what what a more of an honor can we give to our children who go to South middle school than have somebody like that represent them and I can talk on South's behalf because my youngest son went to South

141he now is that Lawrence High School you know so so I was a cougar you know we were you know South middle school and all that you know we had all that stuff and I get it okay I get that you know it's it's hard to change and I know that a lot of people are very upset because they feel like they didn't get a chance to come to this meeting but this meeting was was advertised right this is a meeting that the agenda is available correct it's not that you guys just wrote that agenda right before this meeting this agenda has been has been set yes we did have a three and a four-day weekend we have this and that and I'm not trying to start any trouble I want to say though that

142you know when I went to that site council meeting I was told that this room would be packed with people wearing cougar shirts you know and what I said to that and I said you know what there's going to be people packed here with that are caring parents and that are taxpayers payers of this community because those are the people it doesn't matter if it's just the school if it's just the students it's the community but thank you next commenter Linda Kuzco oh I'm sorry did I mispronounce your name did I mispronounce your last name it's Linda coochie coohcie seems pretty good thank you yeah okay so I'm Linda Kucha and I'm a community member in this city and I'm here to support the name change for south and I I think that mr. Turney

143said most of everything I was going to say and at least verified it a lot I think I've had children and grandchildren go to central and go to South they were all proud whichever school they were at Central changed its name for a historical honorable reason and now South is asking to do the same thing some of the people itself I loved what the principal had to say about not wanting this to be divisive or hard on the students I don't want it to either I guess what I want us to all remember is that self-- has been there 50 years Haskell's been there way longer than that but the Native American people who had this whole country they've been here longer than a lot of us is any of our elders have been here

144there were her first and we don't recognize that a lot of the time so I'm asking that we do before that land belonged to Haskell and I may be wrong here but I owned a home over there and you could look back at the history of the land that land was tribal land before Haskell ever owned it that belonged to Native people so they've been there quite a while so I just think it we should keep that in mind and some of the gentlemen that they're talking about naming that school for honorable hard-working men who went through more than I ever did in my life to get where they got and that's someone for kids to look up to not just native kids athletes any kids we have schools named for african-american people we had

145a school named for a white lady who was an educator in this town who made a big difference opal Jane Kennedy I think it's time to acknowledge the history and what we have with our Native American families too and I just wanted to let everybody know that I support that change for that reason thank you for your time thank you Miss Peecher crea Bala is our next speaker testing one two hi good evening board members my name is el Maria Vela and I'm an alumni both has got high school kayuu and I'm currently a lis major at ESU for library science I am a little nervous so pardon me I didn't anticipate getting up here and speaking but I just wanted to talk about some statistics and Native youth I support the name change and

146I wanted to bring in from the Journal of American Indian education the high school dropout rate for American Indian Alaska Native youth I want to bring in a part of me to app Aspen Institute that talks about suicide rates and I also want to bring in the National Indian Education Association that talks about high death rates the population we're talking about is Native youth 12 to 18 12 to 22 years old and so compared to the to the general population for both suicide for suicide rates Native teens experienced the highest rate of suicide of any population group in the United States as part of the Aspen Institute it talks about national graduation rates for Native American Alaskan native high school students their graduation rate is forty forty nine point three percent compared to seventy six

147point two percent for the white standard I also want to bring in where I brought up the National Indian Education Association where they were talking about for general population Native American youth have the highest death rate with the first one being violence whether it's unintentional or intentional homicide and suicide with numbers like that and we're talking about representation and we're talking about cultural appropriation for me as a child being Native American and growing up in the public school systems I rarely seen positive images regarding my own experience for me as a current grad student in a Library and Information science program at Emporia State University I find out about the classification system and how American Indians are classified through the Library of Congress and the Dewey Decimal System for instance in the nine hundred categories

148for American history geography so you can go to the Lawrence Public Library where I currently volunteer down there two hours a week and shelving for their adult nonfiction section and I had to see that for myself as well as the Mauri of New Zealand have created a thesaurus subject headings because there are so many but barricades to the colonialism that set in how these classification schemes were set that you can't get relevant information in the school system why support this name changes I have a seventh grader that attends a middle school here in town as well and even though I graduated from Houska Indian nations University and I am a Kansas resident from a Michigan band I understand from my experience there that and I want to relate it to it's bigger than us right

