001it is six o'clock good evening it's february 14th this is a regularly scheduled meeting of the board of education for usd 453 so we'll call roll call mr carney here mr goodman here miss murphy here mr powell here miss reed here ms wells here and i'm judy price please stand for the pledge of allegiance pledge of the allegiance states of america and the senior republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all please be seated [Music] dr rhodes the mission statement yes it's to prepare every student for success in every classroom every day okay thank you do we have a motion to accept the agenda or to adopt madam president uh i'm moved that we adopt uh the agenda as presented second i heard ms wells first sorry
002distraction that's fine um so we have a uh motion to accept the procedure to adopt the agenda i'm mr powell and second by mrs wells all of those in favor seven oh thank you all right dr ruth we have several recognitions yes our first one is miss liz and stein and the decca hello my name is maya waxbach i'm the president of deca as well as the senior manager of the businesses at lumberth high school um with me i have ella barry she is as well in deca and she's um was very important in writing our manual for our coffee shop i'm grace wilde wayhead and um she works in the print shop and she's an expert in our burger machine sam walker who is a junior and he is one of the managers for
003our school store and then bo d group yes yes um she's an international student and she's um part of deaf as well so this month is cte month and um we thought it'd be really really fitting to come and talk to you guys about the difference um about deca and our school-based enterprises because it's part of the pure technology education um so cte has many different fields in the following areas at love north high school in construction design digital and web communications manufacturing fashion apparel and interior design restaurant and event management hospitality and tourism marketing teaching and training early childhood development and services entrepreneurship and network systems and so just a quick statistic for you guys according to the ksce the graduation rate for students concentrating in the cte pathway in kansas is 99 um
004so becca is a ctso which is a career technology education student organization and deca prepares students to become emerging leaders and entrepreneurs as well as be college and career ready i want to tell you something about the boston trip in november we went with eight leaders of our deca team to boston we practiced professional communication problem solving and intern internship interviewing skills we had a chance to met other members of the deca um organization over the whole uh united states and also spain so that was pretty um interesting and um we learned a lot um we also had the chance to met businesses and colleges to discuss career internships and scholarships opportunities and as you know boston is a very historical city so we also got the chance to learn boston so we learned to
005take public um and learned about how kovit has affected the city of the hospitality and tourism industry and last week there was the eastern [Music] regionals at the johnson county community college this was the first face-to-face competition in two years so we had the chance to i had a live interview with a judge um there were 600 eastern kansas students competing and we have eight top placers with three champions so we're really proud of them and we're proud of all the competitors um so on february 28th we will be doing our state competition it is virtual this year so it's drawn out through a few couple weeks but on march 10th is when we um know who has qualified to go to nationals so for state we have like two rounds of competition the first
006round is a video submission of us doing our interviews and then we have a live um a competition with the judge via zoom and then after state we know who qualifies we get to go to nationals in atlanta georgia this year we're super grateful that it was in person um for nationals and while we're in georgia um atlanta georgia we will be doing deca event at coca-cola world the georgia aquarium as well as get a chance to go to the uh the national center of civil and human rights cnn as well as the chick-fil-a headquarters all right um i'm here to talk about uh pete's place uh the school store and uh so the day-to-day operations those mainly include uh we're open every other day uh specifically even days uh during lunch time and we're
007also open during varsity uh football and basketball games and other weekend sporting events and that's where we uh mainly get most of our profits uh and staffing uh staffing has mainly been based on students in the marketing two class uh that's what we're on uh and this year staffing has expanded we've hired employees to work during advisory for all three of the businesses and there's an incentive program where students can earn credits for each shift worked which can be spent on a drink of pioneer perk or a t-shirt at pete's place i think that's a really good incentive program and makes students want to work a lot and online ordering we've actually done some online ordering and online shipping just last week we we shipped a few t-shirts to a lady that graduated from leavenworth
008high school uh 65 years ago in california which is really cool uh and we're planning to do more of that and get into the online ordering business uh and for senior shirts uh if if you click on this link on our web on our presentation uh it goes to our website where we posted all of our senior shirts uh it's 16 different designs four different designs and four different uh like a hoodie a crew neck a t-shirt and a long-sleeve t-shirt uh so 16 different options for senior shirts which i'm really proud of okay so pete's print shop um pete's print shop has been oh open like a sauce opening since 2018 um but we are the primary supplier of apparel and accessories for pete's place um and then we also do a parallel accessories
009for sports teams like powerlifting and then we just got an order for tennis as well as softball so we do everything from designing ordering the t-shirts manufacturing the t-shirts delivering it collecting money creating invoices so on and so forth we have also done um stuff for tsa nhs and trio and as well in the presentation you can see at the top there is um deca students wearing like sesame street themed shirts um we that was our theme for the trunk or treat and we actually made all those shirts within the lab which is pretty cool um as well as we've done um apparel and accessories for community members like wedding bags as well as custom apparel for staff and some parents have asked for custom stuff for their seniors so grace will help me kind
010of just show off some of the other stuff that we've manufactured for the school store and so grace do you want to talk okay um so the first thing is we have our stadium seat we bought the stadium seats from sam's without the lv and then we used vinyl in our heat press and we put the lv on it so um that's how we also do some of our stuff is we like buy blanks and then just customize it with lv so we also have that pioneer crewneck that has glitter on it for moms and grandmas and stuff [Music] yeah teachers anyone grace is holding up right now we just did this today it is a polo for tsa um we embroidered it with their lego with the pete's head logo and then the word
011tsa [Music] and then the cool thing is this year we've really gotten in with our sublimation so we've made muds cups water bottles anything from like just teacher related or lv related as well in the middle is we got a new order um miss anseline is having her um high school reunion so we are doing apparel and accessories for that reunion so you can see this line of south um mug right there so those are other like community stuff apparel accessories that we can make oh yeah um that's also a wedding bag that we did for a former counselor at leavenworth nice and then lastly we have a few different hoodies that's our a hoodie that's a hoodie that we have in the school store we put the words pioneer and the lhs on it
