001good evening I'd like to call our meeting doctor from break we're going to continue on we finished our work session and the next item on the agenda is the report of the president of the Board of Education you know my notes I wanted to start off this evening by sharing by sharing a statement that our communication staff posted on our Facebook page and shared at the middle of last week regarding the president's action on daca in February as questions about the potential effects of changes to federal immigration laws began to surface lawrence public schools reaffirmed our commitment to protecting the rights of all staff and students given the president's recent announcement to rescind deferred action for childhood arrivals or daca the school district wants to emphasize that Lawrence USD 497 is a learning community that
002welcomes all staff students and school families the district is committed to ensuring safe and supportive learning environments and providing equal opportunities for all students regardless of race or immigration status we value the privacy rights of each individual and take seriously our responsibility to safeguard the personal information of staff and students Lawrence public schools do not release educational or personnel records unless authorized by the staff member parent or adult student to whom they belong or directed by court order to do so if you have any questions about the release of personal information please visit with your school principal just wanted to share that and make sure that that information was shared widely with our school communities beyond that I just have a couple of things to report on I'm going to start with these notebooks that
003should have been on each board members chair today a couple weeks ago I attended a KSP training on superintendent evaluations and so in your chair tonight you're going to find this packet of materials that has been gathered for board members to consider what I'm hoping that each board member will do with this information is to review there's a set of evaluation instruments in here so if you look at the first couple of pages the first page is actually an NSBA checklist that talks about what what criteria we should be looking at to ensure that our evaluation tool covers these areas so just kind of a checklist of things that our evaluation process and our tools should do the second page is a timeline with some steps in a kind of opportunities for us to fill
004in dates about the evaluation process and then the next three tabs there's one that says admin eval performance-based eval and macro so those are three different kinds of evaluation tools that were shared with people who attended that training and so what I'm hoping and in the last tab actually is the keep rubric that we had been we have been using so that's our current evaluation tool what I'm hoping board members will do is to take a look at the three different types of evaluation tools look through them think about whether you feel like they get at the things that board members have expressed that they don't really like about the keeper brick in terms of the way that it does or doesn't align with how we want to do an evaluation and then at our
005next board meeting I'm going to do a short presentation to just kind of provide some context about these tools and then if you've had a chance to look at them I'm hoping we can have a fuller discussion about which direction we want to go and if we want to use one of these tools or if we want to use it at one of them as a model it with some changes just to try to make a decision because we really need timeline-wise we really need to make a decision so that dr. Stubblefield has an opportunity to do a self evaluation this fall that we would then use as part of the evaluation that has to be done by February 15th so that's that's what these are for homework I'm giving everybody homework all right that
006also on the weekend of August 25th 26 I attended a couple of events I mentioned earlier a Fed a federal education issues conference that I attended they did presentations on tidal programs from KSD II staff we heard a lunchtime presentation by Congressman Roger Marshall and also some advocacy updates from the National School Board Association and the national school superintendents associations lobbyists my favorite takeaway and I wanted to share this was from the the national school superintendent's Association federal lobbyist she said one thing to consider in our communications with our legislators as that less bad does not make it good and so in our advocacy about policy issues to not give them a big pat on the back for doing the thing that's less awful but to continue to advocate that for the good things that
007need to happen and making sure they're hearing from us and as an action plan suggested that she suggested committing five minutes a month to sending emails to it's either your Congress people or if you can get a hold of them the names of their Education staffers what was really interesting was that congressman Marshall actually said to the group that he isn't education is not his primary area of expertise and he relies very heavily on that staff person and so it was kind of a yeah it does make a difference to contact those staffers if and at ksb they talked about trying to provide some contact information to members and so I'm looking to see if that's something that will be made available to us in the future we also had a Board of Directors meeting
008for ksb and Randy Watson came and spoke and on the Kansans can vision and the new accreditation system talked about the mercury and Gemini school redesign projects which there is a set of schools that have applied this year and next year to do high school and elementary middle school redesign and talked about standard standardized testing I guess this is the thing I mentioned earlier that he had issued kind of a challenge to local districts and board members to look at not that since the state has reduced their own testing footprint to look at the testing footprint that we are using in our own districts and it was a really good conversation that we had during our goal-setting session tonight about that so I also wanted to make more members aware that the Kansas Attorney General's
009Office is offering free open meetings and open records act training on October 6th in Topeka from 9:00 to noon it's free but you they asked you to register if you're interested in going I can get you the phone number to call I'm planning to attend and if I go report back so that's all I have this evening thanks and we'll move on to the superintendent okay I just have a couple of things today is Patriot Day observed at the National Day of Service and remembrance in memory of the 2977 civilians military personnel and emergency responders killed in the 2001 September 11th terrorist act the attacks had a profound impact on our nation in the rest of the world and we want to pause remember and honor those who died thank you there will be a
010joint meeting of the board Douglas County Commission and Lawrence City Commission from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. next Monday in the meeting room of the Baker wetlands Discovery Center that address is 1365 north 1250 Road the public is welcome to attend I understand there may be some inaccurate information circulating on social media about school lunches and specifically the cell of ala carte items I want to share that our schools never deny a student a meal due to inability to pay ala carte purchases of individual items or seconds however do require adequate funds in the lunch accounts parents may parents may review student meal purchases online at my school books comm and may complete a form at the child's school if they wish to limit or deny ala carte purchases while there are some school districts across
011the country that may be making a lot a lot of money on the sell of ala carte items our district is not one of them all of the ala carte items we sell also meet USDA smart snack guidelines for nutritional value it was my pleasure yesterday to support our Lawrence teachers of the year Lisa Melton sunflower fifth grade teacher and Jack hood Lawrence high history teacher as they were recognized during the Kansas Teacher of the Year region two awards banquet in addition Amanda Tolbert a new English teacher at free State High School was honor as last year's Teacher of the Year nominee for Topeka Siemens School District so we got a good one we got several good ones Lisa Mountain receive additional recognition yesterday as an elementary semi-finalists and ultimately teachers from Atchison and Silver
