Board of Education Meeting - January 22, 2024 Part 1

001don't you think they are I call the January 22nd 2024 Board of Education meeting to order witcha Public Schools will be the premier District of choice and Inspire each student and staff member to thrive and become future ready within the Greater Community please join me in a moment of silence thank you our Color Guard tonight is provided by the Hamilton Middle School Royals Battalion leadership program commanding the color guard is Cadet command sergeant major Liliana Morales Garcia escorted by Cadet Sergeant First Class Elijah Walker carrying the Kansas flag is Cadet Sergeant Leland clay escorted by Cadet Master Sergeant Jordan Ray please stand for the presentation of the colors followed by the Pledge of Allegiance colors colors ma' Hamilton Middle School Royal Balan requesting permission to post colors you may post the colors thank you ma'am

002order colors post please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance present arms I to the the United States of America and to the rep for it stands one nation God indivisible withy and justice for all right face forward March please join me in thanking the Hamilton Middle School Royals Battalion leadership I want to welcome everyone to the Board of Education meeting and I also want to recognize that we have two Ed officials present with us our new mayor Lily woo and our city council member from District 4 Dalton glasscock want to thank you guys for being here tonight and your support for public education and your support for usd259 students and families thank you Patrick first item first item ceremonial oath of office good evening can you hear me okay okay um thank you I

003am Laura rainwater I am your SED County election commissioner thank you for having me but more importantly thank you for serving and being an elected official you seven have the most important job and the most I mean you represent our youth and our future for tomorrow and I can't say thank you enough enough it's an unpaid position and a lot of hours and a lot of work go into it and I thank you because I have kids and grandkids I have a my husband's an educator with usd259 so I just want to say personally thank you um and congratulations to the new members um you have two new newly elected and congratulation on your reelection so if you would all stand we're going to do a ceremonial swearing in because they've all officially been sworn

004in but we're to do a ceremonial swearing in for all seven if you'll just repeat after me raise your right hand I state your name do solemnly swear do swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States I support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of Kansas and the constitution of the state of Kansas and Faithfully discharge the duties and Faithfully discharge the duties of the office of unified school district 259 of the office of unified school district 259 School Board member School Board member so help me God so help me God congratulations to all of you thank you [Applause] again thank you for the that Patrick next item next item under Student Success good news good evening board members congratulations to those of you who take

005the seat for the first time Miss McCrae Miller and Mr bong and congratulations to Mr reer and to the four of you remaining who return for another year of faithful service it's fitting that tonight was a first the ceremonial swearing in of all seven of you as we recognize School Board appreciation month and the month of January so I know I speak for my colleagues in the audience and for all of those whose children uh you make decisions for every day thank you very much we have one good news item tonight it's actually a two-part good news item and U it focuses on the Jag program and the great work That Jag is doing in our district so I am pleased to invite Christie prey with the Jag organization forward and Christie is going to

006introduce you to some of the Jag friends that came along with her so you can learn more about the six of six award that several of our schools has have received and you will also have a chance to hear from a WPS student so without further Ado Christie welcome good evening thank you so much superintendent board members for having us out tonight and I'm excited to be able to share with you some good news um I am Christy pray I'm the regional manager for jobs for America um Kansas or JK and I'd like to personally thank you for partnering with us as we support students and I'd like to go ahead and thank the students that have come out tonight they volunteered to come tonight to to show um their support of the program PR

007the evidencebased program helps students prepare for postsecondary education and employment opportunities JK programs across the state reported a graduation rate of 93% for the class of 2022 one area that I'm extremely proud of is our follow-up program career Specialists our JK teacher stay in contact with their students for one entire year after graduation to support students on their successful pathway I'd quickly just like to share a quick quote from one of our graduates from wichon North Jak taught me several things that I didn't know would be important in my life J taught me to create a healthy work mindset balancing work and family it took me a while but Jag also taught me to research and think for myself I had no idea what I wanted to do as a career or what job I

008wanted to pursue but Jag gave me goals and showed me what steps were needed to reach those goals I am so grateful for the opportunities that forced me to get out of my comfort zone and create an open mindset Miss Karima was very helpful and I can feel and see the passion she has about guiding others to find their right path I was very nervous taking on welding as a potential career but miss Karima reassured me that I could do whatever I put my mind to now I enjoy going to work every day and I have a wonderful career in welding I get to create machines out of simple pieces of metal and this is a recent graduate just from this past um this past may all of our JK programs in usd2 259 are