012we have an embroidered fur vest which is really cute and it's really warm too so you guys and then lastly we have a quarter zip um with the like pete's head on and it says lp you know that's how van wyk got started okay so in the print shop we're open every day for students to work um so students can make items for the school store um using like the embroidery machine or the heat presses or the sublimation machines or they can create new designs for the apparel um and the accessories and also just overall project management and our goals for the end of the year are to finalize our logo and also to develop a training manual and prepare for the grand opening [Music] um operations at pioneer perk which is the coffee shop
013that sells um like um frappes coffees and smoothies um consists of we're open mostly on odd days but we have also been open during varsity sporting events school dances and most recently um wrestling tournaments um staffing at pioneer perk consists of mostly students from across the school and we're working to get more students trained um additionally students can earn credits for items at the coffee shop or store just like at pete's place um some of our goals for the end of the year is to finalize a logo prepare for a grand opening create accessories to sell at pioneer perk as well as design a refillable cup that allows students to use that with for a discount um one of our key employees is from the special educations program we are hoping to create a stronger
014working relationship with the special education department to train more employees from that area tomorrow we continue to sport love week um which stands for love unity um and vision um and we'll be working with students from one of the special education classes and teaching them how to make hot drinks for our staff members so last week we heard from daca inc located in western virginia that all three of our school-based enterprises got gold certification which is the highest certification that you can get within deca for a school-based enterprise um so this means that the student managers that worked on this manual have qualified to go to atlanta this year for nationals and this year our presentation will be focused on human resource which we are very excited about since this is the area of the
015business that we have been focused on this year um like how we stated earlier with hiring new employees that aren't just in the marketing 2 class um and then a few of us are just going to kind of talk about how deca and working in the school-based enterprises has helped us improve most of us are seniors besides i am right here um so not only has daca but working with the sbe has given me the chance to grow as a leader um but as well as giving me real world experiences on how to run a business i have learned how to create a website um make invoices and communicating with customers um on you know wanting a shirt or a parallel accessories it has also given me the chance to improve my verbal and written
016communication um and as well as be able to just delegate tasks because we have a lot of stuff that gets done that needs to get done in the print shop and i've learned that i just can't do it all by myself and so i learned to not only delegate those tests but communicate to the employees on how to do certain tasks the right way as well as working in the print shop has allowed me to stay active when in my school and just given me the motivation to um to stay at school because working in the print shop is really fun um so i will let sam talk about how um how dennis happened um well deca has really been great for me uh this is actually my first year here uh at deca and
017i i really enjoyed it i i joined it uh right before semester two ended uh and i just i've had a blast i've i've been able to become a better test taker because that deck of competitions you know you take tests uh and i've gotten better at doing that and uh in the sbes i've i've gotten better at interacting with my fellow employees uh and my boss miss anderson you know just learning the ins and outs of business i think that's a really important skill that i'm learning right now and i still got another year to go so i'm really excited and helpful um before i came here to america i was at a school in in the netherlands and we all had to decide what we were going to do and i had no
018no clue so i went on an exchange here and deca helped me to get an interest in something and it provided me to um to be oh sorry um i don't get on the word um but it's deca is great for me to learn about business and what what it takes to to start a business um so i because of deca i have a plan for the future and i just applied for the international business uh college in amsterdam so i'm really grateful for miss einstein and that she want to help me with this and it's just already a great year for me so i'm really looking forward to what that guy's gonna provide for me this this year this end of the year so thank you um so i also just joined deca this
019year um honestly i was really hesitant about it because i thought that i was gonna hate it or that i was gonna be too scared to actually attend and compete but i've actually had like the most fun ever it's one of my favorite activities that i'm involved in at the school um and it's i feel like it's just given me a lot of confidence um because i always thought that i wasn't good at test taking i wasn't good at interviews but i've only participated in one in-person competition so far and i placed first in my event so um i it's kind of proved me wrong about what i thought about myself and miss ansin always says this but it's really true that everybody who like joins deca especially like their senior year they wish they
020joined sooner and that's just the truth because i do wish i joined sooner deca has been a great experience for me as well um i moved to living with my junior year and i joined that year um with like miss answering's guidance and it was a lot of fun right off the beginning and it gave me an opportunity to get like integrated into my community more um also i can already see like immediate changes in like interview skills communication skills um just a few years ago i was in like an interview and they asked me like a really simple question about myself and i was like i don't know and then like going through deca and doing these interviews and competitions it's really taught me to like think on my feet and just be confident
021what i'm saying um and really help me with those skills um so we would like to thank the board for listening to us and um do you guys have any questions for us you all had great smiles up there oh thank you guys [Applause] university in rhode island well done she got additional money you know this is such a wonderful thing to have come before the board you know all too often we're trying to solve problems and then we get to see great successes that's coming out of our school district so and my hands off hats off to every one of you and i'm so thankful that you've taken this opportunity but there's always somebody behind the curtain so uh miss andstein if you could come up here i would appreciate it just a little
022background while she's coming up here this is just another of our amazing teachers that we have in our school district that all too often are not as often recognized as they should be she has kind of a storied past you know she was a business executive you know in a major corporation retired and decided to um that she wanted to just help out in the schools you know that story sound familiar and uh before you uh before you knew it she wanted to do more and she went on to become a teacher in a number of our career and technical education classes and sponsored for deca now this is it's this makes it your second or your your third job but you can see the fruits of the labor and so i just you know
023if i could just say a note to the community there's a whole bunch of you out there that could follow liz's example and our children desperately need that so you know if liz can do it and leave it you know she can challenge others to do it and with that i want to read this certificate of recognition and it's it's a small thing for the work that you've done for our kids uh leavenworth high school deca and miss liz ansting for demonstrated school-based enterprise knowledge and mastery in the areas of marketing finance hospitality management and outstanding achievements in local state and national competition awarded on this 14th day of february 2022 ms judy price board of education president dr roth superintendent of schools these students do deserve the best thank you ms sandstein dr so