149now in this room it's bigger than our children who went to this school right now and it's bigger than Lawrence Kansas there's a saying at Haskell and it says all all in Indian country all roads lead to Haskell so this a change like this is far reaching past what we're experiencing right now and being a little uncomfortable talking about a change like that it's bigger than that it's life changing it's going to increase things like this helped to increase graduation rates of feeling in a sense of pride of belonging and it also I was looking at the mission statement for the Lawrence USD 497 district and it starts with it's a learning community committed to ensuring educational equity and excellence to me changing a name to that represents the deep history that Lawrence has with

150its Native community it's like it's so simple and how we set the pace it's kind of like mr. Jones like that survey was a little leading in his presentation but I wanted to ask was there an indigenous component that helped create that that survey because I also volunteer through service-learning and internships with Native American Student Services and we're developing it's relevant we're developing our library collection over there and when I first started I was having all these problems because it doesn't fit the classification system of Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress what I'm tying this into is like it's all relevant to generational effects for Native people and if it's almost like we're not we don't have to they don't need to be educated it's educating the community it's educating people that our stakeholders are

151in position it's easy to say and stand up for things like this if you haven't experienced what what its roots are um thank you for your time a good night thank you very much mr. Vila okay our next speaker um and I'm I apologize if I don't get your name right Michael Tosi is that right okay thank you very much I would like to ex rescue that um I am the name change I was an instructor at Haskell for 25 years prior to that I was an FBI agent for six and came back to Haskell to start teach you know it had been associated with Haskell since 1971 up to the time of winning the FBI and then came back to high school to teach what we deal with us as a people I think

152Billy Mills represents something that allows people to take a look at I like what the principal said if the name change occurs there's going to be a development of curriculum or some effort to try to open up the door to explain what Indian history is like or Indian culture is like and that's one of the things that you know so many we deal with us Indian people as a stereotype the stereotype is very negative and then what she was just talking about the suicide rate one in six adolescents commit suicide or as attempted suicide and there's a reason for that and we have a real struggle real issue with self-esteem if anybody how many of you seen Billy Mills race if you look at the race you watch that race then he meets in the

153race inspirational comes from behind like the speaker before it said he wasn't really a favorite Jerry Lindgren was the number one twenty thousand meter runner Billy Mills just had what it took that day and and he beats some world class runners and and if you take a look at that race and yet if this occurs this name change occurs that could represent I mean that's motivation when you look at that race that's motivation and and then if you add to this aspect of a teaching history teaching culture it opens the door to opening up just more awareness less tension less you know coming into this where any people have to struggle about who they are we struggle about who we are because society at large you know you look at our history it's been tough

154when Billy Mills came to Haskell we were going through a termination period United States government's going to terminate us eliminate any responsibilities that it said it had based on the treaties it violated all 394 treaties and we were left impoverished all our people were left in poppers but if you look at this this name change would allow people to really take a look and understand and it would help our kids and it motivate our kids and it would help them to become better people and to integrate into society the termination period was it was very difficult the only people that came to boarding schools that the government was trying to push Indian kids to public schools to get out of the Indian business and to just totally abrogate all this treaty responsibilities it didn't work

155today I mean because it didn't work because the state said man we can't handle this you know it's your responsibility so it finally came back to the government and they began to uphold its treaty responsibilities but the termination period it only allowed people who were orphaned or were really extremely poor to come to Haskell so these kids were Haskell in 1950s they were they were they were having a very difficult time and Billy Mills he came up he surfaced in 19th from 1952 to 1962 Haskell is in his Jayhawk Conference they never lost a cross-country track meet track and field meet never lost ten straight years defeated the schools in this era to defeat it Laurens hot if you go back in time to the 1930s House will be tau in 1931 football there's a

156big history or big sports history the Billy Mills broke a record that was held over 20 over 20 years Glen Cunningham had the mile records they're billing us broken and then he led Haskell in 1956 to the cross Tree State Championship and the coach there at the time Tony coffin said that this was the best team in the United States here's a school of 424 425 kids and they were beating huge schools and they beat Wichita East and the finals and so you know by doing this you're you're making things I think becoming more aware you're opening the door of the history you're going to go with the culture you look into the door to people understanding what Indian people are alive really like and we could do that I think this in Billy Mills

157this is the if the catalyst here and I think it's it's something that is very important Billy Mills won the Olympics as an American he didn't win the Olympics as an Indian so everybody can relate to that and like the speaker said before he's the only American to ever win to 10,000 meters there was another Indian person who look from Carlo who won the Olympics I mean I'm sorry took second in 2000 it's only two people who place medal wise and their 10,000 meters or Indians but I said like I said I'm a time's up but this is an important change it really is and it can help not just Indian people but it can help 19 ins as well thank you Thank You mr. Johnston our new secret Shannon Reed um hello I wanted