009doing incredible things but a few of them have earned the prestigious National Six of six award for 2023 the 6 of6 award is bestowed on those Jag programs that meet or exceed a performance measure in six categories graduation rate employment rate full-time employment total full-time positive outcomes connectivity rate and continued education Jag through this 12 month period follows those seniors and that that's where our evidence-based data driven model comes from so at this time I would like to recognize Karima Williams from wichan North dear Dem Mar Franklin from witcha West and Ashley bonds from Witchita Southeast congratulations for your hard work and dedications to your students and providing opportunities for them to learn about employment and post-secondary education we'd also like to thank our principales the district and the board members for continuing to partner

010with us thank you so much and now I have the honor of introducing you to our J K State president she is a student at wias Southeast and she's just going to share with you a few minutes about her opportunities I'm sorry this is Char Moore good evening ladies and gentlemen I hope everyone's day is going wonderful I am charie Moore and I'm the State president of this amazing program named ja K ja K has helped me out in so many ways and taught me so many things and taught me also to not let things Define us as human beings and write our own stories and follow our own paths we are not our challenges yet we grow for them my biggest challenge is my mom and I've let that affect so much of my

011life and which I shouldn't have unfortunately my mother suffered from mental illnesses and drug addiction but I can't let her choices Define me as a person and the woman who I am growing to be I let my pride my thoughts my everything get to me instead of embracing every little thing that makes me me it is hard having your mom choose something that doesn't love you as much as her flesh and blood but if I can go back in time I will show my mom how much I genuinely loved her and all the times I treated her as a kid who treat their favorite toy that is broken I would take it back but the woman I appreciate the most is my grandmother who took me and raised me as her own child she and

012she treated me like she cared me for nine crucial power most powerful months and she has watched me open my eyes for the first time to me opening my first job paycheck she has watched me take my first stumbling steps as an infant to me taking my first stumbling steps in high heels and she has watched so many milestones for me she's always supported me and believed in me when at times I didn't believe it myself and I will forever be thankful for her because I wouldn't be the person who I am today she's made me appreciate my life and turn my lemons into lemonade and I am truly blessed and I am a living testimony I've beat the statistics of being raised by a single black mom having a mentally ill parent or not

013knowing who my father is and so much more my story is powerful and I know there are people out there just like me and I have a voice that I must use and it must be heard and make sure others are hurt and I realized Jack K has taught me so much about the best I can be in life before Jack K I was was this awkward antisocial kid who sat in the back of a class and hope no one set by me I lacked confidence in everything I did and I was scared to try due to failure but Jack has taught me once you fail just get up and try again and again and again all over till you get it there's nothing wrong with failing but it's not okay when you don't try

014again and settle with failure Jack K has moted me into being a leader who can guide others to be positive role models for the Next Generation because we all deserve guidance Jack has made me overcome my fear of what people think about me and to be free and be me Jack has helped me in so many aspects of my life and not even just about business but showing that they're here for the kids Jack's jobs for American graduates is what Jack is jobs for our youth is very important education for our youth is very important and Jack helps the youth out with both I have got involved in so much that I thought I would never do due to Jack I used all my professional tactics that Jack has taught me to land me so

015many opportunities my job as a state president is to pass the word and get as many people involved as I can so they can go through life with the breeze as well I cannot take all the credit for my growth it wouldn't be the truth I must thank my wonderful specialist Miss Ashley bonds over the course of me being a Jag she's taught me so much I know if I need a reference I can call her I know if I need advice for life I can call her and so much as a mentor I can call her to be honest I was really scared to run for president but miss bonds pushed me and let me know I could do it every time I won she cheered me on and showed that she believed in

016me and I'll forever appreciate that she has showed me and other kids that she genuinely care about us and nothing and wants nothing but the best for us she has the biggest heart that I've ever seen and she would give her shut off her back if a student needed it every time I do something professional I think of her because she taught me it she taught me how to shake someone's hand properly how to introduce myself properly and how to believe in myself and be confident I've never seen her not once come into our class in a bad mood she's always in a bubbly yet helpful mood I made my first resume by the help of her and Lord knows if it wasn't for her I probably wouldn't have done it last year our class

017made blankets for the Children's Mercy Hospital and it was all her idea we even wrote Sweet letters to them expressing how great they are and I'm truly appreciative of Jag because they also let me go to DC on them for free and I and I really appreciate that and I believe that other students should be able to get that experience I went to the the capital the Library of Congress I met really big names and really I did really big things and for free so I think everyone should be able to experience that and it's something that I'll never do in a lifetime and I really appreciate Jack for that thank you for sharing your story I think everybody was touched by that thank you wow Patrick next item next item public Communications see no

