001Good evening everybody. Hope you all can hear me. Uh can you hear me? I'm great. So this is the uh regular meeting for and now Murphy here. Here Wilson here. [Music] United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. The mission uh the mission of Levort public schools is to prepare every student for success in every classroom every day. [Music] Okay. Input. in case you haven't been up here presenting something we got to let you know. We're pleased to have you join us tonight to celebrate student staff achievement hearing commission presentation board and observe consideration of policy decisions and administrative recommendations specific to Le Unified School District. We set aside time at each regular scheduled board meeting to hear from the public.
002Comment to address board policies and procedures are administrative staff to carry out those policies as opposed to individual complaints investigated resolve. Please understand while while board members listen and carefully consider your comments. Board members will not immediately respond to question either verbally or gesture. for example, raise your hands and respond to questions, nor will they engage in dialogue and answer respons. This is not appropriate time for or place for patrons to make comments of personal nature by any district employee or student by name. Person making comments violate the privacy right of district employee or student will be asked to terminate the remarks. If speakers have concerns specific to an individual student or staff member, please make an appointment with the superintendent. Those concerned will be documented and shared with the board. Each speaker is reminded
003that we have three minutes speak and will be given a notice of 15 seconds remaining. If a group with an attendance with the same interest, we ask that a spokesperson be appointed to deliver message. As the unified board commits desired outcome to our school community, we ask the comments not be directed to board members addressed to the board as a whole. Thank you for taking the time to school. Okay, the first person up Mr. Waller. Good evening, school board members. I came to speak to you tonight in regards to modifying the library policy. I support the changes recommended by Miss Price, and you should, too. I'm a parent of a leftorn student, an Army retiree. I have a PhD. I teach for KCKCC, and I'm an editor of Army publications. Recently, some people have tried
004to make political points by attacking school libraries and curriculums. For example, right now there is a candidate in Missouri whose campaign ad shows her burning books with a flamethrower. She is clearly attacking books to make political points, not to further education. Lemmore schools should focus on education, not politics. Education prepares students for the world. The December change to the library policy directed a school library to remove sexually explicit material from the library. Unfortunately, the word sexually explicit can be misconstrued dependent on a person's perspective and thinking that the school district should change the previous media policy as a solution in search of a problem. Some people um are trying to make books and libraries a political issue in our schools. Worth noting that the US teen pregnancy rate has been on the decline since 1991
005and 2022 was the lowest on record. Schools and education help achieve this. The legal age of sexual consent in Kansas is 16. Indeed, a child can get married in Kansas at 15 if a judge deems it advantageous to the child. Right? Married at 16 or 17 with parents permission and married at 18 without permission. 15, 16, 17, 18. That's the age of our students and they need access to information. Wholesale blanket bans of books are ineffective and avoid educating students. Book bans have even caused some school districts in the US to pull the Bible from their libraries. After all, the Bible describes incest, adultery, prostitution, polygamy, and homosexuality. And no one is advocating removing the Bible from the library. Similarly, Shakespeare and classical Greek and Roman plays often include sexual themes. They should not be
006banned. Students need to learn them for ethics and to be competitive in standardized tests and prepared for college courses. Books are banned either for content or ideology. Content should be monitored by the school board and proposed changes to the policy reflect that. However, the district should not ban books because of ideology. If the school district bans books for ideology, it could open itself to lawsuits based on the first amendment. The people who decide what is appropriate in our school library should come from Levvenworth. Levvenworth should not allow people from outside our community to decide our library policy. The review committee should decide which books to ban and which books to keep after reading them. The wholesale blanket removal of categories of books should be avoided. The review committee should be signed case by case. In
007closing, I encourage the school board to adopt the changes to the library policy advocated by Mr. Price. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next is falling. Good evening. Thank you guys for your time. I am here to speak on my first amendment gives us the right to freedom of press. The freedom to read what we want when we want. When we censor books, it not only violates the first amendment, it never leaves anywhere good. History has taught us that banning books is about controlling what information people have access to. It is all about fear and fear is the opposite of freedom. policy as I did as written violates USD 453's non-discrimination policy which reads we don't discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, gender, age, religion, marital status, gender orientation, veteran status
008or head status or handicap status which I believe will open our district up to a lot of scrutiny and we already are fighting off a negative image. It would also lead to legal actions taken against her district. At that point, when the personal beliefs of the board members get in the way of doing what is best for the students and staff of the district you were elected to represent, then you have failed to the job in which you were elected to do. As a board member, you were elected to represent all the students and staff in our district. All of your decisions should be based on what is best for the staff and students and what is the best way to meet their educational needs. I urge you to put aside your personal powers into
009what is best for all the students you represent. As a parent, we can make choices on what our students should and shouldn't read. We can also have our conversations when they bring home a book we deem inappropriate or disagree with. It is our right to pass on our beliefs to our children, not the school districts. I feel as a district we have much bigger issues we could spend our time working on. Thank you for your time. [Applause] Randy man. Good evening. Here we go again with policy if it's crazy to me that this policy even came up to be reviewed and challenged the first time in April or May of 2023. This policy policy should have been left alone, but some board members put their personal feelings and beliefs over what is best for the
010students in our district. The changes made in December were narrow-minded and biased. You made changes that alienated and ostracized a protected group of students. My hope for tonight is that you will repeal those changes. Honestly, my hope is that you will go with Mrs. Price's or Mrs. Wells change proposal. Their proposed their proposed changes are inclusive, not exclusive. Their changes along with current district procedure for collection development will enhance our school libraries and create opportunities for students to read about things that peique their interest and hopefully ignite a passion for reading. Something else that has been bothering me for the past three or four board meetings is how some board members have stated that they don't trust the subject matter experts that have been hired by our district. for board members to publicly state that
011they don't trust teachers to do their job. Well, no wonder we can't keep teachers in our district. Who would want to stay in a district with board members who are creating a toxic environment with their negative attitudes or who yell at teachers in a public forum? Teachers have enough problems between dealing with behaviors from out of control students, making sure they stay on top of all the benchmark testing, which as a parent I think is too much testing, to sometimes dealing with parents who blame them for every issue their child is having. Even if those comments were aimed at one teacher, you really directed them to the district as a whole. I am appalled at your treat treatment of our staff. Our teachers are tired. They deserve to be lifted up, not torn down. To
012all USD453 teachers and staff, I see you and I appreciate all your efforts that you make to improve our students well-being. I want to thank the teachers and staff for coming in every day, especially on the days that you don't want to. [Applause] motion adopted and two I think the city manager. Good evening and thank you. This is the coolest place I've spoken in in a long time. The setting. I really appreciate you all doing this. So, I just have a few updates from the city and certainly any questions that you have about what's going on or you think is relevant. Uh just want to give a couple updates. Um some fun stuff we're doing in the city and then some of the programs and some of the updates the commission is going to be
013hearing. So, tomorrow night the city commission will um renew bids to award for the county's first dedicated pickle ball complex. Um there is a very strong group of pickle ballers in Levvenworth and area. Uh we're hoping to maybe hold tournaments here, bring people to Levvenworth. So this is on the side of Cody Park where there's the tennis courts and the raball courts. Now um so the commission has been planning this for a number of years. It's been in our capital budget and tomorrow night they were looking at bids. That also includes a standalone basketball court, an outdoor one. We don't have one of those in the south part of the community and so there'll be a standalone basketball court in the football court through tomorrow night. Um also exciting in about a week and a
014half the commission will uh see a presentation from staff to expand the skate park out on 20th Street. That park is 20 years old now and it gets a lot of use. It hasn't been touched in about 20 years. Um there's a a a group of kids out there that um use that constantly, especially through the summer months. And so we're looking at potentially expanding that. Uh expansion would be to the east of the existing park and maybe some new features and maybe switch around the ones that are there. You have to give these things an upgrade from time to time or they sort of lose uh their impact in the community. Staff is working on the replacement for fire station number three. That's the one loan station that doesn't look like the other two.
015This is a second avenue in limit. It's a station from the 70s. Um that uh is time is has come and so we're working on that. Uh we're moving the parks and recreation offices from the basement of the community center if you've ever been down there uh up to the uh what would be the south wing of the community center. Sans Construction is doing that project. So, we'll have a public-f facing community center where you can come in and register and we're going to have a meeting room and so you can use that space when you come to register or for classes or or for anything uh at the city. Uh the commission will hear tomorrow night an update of Ride LB. Ride LB is the city's public transit program. Um we are at about
0161,600 rides a month now. It's increased just about every month. That's a $2 appbased ondemand ride service. That's a microtransit run through with partnership with the guidance center, uh the Kansas Department of Transportation, and the Kansas City Area Transit Authority. So, tomorrow night will be the uh first official update um now that we have some data uh to give the commission about how that's going and then maybe what are the next steps. It's a three-year pilot program, so we have some time before we have to assess long term. Um but just that the first update for the commission. Spring cleanup is April 27th. Um if the school board would like to put a a group together to participate in the spring cleanup, we'd certainly be happy to have you. But it's really a great event.