024one of the things that have been kind of polarizing communities across the nation is masks and we have uh two individuals that have spent many times many many hours uh donate donating their time and creating mass for our kids and they did this on their own endeavors and we could not thank them enough and so we have miss gina new and miss patty oatney that we want to recognize the scene [Applause] miss new i have a certificate for you i understand this oatney's not able to be with us tonight okay all right so um for high levels of generosity and countless hours of volunteer efforts to support leavenworth students and our school community during the pandemic we'd like to give you the certificate on the 14th of february thank you so thank you so much
025for everything you've done the masks are wonderful quality and they're beautiful you can tell each one is made with love so i appreciate it very much absolutely over over 10 500 masks have been made so and donated generously thank you very much we really appreciate it hmm thank you ms new all right item number three for the building report you want to do the yes miss born from our early childhood center and miss dye mates so i did not know how we're gonna follow your you guys did amazing good job kiddos so i am stephanie bourne and i am the principal at earl lawson early education center and with me tonight is kelsey steins who is our assistant principal um so tonight we're going to start by talking just about a few of the pillars
026of foundation our vision for this school at the early education center we've got about five pillars that we're really basing everything on here at the um at lawson so balanced literacy play-based learning service learning inclusion and co-teaching and then building community resources and stakeholder partnerships we're going to talk to you a little bit about each one of those tonight and of course our school motto preparing every student for success in every classroom every day but at the early education center we're trying to do that through play so that's really our motto so just at the beginning of this year our first couple of weeks we had some hiccups i will tell you as a staff one of the only reasons we were able to get through those first couple of weeks with the limited amount
027of staff we had was from the people in this room um everybody over on this side of the room was in our building every single day doing lunch for our kids opening milks serving trays dr rose and both amy were in our dismissal doing traffic control getting kids in their cars and we had to do that because of the limited staff that we had at the beginning of the year so thank you so much to district office because that was amazing and one of the huge huge ways that our staff has really felt supported this year by district office one of the ways that we're hoping to combat that for next year is starting a hybrid schedule so this year we kind of projected around 250 kids in our school we currently have 395 so
028we wound up getting a lot more kids than we were prepared for and so next year to kind of help that we're looking at starting with only half of our kids at the beginning of the year and alternating days similar to what we did when we went hybrid with remote we're doing this um and so that we can help train our staff help train our kiddos and our families for an easier and smoother transition into the beginning of the year than we had this year um one of the things that we have done this year is the extended learning calendar with the extended learning calendar our calendar is going all the way till june 28th and then we have those intercession grades throughout we have had some really good positive feedback from parents we've also
029had that feedback about child care and things like that one of the things that we have really quickly noticed about our extended learning calendar is through our benchmark assessments that we've taken so far we've noticed that we passed some curricular alignment issues and so now we know to go into next year we're going to have to redesign some of our curricular alignment so that when our kids are taking that benchmark assessment we've actually already taught what it is it's off the assessment this year for that second benchmark we didn't have that um and then we ran those intercession camps during those intercession times to help parents who weren't able to get child care who weren't able to get daycare um and so in both of our session camps we had about 40 students in attendance
030in our october session and right now we have 60 students signed up for our march session so looking at our foundations of the building we're going to start with balanced literacy and play-based learning um as we've seen these two really go hand in hand so here are some examples of things you might see as you are walking through our building so our building was designed so that learning can happen anywhere so in the top left corner um in our main hallway we created an eye spywall so you might see a teacher during transition or a teacher um take a small group of kiddos out to this hallway and play the i spy game where they are specifically identifying letters they can also extend that and they can talk about letter sounds in the next picture
031we have some students who created a zoo this happened during their interest area time during interest areas um this allows students to have choice and we know that when students have choice their learning is a lot more meaningful so these students designed a zoo they took the phonic skills that they knew and they labeled it so they talk about the animals that are in the zoo the exit the interest and they even named it down in the bottom left corner this is a qr code from seesaw so we started using seesaw um as a learning tool but also parent communication so one thing we ran into was because we are play based we're not sending home those worksheets all the time and so parents we're kind of not really knowing what we were doing every
032single day and so seesaw has allowed us to connect with our parents throughout the day so students complete a task parents have it on demand they can comment they can like it they can interact with their kiddos while they're at school so this video on the bottom um this is chatterkids so childhood is an app that we have on our ipads and it's really neat because it's a voice over and so it makes learning super fun for kiddos so this student um took a phonic skill that he was learning and then created a chatter pics so that other students can learn from him i know a secret that can help me read if you put ch together it makes ch and also it sounds like a choo-choo train this is also a great example of
033multi-multi-modal learning and in the last picture on the right is an example of a literate rich environment so a literate rich environment demonstrates how literacy is useful in everyday life and it's used to enhance um print phonological awareness and vocabulary not to mention kids love to see their work and their writing up in their learning environment another one of our foundations is service learning um so we have partnered with uncover kc they are a non-profit organization um in the kansas city area and basically they are our middleman for community service um at the early learning center this year all pre-k and k students have the opportunity to participate in service learning each month throughout these service learning projects we are really trying to teach our kids empathy so it's not about the product at the
034end it's about the process and the empathy um that we're trying to instill in our students so that then they can go out into their community um we'll play a video from our december service learning project [Music] oh [Music] uh [Music] so from the month of december our students participated in baking and decorating cookies this is a really neat experience because our fibula has intentional teaching experiences and baking sugar cookies was fun with them so students were able to follow their recipes do share writing activities and make cookies with their classmates um we took them to the local hospital the police department and the fire department and we actually got a thank you back from one of them and it decided how grateful they were that they were being thought of during that time of