018public comments oh we do have one public comment oh I I have miss Connie Deets registered to speak I'm sorry I apologize about that Connie would you come down to the front public comments at a meeting will not exceed 3 minutes It'll be limited to the registered topic and will not include Personnel matters concerning District district employees and or matters that would violate the privacy of students Connie welcome and thank you for being here I got it thank you for reminding me I'll try to follow the rules I'm sure you didn't need to be reminded that's fine anyway good evening uh president Albert Pro superintendent and board members my name is Connie deeds and as listed in the agenda I live in zip code 67226 which places me in Julie hedrick's District district 2 I'm

019here this evening to congratulate and welcome our newly elected board members Ms Miller Mr vong and to congratulate Mr reer for his reelection Mr vong I want to tell you it is truly exciting to have a 2018 graduate of South High School on our school board that is really exciting I'm very happy speaks well of our school district I think and of witto State that's for you're a student now anyway I am excited to see the broad diversity of age life experiences and backgrounds represented on our board the voters have spoken and elected you to represent them and to make decisions on their behalf in so doing they have entrusted you with the education and safety of our youngest and most vulnerable citizens this is an overwhelming responsibility it demands thoughtful research decisions on your

020part you will face many challenges and opportunities including budgetary shifting demographics facility needs new demands from state and federal lawmakers and expectations of special interest groups parents and many others it will be your task to sift through the noise and focus on the approximately 45,000 students who enter one of our educational facilities every day with the assumption that each of them will be welcomed seen and heard heard I have no doubt that you along with the majority of your other fellow board members will work together to continue to make usd259 the proud District that it is again my congratulations and I might say good luck thank you thank you Connie Patrick next item next item under education department of equity diversity and accountability overview of Future Ready Advocates and mentorship welcome Dr po Mr Reynolds

021thank you for in here tonight thank you well good evening everyone first of all we'd like to recognize and thank uh Board of Education vice president miss Diane Albert and the entire board this evening and the new elects and also superintendent belil thank you for having us this evening and allowing us to present on such a busy evening I am Dr William poite Jr and I currently serve as the executive director for the uh Department of equity diversity and accountability for wiah public schools and I am joined this evening by Mr Keith Reynolds who serves as director of training for our department and we're also joined by some of our department members way back up in the top there and I'm going to mention them by name uh shortly here um the right way here

022our purpose tonight everyone sorry is to Simply inform the board on the Mission Vision and initiatives within the district's Department of equity diversity and accountability with a specific Focus tonight on our department uh our future ready Advocate mentoring program our department uh has a vision statement the witch toop Public Schools Department of diversity and equity and accountability envisions a future in which students outcomes are not predicted by student social factors or challenges uh WPS is committed to ensure Equitable and fair educational opportunities for all students by allocating resources while providing diverse learning opportunities the key word and phrase in that statement is all students and our primary objective is to help all students overcome challenges Andross the graduation stage as we look at um how we Define uh diversity equity and inclusion we like to

023look through a really simplified lens um we know that the term Dei sometimes team it can be polarizing but it really isn't when you look at it for what it really is diversity is just simply a presence of differences um and that's just a fact you know we're all different in some type of way it's not just about race uh we have different abilities disabilities uh we have different age groups we have different socioeconomic statuses we have different genders we have different sexual orientations some of our students are homeless some are in foster care some have experienced different traumas and these are just some of the examples of diversity uh in our district and then when you think about inclusion I'm going to skip over to inclusion real quick and that's just a but inclusion

024is an action and that's just simply uh helping people have a genuine sense of belonging and value and then we come back to equity you know really I could just hold those people from JAG up that's really Equity work right there it's giving every student what they need to succeed and I and I commend you all on that work Jag the Jag folks there uh when we look at this term we Define it as Fair access Fair opportunity and then the proper support to take advantage of that access and opportunities and that's what we just saw with Jag now while diversity is a fact Equity is a choice okay I truly feel that all students can truly become prepared for Life careers College trade school if they choose right here in wiah public schools we

025have the resources we have the staff we have the leadership in Witchita public schools to ensure that every student lives up to their true potential I've had the pleasure to work in Chicago St Louis Milwaukee Atlanta Rockford Illinois and I believe that our school district here is second to none when it comes to opportunity and access and I really mean that I'm a graduate of wiah North High School myself the equity work is making sure that every student has the support they need though to experience success in our great District along with Equity work comes educational Equity uh we Define that as making decisions strategically based upon the principles of fairness which include providing a variety of educational resources models programs and strategies according to students needs and that's important and according to student needs