017There's about,00 residents and boy scout troops and churches and Girl Scout troops and uh that come together and adopt a grid for the city and go out and clean up on that day. So, it's a really really neat event and um which dubtales nicely to all the partnerships we have with the district that we're thankful for. The kickoff event is always over at Warren Middle School in the cafeteria. So, we certainly thank the district for that. Uh thank you again for the facilities for sports. Uh my son's at basketball practice at Henry Levvenworth tonight. So, the use of your facilities certainly helps our parks and recreation programs. We set a record this year for basketball signups to 339 Levvenworth kids in the basketball program and wonderful facilities that you allow us to use. Uh great
018partnerships are on safety and security. Again, it's appropriate that we're in this building working with Mr. Kesler and Miss Sloan and Dr. Adams on u law enforcement presence uh on traffic. Um it's never perfect, but we try to do everything we can and we certainly thank the district admin team for all the help that they give us. So, those are the end of my prepared remarks. Oh, I did want to mention there's some sidewalk work going out uh going on outside on Fifth Avenue Park if you drive uh by the practice soccer fields, and that's a city project. Um it was supposed to be done this past year, but um they're doing it now. So, uh ADA upgrades on the intersections, uh repairing broken sidewalks throughout 10th Avenue Park. So, trying to maintain what we
019have and make sure that's accessible for walkers and strollers and wheelchairs or whatever it may be. So, um, appreciate your support and certainly any questions that you all have for me, I'm happy to answer. Well, you got no moves from the audience. I know. Nothing else. Thank you all. Thanks, Mr. Y. Appreciate it. [Applause] Recognition. Always great to have. And tonight we have Madison Finch. Is she here? Come on down. Stand here and have a picture after here. There. So this is certificate of recognition from the Levvenworth United School Unified School District. and present Madison Finch with a certificate of recognition for positive rep representation of Levvenworth High School and selection to participate in the United States Senate Youth Program for the 12th day of February, 2024 by Mr. Carney and Dr. Adams. What a
020job. Well done. [Applause] Okay. Tenant evaluation tool and [Music] there executive director conducting a res. Good evening and thank you for the invitation. I appreciate that. And just a couple of things. Congratulations on this beautiful facility. My first time uh to be in this facility. It's absolutely wonderful. So congratulations on that to to the Lewood school board and uh and all your hard work with us. Wonderful. Um so I just I want to come in and help uh as as needed uh on the evaluation process for Dr. Adams. I assume we are in USA Kansas. We're a membership service that will support our administrators. Um and uh and I want to say thank you to the board for being willing enough to take part of our pilot program with this new evaluation tool that we
021put together. Uh which truly is a uh a consensus building process rather than just the oldfashioned fill in a number and really not give anybody feedback type of type of evaluation. So, um, with that, um, I want to just say, um, as we get started with this, um, there's a couple of steps I really encourage the board to consider. Uh, and this is built into the evaluation and especially the online tool that you guys are participating in, uh, is the superintendent self-evaluation and giving Dr. an opportunity to to start the process and uh in giving it self-evaluation, giving you an opportunity to kind of see how he uh has identified himself, his strengths and areas that that he wants to work on and that gives you guys a chance for the board to kind of
022agree, disagree, or identify other areas that he would like like you to focus on moving forward. Um, the other thing I'd like to kind of put out there as you as you look at the evaluation tool is to continue to remind you to to really focus on uh your strategic plan. That those are areas that we really encourage you to to try to keep your superintendent focused and making sure he's providing uh reports back to you about the strategic plan. Sometimes we see boards that that have a strategic plan. is nice and laid out and this is the direction we want to go. But we kind of evaluate the superintendent over here on on some other areas and which kind of makes it difficult for our superintendents to really identify where the board would like
023like me to go as an individual. And so uh I think that's where you guys really come into play. Following that self-evaluation is really helping Dr. figure out what are your goals as they as you look at your strategic planning, where you want the district to go forward and really identify where you want him to focus his attention uh as he moves forward with that with with his work here in the district as you're evaluating him as far as work that you would like done the board because after all this is you like to tell our superintendents and our and our lead principles sometimes that that often times we're visitors to communities to try to make communities move forward. you guys are the owners of the community and as board members uh we kind of
024we want to make sure that we're doing where the move the direction that you want the board the community to move the district to move. So um with those come to ideas and I think has everybody had a chance to see the the tool or get online I see a couple heads shaking Wilson saying no saying no um so there's a couple of different sections that we have in this tool. The first section is really around what we call some basics uh of the tool and it's around district leadership metrics and so it's the first one's around communication. So we have three areas in the area of communication that that are just kind of basic. We want we want the superintendent to uh provide some artifacts and evidence for you that you can evaluate the
025work there. um engaging in relationships, demonstrating uh engagement to all stakeholders, providing effective transparency, advocating for educational success and creating sustainable community engagement and those are kind of through the area of communication. The area two is around leadership and again the superintendent um clear vision for the students responsive culture to learning ensuring decisions that are ethical and equitable all outcomes and empowering building capacity of the instructor instructional leadership and drive charge improvement. And then the third area is to how they allocate resources to budgets. Um and establish an un thorough understanding of budget, provide recommendations of board policies, uh prioritizing plans and collecting the data to use as you as you move forward there. And again, you guys are very fortunate with Dr. Adams individual truly understands the numbers and and how those numbers can
026work. That's the that's probably the simplest part of the evaluation right there. uh the more where it becomes a little more challenging are the performance metrics where where you guys create those goals and that's where we'd like you to build a consensus of what those goals are um with between the uh seven of you and Dr. grab a team of eight, if you will, uh working together to to build those those goals and and come up with the consensus of where we want to go with those with the direction. And again, hopefully they're going to relate be somewhat related to your strategic plan that you've already worked with along that way. And then um and that's really the work that's that's empowered right there to the board to to help move him forward and help
027guide him through that through that process. And then once all of those things are kind of identified and set, I know you're kind of working against a deadline here, but there's nothing I'll talk about the deadline in just a second. It's more about the process than the deadline. Let me let me highlight that piece there. Um once you've had a chance for for Dr. Adams to kind of go through, you've had a chance to to put the goals out there. Dr. Madison haven't had a chance to kind of identify where we're at, where we've gone so far this year because I venture to say you guys are probably not very far off, even though maybe we haven't had a conversation about what you like him focus on, but I'm guessing they're going to be pretty
028close. Then you have a chance to kind of go in there and identify where where he's at and you identify that on exceeds expectations, partially beats meets or does not demonstrate expectations. And this is where we call this is the con some of the consensus that we want you to build. It would be real easy for seven individuals such as yourself to sit down and identify well um I think he exceeds and I think he partially meets expectations or I think he meets and then you hand it over to the superintendent. The superintendent's going I don't know what they mean because we're in I'm in four different areas and I've got you know I don't even I don't quite understand where people think I'm in. What we would encourage you guys to do, and you'll
029be able to do this on your particular um electronic tool, is identify where he's at and then probably uh Miss Brenda, is she in here? She is not. She would have access to kind of go in there and identify, are we all in the same place? Uh she's probably kind of the neutral party to this. She'd be able to go in there. Are we all kind of in the same place? And then she would be able to come out and say, "Hey, we've we we all believe Mr. Adams. Uh, there's six of you that believe Mr. Adams is meeting expectations and one of you believe he exceeds expectations. Can we come together and just come up with one or maybe we're in three different areas and we come up with one that we all agree
030on and it gives everybody a chance to go back and review the evidence, maybe talk to each other and then you come up with that consensus of a of a of a evaluation rather than that separation that the board could put out there. And then once you have that um kind of identified in each of these areas, you have that consensus, you provide some feedback as far as what are some areas of strengths because there's a chance you'd have to do that. Again, we we'd want Miss Bren come together and maybe identify the three or four most important ones, areas of strengths. Maybe combine that. Um same thing with areas of improvement. These are things we'd like to see some improvement on. Again, try to build consensus around that. And and then the air other
031one is is kind of going back to to area one and two with the communications, the budget allocations and the leadership. Are there anything we need to improve or change or grow in there? And again trying to build that consensus model where we're we're similar. We're giving our fe our superintendent feedback that they can work with and and kind of move forward rather than kind of get all over the place which is somewhat typical uh to some of the past tools that have been out there. And uh um again it provides a model that we feel is is really really more uh effective for the feedback for our for our superintendent as we look at that. I've thrown a lot at you. Some of you had a chance to look at the tool. Some of
032you have not had a chance to look at the tool. What are some questions that maybe you have? How do we start? How do That's exciting. Um have you received any an email from Super Eval? Okay. So, uh, that's the company that has an online tool and you would just click on that, give you your login, your password, I believe, uh, Bob Hartzel, who who is, um, one of the people that that manages the organization, is going to jump on with you, Dr. Adams, that next week. Do we have set a date yet? We have not set the date yet. So, tonight we can have that conversation. Uh, Bob is simply waiting for us to confirm when. Okay. I believe we're going to run into to to Bob here in the next couple of days
033and be able to set a date. But Bob Bob's going to come in and sit down. He'll zoom in with you. He's in New York. He'll zoom in with you and help you walk you through that the electronics process. Okay. But will this need to be done in executive session or will this session or be done wherever you want the where you do where you select the finalizing goals? um does not have to be done in executive session. If there's any conversation about them, I would prefer that happen in executive session, but come out and when you're building that consensus could be done in open session. Um but at the same time, a lot of this work can be done on your own at your at your own leisure on your computer. rebuild it in
034there and they do allow uh what I recommend is the clerk to kind of go through there and identify where are we together, where are we different and then how can we build build that consensus out of you know in building that consensus would be done in executive session. Good question. Thank you. This is the one thing I will tell you. This is probably not when you have trouble calling your own IT department, you would call Super Eval and Bob or Mike would be the ones would help you with that. And I would I would loosely say that I could help you with that. I've been into it for a grand total of about two hours. So I'm about two hours into a question. Is there a suspense that they're supposed to be shooting for
035as far as the date as far as Okay, so here's here is the um um here's the statutory information on that evaluations in the first two years of new employment is within the first 60 days of the semester by the end of the first 60 days of the semester. um employees in their third or fourth year or one one evaluation within the first 45 days of the second semester. So, the the the thing about that is we would encourage you to get it done within those 60 days, but there's nothing magical um unless you're going to court or unless there's some other type of um lawsuit or other things out there that would that would could could get in the way of not having that evaluation completed by this the first 60 days of each
036semester. Yeah. Each semester. So, I would encourage you to get it done as quickly as possible, but at the same time, making sure it's thorough and not rushed um to the point that it's not effective because again, um with the evaluation that you do right now, you're setting those goals and you're and you're identifying the strengths and areas of improvement are going to last all the way through the summer and into next fall. So, I would encourage you to take the time to do um your due diligence there so you're providing that good feedback as Dr. Adams moves forward. Mr. Cardating was that you and Dr. decided on this pardon me. What's the Is there any money involved? I don't know. Is there a cost for this? Yes. The round numbers, 128 million. I believe
037this year we I'm sorry. What was that? 1200, 1200. How does that compare to what we normally do for evaluations? How does that compare to what we normally spend for evaluations? Like last year, how much money can we put out into the evaluation process? Well, we didn't have anybody help. This is a whole new system. Okay. The one we did last year was my humble op work and so we tried to get into a new era of evaluation. This this should help us I believe based on what I saw toward the end but I just think money well spent. So when a decision is made to change a tool that the board's using, we don't need consensus or anything. It's just like a president level decision. Yeah. Where you want to go to the vote
038on? No, I was just wondering I I'm still learning so I wasn't familiar with what all learn this. That's the whole point and hopefully benefit more in the future, but I think things can simplify. So, so kind of industry. Um, in many cases, boards will will come to us and say, "Do you have a tool that we could use?" Because they don't have their own tool. Yeah. And so, um, superintendent will bring forward a tool and and they utilize that tool. So, I couldn't tell you as far as district to district how many vote on the tool they used with the superintendent and how many of them just um are happy there's a tool available. Yes. And so and on the pricing, the pricing you're actually paying for is to utilize electronic version rather than
039just the paper and pencil version which um the um the advantage of the online the online tool is to um storing the artifacts that the superintendent would bring into this or as you guys are sharing back and forth um the sharing would be a little easier back and forth with information. Thank you. I have a question. Um, you said this is Eur's pilot program, correct? How many school districts in Kansas are using this? We have 51 school districts, I believe, is the final number that are piloting the program this year. Yeah, we feel like feel like it is. And they and again this was a tool that was developed uh through superintendent. We had superintendent meetings, we had schoolboard meeting members meeting and giving us their ideas and feedback and then through um USA Kent
040State University and we kind of compiled their work and put it together in a tool that that we felt like that they helped. So, of the 51 uh school districts that are using this tool, how many of them have already completed the process and turned it in and given their opinion on how they felt the tool worked for them? We had some really good feedback from first semester um as far as the way the tool worked. uh the consensus building and what that meant to uh to some of the meetings. It brought a little more meaning to uh what happened was people were evaluating the superintendent maybe low because they didn't see something that occurred you say communications. Well, I never saw the superintendent say that or do that when they came together and they
041said, "Well, it was in the superintendent submitted the artifacts and the and the board was able to share what was here. This is where that was said. that was here that was said and you know hear who the information was and so was able to build some some views from people that they didn't have didn't have a chance to see so they felt felt really good about it. So how many of the 51 school districts did that first semester for all 51 or you had 20 or 10? I couldn't tell you how many um because I'm trying to track the process of the pilot program here today with 51 how many actually did it in the first semester? I could check how many how many from kids per semester. We're doing it based upon the
042whole year. We've just had meetings over the course of the year. Do you have uh an area where we could bring their review on this program? Um no, not at this time. Everything we've been does everything we've done via Zoom and people jump on that way, right? But there's no written reviews or district talking about No, not that I know of. All right. Thank you. Anybody else? Thank you. Building court. I think we're going to be recording in this building. Are we What do you have for us? All right. Well, hopefully some uh stuff you're going to enjoy. So, uh, good evening. Uh, welcome board members and members of our community and staff, uh, to the Richard Warren educational campus. It houses our Levvenworth Intermediate School, which is fifth grade and sixth grade, and our
043middle school, Richard Warren Middle School, which is seventh and eighth grade. Um, our motto here is ensuring high levels of learning for all. I thought I'd start by just mentioning our administrative team, uh, which is doing an awesome job. Um, obviously I'm Scott Kesler, the campus principal over the whole campus and the principal at the intermediate center or the intermediate building here. Uh, Ben Melik who's then uh here with us tonight, one of our assistant principles on the intermediate side and Michelle Smalls is our other assistant principal on the intermediate school side at Richard Warren Middle School. Laura Badson, who is our director of teaching and learning, is filling in as principal at Richard Warren Elementary uh middle school. And I do want to thank Laura for stepping into that role. It's been invaluable having
044her here on our campus to help us put some things in place. Um, Barbara Eraio is our assistant principal at the middle school as well as Kelsey Stymates who is our assistant principal and our athletic director. I just wanted to start off and I'm going to kind of go over some uh a description of each building with you and go over some numbers just to kind of start to paint the picture of what our campus uh looks like right now. So on the intermediate school side, we have eight gen ed teachers per grade level. We're actually are supposed to have 10 per grade level or we're uh allotted 10 per grade level. Right now we have four that are unfilled. Um we are departmentalized. So one teacher uh will teach ELA and social studies and
045the other teacher in the team will teach math and science. And so that uh both in fifth and sixth grade the students do rotate once they transition during the day. So besides going to specials, um this allows the teachers to actually focus on a couple different content areas um and actually allows them to uh uh dive deeper into the material than they would if they had the lesson plan and dive, you know, into uh each subject. Um our numbers in fifth and sixth grade. Um right now in fifth grade we have 205 students. The average class size is 26. Um in sixth grade we have 236 students. Our average class size is 30. So just to put that in perspective, the average class sizes if we were fully staffed in fifth grade would go down
046to about 21 students, uh 20 21. And in sixth grade, it would actually go down to about 23 24 students. So as you can see, just being short, two teachers per grade level uh makes a big difference for our class sizes. Um we have a awesome special team. Um we have art, music, PE and STEM. Um and I will tell you that the specials team along with our awesome gened teachers. Uh when the specials are not in rotation, they do go support other gened teachers or wherever we need them in the building. So they've been very uh helpful this year. Um if we have uh like we have on occasion and I'll talk a little more more about it on our building tour when we've had to like combine classes if we're short subs um
047you know we send like another staff member up there to help out because you'll have one teacher up there and if you can imagine sometimes with a large group of students you know you start with 30 and start adding those students it's a lot of kids per teacher. Um our teachers do an amazing job and then our specialist teachers uh are always open asking where do you need me today? I have some extra time or on my open space. Um they're filling in, helping out where support is needed. Um some other things I want to mention that we offer on the intermediate school side, we have JOTC. Um and we have some afterchool clubs. So this past fall we had board game club, pioneer salon, jewelry club, basketball club, and beginning band. And then this
048spring we had board game club, beginning band, and girl talk. So we have a lot of things to offer, a lot of positive things that we're doing for our students. on Richard Ward Middle School side, we are uh we have 16 core teachers um and 11 elective teachers. So right now, as you can see on the screen, out of the 16 core teachers, one of them is a long-term sub. Out of the 11 elective teachers, two are long-term subs and we actually have one unfilled. Why uh I think that's important to go uh mention is so that means we technically have even if you include the long-term sub positions we have four teaching positions unfilled. Um and when I get later talk about some of our challenges or uh areas that we need to really
049focus on recruiting and retention. I think it's important to just show those are just the teachers and I'm not even mentioning like the support staff that we have openings for. Um seventh and eighth grade. So seventh grade we have 213 students. In eighth grade, we have 234 students. The average class size for core classes, that's like math, science, ELA, social studies, is 19, but they range from 11 to 26. Remember, it's middle school, so we have to figure out their schedule. And sometimes you have to put schedules together. So, you might have a bigger class one hour than the last. In 8th grade, our and our elective classes, our average is 19. They range from 10 to 40. I'll tell you, like 40 is in our JOTC uh class. There's two morning classes. this first
050and second hour they're large because um first sergeant comes down to teach those first two hours in the day then they have to go back up to the high school but I also want to point out that just this semester second semester we were able to find our second long-term sub that ties into some electives classes so the electives classes were actually the average was much higher the first semester in fact um just to give you an idea um in a couple of our electives classes like public speaking and intro to theater which we able to add back into the schedule this semester. Those class sizes range from 17 to 23. So, if you can imagine without that long-term setup, we'd have 23 students. Then, we have to figure out where to place that hour.