035year and for this month for the month of february um our topic is food insecurity which directly aligns with our grocery store study in kindergarten and so our kiddos made their own food pantry with boxes and they painted and designed them and so as students are bringing in those non-perishable items for donations um and then they're taking that literacy piece that they know and on the note cards they're starting to label what they brought in kind of like what you would see at the grocery store so that's um our service learning project for february so one of the other pillars that we have is building community resources and stakeholder partnerships um one of the teams that we have been a part of this year is called the kindergarten transition team and this is a team
036made up of different early educators from around london county we've got people from fort on there most all of our private schools in the north are represented on our transition team myself mrs batson one of our kindergartner teachers and then we also have kisha wagner who is um in charge of our parents teachers program um which has been really nice because for those of you who don't know our parents and seizures program is a blue ribbon program for the state of kansas so having them on that kindergarten transition team has been really really impactful um one of the things that we are doing as a kindergarten transition team is we wrote a grant to the state of kansas for some professional development for our daycares in leavenworth so that they can have some of the
037same curricular resources that we have here so that way we're preparing those kids in daycare so when they come to us they've already seen some of the curriculum and they're already ready for some of those things moving forward um one of the other good things about that is as part of the grant wrote we are going to do a community-wide kindergarten roundup so it doesn't matter if you are wanting to attend a public um institution like us or if you want to go to private school we're going to do it completely city-wide so that everyone has an opportunity to see what education resources we have in our in our city um another way that we've been building community resources and partnerships is we had ms murphy who was collecting um items from one of her
038handgun habits and she collected so many um clothing items for our school it was phenomenal and it completely filled our nurses pantry storage with a whole variety of different clothes that we need for those littles to often have accidents and stuff um so we're very grateful for that partnership i believe that mr vanek talked to you guys last sweet month about the partnership that we've created with some of the high school students and we had high school students who were being paid to come work at the early education center at the beginning of the year to help us with our writing long dismissal every day um so that was a huge partnership it was very beneficial for both the high school students and us at the early education center one of the other partnerships that
039we are really working hard with is working with our neti heart and education students and they are coming over for um job coaching and so we have a student from third avenue who's coming over with their hair every day doing some job coaching and we also have some quest 18 to 21 students who are coming over to get everyday life job skills with us in the building before they go out into the community one of the last things i want to talk to you about is our huge push for inclusion and co-teaching this is the very first year in leavenworth that we have ever had our preschool classes in our early childhood special education classes together in one class um it's never happened before it's happened in a lot of districts across the state and
040we were one of the last districts to kind of jump on board with this but the amount of huge successes we're seeing for with our kids especially with limited speech has been amazing when they're in classes with kids who are developingly on track with um they are learning at faster rates and we've actually already dismissed some students from ieps already because of our inclusion classrooms along with that we have one of the best speech-language pathologist team in the district marty mott who is one of our speech pathologists wrote a grant through the foundation for communication boards and so in that top left hand corner you'll see an example and these are going to go into every gross motor room we have as well as our outdoor playroom and um our outside playground and then she's
041actually uh she had a little extra money through the foundation so she's going to use that to create communication boards for our vocabulary for each of our studies in the classrooms too so that way teachers can have that connection the reason for these communication boards is we have a lot of non-verbal students in our school and we want to give them the opportunity to communicate with everyone just like our students who are more horrible right underneath that and we'll pass out a couple of examples um we have these communication buttons and we have been partnering up with the leavenworth technology department and our slp to come up with um they're called communication buttons and so what they are is we pick core words and then our slp will teach a child with limited um visibility
042what the core word means based upon the item and if you notice there's also braille on there too so this is some of those beginning steps that we're trying to think outside the box to meet all of our kids needs and especially our kids with limited visibility because some of these communication devices are very expensive if we wanted to go out and purchase them but we've got the resources here in our district to 3d print them so why aren't we doing that for our kids um so that has been a huge partnership for us this year um and then this last thing is kind of the coolest one um so over here in the bottom right hand corner um we have it's kind of a lift wheelchair and so it's for our kiddos who are
043in wheelchairs who maybe can't move their wheelchair around themselves and what this is is we're partnering with benedictine college and they are going to create a platform of sorts for us so that way our kids can get up onto that platform and it has an electronic piece so they can get around the entire school without having to will themselves or be healed by someone else so it is really going to help our youngest learners was just fitting in and feeling part of everything else which was the entire design of our building is making our really as inclusive to all learners as possible so that is it for us tonight what questions do you have for us when's the next play day every day you can come play the playground anytime just be careful the slides
044are fast they are nice how does the kindergarten transition team start um so it actually started um with the earlier question mistake from amanda peterson and it was started with the pat groups and a lot of early childhood and they were asking us to be a part of it as a public school institution and then we were able to get more people involved so which is evolving every time we just added this is back into the group this past month and we're trying to add more people um right now we have someone from the state who is giving us direct health and input of how we really get our early education stronger so we can get earlier interventions for our kids okay great and then how you had mentioned the staffing struggles at the beginning
045of the school year are you still experiencing staffing struggles just like everywhere else absolutely um currently we're about six positions short um but we are we have been phenomenal at pitching in we have the best teachers i've ever worked with um and there are still times where we see district office coming in to help every once in a while too so the support that we've received this year has been the best in all the 12 years i've ever worked for the one more school district and so the the building is brand new um how is it working so far like the the concept when it was designed and we were planning for everything the pandemic wasn't even a thought and so everything is out in the open together and so how are you making that