026what one student needs may not be necessar what uh necessarily what another needs so we understand one side just not fit all but we want to make sure we value all of our students it says that may or may not be the same for every student or school with the intentions with the intention of leading to equality of academic outcomes we want to make sure that similar to an individual education plan that all of our students receive the services that they need in order to be a successful academically and before I go to the next Slide the picture that's up right now you'll see my brother there many of you know him as dforce he's Darren Thomas who graduated from wiah public schools at the age of 58 because of the adult education program that

027we had in place and that's just another example of giving someone opportunity and access because when he came through back in the 70s we didn't have all the laws in place and policies in place and he was able to go back to school graduate and now as a student at uh FR University and their friends uh friendship Fields Program but out of wiah public schools so once again some of our current initiatives here uh in the in our department and I've been here about in my six year now um but we have a what we call a 9503 initiative we're going to talk about that a little bit our future Advocate mentoring program which we're going to talk about engaging congregations for future Readiness our Juvenile Detention mentoring partnership has really been going well over

028the last three semesters as as well we're getting a lot of graduates and that's something we might have to have a whole presentation on restorative practices in our department is led by Mr Rob Simon who's here with us tonight we have a Kinder dads program where we're trying to engage our our dads at the kindergarten level at some of our schools um right now it's just in its SEC early in its second year really third semester our base program better academics and social Excellence many of you have heard about that program and then now we have a a part uh a ladies part called ladies lace ladies for academics and social Excellence led by Miss Bale over at South High School and then our Equity Learning Academy it's led by Keith Reynolds with our Equity

029champ chions and then our department trainings uh also led by Mr Reynolds our department takes pride in our training opportunities uh we not only train in diversity uh but we train in family engagement burnout professional boundaries conflict resolution sensitivity training things that will make uh for a healthier well-being in our uh in our Workforce particularly with our valued uh staff members we partnership with everyone we want to be ambassadors to this wonderful community so training has taken place in churches for the city of Witchita other school districts as well we've done training locally on a state basis as well as National Training our customers can choose from multitude of training topics and so we want we actually create training for them upon request um also after each training session a link to an electronic feedback

030form is given to participants and it's a training evaluation form uh the results from that have been pretty good for us 90% of the participants have found our sessions applicable to their role 90% were able to take learning back to their building and Implement what they learned in training immediately and 90% increase understanding and knowledge from the topic presented our audience pretty much consists primarily of teachers a lot of teachers have been trained afterwards we work with building administrators as well as District administrators and support staff as well our training objective is pretty much similar to the goal of U usd259 and that is to connect and to unite people thank you sir I want to talk just briefly about one of our initiatives called that I mentioned engaging congregations for future readiness um this

031initi started last year when former superintendent Dr Thompson reached out to the community for more support with our students and uh we came with this idea of engaging our faith-based community to work with students in their congregations with our 9503 initiative which stands for 95% attendance zero suspensions and the 3.0 GPA set us those goals right now we have about 35 churches who have signed in on to the initiative about 17 to 20 who've been consistently active with the initiative are question to our churches simply is do you know how the students in your congregation are doing and then how can we help you with the students in your congregation we meet bimonthly with our participants and share different resources as well as information about various opportunities within uh wiah public schools and then the

032next initiative I'd like to share a little bit about is base and this is initiative that we started about six years ago and it stands for better academics and social excellence and was created as part of our Council of great City Schools uh males of color pledge you know we try to highlight our young men in our district through this initiative who are trying to do and striving to do the right thing in school and on a daily basis um you don't have to be a young man of color to be a part of the bass program we simply want to share the narrative that we have a lot of great young men in our district who are meeting the base standards of a 3.2 GPA um good behavior and good attendance uh the men

033on young men on these slides were in the ninth grade on these pictures uh who were at our first base conference in partnership with Witchita State University um about five years ago and six of these young men received scholarships from WSU last year and now are freshmen on their campus as a result of this initiative um I don't have the exact graduation rate for this group but I think it's probably nearly 100% um our sixth B Bas pillars as you can see are Brotherhood Leadership College and Career Readiness health and wellness identity and then uh community service U this is what we're really here to talk about tonight and uh for the last part of our presentation here and that's um the Future Ready Advocate mentoring program or Fram as it's known throughout the district