051And that's why the other electives classes were larger in size. electives. We have DROTC, art, fax, band, choir, business classes, public speaking, intro to theater, multimedia, stab, civics, and aid. Um, we also we've done after school tutoring at the middle school and obviously athletics. We have a variety of sports teams that students can try out for. Um, and some great coaches leading up, some great teams and some great athletes we have. Next, I want to talk about our focus. And our focus is on our students, every student every day. And I wanted to show a few pictures here, but this does not even paint the entire uh picture that you would see um on a daily basis. So, in the upper leftand corner, you know, we do things like class of the month here on
052the intermediate side. Um the staff and um that includes all staff, support staff get to vote. We explained to the students, you know, we see everything you do, whether you're in specials, morning assembly, wherever. Um, in the middle bottom picture, you can see our pioneers of the month. And so what we do is uh each uh each month we have new pioneers of the month. We also want to assembly we do character certificates. And so as you can see, we really focus on the positive. So on the bottom right hand corner, as you can see, we focus on five character traits. being prepared, respectful, having integrity, being disciplined, and being engaged. So, those are five things we focus on, not just in the on the intermediate side, that's our entire campus. Um, some other things
053I want to point out. In the bottom left, you'll see some students working together in art projects. In the top right, uh, a student working in a science class in the middle school side. Um, we do a lot of hands-on learning. Um, and two other things, I'm very proud of our students and staff, but especially our students. As you can see, uh the two uh girls behind the cart, they actually are part of our uh teacher or our student leaders delivering treats for teachers that day. And then uh for those of you uh that were in attendance probably learned at our Veterans Day assembly uh this past fall, that was all put together by our students. And so these, as you can see, we really are changing the story here or striving to change our
054story and focus on the positive because there are a lot of positive things. We have a lot of great students, great families um in our on our campus. Um and our students, uh it's amazing the things that they're doing and the teachers are doing an amazing job just facilitating their ideas and facilitating their leadership roles. We're just we're guiding them, but they're the ones coming up with some of the ideas that we do around campus and they're putting them into play. And so that's awesome to see. Um, some other things I just want to mention, um, some positives. Uh, as you heard earlier today, working with the Loveworth Police Department and the city of Leworth has been great. Um, whether we've had issues, you know, with security, we wanted to increase, um, their presence on
055campus. I would tell you, uh, working with, um, them, the Love Police Department, because I get calls sometimes like, "What happened? The police department's up at your school." We have an open invitation and when they're on patrol, we just tell them, "Hey, when you want to stop by our campus and walk either side, just do it." You know, so they come in a lot of it's just a proactive way to get involved to say hi to our kids. Um, another thing I want to mention is um our PI organization is like our PTO. It's called Partners in Education. And I hope they don't mind me name dropping them like Melissa Hollingsworth and Cassidy Williams. Um there's a couple of the parents involved um a pie. If you ever go to the middle school side and
056there uh you see the parents greeting students at the in the morning, that's a a result of them putting that out there in the community saying, "Hey, we want to start the day off on a positive on a positive note for our uh students." And you'll also see PI running concessions along with our StuCo. Um, and Kylen Campbell helps to get our STCO leaders on the middle school side running the concessions, but PI is involved in that, too. So, it's really a team effort. Um, a couple other things I want to mention, our site council, we meet monthly. Um, we have site council and PI meetings on the same night. And it's great to see, you know, we we get uh the parents involved and some staff members involved, not just sharing information, but actually
057doing what a site council does, talking about action steps, what's actionable, getting feedback. Um, in a minute here, you'll hear me talk about how we went through the needs assessment with our BLT and our site council. Um, I got a hand I want to send a shout out to Cassie Callaway, who's our one of our food service managers. Um, they've been very flexible. like I know when we've had to tweak especially the middle school side or lunch schedule um that she's been very open. Hey, we'll work with you. What do you need? And then um I think this is the first time I've ever seen him sit down. But Jason Ray, our lead custodial uh custodian um for both buildings um tonight when you walk through or anytime you walk through campus, I'm not joking
058either. I think that's the first time I see him sit down all day. Um his staff is doing an amazing job. And then obviously our teachers um are doing an amazing job. I know that I'm just going to mention a couple. I probably could read off the whole list, but Don Terrain and Ben Hutchcraft are teachers of the year. They lead the way. They're doing work outside the school day, but so will uh so are a lot of our other teachers. As I mentioned, all those extra tutoring programs, clubs, and activities after school, coaches, those are all staff going above and beyond working out outside their duty day. Um and the reason I mention all that too is just so you know, um I'm proud of our campus. We have a lot of positive things
059going on that I want to make sure I share and show that it really is a community effort. That being said, uh there's always room for improvement, right? And we recognize that. Um here's some areas of improvement or sustainment that uh we're looking at. Obviously, the first one is staffing. Um again, I mention that because um we talk about it as a staff. talk about it um you know how do we uh manage certain things with less staff and it really does you know it's a less if you missing one person that's an extra person that could be with kids could have eyes on those kids um so we're working through that student attendance my staff has come up with some great ideas uh that we put into place I'll just give you one example
060um well on both sides we do like attendance contest like on the intermediate side the class with the best attendance um for the month it's like um ice cream sandwiches is or some reward uh at the end of that day. Um we're focusing on positive behavior incentives. You know, a lot of times, especially in the community, you know, I'll, you know, I live in the community. I'll be at Walmart or Dylan's or some parent might ask me, "Hey, Greek, you had a rough day." Yeah. Did you see all the great things we did today? Or did you know all the great things we're doing? Can you come up to a basketball game or a volleyball game and see our great athletes playing? Um but we're focusing on those positive behavior incentives and changing that culture.
061So, we actually focus on those kids. Um, you know, sometimes those kids sitting there like, I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing. We want to reward those students and make sure that they, hey, we are recognizing them. Um, academics. Are the academics where we want them? Obviously not. We're always looking to improve our academics. Um, we review our data and our test scores, which leads me to the needs assessment. Right now, we're going through our needs assessment, and I've been through that with my administrative team, with my building leadership team, and then just last month, we did that with our site council. We actually uh we actually had one of our long longest site council meetings in a while. Great conversations, great questions, looking over test scores, looking over data, and so I was
062getting all that feedback on how can we improve our building and how can we improve uh the culture of our building? And one of those things is academics. How do we improve our academics? And so a lot of great discussion around that. So thinking of uh or speaking of great things, I did want to mention I'm going to put a plug in here for our Warren campus family engagement night coming up February 20th. Uh so a lot of times uh uh we don't always get to do this, but I think it was a great opportunity and the high school has been great with uh work to work with us. They usually come down and they put on like a CTE, a career technical education career fair. So, what we're doing is tying in our family
063engagement night to that. So, the middle school is going to highlight that night um our CTE and our electives courses. And then the intermediate school side, we're going to uh showcase our specials classes. And so, there'll be free meals for families that come in. Um they can rotate on one or both sides. Um and students can check out the specialists classes um or the CTE and electives classes, especially the younger students coming up. Um during that day, the reason we're tying it in is the CTE courses from the high school come down, put on um displays, and our eighth graders get to go through that process. Um before I start our tour, is uh does anybody have any questions before we go on a short tour? Other than staffing, what can a board to help
064you be successful here? You know, that's a that's a great question and I can honestly say um I think just continued support I know that when um I think uh just helping spread the positive news uh the positive things that our students are doing around uh the campus whether it's on the 56 side or the 78 side. Um I you know just being in the community myself and seeing social media. I know a lot of times you know if there is a negative event that that gets out in front of everything. Um but we've really focused and I hope people see that on our social media site. I stress that to our staff. You know post the great things our students are doing. You know I think we've been posting like the pioneers of the
065month. Um you should see some of the great things you're doing in Civics's class on the 78 side and we're really trying to highlight that. So, I'd say the the biggest thing to support us is um just spreading that news in the community. And so, when you hear people talk about Richard Warren Educational Campus, um focus on all the positive things that our students are doing because we're we're we have some great students coming up through our campus um that are going to do amazing things. Now, we are you we're going to take the tour presentation? Yes. Questions? Uh I can be open to more questions after the tour if you like. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm ready to give the tour if we are. Okay. For local board members, any community members that would like
066to join. It's open for anyone. Any building? Great. [Music] Did anyone have any questions after the building? [Music] um just goes back to uh I I think if I had to choose one thing we need to focus on is recruiting teachers. Um and so I would say that's the number one priority um that I I hope we continue to focus on. And I think our human resources department and Dr. Adams and everybody involved. We're working on that. Um, but I know from talking to other colleagues in other districts, the number of applications are already down. There's not as many teachers coming out of the programs, right? And so I think that's one of my, you know, obviously from the numbers I showed you, I think, um, focusing on recruiting teachers and staff overall, even like
067parents, um, you know, the classified staff too. um anything we can do to recruit staff and retain staff um I think uh as should be a top priority. Great. And how do you feel about supporting you on that building? Yeah. Um I am glad we're looking at it. Um and here's why. I I always say this to my colleagues. Um if anybody else has any other solutions, I'd be happy to listen to them. I think we should investigate them. And so with the 4day school week, I think it's definitely worth investigating. I mean, right now I'm on the committee and we're investigating that. And we have some great ideas. I know my staff, at least on the uh Warren campus, um the staff survey that we've done, um they're for it. Um are there still
068a lot of questions about it? Absolutely. Um that's part of the committee and part of the process we're going through. Now, I know the next part of the committee is to send out a parent survey. And so I think it's, you know, we need to get that feedback. Um, and so I think it's definitely something we need to look at. Um, I know that there's pros and cons to a 4-day school week. Uh, definitely, you know, we think about, you know, the positives and the negatives of it, but I do think it is definitely something. I'll give you an example. I was talking to a gentleman this morning and he uh is from another organization that goes around to the colleges and they do mock interviews. Um, and at their usual event, they usually have
069like a 100 candidates. I'm sure they had 18. And he goes, "Guess what their first question was? Do you have a four or five days to the work week?" And so, you know, I I I think it's something definitely that we should consider, which we are putting together a you know, presentation for the award. Um, and I'm glad we're doing it. But, you know, I it goes back to recruiting and retaining teachers. If anybody has any other ideas, I'm all for it. You know, let's let's get them out on the table and let's investigate it. Um, it seems to be a topic right now that we have candidates obviously that when I talk to colleagues and then even current staff that are interested in it and so we have current staff interested in it, possible
070candidates that are interested in it. Um, you know, some arguments some people would say is, you know, well, if everybody goes to it, then, you know, what's the advantage? But I would not want to be the last ones out of the gate with this one because I think if you put it into place and it did work well then you're going to build your staff and hopefully retain your staff by putting other things in place and you know having a positive culture and other things we're working on. But I definitely I'm glad we're investigating it and we have a committee looking into it. I've had some staff members even come to my home to express concerns and disapproval of it and then some from your campus. And so, have you met like one-on-one with teachers