012Lake were selected to represent the region at the state level of the Teacher of the Year Program so congratulations to Lisa and Jack congratulations to Freestate Lawrence High in Lawrence virtual high school for encouraging more students to take the AC a CT exam and to those students test takers for their outstanding performance on the a CT exam last year I hi our high schools continue to offer rear as coursework to help prepare students for college and careers my thanks to the Lawrence chamber of commerce for hosting another fun taste of the Lawrence mixer last week into the chamber member business who make it possible for our employees to attend annually at the annual event at half price the district invites Hispanic school families to attend our annual Hispanic college fair from 5:30 to 8:00 on
013Wednesday evening at the Lawrence College and Career Center Friday is a big day for us as we welcome home free State High School alumnus Hamilton Lewis to publicly share remarks about educational his educational journey during the Lawrence Schools Foundation community education breakfast Hamilton is a film Emmit animator in pre visuals pre-visualization artist who has worked on some blockbuster movies for DreamWorks I also want to invite the community to to our most recently completed elementary school construction and renovation frog projects during an open house at Pinckney and sunflower from 9:00 to noon on Saturday September 23rd thank you thank you okay next on our agenda is patron commentary do we have any patron commentary this evening we do not okay and we'll move on to board commentary all right great next on our agenda consent agenda
014consent 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 remove item or items removed are voted on separately and I believe we do yeah I'd like to request that we remove the contract amendment with BG consultants from the consent agenda and take care of that as part of the epidote rep yeah for our new HEPA NOFA solely since they go together and so all right so then can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda with that amendment I'll move the board of education adopt the items listed on the consent agenda with that change from Marcel second yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you okay we'll move on to our discussion and approval items tonight we're gonna
015revisit our decision making process for selection of search firm regarding selection of this next superintendent David Cunningham executive director of human resources and legal counsel is here to provide support if we need it but really think where we are as we just need to have a discussion of the board about which of the firms that we interviewed a couple of weeks ago I can tell you my top pick that was well above the rest was Ray and associates and so if we have consensus around that that might be a good place to know it was also my teacher I knew it was my topic okay mine as well so all right so pretty any discussion I guess I will say I wanted to just provide a little bit of context as to why well you
016do that I'll give my reason um you know I think that one of the issues that we have really tried to focus on as institution is looking at improving diversity within our hiring practices and I think that that was one of the lenses that I used to kind of go through the application materials and while all three firms kind of spoke to it they spoke to it in a way that was much more organic and seemed more real and rational than the others and I was impressed by that specific factor leaps and bounds beyond the other two firms and so that certainly played a part in my decision I think you know there were several factors that I felt like set them apart um one I appreciated that as part of their proposal for the
017base cost of their search that they included some services that weren't necessarily included in some of the other proposals including background checks for the final candidates and the fact that they'll provide a couple of follow-up sessions after we complete the hire to do just some some relationship building between the board and the new superintendent and that is part of their package so I thought that was really good I also like the fact that they guarantee their search for two years which was different than the other firms I I'm excited about their process for having video interview clips that will will allow the board to do screening of candidates in a step that doesn't necessarily require bringing candidates here for interviews multiple times I think that's it's a smart way to do it it will save
018us costs on on that part of it but it will also help us make better decisions in that part of the process and then kind of an some intangibles and that ties in to what Vanessa said I do think that they got our district in a way in terms of our priorities and giving me a feeling of comfort and confidence that they understand us and their be open to listening to what we need and applying those needs to the search process so those are really the the factors that caused me to to choose them as my first choice yeah just to add to that I mean I agree with Vanessa that thought that from a leverage standpoint in equity they definitely got it better than the other two and and I felt their presentation that
019they were more personable that they provided they had a better connection with us that I thought would also translate well to when they were engaging staff in community there is a motion in in the agenda item for this someone wants to make that motion I'll move that the Board of Education hire the firm of Ray and associates to conduct a search for the next superintendent of schools and direct staff to engage in negotiations with the selected firm to finalize the contract for those services and the amount not to exceed $30,000 second yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you okay we'll move on to our reports and approvals tonight the first step ratification of the master agreement with David Cunningham good evening so you have a enclosure that outlines for you the tentative agreement that
020was reached by the parties I wanted to highlight a couple of pieces of that salary and 2310 dollars to base I think the significance of that as it brings us $40 above a $40,000 starting salary for our teachers which I think puts us in a very competitive position particularly with schools to the east of us we're within what was Blue Valley ended up at forty thousand six hundred you know Shawnee missions quite a bit higher than those two numbers but we're right in the ballpark now with that and I think that was one of the things that the board was certainly interested in accomplishing was creating a more competitive salary schedule and we with your support we were able to do that in addition we've continued to provide for a full single health insurance policy
021for our staff who are 1.0 FTE and I use that generically there are actually some folks that can be less than 1.0 that's still qualified for full benefits under the ACA provisions but we pay 100% of that premium so that is a positive thing we had a nominal increase this year of a little over $20 per month per employee so that was good news but that's another component of it we restructured the way in which we compensate our FFA advisers Club advisors in the additional stipend area they were receiving some additional days but provided some information to the additional assignments committee to demonstrate that the amount of work that they were putting in really was more commensurate to one of our stipends in the three thousand dollar range and so that was added and then