046work so um it has been we've learned a lot one of the main things that we learned was from lunches uh the way that lunches were designed in the original building it was designed for family style eating um allowed us to really happy and we stopped eating yet so we were we had to move our kids into the ship to get them spread out a little more but that is a transition that we are looking to go back to that family style before the end of the year question when you have them spread out in the gym are you just already having the uh trays preset for them and then they take them over or so okay cafeteria style and okay style setup and the kids will help serve themselves okay thank you yeah in
047your kindergarten transition team i found a really interesting concept you talked about sharing you know the resources across the community how do you actually see that playing out i mean because i think it is very important particularly for these early learners that everywhere they go the community is moving one direction let's get these kids literate get them exposed get them disciplined so how do you see that transition team influencing the rest of the community yeah um so i think some of the work that they're trying to do in daycare has been really pivotal um one of the things that the grant also did was it gave professional development to all of our daycare providers on that asq assessment that every kindergartner has to take from the state so we're hoping to create a bank of
048those asq's so if i take it in daycare that score is going to follow me free kate now i'm going to appreciate and see how they were in daycare and then when i went to kindergarten that krxe just gives you the last few years of sports too so it'll just help grow that bank of how we can better help serve our kids after knowing those sports the past three years thank you yeah last question yeah when these were designed what is the purpose for the hole that goes through i think it's a placeholder so that way they can all um be strong together okay just taking them together very cool yeah thank you thank you great i do not see anyone from the rotc program so i will do my best to uh share with
049the board you have the information in your packet it is to daytona beach florida it's for the drill nationals this is something that's annual the board does do approval of this one of the things that um maybe the board could consider this evening would be for like trips that are annual like this that have been approved as long as they're following protocol then i can approve it and notify you within an fyi that they're being approved that way they wouldn't have to show up for this but if you would like for them to show up or continue to do it this way we would do it as well but you would still get the same information whether we approve it at the district level or it comes to the board i think it would be
050fine if it was just like a consent item like we still have all the information and we still it's good improving since they're going out so far but i mean this definitely gives me any information that i need my only concern is we're really looking at absenteeism and they're going to be gone a full week from school they uh yes is there no way to avoid that not with the schedule that um the nationals operate by but um we do have you know through basketball football we do have class other students that are missing time as well and so most of your students that are involved in activities such as this are very well organized within their classes to make sure they're not missing much work now we we do still have the chaperone levels
051yes appropriate levels yes yeah and i i like the idea of the consensus because then if we decide to pull it from the consent because there's a question we can do it instead of just automatically being approved that's a good idea yes yeah because i i do like to be able to see when our kids are going on a field trip and us be able to discuss it at least in some way so yep i think constant item is a great idea so i'd like to make a motion to improve their field trip second we have a motion then as [Music] make a motion to move all the uh annual events onto the consent agenda so it's all consolidated second okay that is clarification on that real quick please would this only be for like
052the jrotc or is that now going to encompass all of deca all the other ones okay i just wanted to make sure that way so um as mentioned we have emotion maintenance monkey and second amendment rules to move annual field trip requests to consent each other all of those in favor of thank you all right agenda is next is there anybody who wants to remove anything off the consent agenda i have a couple of questions for 5.6 so you want to pull it off yes 5.6 man president i move to approve the consent agenda with the removal of 5.6 to 6.1 or 6.0 second motion [Music] uh yes um is this team actually able to change or is it consistent throughout the whole time it's definitely able to be changed okay um but it's been
053consistent for the last eight years uh the only exception over the last eight years has been um when mr gullit was here he was the fourth member to the team okay um and when he retired uh we we just did the three okay um and and then the next question would be um if i can get my thought back out of my head here i'll shoot bear with me something with negotiations oh yeah so previously to the eight years and i've only been on this board for four i i know there's been talk that there's been school board members that have been participatory in the negotiations as part of the team um what was the reason that that was stopped i'd have to pass that to robert yeah that that's something that we should discuss
054and that was my next one we should talk about in executive sessions okay and that would be my next question if my questions came too we could go in executive session and answer that okay thank you anyone else have questions madam president i move that we accept item 6.1 this time the board appreciates patrons taking time to talk to us about your policies and procedures we set aside this time during board meetings to hear from the public your comments should be directed towards board policies or the procedures our administrators established to carry out those policies please understand that while board members will listen to and carefully consider all your comments board members will not respond to questions either verbally or through gestures for example raising hands in response to questions or will they engage in
055dialogue with you during the patron input time this is not an appropriate time or place for patrons to make comments of a personal nature about any district employee or student persons making comments which violate the privacy ranks of district employees will be asked to terminate their remarks if a patron or parent has a concern with one or more employees the board will refer that person to the appropriate employee or the superintendent if the board refers your concern to an administrator for investigation the board will hear about it in a future board meeting you can expect the superintendent or another district employee to make arrangements to meet you at the appropriate time thanks again for your time to discuss this district business with the board and the first scheduled person tonight is mr zech um mr
056zech you need to speak at the stadium please thank you very much board members for letting me speak tonight [Music] this book was read out loud in the sophomore english class i'm going to read you part of it now excuse me students because it's going to get x-rated most guys no matter what age get excited about curves in circles but not me don't get me wrong i like girls and their curves and i really like women in their courier curves i spend hours in the bathroom with a magazine that has 1 000 pictures of naked movie stars naked women plus right hand equals happy happy joy joy yep that's right i admit that i masturbate i'm proud of it i'm good at it i'm ambidextrous if there was a professional league i'd get drafted number