071to try and make sure because some have said like, I'm leaving you guys. I haven't met oneon-one with all of them. Um, I will tell you I've had more staff on the intermediate side for it than on the middle school side. Um, and I think the important thing to say is, you know, uh, the board would have the final say. Yeah. And I think what I've been telling staff, and I haven't had the chance, like I said, to meet with individuals. Um, you know, I've met with my building leadership team. Um, we sent out a staff survey. Um, like I tell them, nothing's written in stone. I think there's a misperception out there that it's a definite that this is a go. That's part of what we're doing right now, even with our administrative team,
072is collecting all the data and information, everyone's opinions, everyone's advice, all their concerns. Um, and that's something we're continuing to actually analyze to see, okay, is this going to work? If it's not going to retain staff, then obviously we wouldn't want to do it. Yeah. But if we get a large majority that said, hey, I want the four day work week or school week. Um, you know, I had one teacher tell me, for example, that was, you know, I've had teachers, I have spoke to a couple teachers that are, Mr. Kessle, I'm not sure I like that idea. But then I had one one teacher, a lot of it has to do with what does Mondays look like? Yeah, that's a big concern is not just for, you know, our staff, but the community. I
073will tell you a couple teachers, their first thing is, hey, what about the kids? What do they do on Mondays? Obviously, you know, you have great teachers when they first think about the kids. Um, I had one teacher tell me though, Mr. because I think you'll get a better four days out of me if I know I have like that Monday to plan and do stuff. It's gonna like you're going to get a better four days out of me than those five days you currently give. Um, you know, and that's just one teacher telling me that. Um, so I have heard I've heard positives and negatives about it. I think that would be my next question for you is academically, you know, like you mentioned, our numbers currently, we're not proud of them and so,
074you know, do you think this will further hurt our academic scores? What do you I think there's multiple ways to look at it. Um, when I see a a sixth grade teacher um with 50 or 60 kids because we can't find substitutes, I can tell you that doesn't help our test stories either. So I guess I look at it from multiple angles is is what we're doing right now working and it's not and not because the teachers are not trying is because right now I could say on our intermediate side especially we're overloaded with you know 30 kids in a class when I tell you you know we had two more teachers we'd be down to like 23 or 24 that's what I think about as an admin and also a parent of this district
075you know I have a a son who will be coming through our campus here in just a couple years. Um, and I have four kids in the district. So, as a parent, I also put them on my parent lens to think about, okay, and I have them at the high school, I have them at the middle school, and I have them at elementary level. So, I think even as a parent, even though I'm on the committee, I think, okay, as a parent, what am I going to do with my own kids on a Monday? How will that look? Um, so yeah, it's it's something that I think we need to continue to talk about and analyze, which we're doing. I know we're doing at a fast pace. Um there's a lot of opinions out there
076and I think u the next step is the one of the most important things we're getting ready to do is survey our parents and find out what they think about it. Um but again I'm on the campus too you know like I said when I see one teacher with 50 or 60 kids and I send up support but when you see the large class sizes like I do on our campus whether it's a four day school week or not something has to change. we have to do something to recruit and retain teachers so I can get those class sizes down because one of my biggest philosophies is this that I I believe in smaller class sizes. Um and you can't have smaller class sizes if you can't find teachers and so I think that's one
077of like it goes back to one of my top priorities. co even in previous years, you know, I've been contacted by people saying, "I'm leaving because of behaviors." Um, and so I heard you talk some about what you're doing. Um, and I appreciate that. So, do you believe that like our percentage of behavior incidences is up or down compared to like last school year? Um, so that came back to the district. Um, looking at the numbers, I would say they're about the same or higher. I would say we have a high incident of behaviors. We get a lot of office referrals on the intermediate and the middle school side. Um, I hear from teachers, too. Yeah. Hey, you know, Mr. Kesler, one of the things I don't like are the behaviors. Um, I think that's
078why we're doing a lot of smart things in our district. You know, we have a behavior committee, too. And so, I think everything works as a system. And so I can give you four days school days, but if I'm not working on the behaviors, which we are, well then you're not going to like those four days and you still have a lot of behaviors. So we're actually attacking this from multiple angles. We're we have a behavior committee within our campus. I know I'm constantly working with uh our RBTs, our behavior specialists, or they're working with my staff. Um we're working with our school sites, we're working with um admin, we're working with teachers, uh my ability leadership team. We talk about the behaviors. We look at ways that we can reduce it. Um, and so
079we're looking at several different things. Is it overwhelming for staff and admin? Yeah, absolutely. But that's where I think it's a combination of things and that's why we're looking at it from different angles. We're looking at the behaviors. How can we reduce the behaviors? Um, at the same time, when we talk about students, you know, sometimes we're the only advocate that child's going to have who has those behaviors. So part of what we're looking at is, you know, I can send a kid home for five days. Guess what? They're coming back to us in five days. What are we doing to help that child? How we working to change that behavior? At the same time, I know what that teacher's been going through. Um, you know, and maybe that behavior deserves a consequence. So each
080situation is different and sometimes, you know, we just do make the best decision we can. But one thing I know we are working on in addition to when we think about recruiting and retaining teachers, one thing I talked about to my admin team is are we being consistent with the way we handle behaviors, are we doing everything we can for those individual students? Because like I said, I how are we fixing them or how are we helping them to turn their behavior around? And also we try to, you know, we're calling parents. We try to get those parents involved as much as possible. Sometimes that doesn't always work out, but we're trying to get the parents involved as much as possible. Hey, this is what we're seeing. This is what we're doing on our end.
081Um, and we have some great parents that are helping us out. They're doing multiple things outside of school. Um, so it just takes a a a team to to help those students. So, back to your question. Um, yeah, some some teachers have mentioned the behaviors as a reason. Um, and we're trying to work on that. Thanks. So, a question with the behaviors. We have the behaviors on a five day a week. Do we really think that having them home one day a week is going to help their behaviors the other four days when they're back in? Because I remember during co that was one of the things everybody talked about. Kids were put on computers and boxes in their homes. They lost touch with a lot of kids. I can't remember the exact number, but
082I'm pretty sure it was in three digits. um you know, and then trying to transition back in and still losing a lot of the facial cues and everything else is part of what cascaded into all these behavioral issues. Now, if we're stopping Reagan from having that consistency and then only having consistency four days a week, do we really think that's going to help the behaviors? I think they're two separate things in a way. And I'll explain. I don't think anybody's saying the four day school week is going to solve the behaviors. Um we've been very transparent on the committee and the four day school week. Um we're trying to do two things, but the main thing is recruit and retain staff and then the other thing is we're trying to work it out to where
083we actually increase instructional time on those days we do have. Um now that being said, we talk about consistency. um when I have to go from 30 in a class combined to 50. I I guess what I'm saying is some of the things I do believe can bring up some valid concerns. I guess my concern is I'm already seeing the inconsistency with the staffing levels we have. And so I guess that's what the four day school week would be is can we solve our staffing issue. The goal of the behavior committee and each individual building principal and admin team and staff should be how do we handle the behaviors on those four days? Does that make sense? So I Right. I think you bring up a very valid concern. I just I see the inconsistency
084now with their staffing levels. Right. So part of my other thing is it really that they have the need to have a 4 day week or do they just need a higher pay increase? Is it, you know, incentivizing one way versus another way or is this just a way to not pay a higher wage? Well, we're going to still pay you this, but you're only going to be working this. you know, I I don't know what all the conversations are because we weren't being party to any of those. Um so Murphy just to kind of which was going to be my talking point as a superintendent note it is our intent as we've always said uh the committee that I chair is going to be sharing to the board in March the March 4th board
085meeting all of our findings and then it'll be at your discretion as to whether or not you want us to continue to proceed or to stop. um we've surveyed our employees, they were in favor of it overall. So then that told us, okay, let's go to the next level. Let's survey our our parents and our school community. And so that will be coming out here next week on the February 22nd. Um we don't have all the answers. What we do know is um some neighboring not too far to the south of us, Independence, large school district, Independence, Missouri, um they had a 450% increase in applications as soon as they went to a 4-day school week. Um so we've heard a lot of we are constantly researching all of us, everybody on the team, our
086admin, we've tasked them with researching what a Monday would would look like. And so we hope to bring to you at our presentation maybe a template of what a Monday would look like. Our goal is though when we survey our parents, we want to make sure that they understand what a Monday would also look like. Um but to your point with regards to to behaviors and things like that, we've seen pros and cons. We've seen people say independents has seen a increase in attendance. They've seen a reduction if you look at their study. They've seen a reduction of behaviors. So it just it's all over the floor. Well, and and that would lead me into what our decision was with um Earl Walls and early childhood. We put them on an all year long schedule
087because that was going to be the new great thing and it was going to be out better outcomes and everything else. And then here we are within the last month or so, we voted to put them on the same schedule as the rest of the school rather than move our district to everybody going to. So it was try the great new thing and the great new thing wasn't really as accepted as most people thought it would be and everything goes in cycles as we all know but I will tell you uh the 4day school week's been around for a very long time um well it's been around for a very long time across the nation um it is coming to this area we can either as Mr. uh Kesler said we can be first in
088the northeast Kansas which would allow us to really uh increase our applicants um because I do believe it is coming. Um especially when you have college applicants asking for it um what I can commit to you is we would not come to the board with a recommendation of a 4-day school week if we can guarantee that we're going to have the same student contact hours or more. We will not come to you. I couldn't do it to come to you and say, "Let's do this with less hours with our kids." Right? So, it's going to be at a cost that we're gonna have to extend the instructional day and and extend the amount of contact hours, right? So, in the long run, you're actually our hope will be to gain instruction. So, our best our
089best educator are teachers, our qualified teachers. We want our teachers in front of our kids. And that has been our whole purpose of this is to recruit and retain our current staff. But in order to make it effective and to work, we would have to increase our instruction time. So otherwise it wouldn't be successful. So are you modeling specifically the details of independent system? No. No, not at all. That's not like that we're using the presentation. I don't know what presentation you're talking about. I had some educators tell me they were presented and they had another school district actually on the slides and then it just changed. I just relay there was we haven't prepared a slideshow but what we did prepare I prepared show somebody else's slides from another district. I prepared personally a
090a Google sheet uh excuse me Google doc that had all over the nation information just all the research I could find so that way you can take upon yourself to look through it and for the committee so I don't know if that's what you're referencing there hasn't been a there has not been a a slideshow uh prepared by the district uh so how do we help the communication because you say we're going to sit there and survey the parents how do Hey, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Let's get Mr. Ford his presentation about the schools. This can we can talk about that have time to talk. This is enough time talk about you have anything else to say? No. Does anybody else have any questions about Richard Warren campus? Thank you so much for
091the tour. You're welcome. It's always a fantastic Thank you. And hey, you guys are always welcome anytime to come on up and I'd love to show you around the school. Thank you. and fly. And yeah, you got to come back fly to town. Yes, that's right. Thank you. Item six, the cons. I'd like to make a motion to accept the consent agenda as presented. Motion by agendas. All in favor? [Music] Are you ready? I am ready. Good evening. Uh, tonight I'm bringing a request to purchase a special education van. This would be a TRIT uh Ford F or T350 all-wheel drive vehicle. It'd be XLT class. So, uh it would provide that four-wheel drive vehicle, all-wheel drive vehicle for transporting special education students to and from their programs that are located down. In 21, we