022the scholar bowl the amount of work tied up with that needing an assistant that was also brought into the Master Agreement so you have amounts that reflect those for an annual basis for both the high schools there's some language changes as well that are outlined in the enclosure but those were the highlights that I think were important in terms of completing an agreement as I noted and I think last last meeting the the teacher Lawrence Education Association membership and actually includes all teachers in the district they did overwhelmingly ratify the tentative agreement so they've reported that to us so it's now it's in your court now so to speak in terms of ratification and these items reflect everything that you agreed to authorize your team to negotiate on behalf of the board any questions for
023D ready for motion then we can make the motion I move the Board of Education approved the tentative agreement and ratified the 2017-2018 Master Agreement and the certified compensation and fringe package in the amount of three million four and twenty six thousand three hundred fifty four dollars I'll second it yes yes yes yes yes thank you okay next up a bond sale resolution I would Cathy Johnson executive director finance evening we had a good day today so we're gonna share some good news with you we have with us tonight staff from Gilmore and Bell our legal counsel because you've got lots of paperwork to sign with lots of lots of stuff and then Dave's here with George Kay bomb and he's gonna actually share the good results and the process with you and how that
024turned out thank you okay and I just want to note for board members that there is a revised enclosure at our places that reflects the information about what happened today with the sale you can go ahead and start and I'll pull this up good evening David are two very with George K Bauman company it's a pleasure to be here tonight and I think we do have some good news for you today the school district received bids for the first forty three and a half million dollars of bonds that was authorized by voters back in May this is a twenty year bond issue we met today in the finance office conference room and and pulled up the website where the bids were being provided and prior to the sale we saw that there were eight firms
025registered to bid which we were really pleased by quite honestly I would have been happy with with four to five bidders the the bid deadline came and when we opened the bids fortunately all eight of the bidders did end up bidding and the best bid was provided by should be there in front of you Hutchinson shocky and early early and company which is out of Chicago and the interest rate the true interest cost on their bid bid was two point nine five zero four seven six percent they in addition to having eight bids a couple of other points that I would just sort of like to mention to kind of show you how good and aggressive the bidding was if you look there the difference between the low bid the best paid by Hutchinson shocky
026and the highest bid by Wells Fargo is only 0.06 percent that for that many bids that's a very narrow spread and the other thing I'd point out as Kathy had printed out another report and gave it to me earlier right after the sale that showed when the bids were received of those eight bids we had one bid show up six minutes in advance all seven of the other bids showed up within 24 seconds of when the bids were due which tells me that the bidders were really spending up until the last minute last seconds sharpening their pencil to try to give you the most aggressive bid possible and I am real pleased to say that that bid by Hutchinson shocky is obviously a very good bid we we've air fight it mathematically it's correct it
027meets all of the other bidding parameters that we put in place so we know that we see no reason that you wouldn't want to go ahead and accept that bid we did actually after the bids the bid was opened and we verified it mathematically made sure it was correct we did just in order to make sure that the amortization repayment structure met with the school districts needs going forward we sort of moved some principle amounts around and the actual true interest cost will end up being about two point nine four percent so a little lower than what's shown but really that's it the only action item required by the board tonight is to I think you see that motion on you know the board there the handout there if there are any particular questions about
028the sale I'd be happy to answer them if there's any particular questions about the the actual motion and the resolution there are representatives from Gilmore embel who that I'm sure could address those two thank you I'm the only question I had and wanted I think others had asked this questions when we were talking about this bond sale um am I correct in remembering that we were thinking that if we got somewhere around 3% that we were going to be doing well for the interest rate on this bond sale so we came in even lower than we had hoped yeah the interest rates that were used in some of the initial mental levy projections were closer to three point six or three point seven percent so this is even lower that's really good news then okay
029great other questions thank you for all of your good work on this we really appreciate it um make a motion then I move the board adopt a resolution authorizing and directing the issuance sale and delivery of the district's general obligation refunding and improvement bond series 2017 a and accepting the bid of Hutchinson shocky early and company with an interest rate of two point nine five zero four seven six percent all as presented to the board yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you very much all right next on our agenda GMP for new facilities and operations site and the item from consent the BG consultants amendment and with Tony Barron executive director of maintenance operations good evening Tony Barron executive director facilities and operations operations warehouse IRC and future transportation site at 7-eleven he's 23
030as many of you know we acquired the site earlier this year and have been in probably years in the making of trying to find a site that works and consolidate services so I'm gonna go through a little bit of background before I get to the pricing of everything just to kind of show you how we got to where we are today the background here in 2015 we consulted with him I'm gonna say we consulted with BG which is a different consultation than what it was what we're gonna talk about later with the what we've pulled off the consent item but what we did we got with him we contracted with him to go over a site study with us we went over six proposed sites excuse me six district owned sites and one site that
031we did not own here's the objectives for the study were basically to to classify sites to see if it was worth us to go through the process of developing a site that was undeveloped I determined relocation opportunities for our services primarily as you know Paula mirrors and I we worked close together on all our Rob all of our operational stuff so we'll her being with the warehouse which is now located off of 29th and Haskell us facilities and operations 146 main and then our IRC which is out here at in this office excuse me in this building so the logistics of it becomes really difficult so consolidate those services and then the idea adjacency is obviously in colocation opportunities which we can help us with you these and then space needs yeah I'm not sure
032if any of you have walked through our site at 1:46 main but it's a very tight space we're on 1.15 acres and it's a very small office space after we established the objectives as you can see here we decided as you know we just had to purchase a former former Douglas County Public Works site which is just a little over seven acres and it's located at 7-eleven East 23rd if you reference it I'm not sure if you guys know where that's at it's just it would be if you drive in let's say you're driving east on 23rd and you just pass Haskell University it would be right there own Burroughs Creek Trail just to the its it borders Haskell on the east side of the property on the south side of the 23rd Street so