158to speak to you all as a former South junior high students first I want to thank Carol a friend of mine for bringing this to fruition for getting it this far she is a true advocate for her community and I just really want to acknowledge that you put a lot of Labor into this so when I was a junior high student I had the privilege of having Russell Blackbird as my principal and he was very affiliated and connected to haskell and so I had the privilege of having that steeped in my education in my early early adolescence I learned tons of information about how rooted our land and our building and our history was with Haskell and with the land that was originally tribal land as was mentioned earlier so I have that privilege and

159it taught me a lot but without Russell blackboard or somebody else with that knowledge being a principal I don't know that students are getting that history lesson so I think that this name change is a simple way to do that giving visibility to people who have historically and culturally been erased by colonialism genocide is the least that we can do it's just that simple it's a baby step specifically because those are facts that they were historically and culturally experienced genocide and colonialism those are facts that we need to be teaching to students and as was mentioned by other speakers this is a perfect opportunity to open that conversation and to open the door and to know that those students beginning on education south is a cardinal direction as people have mentioned there's nothing to really

160be attached to that I have no attachment I have good memories of my time at South junior high I'm a lucky student that did not have a really hard junior high experience and Russell Blackbird and some of the other educators I have to thank for that but south is just a cardinal direction there's nothing to be attached to that so in my opinion that should be dropped from it altogether when considering the name change and hopefully it would be past week let go of that word instead of trying to incorporate it into it at all so I just want to say that I really hope that the district and the board decides not to contribute to further erasure of indigenous people on this stolen land instead I want you to make a very simple choice

161to lift up the history of Native communities especially in this community and how significant that is in Lawrence and I appreciated that somebody before us talked about all roads lead to Haskell and I think that's incredible and it is a central part of the indigenous community throughout this entire land so we have a really unique opportunity to honor that and I just to honor the history of Native communities being incredibly gracious host to us despite our continued oppression of them it's about time for us to send her the first people of this land with real intention and two former teachers of mine that I see in the crowd and two former teachers who might still be itself who have some resistance to that name change I would encourage you to let it go because whatever

162your practical resistance to it is doesn't match up to how symbolic it can be to acknowledge an indigenous person from this community just by changing the name of a school which I understand is not going to cost very much money so it seems like a simple choice [Applause] all right our next speaker Elizabeth crank Warner oshio nice nabe hello friends my name is Elizabeth Kronk Warner I'm a citizen the SU st. Maria tribe of Chippewa Indians director of the University of Kansas tribal long government center and most importantly and why I'm here tonight a mother and I want to speak very narrowly on a question that dr. Jones raised at least what I understood him to raise which is the question of is this going to benefit our children and how is this gonna impact

163our children at South and so I speak in favor of that because I see this benefiting all children regardless of race so if we look narrowly at the question of native chiller and I speak as an educator who's been doing native education now for over 12 years we know that extensive literature has demonstrated that Native children benefit from the establishment of a community you can look at bryan babe brave boy and his extensive empirical data which demonstrates this to be true how us do we establish community we establish community in many ways but one of the ways that we can establish community is by demonstrating and showing good role models so one of the reasons why I speak in favor of this is because by naming the school after Billy Mills who is an amazing

164person as others have already spoken to we help build community which again Brayboy has demonstrated through extensive empirical data helps our Native children and I think I only have to cite to the map data which was shown earlier in this meeting to show that our Native students are falling behind are falling behind our other students to demonstrate that they do need to have this community building effort and that it will benefit them but they are not the only ones to benefit all students at South will benefit from this name change I also had the pleasure of serving as an amici on the Gruder V Ballinger Supreme Court case which you may know looked at affirmative action in all schools and how affirmative action in all schools benefits all students and one of the reasons why

165all students benefit is because they benefit from learning about diversity and Shan Reed just made my point right she just explained how her educational experience was more robust and more complete because of her knowledge about Native communities so that demonstrates that non diverse students just like Native students will benefit from this proposal and for that reason speaking narrowly to that point and in greement with all the previous points that have been made I strongly support the name change and just one more point of privilege I too want to acknowledge Carol for her amazing advocacy and work on this behalf we appreciate you Chema glitch thank you Thank You mr. okay mr. Turney I have a second Oh different mr. Turney okay we were trying to figure that out all right Austin seat Ernie it is