092purchased purchased the van, seen an increase in travel. So, we're sitting around 79,000 miles on that van. To have that ability to cycle those vans and spread the mileage out and then also have the ability to do service and maintenance without taking away a vehicle that's increased in its theme. So, that is the uh request tonight. This would be a special education purchase. So, instead of replacing, we're adding to it to reduce the mileage of the current. That's correct. Did we seek bids for this? Are using state contract through Chevy Mission Ford, which we've done several times in the past. Right. I just had several constituents approach me wanting to know why we're not doing it locally. And since we had a Ford dealership right here that's very supportive of our absolutely some of the
093challenges that I've had working with dealerships is the um lack of a fleet manager to do pricing as a fleet versus an individual. uh when I send out bids, there is a delay in what is available or what can be built. Uh buying through a state program allows me to essentially order what I want and then we get it within about a six month time frame. Thank you. That should explain it too. I appreciate I'd like to make a motion to approve the purchase of the 2024 Ford Transit 350 from Shauny Mission Ford under the state contract in the amount of $64,844. Second motion as well by Mr. Van. Thank you. The next item I have tonight is a vehicle. Um, and I'll just say this, both of these are part of my annual capital
094outlay. Um, I hold money for the 28 vehicles that we have. Mr. Stoka assist me with trying to cycle these things through. The second vehicle is a F550. We currently have a 2012 uh F550 gasoline powered. This provides our plowing services, one of our vehicles that provides plowing and salt applications. Uh over the years, uh it's taken a toll on that gasoline engine. So, we are trying to move our fleet to a diesel engine system. This again would be an XLT. Uh this is a cabin chassis. So, the difference here and full transparency to the board, the the request is for the purchase price from China Mission Ford. This is a 4x4. uh and we anticipate additional costs to outfit this vehicle. Uh so I have included that in the amount. So that is um
095what do we estimate about $25,000 in additional upgrades. So we would be asking to purchase a cabin chassis. So that is just the base of the cab and then the body. And then we will order a secondary piece the flatbed that will hold the spreader. And then eventually we will have some additional pieces that we'll add on to that for um the salt spreader. I got concern and I know you like to go purple weight, but I I was thinking about this this morning. Why Why don't we take these construction type vehicles? Why don't we offload them to local contractors and pay instead of putting out there somebody gives them a real good deal? see what that might maybe somebody had good mechanic or whatever make something out of it say I think that put
096them out there whole world so I'll say first it's the discretion of your of you the board to decide how we dispose of our excess materials uh in the past it's been really left up to our department to to determine that uh we have had garage sales in the past we have sold vehicles uh in the past open to the community. Purple Wave has produced probably some of the better responses from us. If that is something the board would like us to try, we have some just I know the guards have never be nice for the community trying to think what's happening. If they're in, if they're in, they may not have anything. At least give them first option if they want to go towards the lake to give somebody a first option bonafide to
097bid on this. So definitely drug not somebody might be able to use the community might build some potholes. Well, any it's my understanding that anyone is able to sign up and have a purple wave account and anybody can purchase it. I realize that. I'm talking about first come first come should come to the taxpayer in my mind [Music] we don't even you said you're transitioning to wanting to transition to diesel. Yeah. Most of our heavy duty trucks are Moving to diesel. What are the pros on moving them to diesel versus gasoline? More horsepower for the the engine displacement. Uh longer life, solar run typically twice, I would say about twice as long. Mr. Burton is here. Uh Bergen uh from Auto Tech if I'm saying something incorrect. Uh but our our diesel engines will run
098longer provide more power and that longer uh running will offset the expense of what diesel is versus gasoline. At times diesel has been right right with the estimate more recently. So yeah I believe uh for what we use for we'll get get much more light on it. What is the anticipated um like if this were approved and it were ordered when the truck? Um so once I place the order they would be able to tell me where I'm at on the order system. They estimate anywhere between four and six months, which is kind of typical for a order on a fleet vehicle like this. Um, so once I get the order in place, they tell me where I'm at in the order and then they typically keep me updated as it's going through the process
099of being and I think the goal is to have it the new spreader and everything all up in the morning for next winter. Correct. Correct. So, we would we would get the uh bed ordered. Once the vehicle is ordered, we would go ahead and get the bed coming. We would probably wait till winter time when we get closer to assess the need for that spread, but we anticipate that the spreader we have would also be replaced. My next question, can you use the spreader you have? Uh we will if we can. Um, but as we pull it off and evaluate it being salt spreaders, uh, some of the corroded, uh, it just makes more sense to to buy a new one at the age that it is versus try to start replacing a bunch of
100parts and not have a dependable piece of equipment. Okay. So, I have a motion this year. I would like to make a motion to purchase the F550 from Shauny Mission Ford in the amount of $7,674. Second motion is Murphy second Mr. purchase your diesel. What about the auto? We got a motion. So, thank you. Thanks. consideration of concrete projects. Yep. I'm back here again every year to ask to do some concrete work around the district. We've identified some certain areas that uh Roy need attention and that's what I'm bringing for you today. I'll have to answer any questions. Did you for the Chiefs? I'm an Iowa State fan, so Brock Curry. I didn't really care one way or the other. It's not the Minnesota Vikings. So, so the Pioneer Sports Complex is pretty new. What
101are the concrete issues happening around there? Over there. That whole complex was built back in the 2000 area and they were using the uh limestone mixed in. We're using grants now. Limestone has just failed. We've done a lot of work around the uh middle school for the same reason and now we've inherited that. So now we're starting to replace it. Any questions? Have a motion. Like to make a motion to accept the bid from Kirsten Concrete in the amount of $65,860. Got a motion on Mr. Well, second to the contract for personal construction. All in favor? Okay. [Music] consideration of Microsoft licensing. Uh oh, there business for our Microsoft licensing that runs our Windows operating systems for desktops and servers. Um, this will be for a three-year commitment at the block pricing for three years.
102I did get three bids and I relo as it's all the same product. Have we used this company before? Yes, we have. Are we currently using this? No. So, we got our licensing last year from connection and they were a little high this year. We didn't do a three year last year when we did. So, it was from three years ago. So, this was last year of our agreement. So, this will be a new agreement for three years. Okay. Thank you. I'd like to recommend that we accept the lowest bid from Journey Head for the three-year subscription totaling $68,97.33. Second, we got that one. That's you. Oh, I can't I can't tell where we got motion as well. Second by Mrs. Reed on the contract for Microsoft Microsoft. All in favor zero. You got to
103stay up there. Go ahead and go through next meeting. Okay. So, the next one is for our student refresh of Chromebook devices. We're looking to get 900 of them. Uh we'll be starting with Acer. This is the model. The last two refreshes we did. We went with the 751 and 752s. This year will be 753s. Um, we've had great luck with Acer. Our tech department is certified with Acer, so we're able to order part directly through that. And yeah, any questions? How many books do you guys see that you can't repair for a year? Can't repair? I'd say maybe it's honestly not that much. Uh, if we can't repair one, then we use that from different parts. The rail just the Frankenstein pretty much our loss our loss is about 6% a year between damages
104that we can't repair because a student has dropped it and it's been dropped several times but Acer has been pretty good and our protective covers have done us really well. Will our same covers hold the new Chromebooks or additional? We'll have to order new ones. Is that in this proposal? We still knew they had different shells this where where is CDWG? Where are they located? Who is that? Um it's an online online corporation. So usually everything we do is online. They have a state contract. Chicago. Yeah. I like to make a motion to accept the loads bid in the amount of 2607,570 from CDWG motion by electricity for lack All in favor zero. Thank you. So, we're going to have a five minute reset for biological reasoning. Let's see what time 7:52 7:57 back at
1057. [Music] Okay. Be careful. Okay. Just to introduce this item. We do get asked what does if stand for and there is no there's no mutation or anything. Um so for the the public HR board policies are basically organized alphabetically I stands for instruction program in this case and the policy we're talking about is textbooks instructional materials and media centers both how materials are selected and then also what happens if or when materials are challenged. For tonight, we've had three board members each provide suggested edits and they are listed in your agenda in the order they were received. Mrs. Price is listed as policy A. Mrs. Overby is listed as policy B and Mrs. Wells is listed as policy C. So those are the three different policy changes at the table for tonight's discussion. Well,
106like started policy. Nothing's changed from when submitted in January. Um, it was just clarifying some things about, you know, people were in the district issues with the community challenge. Sorry, the composition of the review panel itself using a district employee not specifically the principal because by the time it's got to open policy principally a fresh set of eyes and also the basically taking deleting the December ads for multiple reasons and I think there's I think they are sort of the nod that you would not trust our professionals our teachers and staff and it's the thing is when we're thinking about language and policy policy is the absence of a policy a detriment to the district and to be honest. I went back and looked at started looking at all the other districts in the state
107and what they've done. So when you start looking at our conference you know Lancing Baser Lynwood um Piper all them none of them made any changes like this to and so when we looked at the original policy of IF back in the summer of 22. These were not recommended changes then and they were sort of like a hail Mary change in December. I don't see them adding anything to the policies that we have. They're detrimental and restrictive, but they're not enhancing educational for the December. So, there's some questions there. Okay. um my changes. Um basically it just deals with the amendment that came in in December, which I feel like after hearing what some of the challenges and things that um were read to this board and things that we have in our libraries. I
108wonder if maybe I I think we do need to clarify that. And again, like I said to you before, the problem is not the gay, it's the form. It's really like what do we want to what is the what do we want to put our name to? Do do we have want to have standards? Do we want to have boundaries? Because I'm telling you, I mean, I can look up a whole bunch of things that does not that we do not have in our library. I mean, do we just open that door? Why? I mean, I think we we restrict access to websites, don't we? We restrict the internet. We don't have kids who, you know, well, if the kid's in fifth grade and he's uh curious about format, well, we've got to provide that
109that access in our school. Now, what you do outside what your kid has on their phone, what you do in your own home, that's on you. But I'm talking about boundaries and standards for the district. What do we put our name to? And it would be inappropriate for, you know, people may um have said a lot about personal beliefs and whatnot. Okay. So, if I'm a religious person, I don't come in and say, "Where's all the religious books? You know, you're you're restricting me. Where where's the you know, where's the the catechism? Where's the Book of Mormon? Where is this at our library? I'm being persecuted because it doesn't exist. It It's not here for at taxpayer expense for me to check out and for my children to have access to. Um, so it's about
110boundaries and standards and some of the stuff that was read to us, um, some of the stuff that Miss Reed has found, um, what the parent challenge. I mean, I don't know. I guess what frustrates me is beyond, you know, the name calling that you're a bigot, you're a this, they're that, where's the defense of that? Where's the educational value to that? Do we want to elevate the standard and provide something for our students that is aspirational or edifying in some way besides um appealing to your most basic passions? I mean, I I just some of that stuff is right on the line of pornography, if not I would say it is pornography. And like was pointed out at the the last meeting, it does read like penthouse porn. What is the purpose of that?
111What is the defense of that? Because there's never a defense. We just stand up and say you're a book fan or you're a bigot. You're the No. What is the defense of that? And I don't hear any defense. It's always deflect, deflect, deflect. You're a bad person because you um because you want a different standard. You have, you know, but where's the defense of that? Why are we shuffling garbage to our kids in when there's so many other things available? And it is ridiculous to say, you know, that some people want to restrict and some people want to open up. That's not true because I've done lots of title searches and lots of um you know on content on we don't have any books on Ben Carson. We don't have any books on Thomas Soul.