034and the community we're in our third year with this initiative and it currently serves 14 Schools consistently and also we hold mentoring groups at seven other schools within the district Fram is a school-based mentoring program in witch talk public schools that targets students who have demonstrated a need for a positive role model to help them with behaviors and also attendance and academics now we did start out with the focus on our African-American males due to suspension rates but now this is expanded to working with students of all Races genders in the schools that we serve we have girls groups as well as boy groups uh and many of our schools you know one of the best ways to really explain the work of Fram I I seen this on a video gentleman from Avid he

035he held up $2 and he asked a simple question and some of you might have seen this and said how much we got a really sharp board and superintendent here how much is this dollar worth anybody how much is this it's not a trick question how much is this dollar worth $1 a dollar okay so you're telling me that this is worth a dollar and this is worth a dollar right okay so if I take this dollar bill and I ball it up and crumble it up and then I ask you how much is this dollar worth and then how much is this dollar worth still worth a dollar okay wait a minute okay Kathy you're really smart over it how about if I take that dollar and I stomp it on the floor and

036crumble it up and put it through a bunch of trauma there and then they pick it back up and we ask the question how much is this dollar worth and how much is this dollar worth now if I was to ask you now which dollar am I going to try to get into Koke machine univers to get that Diet Coke that I want I'm probably going to try to get that dollar in first to get him in the Coke machine University but and I didn't make this up I stole this y'all but that's the work of Fram that's the work of equity is finding those CRI those Crum crumbl crumbled up dollar bills and knowing that they also have the same value as that as that dollar bill who didn't have to go through that

037same type of trauma and that's where the Equity work comes in that's what the young lady from JAG was just talking about with her Jag sponsor that she helped her come and it takes that Equity work just helps me I have to get maybe have to do a little extra work with that dollar bill to get him in the Coke machine used to University might have to put him on my knee and stretch him out show them a little more help and than they that they need and that's the work of Fram that's the work of the equity work within our district not just in our department we have a lot of departments in our district that's doing this type of work in witch Public Schools I just showed you my brother there where he

038got the love and the access and the opportunity to support that he needed as well um I'm not going to go just in detail this is the uh original um definition board you all have the uh F the the job definition of the uh Future Ready Advocate that we started with there and then I do want to take a moment though to talk about our current Future Ready Advocates we have a great great team I call them the Dream Team some of them are here tonight some of them are coaches also on the district and they they coaching Middle School basketball tonight a number of them but we have Mr Hercules Finley uh who works over at trusdale and South I think he's here with us tonight um coach Larry Allen who's over at Robinson

039I think he had a game tonight um Mr Lavale Jackson he's over at Curtis working with the team over there with Miss reick uh Tony Johnson doing a great job out at Northwest also has groups at Pleasant Valley and Wilbur uh Michael Lewis he's work working over at Jardine and me with our young men and women over at at at uh at those two schools Mr Odell Harris he's here tonight he's working with us over at West and over at Allison um Mr Joe Mitchell's also here with us tonight he's working at Stucky and Heights uh and Jackson Elementary we are plugging into some of our elementaries now and then Mr Tyrone Barry he had a game tonight I don't think he can make it but he's at Southeast and Coleman along with kin loggin

040who's a Southeast and Coleman U then Mr Scotty Welch and Daryl bigs just joined our team this year uh Mr Welsh is at griffinsteed bigs is over at trusdale in South with Mr Hercules Finley uh we'd like to uh talk about the fact guys that we are a research-based mentoring program as well um but before I go on to that I do want to come back here and just say real quick that um we also have in our house our restorative practice Guru Mr Rob Simon and I think he's here tonight and Gwen Duggins who's not here but serves as our climate and opport Unity lead and I must mention that all of these individuals this is interesting fact except for one are graduates of wiah public schools that I just mentioned and many of

041them have overcome those same obstacles that many of our students face on a daily basis I'd like to refer to them as the Dream Team uh and I don't say that lightly they they are all Community leaders some are ministers some are deacons in their churches some are entrepreneurs but most importantly they're all here because they love the miss and vision of the work that we do with the Future Ready Advocate mentoring initiative and I mean that um I couldn't have a better team I wish we had time to hear from each one of them on why they do this work or actually the ministry I should say but we meet every Friday morning at AAC you all are always welcome to come and meet with us and talk with us uh most of them