166your turn thank you I'll just speak naturally to one specific point I suggested by my dad who was on the school board and I've heard a lot of school board stuff in the past from him suggested I take the survey about the name change and I received the survey without having you know prior knowledge from being on a site Council or something like that received it cold and I found that it was a pretty opaque survey that just sort of arrives like a slap in the face like we're gonna change the name what do you think and your your reaction is like you know what what WTF so I'm not sure it makes interpreting those survey results pretty difficult I think because it was a brief somewhat awkward survey maybe not for all respondents depending

167on how they received the survey and if they got it on paper with a cover letter or see something first but if you just saw the survey as it is it was almost designed to sort of stir up resistance and I say that my I worked in Washington DC on management consulting for some time working with federal and state government bureaucracies and I'm pretty skeptical about bureaucracies so it occurred to me that it might have been designed to sort of novel the proposal from the beginning by sort of jamming down an awkward survey to get negative results but I'm kind of as I say I'm kind of skeptical what we'll just say it was a little clumsy so it's hard to harder to interpret the results thank you thank you mister twenty-eight our final unless

168anyone has forms they haven't turned in our final speaker will be Steve Kay do my name is Steve kadai a parent grandfather uncle Greg grandfather of children in the long USD forty nine ninety seven school system when I filled out that speaker form it said who what school are you affiliated with that you got the form I put South quarterly Central and University of Kansas I in fact have family in each of those places and because this is a educational place we're at this evening my task is to give you some English arts instruction or class so I'm going to give you a English arts lesson for the day bear with me the title of this poem is called youth we have tomorrow bright before us like a flame yesterday a nightgown thing a sundown

169name and dawn today broad arch above the road we came we Marsh Americans together we Marsh Langston Hughes and father I looked at those charts and I see children it's it's sad those charts and graphs that we saw there are children or youth many of them failing is that many is it few is it a lot who cares about that kind of thing what we should be caring if there was one and there was one youth in that draft because some of us will not stand by no matter the racial group we're going to help that child that youth what are here this evening tonight about a name change we're here because of the youth Langston Hughes said it we March Americans together I'm a you know I'm a military veteran of the United States

170Air Force and proud of it and I know that there are veterans here in the audience and I Saturday I have known Billy Mills most of our life and the gentleman that made the comments about the Billy Mills is career I applaud that but I kind of grew up with Billy Mills I went out to see him Saturday Billy Mills was in town he was putting on a charity run 10k round at the haskell grounds the campus Saturday morning some of you may have been there some of you may have participated I had a chance he was a busy man out there but I had a chance to talk to him for maybe two minutes I said Billy we were standing there on the west side of the campus I said Billy over there you

171can see the back side of that facility of the South middle school yeah I'm sure I can see there I said that's the facility we want the name didn't name change I see the sign my time is my time is the coordinates lady you need to expire but as a grandfather great-grandfather my journey might be that sundown what I'm here for the youth and Billy Mills told me Billy Mills told me Saturday he said Steve he said I used to run over there I used to train over there when I was there at Haskell Institute thank you mister could you think with school board members that is sure Authority and your duty to make this decision and not solely for the Native American children but all of the youth Carol in her statement said that

172the name change will brighten the Langston Hughes flame I asked you to give us your utmost consideration for the name change and that you approve the name for Billy Mills South middle school thank you good evening thank you [Applause] all right um thank you all for providing your input in your perspectives we really do appreciate it or members we do not plan to have a motion to vote on this tonight in part because we're receiving input and still receiving input and in part because Marcel who has been a site the site council rep at South was not able to be here tonight so I want to make sure if you have further questions to ask any of our presenters or if for their information you'd like to get let's let's make sure we ask for

173that and then if more members have any comments I want to share them let's do that I know Melissa I had a question even when when the survey was presented to the students Melissa is this for is this a question for Keith or I guess it'll be key oh it did he goodness survey was no sorry when the survey was presented to the kids was it presented in the same manner like was it I don't know like physically scripted or yeah like or where the teachers sharing it so Keith's kid I'm sorry can you come up to the podium to answer the questions since we want to make sure that everybody who's watching and also who's here can hear your answer nope the teachers were given the same instructions they had the fact sheet they