112We don't have any of that stuff. So somebody's making decisions and making decisions this not that. this not that off of their personal bias and their politics. Yes, a lot has been made about my personal bias or some other people in the community. Our personal advice, you can't bring that into this, but somebody is making those decisions because obviously what exists in this district is the tiniest sliver of what's available. I mean, of all the books and all the media materials that exist in the world, USD 453 has a tiny sliver of that. And obviously, it is ridiculous to say that, you know, decisions aren't being made. Like I said, this, not that, this, not that. So, where's the defense of this versus that? Why is it so important that we're going to bring in
113this very graphic, very, you know, like basically a how-to guide on how to engage in certain sex acts? When did that become a part of what people wanted for their children's education? I mean, I I don't understand that. and the amendment that was written. Yeah, it, you know, I would have never thought of that five years ago. But when you see what somebody has chosen to put in our libraries, maybe it's necessary to further clarify that and you know put some some better clear guidelines on what the guidelines are and what the guard rules are. Here's the guidelines. This is what we're going for. This is the no go zone. In between there there's a million choices you can make and nobody ever says why you're choosing this versus something else. And if it's representation,
114everybody's got to see themselves. Well, I'm quite sure that in this district we have students who abuse drugs and alcohol. We don't go and open a bar up on Main Street. We have students who come from very conservative and we don't seem to, you know, stay up at night worried about do they see themselves. Are we making sure that they feel supported and welcomed and and and elevated and celebrated? And I'm not saying that we should I'm not saying that we should. I'm just making a point that, you know, the way this is framed is is really frustrating because it's it's like, you know, you're very close-minded. You're big a you hate certain people and you're punishing certain people. Well, you're making choices, too. Where is your defense of the choices that you're making? So
115that's um that's the part about the sexually graphic materials. And another change that I made is the gender ideology stuff. What are you putting your name on as a USD 453? What are you endorsing? What are you encouraging? I don't know. That makes me a little uncomfortable. We're going to take little bitty kids and put them, you know, and suggest to them to put yourself on a path to possibly destroy your physical body and become and become a lifelong medical patient. Wait, and we put our name to that. Now, you can have whatever opinion you want to have on that. We all have different opinions on that. But what did we put our name on as USD453? Okay. Number one, you could put that out the bound the boundaries. It's a boundaries and standards for
116this taxpayer funded space. May I speak now? Okay. Number one, I don't think we're the school of porn. I mean, you can make it sound like that's all we're trying to teach in the way you just state it. And the only example I can I'm not a big reader anymore, but I did read the book about the trials and tribulations, the American way that everybody thought it was just about masturbation. I read the book and it's a great book in my opinion my whole life bestseller because it taught the whole premise of that thing exaggerated was about not accepting certain people whe they be handicapped or they be gay whe they be Indian whether they be African-Americans or whatever that was the terms that book and he had to put it out there in such
117a weird form by a kid the main character being sealed club feet ter that to me is not teacher porn that's just that was ridiculous so I what about the book that read what was it American sure library book it's not mandatory for one not every child is What are you putting your name into? We're not indoctrinating people to do to read this. We're not doing it. I don't I don't care what anybody say. That's not happening. So, are we going to put drugs? Just make we can just go out and put drugs in the hallways because not every Let's get back on task of the policy. So, it's not good policy. Doesn't care. Yes, if it's a new restrictive language has not been policed. If it was such good policy and one brought up
118when the policy was over two summers ago, it was not. It was an ill and it was such good policy so damaging to our students. Why isn't every other district in the state do an I don't like that policy? Well, policy that this board is not going to pass one that protects all students and make sure that all materials are upstandable. Actually, that is the case. That policy doesn't exist if as it was before the summer. We had all the garbage with it. So, obviously that didn't work. It's not all the garbage. It's like whatever she read. Like I said, it's not all the garbage. And I'm not here to talk about specific books. Keep going. No, the policy is to be written over large wide ranging. It's not meant to be restrictive. The issue
119was to prevent harm. I get it. Okay. That's why we have the process to come back and challenge. As some pointed out, you don't want to speak about specific books because you have no intense for those books. Actually, I do. But I'm a book word and I don't I don't I would never ban a book unless I was the last person on earth and I would not ban a book then because child of any age is taking a book to read it. They have they have maturity to read it. So, you're telling me that a kindergarten has to read a book telling them introducing gender identity is specifically written to introduce gender identity to the youngest readers. This book specifically tells them they can be a girl and a boy. Can you explain to me
120the truth behind that statement? What they want to be is none of my business. They're all human. No. If it's written and it's written at a content appropriate age. Okay, if it's meant to be written for kindergarten, first grade, whatever, and that child is a kindergartener and has a question. Okay, maybe they don't go to it by themselves. They probably should have that discussion with parents. I get that parents should be involved. Okay, so I feel the policy wasn't good enough because in the current policy, this was allowed to be there without parental discretion. So, I'm saying that too, but if the child is has a question, the child is curious, the child wants information, okay, read it. Well, then you can let them read. I don't want And you're not to say someone else
121can't read that book. But I'm not giving stuff to kids that make karma. I'm not an advocate. I'm not force cutting stuff. Okay. And you know what? It's not saying you can't read it. I know. It's not saying you can't read it. You can read it. You can own it. You can do it. It's What do you What do you put your name to? USD 453. What is the standard? What are the boundaries? The standard that's all because it's it's not read. If you want your kids to read that, that's why we have the things we have. You're advocating for zero standards. No, not [Music] this is supposed to be a discussion, not a dog fight. He wants to be able to speak, but listen. So standard any bar standards do exist yet as written
122is a standard and it does have bars. It does outline these are the requirements as you go through it. The issue before is like what is appropriate. Okay. Well, put in appropriate again you want to add a real uh world library association. That's good. It's another source of what is appropriate for that. I get it because in my mind I just when they go back for books or work out some sort of matrixed rubric that says here are the different sources and here's how they rate them. Is this something we want to you know as we want to buy this other book or whatever how do we go about it? I did does have arguments. the December ads. No, the December ads, when you start talking about books that are written for age appropriate content,
123okay, you're talking about age appropriate content, that was addressed. But when you start talking about ideology, that's not age appropriate. That's complex. And ideology, you start talking about those kind of things, restricted language that's put in there, that's what opens you up to any kind of first amendment. um this is what I'm looking for challenges that restrictive language. Okay, that takes the guard rails away because it just quotes it right down and then you get a reputation for being a district that you don't like your teachers and you don't like your kids because I got asked that in a conference because this got out. It's a lack not necessary a lack of stock but people do look at this going what are you guys drinking in the water here? What is causing that? because if
124across the state if what we're adding is saying, "Oh, it's needed. Everybody else needs it and nobody else is picking it up, how is that, you know, helping our children?" Because now you're putting them at a disadvantage to other other districts that don't have an issue with ISIS prior to they're at a disadvantage because they don't have access. No, they're not talking about sex for the longer. Actually, you start looking at some of the AP courses and other things like that. Yeah. I get it. But I'm saying the December ads the December ads as they are that chunk or collection development that no one I need clarification on comment. I got a lot of questions because this got out. This is a public board meeting. So, of course, this would get out, but it's going
125to get out if we've been discussing it in the public. So, to say because I got questions because this got out like we were supposed to be keeping No, let me clarify. This got out out of our district, out of out of our conference area. I'm talking like way west Kansas. I'm talking southeast Kansas. districts that have no continuous connection to us are like wow what has happened to you guys alone and I get comments from the other side I just got family that came up behind me and thank me for taking the heat for them because we don't have culture where both sides of the aisle are represented in this district well and public education is becoming an unfriendly place to uh and it is a national dialogue so Levvenworth is not anymore especially
126in many other places how to address these issues. So, how do we go back to the policy but still keep searchable books private that you can access them if you as a parent that goes back to those specific books. If they're being challenged, let me go through the process level process review for you and then that's determined. Okay, well, does it go back to the main, you know, circulation area? Does it go to this restricted area? kids only. That's something that's for that challenge. And that was one of the other one of the other December ads that put you to put the board in the approval process for all for all the purchases. But when you do that, you've just taken away the the challenge process because you put us in as the approval because
127the first one before December, that's the way the state gave it. No. No. The December adval process were final. Okay. Let's let's move on to see Can I Can we um move on to the because you were talking about the review changes. I had a couple other changes there as well. Um because you talk about the review process and um I think that the way that it's written, it sets it up. So why even have a review process if you if you basically stack that committee in favor of the district? We already know what the district said. If it gets to that level, we already know what the complaint wants. We already know what the district said. So wouldn't you adjudicate that like bringing in more community? Now I did talk to Mr. Kellen in
128our board meeting about that and how the committees were formed and he had picked at that time. I expressed originally when we had the board committee when Mrs. Price was president she assigned um Mr. Pow to be in charge of the committee I was the second board member and they did a lottery of all people that wanted to volunteer to be on it and then um [Music] Jake, Mr. Potter sat there with Mr. Pal and I in a room with all those names in a box and then drew the three winning contestants and it ended up being a fair and even outcome of ideas and opinions and a lot of what came in that they did put in for that December. I wasn't part of any of the writing on that, but a lot of
129that that they added in there for your Hail Mary was because of things that were said and reported in that committee over that whole six weeks of summer. So, it's not like they sat there and came up that I had my notes sent. I know what every volunteer said. We have reports that were turned into the board as well. So, I don't think I would be saying a couple of guys here and did some kind of hail Mary just to before they left. Um, I think their intent was to listen to those volunteers that were trying to be on that committee. What just would have been much s and the the board itself were able to be on it. They kept pass down the ball. So, it it you know, or you want to call
130it a hell layering now, we kept passing the buck because people didn't want to touch it. And I'm sure it was table. My feeling, not that I had proof, my feeling was it was table until election because nobody wanted to touch it knowing that they were touching it prior to election. And that's that's how I've had a lot of constituents come to me and tell me that that the board itself in not dealing with it before elections was political. Just like this board and I talked about it last time. Okay, here's my take on it. I've said that before. I know people want to talk about longevity and I've been on board a long time and why is it all of a sudden the last five years everybody was dumb down and now everybody was
131why was it if you look at these jump purchases were made in our district because I I called American library associated culture director there for one thing she doesn't do well about the processes. So, uh, it just it just seemed to me and I'm going to say it became political, critical race theory scare about four years ago, right about the time of the pandemic down in Virginia, the governor and I, people would question me in the public and I'll name like generality, but we weren't and we never probably will. It's just one of those scary tactics that came out of that and everything else manifested in the zoo. Are you saying that we don't teach CRT? Pardon? Are you saying that we don't teach CRT? Yes, we are not. So you tell me tell me
132who's teaching what class? So do you remember when Tell me who's teaching what class? We're not supposed to teachers because of privacy issues. What class? The social studies department. Teacher CRT. What proof? You remember Mr. Goodman sitting there? Yeah, I remember Mr. Goodman. So, you're calling him a liar? I'm not calling anybody a liar. I'm just telling you are we going to say there's no race or racial problem in this country ever? That's not I know a CRT and there and nobody's teaching the theory. Okay. The deconstructionist, you know, Marxist I still stand by. I still stand by the fact incorporated. Yes. I I believe the head department nonperson and uh it wasn't any CRT CRT described. So let's move on to C. So C what I've proposed is what KSB initially put out to
133us without any additional changes which most of the school districts across our state adopted without any changes and all of the school districts in our region adopted without any changes. That is what I'm proposing that we go back to. It's the original without any changes that Katie is being proposed to us. That is what I'm going to bring up um an issue that popped out on yours that I wondered about on the review committee. You have one student. Mhm. If that book was being challenged, the one that was read just held up, what student are we put on? I mean, are we being led by the children now? Are we going to pick a a kindergartener to be on that review committee to see if that's appropriate? Are we going to pick a Are we
134talking about a high school student or why is the student on the committee? So, I can see where that information would be valuable, especially if the student was not part of the challenge. If the student had never seen the material before and the student with their parent potentially if their parent agreed to read the book together and get that student's opinion of what they just received, I can see that being valuable information. Are we talking about this the age of the student that it was written for? I would assume. No, that would actually have to be put in there just but I assume you know 5year-old 5year-old book. I'm not suggesting anything ad suggesting to I would suggest that this has been going on long enough and I agree with Los that it just needs
135to go back to the original form and if there is a vote like that then let's bring it forward. Let's do what we need to do to make sure it's where it needs to be. I'm just gonna say and I don't know if anyone really remembers how this all started but it was because of the fire series and the pornography and sexual abuse this policy started and that is exactly why we went through that six week committee we started yes meeting oh absolutely was Mr. Christ appointed me to be on that committee and it was because of those fire books that were said that everyone were read before it was ever put on the shelf to find out no they weren't. Some were read at the bookstore the rest were ordered online sight and see
136that is exactly what brought us here today. Okay. I'd like to make a motion to adopt policy IMC as presented. I second. Vote. All in favor three. Let's move on. [Music] This will go back to the original prior to the Okay. I thought it was supposed to go the original prior. Yep. 13 lines of communication protocol. Dr. Adams, do you want me to speak to that? Yeah. I guess you can hear me. Can you make him louder? Just a second. And if not, Amy, you're certainly probably ready to talk about it. I just was there to kind of provide some context and background. So, go ahead. Okay. Is this better? We can hear you. Yeah. Okay. Great. All right. So, there should be a PDF in front of you that we intend to put on
137the website, social media, and wherever else Mr. Potter is able to make that available for both internal as well as external stakeholders. I believe there is four of you in the room that attended the KASB boardsmanship training. If I'm not mistaken, that was two Saturdays ago. Now, that came up as one of the key concepts as it relates to stakeholder communication. So while those rows don't represent everything that happens in the district, they are broader categories if you will uh that help us as we work to answer questions and direct the patron or staff members to be appropriate first party all the primary believe that we're resolve issues at the lowest level possible. So I'm just going to pick on an example. Let's say we have a patron that is concerned about a facility issue.