033that's the location that we're at some great things about this the strategic centralization of Support Services as I mentioned before warehouse would be on site we will be on site IRC will be on site and at some point in the future we'll have transportation plenty of kornshell space to be renovated the cost benefit of trying to develop infrastructure on an undeveloped site some of the sites we looked at where the West West property that we own which is just a pasture right now and that's off of 1500 Road we have a site on the east side that's undeveloped Holcomb Park was looked at it just was probably too small for our operation East Heights was looked at just didn't really feel like it was a good place for us considering the neighbors and plus the
034site itself may have been a little bit too small College and Career Center we have some land out there that we considered but the same thing we wanted to keep that open for future expansion of the school itself and the other side was 7/11 which was what we chose here a new buildings we were then we demoed a few buildings we tried to keep as many that were functional for us some of them were a dilapidated enough and did not have any function so we demoed I believe three structures on site utilities are there and the great thing about this site is we swapped it I did a land swap plus some cash with the county because they want are 146 main site so is it really a good positive relationship between the both of
035us here's a view here's the proposed view as a stands now how many if you picture yourself where we are looking Northwest so if you if you look to the upper right hand corner of this picture that would be 23rd Street so that's 23rd Street if you see a building in dark gray that's an existing building it was at state on site if it has a light gray that means it's a new building that we're building on site so if you look right here this is the proposed new warehouse it's approximately 13,500 square feet this area right here is going to be the IRC space it's going to be approximately 6,500 square feet this gray building right here is an existing building on site and it has approximately I think it has five overhead doors
036right now so we're gonna use it as our staging area for our trucks to unload and it's gonna be where the where all the deliveries come in and then they'll be forklifted or pallet jacked into the warehouse for storage this right here is just a covered storage space these outlying buildings over here were existing buildings that we're gonna use for grounds shop ground storage covered parking right here and then along the north side of the property that's going to be the mechanic base which is that's the sir that's the role they currently serve right now and then if you come down here there's approximately 9,000 little over 9,000 square feet of office space for not only admin assistants myself direct for supervisors but also all of our trades guys also gonna have a workspace in
037there I'll go into that in more detail here's a top view floor plan of the warehouse and the IRC and I'll just walk through it really quickly as I mentioned the 13,500 square feet right here proposed storage area to the right hand side you can see the IRC area they're gonna be office down here in the blue this is gonna be more of a finished space we have office and break room and rest rooms for our warehouse people and also our see staff IRC does have a second level it seemed like a waste of space they need more floor space so we put a second level on the IRC so if you look at this picture right here they do have approximately 1600 square feet on the upper level and then I'm gonna get to
038the actual floor plan for our space it uh we're I won't get into where we're at right now but this is definitely a very nice space for us it's gonna meet our needs plus just we've programmed a few extra offices for future expansion one reason why we're in a position that we're in right now with needing more space it's a very tight space so I'm gonna walk you through real quick if you see this will be the up is north right here is our main entry we're gonna have a secured entry into the space as we do all of our locations reception office coordinator and then if you just look along the line here these are all offices loan-out exterior here for our trades and for our supervisors we have a break room right here
039in the middle which will be reinforced as a hugging shell and then we have a nice meeting room of approximately 780 square feet right now we don't have a space we have approximately 30 employees on site and we just don't have a space big enough that we can have a meeting we're usually in the mechanics Bay for the grounds building just trying our outside I'm trying to talk to them and it just for anything that's any length of time it's just so we're hopeful that this break room slash training room will help us to communicate better with our staff and then right here we have storage we have a lot of storage on-site we just obviously storage is important to us so the proposed GMP in the price break down those as follows here we
040we have our proposed GMP or five point three three formula five so that includes the demolition and if you remember a package came to you an early package demo Kane came to you in May 5th board meeting I believe and so we have the demolition has been underway so the 277 is part of the demolition site work warehouse IRC renovations you see the number of three point three one six and then the facilities and operations building in the trades offices around one point seven four zero which brings us to the total of five point three three any questions on on this part so the estimate and funding sourcing this is a when we did this we like I said we started the process in June of 2015 and we were working with VG consultants and
041so we came to the point where we felt like a four point eight was right around our target what we wanted to hit for the budget we went to that we didn't make it obviously as you can see what I'm bringing to you is five point three three four I mean I'll get into there maybe some of the rationale behind that we did at that time in February we had to go forward with the 12-week process to secure a loan for financing and and that's going to be on the lease which you guys also have approved and the numbers we had there led us to the four point eight four point eight five range and then that's the amount that we financed so where that leaves us today with the proposed GMP and the lease
042purchase leaves this approximately a four hundred eighty four thousand to be to come out of capital outlay funds for the estimate versus the actual costs you're probably wondering okay how did we get that far off a couple things happened we were in the process of procuring the site it kind of became a very long process longer than anticipated for us for various reasons the delayed procurement of that caused us as of today we're nine months in we were expected to be starting the construction in January 2017 we can't originally contracted with VG for the actual design of the site in October we accelerated the program we wanted them to be ready by to start in January we one thing we we noticed that obviously the funding we need to secure the funding and the other
043thing that was just a simple fact of the site plan process for us if you look at the next bullet point the February 2017 site plans of middle we went into this with some assumptions that weren't very good we started the site plan in February of 2017 submitted it to the city and we didn't get it back for approval until July of 2017 so it caused us to hold off on a few things until we had some unknowns and those unknowns were in the range of $350,000 which puts us about where we're at over budget a little bit more plus the 96 for escalation the construction market is also just it's pretty saturated right now there's a lot of companies fighting for a lot of jobs what kind of at the mercy of the contractor
044when we're above budget we keep going back to them and we're kind of at their mercy to to give us the cost that they give us and so that leads us to the four hundred eighty four thousand the other thing that in hindsight we have been very purposeful in our bond projects and higher annecy and we were going to put this out to hard bid is what we were going to do we decided through the process that a construction manager would be better a better process to go through most of the time construction managers are hired at the same time the architect and they designed together which leads you to a consistent price and this particular situation we hired the construction manager late where architect was 90% through the construction documents so when he when