057one and make millions of dollars and maybe you're thinking well you really shouldn't be talking about masturbation in public although i'm going to talk about it because everybody does it and everybody likes it and and if god had wanted us to masturbate then god wouldn't have given us stones so i thank god for my thumbs but the thing is no matter how much time my thumbs and i spend with curve curves of imaginary women i'm much more in love with right angles of the build so that that book was read out loud and i'm trying to figure out i'm asking the board and the administration how is that preparing every student for success in the classroom and then i went to your strategic plan the board has and i ask myself it says this is
058for students we believe all students can learn and are entitled to equitable education which ensures quality nurtures self-esteem and allows students to reach their greatest potential i'm trying to figure out how this book has anything to do with that and then teaching and learning provide a comprehensive curriculum at all levels that aligns with with state and national standards i don't think this aligns with state and national standards and then with your strategic plan talks about staff we believe the effective schools have employees who have bodied the vision the mission of the school district and are committed to providing an equitable and quality education for all children kind of interesting your time is up i'm not sure how that happened mr zach your time is up i know mr secretary time is up please receive a
059memorial decline it is your responsibility administrators and teachers to help students maintain the highest morality we might not agree about this book we can agree that there are many other books that would accomplish this dick's district academic goals and they are not morally compromised [Applause] she's called the board to the right hey hmm thank you we're still broadcasting uh miss mcallister and ms mcallister make you aware you have three minutes all right thank you good evening my name is katie mcallister i am a building aide at david brewer elementary where my daughter attends first grade thank you for hearing my concerns tonight not only as a district employee but as a parent as well i'll do my best to be brief and not put anyone to sleep on january 13th i sent an email to
060the board asking for help in addition to the staffing issues i explained to the board my co-workers are not okay and quite frankly to date they're still not to my knowledge we as district employees were never asked what mitigation efforts would make us feel safest in the work environment we in which we report to every day as we grow the minds of this country's future i asked the board to come into my building to see firsthand the numerous challenges being faced at the time the omnicron variant was nowhere near peaking to date the only volunteer i've personally seen in my building is the only man that didn't get re-elected during the last meeting on the 24th it was mentioned that for the most part school has gone on as normal and teachers weren't feeling the
061angst of the last two years respectfully i strongly disagree and do not feel those words are an accurate representation of the majority of district employees of how the majority of district employees actually feel the wheels on the bus are falling off and i still haven't gotten a response from my email sent on january 13th from the majority of this sitting board we appreciate the efforts to to communicate the concerns of my co-workers and i during the last meeting however i am still left confused and concerned when it was shared with me that by a sitting board member that when masks were made situational the omnicron variant had not arrived to our shores which implies that omnicron's arrival was inevitable and we all knew it i'm no scientist but as i'm sure you remember i do
062love science i recognize that the cdc is funded by roughly 6.5 billion dollars a year to do nothing but study disease and advise this country on how to mitigate a virus that has killed about 4.5 bill excuse me million people worldwide in the last two years and as of january 13th the cdc recommends universal indoor masking for all students aged 2 years and older staff teachers and visitors to k-12 schools regardless of vaccination status i pulled that information today as nonpartisan board as a nonpartisan board of elected officials allowing anything other than the objective true science affords us to guide policy that affects stakeholders in this public and it's the entity is derelict of your duties and is having a detrimental impact on the employees and in turn the students with it within this district
063i see the mental health and well-being of my co-workers and friends deteriorate on a daily basis i see the impacts of this pandemic has had on these kids learning experiences i also get to see teachers suffering highly educated phenomenal educators seriously considering leaving education all together pregnant staff come scared to come to work surrounded by unmasked sales facility use agreement so one of the things when we built the new sports complex out at warren campus we wanted to revamp or redo the facility use policy to encompass basically all the amenities that schools offer communities the one thing that i will share with the board and the goal of the board at the time was not to compete with sports field which the city owns and that's one of the things like parameter wise we set
064matt dedeke and his crew along with jake amy and i reviewed this posinelli has also reviewed it from a legal standpoint so this is a first read for you as a board to consider for next month what the new facility use agreement uh would uh encompass okay thank you dr rhodes so if you have any questions please feel free to shoot them my way um and i will get a response to uh to your question all right you get to follow on with number nine your superintendent um really brief this evening on this uh the uh positive thing with uh the covid criteria is that it's decreasing community-wide um and as when it was peaking your school seeing the same type of results as the community we're seeing those same results as that is coming
065down as well to date as early as today we had four active covet cases for staff as of the report this morning so fortunately up to this point we have not had any serious illness with the latest surge of positivity rates and so we feel very fortunate about that i think a lot of that as the previous speaker said ms mcallister that it's also the due diligence that staff and students have put forth through this and as i said last time it's it's it's one of those issues that can really divide a community and i think our school community has stayed together as well as it could have and i think that hopefully we're on the downhill slide of this and good things are yet to come to finish out the school year anything else
066all right item number 10 executive session for non-elected personnel as madam president i move we go into executive session to discuss non-elected personnel pursuant to the exception under the kansas open meeting act in order to protect the privacy interest of the individuals to be discussed and that we return an open session in this room at what time do we need um 15 minutes so 22 at 0 or 7 222 the board will invite dr wrote amy sloan and robert angela into the meeting second all right we have a motion by mr powell and second by ms murphy or is to go into executive session all of those in favor 7-0 thank you all right okay [Music] i would like to make a motion to approve the stafford report as presented with the exception of the
067contract renewals second okay we have a motion by mr palace second by mr goodman to accept the staffing report minus the contract renewals all of those in favor 7-0 thank you second motion madam president i would like to make a motion to approve the contract renewals as presented i would like to make that motion to extend the offer to cover 2022 to 2023 and the 2023 to 2024 school years second all right we have a motion by mr powell and second by ms murphy to accept the contract rules through the end of the 23-24 contract all of those in favor 7-0 thank you all right moving on to item 12 upcoming meeting dates this week is very busy with the schools parent teacher conferences are 16th and 17th there is no school on the 18th