042work very closely with the administrative teams at their schools on a daily basis and they serve in various capacities in their schools all of them hold regular power groups with their young men as I mentioned many are now hosting girl groups um our director of training Mr Reynolds he actually leads three groups at the Gateway Alternative School um and our Department administrative assistant Irma bigo she actually leads a group at East High School and also works with some girls at Chester Lewis and so we're all jumping right into the work a little bit just real quick on our research that we're that we're based on Bren Bren br's ecological systems theory and just in the middle I won't go into detail for time sake but in the middle of that Circle those circles you see

043a young man and that's his Micro Systems that he's a part of and you see the home you can see the religious setting the school and then the neighborhood that's the Micro Systems and then the second Circle there is what you call the meso systems that's the home the school the neighborhood and the religious setting or lack of or it could be a neighborhood team but how do we get those systems to work together for the betterment of this young man in the middle or young lady in the middle of the circle and that's what our research is based on that's what the Fram team does is work with the home the school uh sometimes the church and the engaging congregation piece and then the actual neighborhood too to make sure that child uh is

044successful in our school district and then the second part of our research that we base our work upon is the phenomological variant ecological systems theory which is a part of bro from Bender system and I'm not going to go into detail but it's the net vulnerability that just where I'm born at leads to a certain amount of net stress and number three at the bottom there and that's where we start seeing our kids that reactive Co processes some of those are maladaptive some of those are adaptive processes but th leads to those emerging identities that we see in our schools if they don't have the right supports back here in in in uh where they where they experience that net stress and it can uh lead to some very unproductive or productive stage coping um

045outcomes here um I had another slide on there but I think I didn't get to put it back on we talked about academic identity and individual attempt to construct self- understanding and meaning by defining himself through academic values School belonging School regard and school performance so how do I feel about myself um as a student how do I Define myself as a student and then we talk about in the work of improving social emotional well-being there in our FAS they Mentor students and form relationships with them working on self-awareness social awareness responsible decision making self-managing peer relationships and I think your handouts uh P I think one of the slides didn't go on and it got changed but on there I had a bus with that half of it was a prison bus and half

046of it was a school bus and that's a big part of the work there too is how do we make sure that our kids don't end up on the wrong side of that bus with this work with some of those stage specific outcomes I just realized that it didn't go through when we changed some of those slides here and then of course we promote restorative practices in our work um and we we practice these conferences by caring listening encouraging instilling hope and then building relationships and one of the ways that we do that is through our our um I'm going to go here to our wildly important goals I want to run out of time here but two of our goals this year was to help help working with our senior lisons at our schools

047to increase our graduation rates by 5% for African-American males hopefully from 74.9% to 79.9% and then decreasing the amount of in school and out of school suspensions for our students that are directly on our case lows by 10% uh for this school year and one of the ways we do that and measure that our leads is just through the number of contacts that we make on a regular basis in first semester you can see we had uh almost 1,200 total unique student contacts and for a total of 9,23 um overall contacts with our students and um I'm sorry that the slide I had that you can't see it but most of those were uh simply check-ins as well um and I'm going to keep pushing there just to show a little bit about how we're

048looking at our African-American seniors to help them with this graduation we set a goal at 85% we know that's very um aggressive um but if you look at the I'm just going to explain those real quick for each school I'm not going to go by each school but the way we looked at it to start the school year was the number of African-American males at each High School um that were considered seniors and if you just use um Heights for for example there's 52 African-American male students there at um 27 were considered on track to hit a 85% Mark they would have to have 44 of those students to graduate we know that's very aggressive but so that would be a deficit of 18 students there um with at Heights but if you look at

049the number of students at Heights that have of those young men that had 20 that had seven or less credits remaining then you can see that's very doable and you go down that that last uh um uh column there you can begin to see that this is doable to raise those graduation rates and we're being very intentional with every single student uh that we're working with at most of the schools we're at most of the schools working with those senior lisons um at the schools and then we're going to wrap up here with just a little bit of a message from um some of our principles and um some of our and I hope we got this queued up right uh Patrick to play here and some of our students and we're going to wrap

050up with that tonight and we will be sending out information sheets for um for everyone uh later in the week as well and this is just a short little video here see if we can oh can we get the volume there what do there I don't know if we're going to be able get complely change because they know it it instantly gives us a chance to have conversations that I think we probably wouldn't be able to authentic had without The Advocates and it's made it's made a huge difference we really aren't seeing those behaviors anymore they're pretty rare so he definitely has had an impact too I have seen some amazing things happen when those kids have that person that they feel is holding them accountable I I genuinely see them doing things that they