045the construction manager came on which is KBS contractors they did a really good job of putting on the brakes and saying wait a second you guys have designed to this point and we just don't feel like that's you're not gonna make budget and and we kept whittling it down whittling it down we got to a point where we felt like that we could go to go to the market and get a decent bid we came in high and so we kept whittling away we ended we came in at 5.5 to I think five point five point five two so we were higher and what we finally decided on was I think we just need to go back to the drawing board so we asked VG to reduce our square footage we had some shelled space
046for transportation that we were just we were shelling it out which would have made it easier to put back together in the end we decided okay let's go back and let's take care of facilities and operations and build a building with the ability to add on to it for transportation at a later date so that's what we did the BG consultants as a consent item agenda that you pulled off the consent is because of this redesign so that is the $46,000 that we had to go back to the drawing board for and put back together so that's I want to make sure that was very clear I want to make sure you guys were well aware of that and so a couple things there that the reasons why the estimate was off from the actual
047cost I want to make sure I answer I want to make sure I answer any questions you guys have I appreciate you considering this GMP tonight and if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer questions now okay I'm Marshall um I just I just wanted to say in this process you know Tony and Kyle have kept the Facilities Committee kind of informed of where this was headed as we as they've gone through this work with BG and tried to get this to the point where we were ready to bring this to the board and you know we've we've really pushed them on making sure that where we ended up in the design was both fiscally responsible but also truly met the needs that we set out to meet with starting this project and
048I feel like we're at that point that you know this is what we have to do to be able to consolidate and own our own warehouse space and provide appropriate space for our F&O to function at the high level that we expect so although it's slightly above where we thought we were gonna be with this I'm comfortable with with the work that has gone into getting us there and I just I just wanted to share that and I know it's been it's been a long and difficult process to get to this point so appreciate all the work that has gone into it did you have yeah I just that you know whenever you deal with the existing sites like this have been used for decades with industrial type uses another type there's there's lots of
049unknowns lots of complexities that get added some of the reasons that Tony covered that you know it's it's unfortunate that there was that much of a bust but those things do happen on occasion particularly in this type of situation and like Shannon said we did push push them really hard to make sure it's okay cut what you have to but whatever you you need that whatever you we get we has to serve your guys's needs otherwise we're you know it's it's a waste of time and resources and so they think that they've got what they need and plus it's been designed in such a way that if we need to go back in at some point or if we have additional funds to add some additional things growth whatever that's been that we need to
050to add back it's done in such a way to minimize the cost moving forward when that happens so that we don't have to rework we'll just we'll just be adding stuff and I think what Marcel mentioned about you know planning for this project has been a lot different than planning for our school projects because we didn't own this site at the point that we started the planning and so that has I mean as Tony mentioned that particularly with the site the site work that really made that more difficult to accurately estimate where we were gonna end up because it wasn't our site to begin with unlike with all of our school construction projects where we didn't have that as a factor so with that I'll stop talking with that and opportunity for any other questions
051or comments we ready for emotion then and I just went we're gonna do two motions just so everything is we have to do the motion that's in here for the GMP and then we also need to do the motion on the BG item that we pulled from consent we have to vote on them separately or can we separate we need to do them separately so I'll do the GMP first so I moved the Board of Education approve of the amended construction management at risk services contract for KBS can convict mr. constructors incorporated for construction have a warehouse and facilities and operations building located at 7-eleven East 23rd Street in the amount of five million fifty six thousand four hundred seven dollars yes yes yes yes and here's a second so I move the Board of
052Education approved the amended contract with BG consultants to provide design bidding construction administration services related to the construction and renovation of the property located at 711 East 23rd Street in the amount of forty six thousand dollars yes yes yes thank you Tony all right moving on to our final report of the evening an equity update with Lea wisdom our assistant director of student services and equity and Anika more equity facilitator and Kevin Morrell special education I'm sorry I forgot your tie over on Kevin we all know who you are we're good all right good evening and like you said I'm Lea wisdom assistant director of student services and equity and Denis Kimura district equity facilitator special education thank you so we're here to give you just an update on where we're at in terms of
053our equity work and as you guys know our equity work continues to be about closing achievement and opportunity gaps and building our capacity in terms of how we're embedding equity into all that we do and also sustainability so I think as we look at the update we want to highlight the things that we are continuing to do and building on kind of where we're at and what our plan is moving forward so feel free to ask us questions as we move through and we're going to kind of take turns where the areas that we deal with the most so as we think about those pieces our equity committees are huge and this is as you guys know equity Council and Delta frankly the other committees as well are relatively new this gives us the opportunity
054to bring in staff parents community members to continue to get input as we think about what this means for us challenging some of our systems procedures looking at guidelines so our equity Council and our delts of both recently got some co-chairs so one of our equity council co-chairs here Annette Dabney and who also serves as chair of one of the subcommittee's on the equity Advisory Council all of them have decided on meeting dates so our equity Council meets the after I'd write it down the third Monday of every month and Delta's going to meet the first Monday of every month these are opposite your board meetings because we do have board representation on those groups or on those committees our first Delta meeting is actually in September it's on Thursday but from there on out
055will be that first Monday equity Council has been meeting both have been meeting for quite some time but recently they've looked at their previous brochure and made revisions to that so that's been pretty exciting to watch that work happen through that the equity advisory council has developed three areas of focus which is academic achievement social-emotional behavior support systems and policy and each one of the co-chairs is chairing one of the subcommittee's so that's you can kind of look for their brochure and just those areas of focus and yeah I'm sorry I was going to say one of the Delta co-chairs here also oh please injury Shamari she's back there yeah and I were meeting with them for the first time on the 18th so we do have three co-chairs for Delta as well to plan