068or the 21st so long weekends for everyone there will be a special board meeting on the 28th of february it is um board training essentially so okay and we will provide dinner so don't eat too much before you come okay and we we'll start at 5 30. um jack will you be able to make 5 30 or i will i will make every effort i can close okay yep and that's on the 28th 28th it's a monday evening all right item 12.2 is unscheduled patron input we have several folks here i'd like to remind all of those providing unscheduled patron input that you are limited to three minutes um mr zeke [Music] thank you again uh one thing also i didn't get to talk about is our librarian is pushing the top 10 banned books
069of 2020 and 2021 and this is on a little thing where you click to go look at your class schedule or what your assignments are this is what she was putting out to the kids the best week of the year is here no not christmas banned book week celebrate your right to read stop the library in the library next week to learn about banned books history and what you can do to protect your right to read so i i guess i have a little bit of a problem with a teacher promoting these types of book having the books in the library sitting there is one thing but promoting that i'm curious how the board policy what it has to do with these types of books in our schools so not the danny's excellent they're perfect
070i'm a center big time every day so i'm going to read this one more time since i got out of hand i think you would all agree that our country is in a moral decline it is your responsibility board members administrators and teachers to help students maintain the highest morality but we might not agree about this book we can agree that there are many other books that would accomplish the district academic goals that are not morally compromised thank you for listening all right ms zanstein good evening dr rose and members of the board i appreciate this opportunity to address you in regards to a few concerns but before i go there i want to thank you for your service and i also want to thank you for what you did for some of the teachers
071and giving them some of their covered days back it really helped some of the teachers probably more than you know so thank you for that as you heard from my students earlier at cte month and hopefully you heard the enthusiasm the students have and being leaders of deca it's just one of the ctsos at the level north high school there are several others ctsos are effective in helping students develop foundations for careers in a competitive world which are critical elements of employability employers are looking for students with academic knowledge technical skills but equally important are the ethics teamwork problem solving critical thinking and the ability to communicate clearly and effectively in order for the students in the cte program to continue to be successful careful attention to the programs must be prioritized with recent discussions
072of a schedule change at the high school there are concerns that collaboration time which is the plc's will be greatly minimized it is my hope you understand the value of collaboration for all teachers at lhs but especially for cte it is dangerous for teachers to work in isolation and taking away collaborative work time is setting teachers up for professional failure core teachers need time to prepare new curriculum while cte teachers need time to work together to keep up with the fast-moving world however we are also needing time to work with community and business leaders and partners as we rely heavily on advice from businesses and industry facilitating an advisory committee is not only required for funding for our classes but is necessary in order to provide our students with up-to-date educational programs connections with internships
073and to assist in public relation activities i know that you don't help set the schedule but i think what's important is that we keep an open line of communication we owe it to our students to work together to make sure we are providing the very best possible academic experience for our students teachers are working diligently to develop the cte pathways which have proven to provide our students great post-secondary collegiate and workforce success career planning requires collaboration and it should not sound idealistic to create a strong bond with our shareholders this can happen with transparent communication and that's why i'm here today students lives and teachers lives are valued far beyond the classroom as teachers are empathizing with students i'm asking parents and community members to be kind and empathize with the teachers and to quit
074posting ugly and derogatory comments about teachers that you don't even know please take time to listen take priority in addressing the concerns of our teachers 15 seconds on a daily basis teachers strive to offer their very best in helping all of our students i'm asking please do not neglect the teachers mr mcgowan and just on an administrative note when i came this evening i intended to try to speak up front and mr potter pointed out that i couldn't um but i think if you look at your policy that's posted online and on the agenda tonight you'll notice that it could be worded better and i would recommend that when we look at this we don't require parents to take off from their jobs or work to come in physically into this building to sign up
075when we're in the 21st century and we give all our kids computers and laptops so that's just my two cents on that i'd ask that you clarify that you say you want parents to speak um so i'm here to speak as you know my name is mac mccown and my son attends warren middle school at past board meetings i've heard you guys glass over at least two times that masking on school buses is a federal requirement ms price tonight i'm asking that you or any other board member define that requirement to us and why you can't or you won't get our kids out of it when other districts have done and states have done just that two years into this cove nonsense our founding fathers would roll over in their graves knowing that we are
076allowing our federal government to force mask our healthy children in the u.s constitution the federal government's powers are few and enumerated forcibly masking its own citizen is not one of those powers in fact masking healthy children to make others feel safe in violation of their god-given inalienable rights is the darkest chapter of my 18-year history with usd-453 [Music] i would like to see a board member stand up this evening make a motion to end this mandated masking on our buses tonight we can't continue to treat our children this way they deserve better thank you item 12-3 board member comments we'll start with mr carney well julian we talked before me and i didn't know she had a plan but uh i think it's imperative that we reach out to our legislators that represent this district
077and i think a lot i don't remember the last time we had anybody in here by what eight ten years ago but with the things that are going on in education and the funding things that we need to retain teachers and things i think they need to come in here and tell us what their vision is for education down the road and i know they have busy schedules but they also have the time to come down because i think it should be important to them right thank you as well i have no comments tonight all right thank you miss reed i have had a vanilla frappe i think from the coffee station and it was perfect i would go to a coffee shop and buy it service was great i've also been to the store
078that you guys were talking about i have a beautiful bracelet i believe i'm not wearing it tonight but my daughter enjoys the beads i bought my husband a best so he could be supporting a local around town and i think you helped me in the store when i came here so wonderful things and thank you miss fancy for all your work with the kids thank you mr goodman and i'd like to echo thanks this has time for for doing this for our kids and teaching about visitors and professionalism and that sort of thing um also like to uh thank the music teachers that we had we had a nice fundraiser downtown leavenworth for the jazz ensemble and that was it was very well done appreciate them doing that um for that uh and that's all