138Say you have a rotating wall block that has fallen into the pioneer career center. Well, it's great that they are making you aware as a board member. The expectation is not that you as a board member want to make sure that that gets restored. So, this helps you to direct that patron or person back to the appropriate party. In this case, I believe it was starting principle, the unless you're dedicated in that situation. So again, uh I just want to reinforce the idea here to help our our individuals that are reporting issues, have concerns, questions, or otherwise to have the ability to still communicate with us, but also have a development. So just in case you weren't able to hear uh from your KS two weeks ago, um we've had similar documents like this. This
139document will be located throughout our website at multiple links whether that's uh the district, the families and so this is a guide for anyone whether they're a parent, a guardian, a community member who to contact and the levels always always hoping that we can start at the lowest level going and then working your way if you don't get the answer that you need or need additional assistance you then go to level two and so forth. So any questions? Nope. It's just it's information only. Okay. Item 14, teaching plan highlight. Yeah. So Jake's here to uh present on some information with regards to the website. So this is the part of the meeting where we show you something new on the strategic dashboard as it relates to our new strategic and boys intended us a highlight
140remembering our focus areas are team and learning staffing personnel finance that good answer now I have to start Yes. Staff personnel and operations, family and community involvement, student engagement and support services. So my is family community involvement. And I will tell you what I'm going to show you tonight. We've never actually reported it out in this way. So I think it's going to be more beneficial when we look at this again in six months. So what you're going to see is some of our website analytics and social media reporting. And the time period is from July through December 30th. So basically first and second quarter. So as a standalone I'm gonna say that um there's some interesting backwoods here, but again I think they'll be more interesting when we have another six-month body of compare
141it to. So these are this is our our website usd453.org. Um some fun facts I guess is um average time on the site is 39 seconds. That could mean that it's one of our parents that actually knows what they're looking for. Scrolls 33 seconds in and out. Um just over my eyes are terrible. So over 250,000 or so page views in the course of that six months. And user engagement is when we were looking at more than just the home screen. So some kind of a click action. I think that's like around 180,000 there. Second one is if you've noticed within the last six months we have a chat bot that shows up on the main page of the website and from there you can see that in that six-month period we've had over a
142thousand questions. So will be beneficial for me moving forward is these spikes are times in the year. So this is right around the first week of school which makes sense because learning new routines maybe your kids in a new building those situations. and I have a a backup report that actually goes through each of the questions that are asked so we can figure out if we're doing a good enough job of putting information out there. So, for example, um school hours shows up a lot. Clearly, that means that we need to put that out there more because that's what what people are looking for. And then that's the peak first week of the school year. We get a little bit more action as the school year goes on. Um but this is good in terms
143of 97% of the questions were able to be answered by the chatbot. So those beforehand were questions that came to my inbox. So that's very much appreciated. I have used this and it was very nice. I was like, man, how are you on so much? Because I did not realize that it was AI answering me. No, sometimes it's me. Sometimes it's me. Um, a couple are looking at our Facebook engagement. Um, we track our response rate and please know that that means if somebody messages, like if you message me, I message back and then you say thank you again. And if I don't continue that conversation, that's going to show up as a non 100% response rate. We obviously have an uptick in spam. So, we're not responding to those messages as well. And I
144will say lots of times as soon as the the winter snowflakes start to fall, we do get messages from students saying, "Are we going to have school tomorrow?" They don't get to all this as well. Are you going to start deleting some of that, Sam? As best we can. As best we can teach your church, as best we can. Um, response rate. I always try to get a response back within 24 hours. I feel like we do really good here and that we're under four hours in response time. That's an average. Um, a little bit more I would say in the weeds. We'll continue to track over a six-month period what some of our most popular posts are and that will help to inform the kinds of things that we put on our social media.
145And then I'm going to adjust this graphic. Um, the top line of what you see is our board meeting views and all this is funneled to our YouTube channel. The bottom line is what we just started to shoot was the pre the superintendent's school community updates. This number though just tracks the YouTube news. Dr. Adams updates actually get way more action when we post them to Facebook. So I'm going to come back and again it's interesting to look at some of this stuff or this high um was what we were talking about with weather protocols. So the type of information that we're going to be putting out um that's something we'll look at on a on an annual basis moving forward. But I'm telling you that without the strategic plan, without Mr. Bsteiner's dashboard. Um,
146this gives us a different level of reporting than we've had previously. Not right now. 15 super acting. So, a couple things that Dr. Adams asked me to kind of update you on. We've had a lengthy discussion about it is the 4day school week. So, just kind of tell you where we're at. Um, I am chairing on addicts the committee. Um, and as Dr. Adams shared with you, we're looking at everything. This was one of those items if you recall he shared. And so, we have a committee um that has been meeting weekly. We've met seven times uh for an hour uh along with some subcommittees. I know uh Mr. Kesler is my administrator on our committee and so he has met with the administration all the administrators tonight at our DLD. The entire hour was
147dedicated to the 4-day school week. Um we have surveyed our staff as we shared that the results to the board. Um, and so now we're in the process, our next steps, our timeline is to survey our parents. And so that will happen actually February 22nd. Prior to sending out the survey, Dr. Adams on his weekly video, we'll kind of explain a little bit of why we're looking at a 4-day school week. So that and then also to tell parents to look for the email and then we hope to survey all of our parents um with some supporting documents that would show you what a coordinate that Monday would appear to be if your student participated in the fifth day that Monday as far as the extended learning opportunities. So what can you expect from this
148part of the board? uh the committee it's not going to be any slum it will be committee members myself will present our findings what we've what we have shared and learned and we'll do that on March uh 4th and at that time we would ask for an action item from you as to direction what the board wants us to do um again as stated by Mr. Kesler and I know Mr. or Dr. attitude that it's a board decision whether or not you want us to continue to pursue that or you're like no we're not interested and then we'll we'll stop. Okay. So that's where we're at. There'll be a presentation at the March. So that's an update on the 4day uh school. Any questions on that? Any question on the survey that went out to
149our staff? Is it yes or no or is there a May year? So on the survey that went out to the staff, there was men decided or uh the other category was um I'm sorry, no preference, sorry. Um and based off of that information in the survey that we shared with you, the results staff were in favor of it. Um and so that made us okay, let's keep going. So now the next thing we don't have staff is we can't do it. So now we have staff, we have buy in, but we believe the majority of our staff are interested in it. Now it's time to give input from our families and we receive that. Yes, we put that in the I got two people. Sorry. Go ahead. We also received your comments. Yes. Yeah,
150that was a little confusing to me because it was um you know against them in favor of it and I went through all those comments and it seemed like that. So those were the ones who because you could fill it out based off of the questions and what your type was. Um, so to your question, uh, we will survey our parents, but with parents, uh, we really need we can't have you be undecided. So, it's either yes or no. Um, we're going to do it the same way we did before. We're going to survey all of our parents and it's going to go out February 22nd and it's going to be very similar to the staff um survey but it's going to be uh tailored for our parents with regards to that uh Monday if
151they would be interested in the extended learning what they see as benefits, what they see as uh cons or concerns and then we'll provide you with that feedback just as we did for the staff. Um, so that's kind of what to look forward to as far as that March presentation. What can we do to soothe some of these parents? I have a writing to read a newspaper where it pretty much said that you were looking to do this and then the comment is we understand it can cause hardship for families. Um, you know, you can bring your kids to the school that day. We don't know what we're going to do with them. And that kind of just the way that's printed in the paper like that commentary they're like so drop at school on
152a day that teachers aren't there but I'm just saying that put out a really negative I can't speak to the article but what I can say is more times you have to report. No I mean I can't speak to why they what the comment was or whatever on the times but what I can tell you is Dr. Adams has been very adamant in our uh responsibility as a committee and with our administration that we would have enrichment activities for every student to participate if they wanted to. So it's similar think of it as summer school. Summer school is extended learning and it's open for anyone and everyone to participate but parents not all parents choose to participate. So, it's very similar to that, but we will make sure that we have opportunities for all of
153our students whether they choose to participate or not. That'll be at the discretion of the parents. But we will do everything that we can prior to sending out the survey to end your point, Miss Murphy, to provide them with as much information that we possibly can so they can make the decision that they feel best for them. Okay. Um, so when you're talking about the enrichment activities, kind of like summer school, um, so this was supposed to be more of a planning period for educators without students, but now we're going to have educators with students in going to be in charge of their regimen. So we're working on all of those pieces and that's what we're going to be presenting to you at the March 4th hire. It's a combination of current staff, substitutes, people
154that are um there is the potential of additional staff um that would just be working that Monday. It's similar to summer school. We have teachers that work summer school. We have community members that work summer school. We have college kids that work summer school. Um there's lots of opportunities. uh we're we're actually pursuing every possible um but the plan would be teachers are doing teacher readiness and then in our large spaces our collab spaces type things we would have student activities and it would vary it would be different at the high school versus an elementary what you're looking at yeah but we hope to answer all those questions that is our and that would be included in with the Earl and we'll have every level configuration. Yes, ma'am. So, that is the 48 week update.
155Oh, I'm sorry. I apologize. One of the questions I got from staff was um why are they calling it a 4 day work weekly more than 4 days? It's a it's not a 4 day work week. It's a 4 day school week is what we're calling it. It's a 4 day school week. It's not It is not a 4-day work week. Yes. And we've tried to clarify that and I feel like we have with our staff. Um, but now I can say it openly so everybody can hear it. It is a 4-day school week. Staff are still working 5 days. Teachers are still working. This is their contract. They're fulfilling their obligation as will all of our classified. They'll fulfill their obligation. There will be no loss of wages um for any of our staff.
156So earlier I was asking if you were following like the detailed model that independence did. We are what model are you following? We're actually creating the Leathermore POC453 model that's best for us. We're we're taking pieces of others looking at everybody and we're fitting it for what we have and also fit in for our community. We have lots of community resources and others don't and vice versa. So, we're going to fit it for what works best for us and our families. The reason I ask is because if we're going to say look at this over here, look how great this is. Look at how happy everyone is. we're not actually doing it the same way. You know, the details sometimes are what we think it's things are great. That's that was my thought process. Understood.
157The only other thing is we put out a message tonight to our families. Um Mr. Potter did there will be no school uh this Wednesday for our our staff and our students so they can celebrate uh our chiefs. Yes. So, we're excited about that. Um, and then it's time. Yeah. So, uh, that's all I have. Nice job. Item 16, executive session negotiation. How much time do they need? 15 minutes, please. We're going to go back into the right. This team lock. Mr. I move we go into executive session to discuss negotiations pursuant to the exception for employer employee negotiations under the Kansas media act that we return to open session in this room in 15 minutes at 8:59 and the board would like to invite Dr. Adams is he going to join us remotely? Uh
158yes. Okay. Dr. Adams, Amy Sloan, um Beth Maddox, and is our board attorney gonna have an attorney? Oh, okay. And Kate Gallon to the meeting. Okay, just reminder no cell phones executive session, no laptop. So, we had a motion listation. All favor. Mr. President, I move to go into executive session to discuss non-elected personnel pursuant to the exception under the Kansas Open Meetings Act in order to protect the privacy interests of the individuals to be discussed and that we return to open session in this room in 20 minutes. The board would like to invite Dr. Adams, Amy Sloan, and Kate Gallen into the meeting. Second 12, 13. Mr. President, I'd like to accept the staffing report as presented. Second motion to accept favor. Yep. Close the meeting. 9:22 at 9:22. 9:17 22 the time. What?