056ahead and think about what those will look like so thank you for that our lgbtq+ Advisory Committee is made up of teachers and administrators and the teachers at the building that are associated with the LGBTQ that the building student groups at the buildings are a part of those two high schools I'm sorry are a part of this committee and also we have from their middle schools and then to elementary administrators and we we meet on a regular not a regular basis but just as Anita we've met about five times we are in the process of completing some recommendations for expectations and guidance for our principals and teachers as it relates to LGBTQ students and how they identified in our system and what we expect of our teachers and and ourselves and that has gone to
057our equity equity Council Nexus Delta but we feel like we've got the wording where we need it it's a pretty strong language with those expectations and so once they go through Delta they will be presented so you see those also then are specially advisory committee we have our teacher committee that's met started last year and it met we'll meet again I think this month and then we're working on our parent we still haven't got it started we've reached out to some parents but haven't gotten the feedback that we are comfortable with starting the group yet but but we are still in that process of working to create the Parent Advisory Group sort of talked a little bit about district actually support and technique is gonna take this over and talk a lot about what her
058role is and some of what our training is and we'll move into professional learning yes so um good evening again so the first thing on the list there is minimum expectations last year I'm added conversation with the district equity leadership team around minimal expectations for my role working in the building specifically with administrators and the equity teams trying to establish some kind of process that is an expectation versus the option to really be able to figure out where buildings are with their goals and what steps they need to be taking to make the moves to achieve those goals in an intentional all deliver speed process so one thing that I've established it's not necessarily writing but for starting with new principals coming in I have large thumb launched the year we need with every single
059new administrator to Lawrence specifically had principals not necessarily assistants working with them on specifically a new to being in a district leading and a team even or even type of equity goals in a building specifically around things such as race and LGBTQ so all of those principles have met with me under the understand that we will do three more check-ins drop the year and as me that they need me they will call so establishing those relationships early on will help with that as far as returning principles in my experience of just this year what it seems like is I'm because there's nothing solidified yet and that's still being worked on um at the district level but thinking about a timeline of first to three year experience principles in our district and then another set of
060expectations for ones that are more experienced beyond that but making sure that it's not just the one and done to really help them and support them and scaffold them throughout their time in the district leading this work last year I was able to recreate I went to the University of K State with the Diversity and equity Council under the leadership of dr. Nathaniel Thomas the former vice provost of diversity equity okay you working with their Council on K V as part of my community outreach we went to k-state to lead and learn how to lead a microaggressions workshop through dr. Alma Clayton Peterson out of Illinois I brought that training back to Lawrence public schools did some revamping of it to make it fit the needs of our school district launched that in the district
061by winter break of last year it was a expectation at school schedule that from January to May of the twenty schools we had fourteen schools pursue that training building-wide two schools did it just with their equity team so this year we'll be working on finishing up the remaining schools that did not complete that for their entire faculty that workshop was also available on August 11th for any new staff coming into district I'm to take it as an option it was not a mandatory training I do have some principals who are already rescheduling that for their entire staff to include the new staff even if they already had it last year so really helping principals get that in clear buildings and then thinking of some different flexible plans for principals who did it last year but
062have new staff that needed this year working on that letting principals have different options to get that to their stuff that they want to make sure that they have that before the end of the school year and that's they're not waiting til be into this foyer or the spring to get that done eating support what that looks like for my role specifically part of minimum expectations also working with the principal is also to make sure that I can get in with the teens in May when I met with every team closing the year one of the things that we put on the table for them was that they're eating meeting calendar should be linked to my calendar so I should know when every single team is meeting that will enable me to be able to
063go into their meetings stop it and see what they're working on provide them some perspective maybe some things that have been missed and see exactly where they are on track with the goals that link back to the district-wide goals versus our individual building goals that will also give me a chance to support them face to face with what they're doing faculty common times some teams have things they're doing in their bills not sure how to get that to their staff or the best way to do it so being able to provide perspective for that so I have a couple schools already that I'm on the calendar to go into buildings this week and support them as they roll out some trainings with their faculty I mean being able to also provide them observation notes and
064feedback for their facilitation of that equity work in their buildings that is what the teams have requested so that will be something that we will make sure that they get as well the e-team support also shows up in the e-team training part as well that's the way we'll so I'll support them and I'll talk about that next maintaining district equity resources so two and a half years ago in district we created a culturally relevant rubric that was originally created for looking at literature and we expanded that to looking at all things across the board whether it's a poster in the classroom for decoration a video being shown to classes or even evaluating a lesson plan for a culturally responsive teaching that rubric again we always continue to come back to it it was the same
065rubric that went into place to help with the recommendation of the adoption of reading straight that was kind of the start of how it became a rubric we worked with over 36 teachers to create that rubric it started off as guiding questions and we have housed that rubric on our equity resource page this entire time and I've made the upgrades as needed as thought of by the e teams so continuing to push not specifically the rubric itself but the process the equity teams have all been trained in the process of how to navigate that in their buildings and sort of continue to reiterate that process over and over regardless of what the tool is is what the goal is that process includes some of the PE G work around making sure that it's not just
066one teachers eyes on something with their lens being the determining but also seeking multiple perspectives to decide what that lesson or book may mean for another group without having any bias going towards that so that's part of that and also bringing in some of the tools like using the courageous conversations compass with the students as a piece of that as well the equity share point page is a site that I maintain with resources not just for the equity teams but also for the entire staff one thing that I've added that this year is during building floats and observations from classrooms I'm immediately after leaving a building I'm emailing the administrators those buildings to let them know some of the themes I see and the classrooms I've it's some of the common patterns that either may