051would not be doing if it weren't for that connection um and and we've really seen a tremendous change in the boys that he's working with um and and in fact they are they are turning into positive leaders in our school and they are just improving the the whole culture of our of our student body Mr Jackson's proactive and goes to those students before being asked for um and that's really uh what I appreciate as as an administrator is having a person take the time and investment to do that the impact you may not see it right right now but we're going to start seeing it next year the year after and I pray for many years um it's money well spent also seeing uh strong African-American men with positive uh positive affirmative type of relationships

052with kids he's always there for me he's he's not a teacher he's more of a big brother he um inspir me to be like the best person I can be it was kind of like Father father father figures to me because I don't grow up with a dad around the house of the school year um I was like I want to drop out of stuff cuz I'm a senior and just recently I got accepted to Butler um because of Miss Hughes and Mr Johnson like they motivated me kept the positivity around me helped me not doubt myself as much and made me help me figure out that I was much worth I'm worth a lot more than what I what I thought I was Jason he's my best friend and he's the best teacher I

053never had because he saved my life knows our neighborhood knows our students um is from the community that they can identify with what would serve Us best would be to have a future Ed Advocate a male and female in every building uh fulltime that's the thing that I think we're missing if anything it's been a a valuable almost Irreplaceable resource to have that extra support in the building and mentorship with with kids that we struggle to connect with otherwi he's great uh we love him and let's let's keep doing this as long as we can in fact if we can make it bigger we should do that too you know beyond the data these uh men are making a difference thank you all [Applause] thank you gentlemen does anybody have any questions s oh now

054it just came there was a delay uh I think knock is first knock thank you Dr pet and Mr Reynold some questions I have uh more so in distinguishing Fram from other school-based mentoring programs just to clarify teams this is more in-house yes yes we are in-house they work actually for the district where many of other mentoring programs are Community Based mentoring programs and so having having those mentors in house every day that's uh just really a a radio call away sometimes versus uh the check-in the weekly check-ins have we done any comparative studies with Fram as opposed to other school-based mentoring programs that are more so Community Based not yet okay uh the next question I have I'm looking at the student contact data and I'm curious uh what explains the discrepancies um I

055mean we see North High about yeah well that's that's one right there with Mr Tony Johnson he just puts in every single contact and we all should be doing that so we probably have a lot more contacts than we have there but he's just very detail oriented uh on on his data so but but let me say this we do have some great community-based mentoring programs too so that isn't a knock against uh Community Based uh mentoring programs too we have some great ones that we work with as well so let me just say that but sometimes your your school-based mentoring programs just serves a little bit of a different purpose because you're actually a part of the staff at the school as well I I think for my lenses looking at it from like

056an efficiency standpoint and prevention of a you know duplication of services uh the last question I have um what are some opportunities for improvement for the Fram program that's a great question because you can always proove you can always improve um and really it comes down to relationships a lot of times with your administrators and with those in your building so really the just better communication on our part as well and with uh the purpose of the futur advocate in the school building and so that's one area we definitely want to improve and the buildings that we're in is that communication piece so that teachers know that and and staff know how to even refer the students which we have a system but uh communication could be a little better I think I Y my

057time thank you Kathy I just want to say thank you it just thank you doesn't cover the appreciation I have for your presentation to the board as well as to the community I love what you're doing for all students thank you thank you for having us C thank you appreciate you melody thank you blue I'm new so thank you Dr poite um for all that you do in the community and that you've been doing I have a couple of pointed questions I know that looking at our strategic plan that was just uh conducted and complet it um we're looking at a 60 approximately 66% graduation rate for black males across the district that's not school to school to school it's across the district so um I did hear you say that you'd like to reach

058that 85% and looking at our uh the one that you have here um what do you think needs to be put into place where we can reach enough black male students that we could actually meet that goal what would you say would be beneficial well I think as a district we're doing a lot better actually that 66 67% was the year before and actually last year that number now it's went up to 74.9% for black males for black males yes excellent and um and so now our goal is to raise that another 5% Miss Miller M by to 75 uh to 79.4 and working but you know the work that we've been seeing with our senior lons and then um but having those sometimes you know in our schools people are busy doing the work

059that they do and you don't have a chance to do some of that outside work and that's what that that meso system work we're connecting with the school the neighborhood the church you know the families and so to be able to work on some of those things that take place outside of the classroom are really where you're finding so many of your obstacles for for graduation um it's not happening in the classroom all the time it's outside of the classroom if we can help students overcome some some of those obstacles as we talked about some of them you know just poverty brings along along another set of obstacles so many times but when you can help students and having these type of initiatives in place to um help those students with some of those other