079i have for today thank you ms murphy um i want to go back and echo again even though we've given um the the ladies the um certificate of appreciation because of the mass that they've made 10 500 that's a lot of masks that they've donated to it but going through that donation list i mean the donations continue on above and beyond the mask in support of our schools and it's because of those generous hearts um that they help our schools thrive they help our students thrive they help our teachers thrive and i just wanted to say again how much i truly appreciate um that like the closet it's just all those things the clothing drive that was done through karma cakes these kids some kids would have nothing were it not for that so i
080from my heart truly truly appreciate seeing things like that i need a vest uh yes i need a rest i know a place you can get one i do i gotta just find the size um i do want to say you know we we've got the uh team that is uh getting ready to go the nationals which is our drill teams uh armed and unarmed i was so sad to see their buses did not show up to pick them up this weekend it broke my heart i and i don't know if it hurt my heart more than it hurt the kid's heart i did speak with first sergeant in his 10 years it's only the second time um if there's some way we could figure out something so if there's some kind of emergency thing
081that we could throw together for them to get them from point a to b it might be worth our discussion as a board someday i know kovitz changed so many different things and things happen but that i just know how heartbreaking that is after they work so hard and all our kids do all kinds of great things all our educators and our staff do great things and i am so happy that we're still all here together today thank you mr bell i think the first thing is to thank everybody who's come here tonight and set through all this stuff right along with us and i think that's important it shows the community is engaged in their school no matter what side of a discussion you're on or what position you take the fact that you're
082all here shows that our community is working in our schools and that that's that's just really powerful um the second thing is is i and i know we keep talking about miss hanstein and the programs that we have in the school but you know one of our the critical things that we're going to be looking at and i think many of us came to the board with as a as an objective is how do we get these kids prepared for post-secondary success and we all know it's not just about college it's about whether they can present themselves whenever they're taking or they're going before a group of people is going to hire them or not are they prepared to do that uh can they think on their feet you know there's so many things in
083these programs and the number of other programs that are in our school right now with our career and technical education that um it we've got a great base and that we uh have an opportunity here and i think take it even further so that's that's kind of my hope for the next year and i throw that out because it requires the community involvement to make that work it requires business leaders industry leaders and others to participate this is a cte is a community thing so and that takes me into my next point about community is that our early learning center has reached the point to where its first year everybody realize this is the first year first few you know eight months of this this concept in this center and i just so much appreciate
084what you all are doing in the early learning center however we've reached that point to where minions had talked about that it was only going to be successful if it also became part of the community so i'm going to challenge everybody that's sitting here tonight and those that may watch this remotely is that we've reached the point to where you know kovid has reached a point where we can bring volunteers back into the classroom that now it's time you know you can get a hold of me my emails on the website or get a hold of miss batson but we're ready to start a volunteer program where we can schedule retirees or someone who has a schedule that allows them to come in morning afternoon 30 minutes an hour it doesn't really matter it will
085all cumulatively touch the lives of an individual child where we can sit down and one-on-one work on their literacy and you're going to hear me say that literacy literacy if we are not making our kids literate coming out of school we've done nothing like that's too strong a statement but it's our core value and so we've got an opportunity here and having read to first graders for over a year before covet hit it was so rewarding and so for us to be able to pour ourselves into these kids that's what the next step is in my view for the early learning center so i'm looking for the community to step up and everybody said we need to do more we need to be in here now's the time to put our money where our mouth
086is as the saying goes we really need you to stood up step up and what i would like to see our district do is create a program that reflects what was been successful i don't know how many different school districts problem school districts and that's a program that's we're crazy about our kids and it really starts at that very early learning level so i'm just challenging you you know you don't have to be a board member to make a difference in the lives of our kids and it requires a background check there's a number of things you may have to do but that background check is free the school district pays for it because we so much want you to volunteer and you're not going to go in blind miss batson and staff you know
087we're going to get some instruction on uh how to uh teach sight you know mouth sounds all the kind of things that we can help the teachers reinforce what they're teaching in the classroom so i know that was a lot and i'm sorry but i'm passionate about getting our kids littered in our schools and making the early learning center successful because it's it's what's going to make a difference in our school in in four years three years 12 years so thank you madam president may i have an alibi please sure to lend in on to um our vice president here i don't know if anybody needs a reminder they relax the rules on substitutes now if you have a high school diploma can pass background check and you're 18 years of age or older you
088can apply to be a substitute in our schools as well this will also help relieve some of the stress the angst and support our students plus and i love volunteers i'm from the volunteer state is where i was born volunteering is in my heart but by golly there's a paycheck to substituting so there is that perk as well so just to put that on your mind thank you ma'am all right thanks miss murphy and you took away one of my speaking points i'm sorry okay it's that psychic thing but no no it's all important and it really is something we need to keep reminding our community about so i mentioned earlier on the calendar review that this week is parent teacher conferences for all of those parents out there guardians who have children in the
089district please reach out to your teachers it's amazing what they do every day in a classroom and i know i could not do it to the level they do it and i thank them all fine thank you um because of what you do our kids couldn't do what they can do so thank you for getting them there last week because we weren't here last week was national counselors week so i wanted to throw a shout out to all of our counselors because in conjunction with our teachers they help our children figure out a path ahead it's very important and they sometimes are not thanked either mr goodman mentioned the la the jazz night the education foundation does a lot of great things they did the harlem wizards back in january um they have several other
090things coming they've got a breakfast in march so if you're asked to help contribute to the education foundation please do so be generous because it just helps our community help our kids and it really means a lot to our teachers when we show that kind of support lots of second semester stuff is going on the drill team they have another meet this weekend we've got a play plays coming in march we've got lots of basketball and other sports coming so there's lots for you to do to get out and support our pioneers and as always i'm going to ask you one thing please be a good human and go pioneers at this time it is 7 54 and that is