067link to multiple buildings and also let them know the things that are going well in classrooms I visited so today I did foreign language of secondary buildings I'm so I'll be sending out emails to principals let them know some of the things I saw elementary they've had some emails and so from those observations what I'm now doing is on the SharePoint site I'm listing different tips for teachers to consider in their classrooms in the form of dysreflexia nning the beginning of the year I launched three tips for classrooms to consider one of them was how our students meet and greet visitors specifically visitors of color or of diverse backgrounds there are some patterns of that that have shown up in our schools around microaggressions so having teachers thinking about their beginning of your practices and
068then also thinking about how they incorporate the compass with their classrooms 18 trainings in the beginning of this role I did two trainings a year per level so the elementary teams come in together and the secondary teams come in together those trainings are focused on just helping those teams understand the protocol also giving them some space to kind of map out their goals and planning for the year now this is in addition to what they should already be doing in their building so this isn't a replacement for what they should already have established for procedures and there goes its extra support to bring these teams together it also gives the teams a chance to collaborate across buildings so putting all of middle school and high school and rooms together they get the chance to see
069what it looks like in other schools and get other perspective and then we put seven elementary schools together at a time trough these trainings they're typically half-day trainings these focus on mastering the protocol being able to model things for their faculty and also being able to think about what the next steps are for their faculty typically they will and a little bit of planning time to be able to go think of what we've done in the training to apply to their building team we start the year off by looking at their building goals when the beginning of this position I launched a survey to kind of see where their to gauge their learning what their needs were we did beginning of year this year we're going to do beginning and end of year so they
070can have some end of your data to gauge their next fall goals as well and possibly amid your evaluation to see what the progress they've made from the beginning of your till winter break so all the teams were alerted of this in May and they were all in support in favor of having that to be able to guide their teams so that's what that will look like this year we're also extending that to four trainings instead of two so all of the levels every building will have for trainings total and these trainings are specific to the classroom teachers support for our district level equity teams is still in development as well for teams such as teaching and learning IT operations the teams that operate the district level thanks um so that's a lot and so
071we've been starting to have conversations about that's the sustainability piece so our learning coaches who you as you know are now in every building well they were before but some are you know at least staying at one building we as they come together and work here together to collaborate and they're gonna have focus on equity at each of their meetings and tanika or and/or I are gonna go in and work with learning coaches so they continue to build their capacity and support where they can in buildings and as sort of a next step to that P eg who we work with offers an affiliate practitioner training which is different than what jenika and and Rebecca Reaver who do our beyond diversity it's the affiliate practitioner training is going through six week of six weeks of
072training focused on the protocol from PE G to better be able to have those conversations and work with staff but not that's isn't extended to being able to be on diversity without additional training but we are focused on getting some of our coaches through that we in and I actually have both well Anna's completed it I'm almost done going through the 6-week strain six-week training again focused on the protocol you throughout that training it involves going through each piece of the protocol listening to videos and/or readings and interacting with other individuals from around the country who are also in the six-week training and then the final step is to go to a live day to culminate and bring together all that work and then after you've been through the six-week training you have the ability
073to access some ongoing support from PE G to continue to build your skill set in the area of utilizing protocol and having those conversations so as I mentioned Anna and I were the first to kind of you know complete it outside of Becky and Janica who have been trained for a long time and had the additional training we have for coaches who are now interested in moving forward so we're looking at doing six total individuals so having some of our coaches go through that affiliate practitioner training and then looking ahead to what what does that look like do we want other members of our delt and/or building principals we'll continue to have that conversation we're excited about that in terms of building sustainability and capacity so again to train we'll look at six additional during
074just the school year we of course have to be thoughtful and plan ahead for that in terms of learning coaches and then additional leadership roles so we'll work backwards through this professional learning we have we are gonna offer pass this year which is partnerships for academic for academic academically successful students that's a tongue twister that is going to be three seminars facilitated by PE G they're gonna work directly with our delt team and our district and building admin and the intent and purpose behind that is arming participants with better that better be a better ability to both pull our parents and particular parents of color and engaging our students of color so that's what those three sessions are about we're excited to the first one is really just going to be dealt in the admin
075there's a possibility that they'll think about who their past teams will be and they might have some other individuals attend some future seminars but that's kind of our focus this year in terms of our partnership with PE G we've talked about this we have the average strand culturally relevant teaching transforming educators strand and that is something separate from beyond diversity it is a two-day training that that focuses on race gender sexual orientation and gender identity so a lot of the intersectionalities so we do have a plan in place for getting all of our certified staff trained in that and as you may or may not recall we had staff at our high schools attending this when they went to an avid Summer Institute and coming back and saying wow that's something that's it's a nice
076you know thing to put in my toolbox that's something a lot of our teachers should have we all attended and thought yeah that is something we should all have Janique and I have both attended and we will do a lot of those trainings together really focusing on making that applicable to our work here bringing in the protocol and ensuring that as we're introducing strategies and building people's tool building our staffs toolkits that they're also staying in protocol and using those pieces so currently we've done two we did one last April in one this summer we have three scheduled for this year and then we'll look ahead to what does the summer look like can we offer more things like that so we have a plan in place each schools given an amount of slots that