174had the advisory they were supposed to give it during advisory now teachers were able to have conversations with their students and speak with their students before they took it okay other questions or comments but I have a comment but I go home do your kids I let's make sure did anybody have anything else they wanted to ask mr. Jones before he okay great don't do as good okay thank you thank you very much okay Rick I do have a comment and and I understand we're not gonna vote tonight but you know whatever decision we make we're gonna make a lot of people unhappy you know so that's just the reality you know that said I find the comments really compelling in terms of making a name change so you know that if I had to

175vote tonight that would be my vote and I suspect when we do go be unless there's you know dramatic new information but I also want to make sure that we respect the people who have a different opinion that they're really attached to the south name and so I think for me it's gonna be really important that we retain that it's not gonna make everybody who yeah would just you know it doesn't want to make a change it's not gonna make everybody happy but I think it's it's gonna be really important to respect those viewpoints as well thank you Jessica so I guess I would just say that I you know I'm from Lawrence and I went to West right and I have a lot of pride in West and I remember the I could sing

176it to you right now I could be the Warhawk beat for you up here yeah but at the end of the day the tradition of West isn't tied to West and we're being given an opportunity to honor something that we probably should have honored a long time ago in this district so I'm also sitting there I think that you know I want to open it up to the community to send me feedback we've gotten some emails for sure not supporting the name change and so you know I want to hear from people who continue to want to say those things but I think we heard some really wonderful comments tonight thank you all for coming and speaking with us from your heart and telling us how you feel about it and why it's important to

177your community so thank you Vanessa yeah I mean I completely agree I think that change can be hard for people I think being attached to the way things were like an issue for some people but I do think that there's a real compelling reason to make this change that allows us as a board to honor a community that gave a lot to help us to do good things and I'm so I am certainly in favor of a name change I I think we may like if that is the compelling vote and we have a majority that wants to make the name change I don't know that we should necessarily we've heard a lot of ideas a lot of options I do think we need to have some sort of committee that's tied to the school

178come up with the recommendation where this is the name we want rather than having us kind of debate that here just because I think that it it's more powerful if it comes from the community that's affected I'm so again I know we're not voting tonight but I will say I am definitely in favor of a change and would want the South community to work with the group that has put the proposal together to actually narrow that down so that we're voting on their recommendation okay all right Jill no I I think we've all heard from a lot of people maybe not tonight but via email and etc from both sides and from parents from grandparents former teachers retired administrators and I I'm just it's impressive how much you know feelings there are and what a

179great place south is just reflected by everyone's input but I would I would concur I think we've set a precedent you know of honoring the origin of a building or of a location to note with with Central and I agree about I I would prefer to if we did something to kind of have some continuity where we do have keep the direction just and that for the sake of kind of a tie between all of the middle schools and I think it does sort of give a nod to the original name or the original name but also tying into the system of middle schools and that we we kind of have set that presidental with precedent precedent with with Liberty Memorial but so I just want to raise a couple of things for board members

180to think about between now and the next time that we meet and have a discussion about the proposal i I'm with Vanessa I think that if the Board's decision is to move forward with the name change I do think that there's more process that needs to happen in terms of having that community come together and make a recommendation on a singular name to the board I also would like board members to think about the issue of choosing a name for school naming it after someone who is still living obviously mr. Mills is an incredibly compelling role model for all students for our community when in conversations with dr. Stubblefield and looking into kind of our own board policy which we have everybody has a copy of it in our packet about naming and facilities we

181don't we don't address renaming of facilities in our own policy so it doesn't specifically say address that other than if you're talking about naming libraries auditoriums in specific areas there's a piece of the policy that deals with that so our policy is a little bit in applicable to the situation that we have before us Liberty Memorial when they went through that they followed recommendations from recommended policies from the state school board Association and their recommended policy is you do you don't name a building after someone who is living that's their their that's their best practice recommendation obviously we can choose to vary from that since it's not in our policy I think what I want to know from board members is do you want to have the policy discussion ahead of the process of sending

182this back to the South community to choose a name do we want to have a discussion about what our policy is and make make any changes to it in that way or say ok we are ok with having that be one of the options or we're not because when we do that we will be setting a precedent for future naming of buildings and facilities in our district and we've had we have had a conversation in the last year and a half or two years over a proposal to name the stadium at Lawrence high after a former coach and so I want to make sure that the whatever process we choose to use that we've actually thought through and had some discussion about those issues as well because it's it's this this particular kind of circumstance

183hasn't come up in our policy doesn't deal with it why why is it not ideal to mean someone who's living and especially if it's culturally relevant like they choose to if Native Americans choose to honor their elders I think that's an important thing to talk about I'm only raising this because I want board members to think about it not because I'm saying that I think one answer the other is right and if you want additional information about if our policy versus the recommended policies that were used when Liberty Memorial went through this process I think they've been shared before but we can share them again you can take the look so I I don't seem to see the need to have a policy discussion about this and I appreciate that you would like us to