159What? No, you don't. She just said Oh. Call to work here. Looks like Okay, Danny Ro. Yes, Mr. Wilson, you here? We're having to redo the call. [Music] I said And then he said, "Oh yes, here okay. I would go ahead and ask Jake to come after you." I'm sorry. I saw where we're at is 21, a book challenge hearing. and Jay is going to kind of walk you through. As a reminder, policy if as was written um still has the steps of challenges for for any individual whether they're parent, guardian or community member. Challenge level one is meeting with the child's teacher and principal. Number two, if not happy with that result is meeting with the superintendent. Number three is community review committee. And number four will be this board here affirming or changing
160or supporting review committee findings. January 5th of this year, the review committee were award three books that were challenged. In this instance, the challenger appealed review committee findings. But to go over those, the three books were It feels good to me yourself, I am jazz, and brick. The review kit committee ask that I am jazz be placed in the counselor's office and both check out only no longer available to students. I see four books listed, Rick. Okay. Um the challenger will only challenge three books. It feels good to be yourself. The review committee also passed that that be placed in the counselor's office. and only restricted to parent checkout, no longer available to students. Rick by Alex Gino in this case was elementary. Review committee recommended that it be moved up to grades seven and
161eight. In this instance, the review committee went one step further and researched another title by that same author which was by by Alex George and Melissa is the name of that title. The review committee independently asked that that be treated the same as so that's why you see four original complainant only asked for three books to be to be challenged um because we haven't had one of these before serving in my role as leaison we informed both the challenger of the hearing tonight and also the review committee and they were under no obligation to be here or present or anything like that neither of them neither of the two parties appear so I brief you is the review committee report as you received it in January and with the knowledge that the challenger in this
162case is not like the results because she wants the titles remove all schools. That's her request. So at this time you guys take action on on this since we don't have a parent here. Uh, I would like to propose that we accept the review committee's proposal and that we um accept their recommendations. Second accept the calendar results challenge. on closing challenge is going to come back in regular session. Are you here? I am. Wilson here. Yep. Happy to. Um, so just as a reminder again, there is no school this Wednesday. The district is closed on February 13th. Uh, the district is closed February 19th in observance for President's Day. I'm sorry. Oh, well there you um the uh February uh 21st I want to remind you that that is uh Dr. Adams is having coffee
163with Hellen at the board office at 7 a.m. Again, that's February 21st. And then our next board meeting is March 4th. Uh back at the board office the end of the quarter is March 5th. We have parent teacher conferences coming up right around the corner. March 6th and 7th, there will be no school. And then followed by spring break um the 11th through the 15th and the district is closed district-wide from the 11th through the 15th. And then March 29th is an offworking day following. Thank you. AK on schedule three. Oh, that's good. So, first up for Mac Allen. Good evening. My is this is Mark. Sorry. Good evening. My name is M. Allen and I'm student at this school district. Tonight's board meeting has been a long one with many words exchanged between multiple
164board members. Your words as the faces of USD453 are important and I'm now going to hold you all accountable for the words that you have said to them. One board member stated the last character was a boy and a girl. I would like to ask how the board I would like to ask the board how does that work? How would you have a stable family unit for raising children? It's not the board's job nor the constituents to educate you. As a board member of the school district as diverse as USD453, you are responsible for educating yourself on all the types of students as well as the parents that you serve. The same board member then stated, "Can you tell me how a boy and a girl are not hurt? How a boy and a girl
165are the same? Education is your job, not mine." A different board member then stated, "Is this what we put our names on?" By becoming a school board member, you have put your name on me. A transgender student who is medically transitioned. Can you really believe yourself when you say I am mutilating my body? For your information, I feel just fine. You can have your own opinions and beliefs, but as a nonpartisan office holder, I find it deplorable that you have spoken in this way. We don't have to be opponents, but as the most visible transgender student in this district, I will hold you accountable for the harm that you caused to my community. The same board member stated, "We need to elevate our standards." Your elevation of standards systematically is systematically removing any representation for
166a federally protected class of people. As shown in document B, proposed changes to the IF policy, middle school program and classroom, middle school and classroom library. Item four, the federal protection can be found in the title 7 of civil rights act 1964 and title 9 in the education amendments of 1972. I ask you now, when is the last time any of you wrote a book? Who are you to decide what is art and what is not? The human life is incredibly complex and big surprise, our lives include sex. Not to mention, never mind. Not every mention of sex, sexuality, or gender is pornographic. To suggest so is inaccurate and very telling of your views on such subjects. During this board meeting, I have been reduced to being a drug, an ideology, and a mistake. I
167can assure you that I'm none of these things. I'm a student. I'm an athlete. I'm a performer. I'm a brother. I'm a son. And yes, I am transgender. But that does not make me any less human than the rest of you. Thank you. [Applause] Good evening. I know you all missed me last month when I was absent, so wanted to be sure and welcome Mrs. Overby to the board and Mrs. Wilson and returning members. Since November, I've encouraged this board to seek out counsel, which according to records that are very public, we spend a significant amount of money on. In doing so, uh, regarding the rampant porn that you believe is in our district, here are the legal criteria that any piece of art is judged by. These are three things that a work of
168art must be all three without fail to be considered pornographic. One, have a dominant theme in the work considered as a whole that appeals to prerent interest. two, be patently offensive because it goes beyond contemporary community standards. And three, be utterly without any redeeming social value. And again, I ask you to take that up with Robert when you talk about the books that we have and why many of these books will not meet this test. Second, much criticism has been given to the titers we don't have. Again, I ask you to remember that in several buildings, we have staff aids or paras or we're lucky some parent volunteers running our library. Their primary priority has been to get access to the most popular and requested titles that our kids are asking for. Ben Carson is
169not one of them. Second, outside of the high school, there are very few buildings in our district that have book budget for their libraries. They depend on the book sales and whatever fundraisers they use to purchase the books that they have. and Scholastic Books Elsa is limited to largely popular fiction um you know some non-fiction books there isn't a lot of option for them there and they have no budget to buy books with lastly regular weeding title analysis and evaluations cannot happen when we do not have libraries in our build or librarians in our buildings paras teachers aids and volunteer parents do not know how to run those kinds of reports they don't even know what they mean that's what you hire ire librarians to do. Mention of the Bible and other religious texts would
170lead the public to perhaps believe they are not present in our schools and that is emphatically false. I fight for every book to have a right on the shelf and I guarantee you we have the Bible. We have the Book of Mormon. We have the Bron on and on and on and they are in our elementary schools as well. I will continue to defend their right to stay on the shelves as I will continue to defend the right of all the books that you choose to challenge. Y'all have a good night. [Applause] [Music] Randy B. Tonight, board members complained that their personal views about policy if were being twisted to make them look biased or bigoted. Well, if during the same conversation those members comment that books about transgendered persons should not be in our
171libraries because those books will cause students to mutilate their bodies. All I can say is that your bias is showing [Applause] four board comments. So, um I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but I think people should be very cautious what they vote for, how they support it in public. um people are watching and then um making sure that we're very clear with who we are, especially because people vote for us. And so if someone wants to say they're a Christian, they're a Bible believing Christian, they go to churches that believe the Bible and they want to take stances that are completely against that. Um that's worth noting. And then on that point um I don't think that any lines have been blurred at all. But just to clarify that every
172single person I believe is creation of God and is beautiful and absolutely of high value. And that's why these issues are very important that we speak factually. um if you're cutting off the part of your body to look different um you know it is what it is. So, um I had told everyone that I committed to talking about our um academics every month. And what I noticed was that a lot of websites are outdated. Um, one of this shows us in the bottom of 50% for math and reading scores in the state of Kansas, which has roughly 200 school districts. Um, those statistics were from the 2122 school year. And so I haven't been able to hear back from them and see where they would bring us yet for the 2324 school year. I don't
173think it's ever um I haven't read anything that it would be better. And then in response to Mr. Carney, the ALA does have a recommended reading list which obviously is provided for anybody who wants to see it. And I think we've done quite a bit of discussion that our librarians are influenced um by the ALA as far as what books are purchased. [Music] Um, well, I'd like to go back to your first comment because I know it was directed towards me after you said that I thought you were a Christian, but I very much am a Christian and I believe my God has called me to love and not all my neighbors will look like me or be like me, but I'm to love them for the absolutely to mention our loving I'm glad to
174be here and welcome. Um, I want to congratulate the Raiders on being four-time national champions. Um, I was unable to attend the big celebration on Saturday due to a prior commitment by but by all accounts, it was quite the celebration. I hope to attend next year's celebration when our runners become five time national champions. Um on the IF policy decision, obviously I took um um a different side than what was decided, but it was decided and we go and I don't think that anyone sitting here um has bad intentions or doesn't care about people or love people where they're at. And unique, as I've said over and over again, is about balance. It's about balance. But we have a decision and we will go on. Um, lastly, I'd like to make a shameless plug for
175the Special Locus Basketball Tournament fundraiser uh taking place at the high school this coming Saturday. We have lots of our pioneers participating as Catholics, coaches, and volunteers. So come cheer on our athletes and be a part of something truly joyful. Go Pioneers. Um starts at Make the Point starts at 8:30 and then they'll be playing the games throughout usually runs till about 3. I want to piggyback what um Karen said about JTC. Uh it was a phenomenal banquet. I was sit three hours, great spaghetti, um you know, and when you can have a 5-year-old sitting there and still be pleasant and happy for the whole three hours participatory, you know, it's a really great event. Um wonderful guest speaker, General Ham. Um and um we could always take care with the board and the rest
176of the district remembering for sergeant words, not just fired up and click to click. Every moment that goes on is a click to a click. So you have your time watch. It's click to click. So your race doesn't stop. It starts and finishes with each click. As first sergeant says, your first click's the day you were born. the last clicks the day you die. We can click between matter. Um, hey, did you guys take a look at that uh gift block? There have been over $1,100 donated between hat, scarves, gloves knitted by uh volunteers for our students so they could stay warm and $800 in choir club uniforms in the Methodist church. Our community stands by us and supports us and we need to remember them. um as often as we try to remember everything
177else within the district. And uh everyone that is going to the parade, hey, have fun. Be careful. Don't drink. Don't do drugs. Don't drink. Do drugs. Drive. Um there are little kids there. So, please be aware because it can't be a stampede. So, enjoy the festivities, enjoy the um camaraderie, and um relish in the glow of success. But remember, the next day, whatever we're all doing, it's still time to get back to work again. Thank you. So, I did get to attend the the celebration, but it's one of those anytime we can um celebrate all of our really hardworking students and the extra miles and miles and extra miles that they go um to go to the level they did. It was really impressive that just what they can do and their perseverance. Um, along
178with that, good luck to all the drillers this weekend as they go out to Smith drilling or Smith Cotton rather for the next drill meet. I'm sure they'll bring home lots of hardware because that's what they do. It's always exciting to see how they go. Um, one of the things I wanted to say thank you is to all the boys and girls basketball teams, the cheerleaders, and the band for giving it their all every game night. Whether or not the games turn out the way you want them to, the fact that they're out there every time and doing their best, it's amazing. And as as a follow on to that, um I had a a member from another team come up to me and tell me how awesome our facilities are. So I really really
179really want to say thank you to all of our custodial staff for keeping us up to snuff because when you have visitors that tell you you have a great place, you get the thanks from the right places. Thanks to all our teachers and staff as always, you make us the best we are. So thank you. And thanks to Quest for Snacks. You guys are good. else. Um, I also was able to attend the JOTC banquet. I just want to as a as a board member, that is the highlight of of what we get to do. The stuff like tonight is hard and it's important, but being invited to help celebrate the student successes and the programs that we offer. Please, everybody, invite us. Um, we might not be able to attend because there's so many
180different successes, but please extend us an invitation. and we'd love to be there to cheer you on as well. Um, that's why I'm sure Thank you. Okay. I I kind of done that too. It's impressive. And the thing that I kind of dwelt on the whole time and I know a lot of people involved in that program realize that when I was in high school I went to Catholic school but the high school man years I remember boys but it was you and I think it's worse being taught by being but anyway and then the thing you know you can go online I I love computers and Google and all that jungle whatever you can find any kind of statistic you want out there about anything but the statistic that I like that I saw
181on the last page of course 11 times and I had my three-year-old third or eight grandson counted there's 573 kids in that novel so the thing about our our elementary I mean my my feeling I was talk about when we got in that pandemic stage and people were home. I think they absorb the mentality of okay just I think it's part of our absent people but uh the fact that we're struggling maybe we're struggling all over the country this is not just our problem it's a whole country problem and sad true but we just got to keep on track say half of our kids in high school are not I think we're doing something And that I think