077they can they can send and that's something similar to what we do for beyond diversity beyond diversity we will continue with the monthly ones um we have five scheduled for this year we have approximately 450 staff left in the entire district to train that includes classified and certified together we did a food service training to start the school year in August and a custodial facilities operations one in June - target those specific groups that don't have the ability to come out of the building for two full days with the sub coverage so we will we scheduled five but we may not need all five and we were working on a plan to be able to make sure that all the classified staff specifically pair of educators have the opportunity to go in a way that
078doesn't inconvenience the buildings because we know that that number is larger than the certified staff yet to go so we may not use all five this year to get them through the first one will be October 4th and 5th that was targeted for new to Lawrence staff but based off the numbers we're working and thinking about shifting that to let it be a combination of new staff with a pair of educators so we can get some of them in early and not have that I'm in bounce of the numbers just that the year that last week doctor stubble and I have the opportunity to attend at equity leaders Institute in Indianapolis the Midwest will get great equity Great Lakes equity center there in the classes of a name change and now they're called Midwest and
079plains educational thing I access in Orson blank so they've changed their name so when I'm talking I'm getting me confused but we had an opportunity to attend the Nike Leaders Institute this past summer we had opportunity to reach out to them because we were given their name for assistance to deal with some of the issues that we've we've been having so we did reach out to them they offer just lots of comment and they were actually impressed with what we're doing but also saw areas but we we can improve and so as a result of that they invited us to their Institute and it it was a it's a it's a kind of a little private setting because there were maybe 50 the 60 people and you have the process is that you have to
080put an application in to attend and then they let you know if you were able to attend so they put you off and say we'll decide later and then they let you know unfortunately we were invited to attend it was it was very informative and and it was set up for leaders and so this is education state leaders districts all over the country and it really was about if you're already in the process so wasn't people that was a new to equity it was people that are involved and trying to make change and looking at such an exchange we're invited to have a discussion about what you can do and what needs to happen what you're doing and so and it lends very well to our PE G work it they use the agreements thank
081you they use the agreements they actually there was a little mini beyond diversity so was really Lin's what we're doing and as a result we were those talks in districts and states that were doing some things that gave us some ideas of what additionally they will reach out they that they are in the process of looking in our data and they are going to get back to us within the next month about what they can offer us they have lots of resources that we have access to the rubix professional learning they will come into your district to do some learning and they and they really look at does not just racist the intersectionality of all groups all marginalized groups that's their focus and they they really push that which is something that we know that
082we need them to discuss so we are waiting for me oh I was just gonna say and this is a government-funded resource so there's no cost when they provide the technical assistance if they do come in and train it's a minimum cost of paying for half of the travel or in that sort of thing but all of the resources and not everything that they provide is there's no costs associated with it so that's been a great benefit in last week's conference the focus was really looking at reframing the achievement gap and just looking at some things outside of assessments that may be attributing to the achievement gap so was very helpful and we made some connections with people in Iowa and also Missouri because you sat with your cadre and we were with Iowa and
083Missouri um well the sped Advisory Committee that we said you will later on reach out to parents is that are you choosing specific parents or are you sending notification kind of similar similar against an application out we want to try to get a parent from at least every building so we know it's going to be a large group but appearing for every from every building and then we're gonna also try to have the principal's help us I guess and maybe I just missed it and I apologize if I did but can you maybe go into a little bit more detail about how you're gonna incorporate the Great Lakes equity stuff into what we're doing I don't I don't have an answer anything they are they're they're looking at our data they're gonna reach out to
084us and tell us this is how we can help okay so they're gonna make recommendations yeah they have information data so they're gonna come back to us and they also provide specific so they have as the Nico was mentioning we created a rubric to look at our resources they have lots of rubrics and questionnaires that will help us to further as we expand what we're doing to look at it more broadly and maybe if they're missing lenses that we in our creation of our rubric to help that get better as we look at materials and such they also we will incorporate them they do a very good job of looking at the intersectionality of all marginalized groups and they're very intentional about that and during the two days that we were there the questions that
085they wouldn't you well I can speak for myself when I was looking at something probably from a more narrow focus the leaders there would ask you perhaps did you think about this so that in our effort to close the achievement gap and meet the needs of our students we're not marginalizing another subgroup in that process so they do a very good job of helping you to take a step back and look at you know add on to that with the rubric that we self created a lot of there are some contents that aren't able to connect with the rubric we have because the start of it was for literature and then expand it out so with their resources we can bridge in more specific things for things such as science or mathematics but typically are
086unable to use the full 12 criteria the current rubric we have now they are they have a rubric developer math and stem and then just as you're looking at your curriculum as a whole they also have rubrics for us to do self assessment as a district on where we are around equity and so once they look at all of that and we look at it we can say they'll give suggested and we'll incorporate that they will help you also to create a more strategic plan around addressing your equity based off your data it's stored in house on the equity sharepoint page the original philosophy behind that when it was first created was because it was it was a professional development led in district with teachers it created it the leadership at that time it was
087stored in house because we didn't want it to it wasn't a document we were sharing across districts because we didn't we knew that other people didn't have the same process so we didn't want to have that accessible with people who wouldn't have the background then it would in case it was misused so that was the original philosophy so yeah we do house it on the equity sharepoint page for all the staff in district but the rubrics through this organization there are open source so anybody can go in there it's all just right there it's a free resource and you said there they're based in Indiana yes okay they used to have offices there one time there was the office at k-state but they've consolidated over the years so now that's why I went from great
088the Great Lakes and the Midwest are consolidating so hence the name change and I'm not sure what the name is okay um additional question a really great report thank you and thank you to our committee co-chairs who came this evening for being here and for your participation in these groups and we really we really value that we know your time is valuable so thank you alright with that we are concluded with our business this evening move to adjourn second all in favor aye we're adjourned thank you