184think about the naming it after a living person but if the group comes back with the recommendation then I'm probably going to support that it with the bridge so if it's Billy Mills for example you know and he's not gonna be around forever so I don't know that this is you know that's that big of a deal with regard to they you know precedent I'm not concerned about that you know yes we did have a proposal to name the stadium after a coach and we said no so I think we you know if this situation dictates saying no in the future we can do that so so it doesn't really for me it's not a big deal yeah I feel the same I feel like I mean I think a great point was made here

185tonight that Native American people was honor their elders while they're still living and I don't think it's really our place to make that determination so if we have a group that is going to put forth the proposal with a suggestive name and we can get to a name that we can approve or not approve I think that's ideal all right so it sounds to me like what we need to do then is have some further conversation with stuff about what that process would look like and what the timeline would look like to have it come back to the board both for a vote on whether what happens after that I appreciate your input and I do understand what you're saying and we will have further opportunity to hear from you and anyone else in the

186community that's one of the reasons why when aboard officers we're putting the agenda together for tonight's meeting we said you know what we are not going to vote on it tonight we want to make sure that members of the community that wants to be heard about this have an opportunity to be heard that they don't feel like we've had this proposal and we are making a decision on the spot because it is something that people have strong opinions about and we need to hear that can i clarify so when I suggested that we had send it back to a committee make a recommendation I wasn't necessarily meaning just like South staff so like a community group of people the constituents the stakeholders that so we would be guided we would be guided by our policy

187in this and what our policy said is that the board may establish a committee to assist in reviewing a request it doesn't specify that it has to be only composed of people who are currently affiliated with the building or not that is that is a decision that the board would have the opportunity to make and when we did this same when we kind of had this similar process for Liberty Memorial central middle school there were members of Central Junior High who were part of the discussion as well as members from like society and you know just other people at large kind of grappling with and so I think so I think what we need to do is we need to actually give our staff an opportunity to inform the board about what the process was

188that we used when we went through that process and have a discussion at our next meeting about putting this on the agenda too though perhaps our second it would be our second November meeting would be our next meeting if we want to have a vote on yes or no changing the name and then have them be ready to talk about okay this is the process that we would suggest to the board for moving forward of them to clarify to the weakest Intuit's you mean stack as far as the district level to to confer with them correct well what the next steps will be it would include we would be conferring with yeah yes sir Johnson wobbly self right it would it would involve make sure that as well yeah I'm so I I'm used to

189calling him Keith messed up so I just want to clarify at the next meeting you'll are you saying you'll vote on whether to do it or not and then the next step would be the if it's yes to actually come to give time to decide on the name means that would you I think that we need to have that discussion yes because we're not we're not planning to move it forward tonight I guess I'm not comfortable voting on a name change if I don't know what to name it yeah okay so so so here's here's my question then um it is the consensus of the board that you want the committee to be formed and move forward with proposing a name yeah I believe that yeah even without Marcel here and I think that yeah

190there are enough of us that think that is not a bad idea all right um do we we don't need to have a vote no I can follow up with dr. Jones but I do want to say it probably won't I mean it's unlikely that'll be the next board meeting just because next week is short the fall break so it probably would have to in order to be fair and give people time and to advertise they would probably have to be there the December meeting I think I was suggesting that the next meeting for a discussion about yes we're gonna move forward with the process but if there's consensus amongst the board at this point to move forward with the process then unless David in the back has anything different to say about that process

191okay thank you some I think just helping I think one thing that will be important is to provide information about the opportunity to get involved in that community to the community so that people are aware of what that process looks like and then I don't like I don't know are we gonna be part of selecting that committee or is that going to happen at the school level or are we gonna figure it I think we I think I'm you need two years or two weeks from now staff an opportunity to discuss that and we'll come back with suggestions for the board about how we would move that forward okay but for now probably emailing dr. Jones the principal at South if you're interested and to keep people informed or watch their newsletter what would be

192the recommendation for people who are interested in staying engaged around this issue for how to be informed about that dr. Jones has left but I do think emailing him directly cuz he'll probably facilitated and we'll just make sure that he has support from the district level to get the information out bro yes yes okay any other questions or comments before we adjourn no all right turn our favor I thank you all very much for being here this evening