060areas outside the class so I hear you saying that not everything is going to happen in the classroom right not everything is we're going to have to be able to get outside of the classroom connect with our communities yes and bring in all of those wonderful resources that we know are out here yes and connect them yes I love it I love it so the next thing has to do with actually looking at outcomes and I know that you said you do um you assess the trainings because I heard 90% I was yes so in terms of looking at outcomes for each of the different areas that you um that your program administers is there um is there an actual ual evaluation process what are the tools yes we'll be sharing some data with you

061on some information sheets that's coming out um we could have got into a deep data dive tonight but and I'm feeling I'm I'm feeling the pressure to stop talking so thank you no no you're fine no but we have we have lots to data this year about a number of our programs though we really do excellent and uh so we just kind of skim the surface a little bit tonight just for time sake excellent you're doing good work plenty thank you thank you yeah superintendent so I appreciate the presentation and thank you guys um Dr poly did a great job of celebrating his team but I also would like to take a moment to celebrate Dr poite we would not be here without you and your leadership and guidance so um it's good work we're

062going to continue good work keep moving forward so thank you thank you thank you gentlemen well done and uh if anybody would like to learn more and do more data Dives with them it is very interesting information and I've always enjoyed our conversations when you share that so more than happy to so thank you very much thank you all Patrick next item next item under education McKinny vento families in transition so we'll just take a second to transition the slides to our next presenters all right welcome Denise Dei thank you for being here good evening I would like to uh request that I not follow Dr poite next time because I don't know if it's going to be near as engaging of a a presentation but um yeah I don't have any cash on me

063so I'm sorry but um we are so appreciative of their support they truly is a dream team and uh tonight we're going to share a bit of information about mckin vinto and a a program that um also supports some of our students who experience um another factor that they have to overcome uh but first I want to say uh good evening Board of Education members superintendent Bei Welcome to our two new board members and happy board appreciation month we thank you so much for just the time and efforts that you give going above and beyond it's it's a lot of work and it's tough job so we appreciate yall um my name is Dei stru I got have to remember to introduce myself because we have new faces I support our federal programs amongst anything

064or amongst a lot of things um one of those is the mckin vento program uh I will soon turn it over to Denise to share a little bit more but um advance that uh why does this program exist well it was a federal law passed in 1987 to address education of homeless students specifically spefically so that's known as the mckin vento act and every district is required to have a homeless liaison uh which is Denise so I'm going to turn it over to her to share more about uh the work we do in our district thank you de uh my name is uh Denise Lawson and I am the title services manager for the district and also the current District homeless Le aison um I have been the homeless Le Asen for almost one year

065um I did have the the uh I was fortunate enough to actually supervise the program for the last three years so um our last a is and retired so um I do want to say before I start with my presentation that although it's just DD and presenting it really does take an entire team to um help with um educating our homeless students and making sure that they get the the things that they need um I did ask my team to come so that I could recognize them as soon as I said I was going to ask them to stand up it was crickets and I don't believe any of them are here but I hope some of them they're very humble and and and don't really like the Limelight um they do what they do

066because they are very passionate and compassionate about what they do and not because they want the recognition but I I do want to recognize that I do have 11 other staff members that um are very valuable to the program and um do a lot of the work so what I've shared with you here is um like d said every district is required to have a homeless liaison and there are 10 requirements for that liaison to take care of um I'm not going to read them all to you but I will point out some key ones that you'll see kind of um a theme throughout the presentation um so one of those is identification of homeless students that's a very important one wouldn't have uh the program if we didn't identify them um another is to

067um make sure they have immediate enrollment in schools and I'll talk about what that means here in a little bit Education and Training of District staff that's even though I have a department of 11 that help with this educating and training The District staff on what our homeless students need is is of utmost important because they are the um they're the ones that are seeing the kids every day and then identifying and supporting some unaccompanied Youth and I'll talk about what unaccompanied youth means here a little bit later um and explain what that that means so who do we serve in our program um we serve any student enrolled in usd259 along with their family members um who lack a and these are three very key terms a fixed regular and adequate nighttime residence when

068people think of homeless they think of the HUD definition of of the person living on the street um but that is not the case necessarily with our families the mckin vento ACT allows us to broaden that to families that are living doubled up due to loss of housing for financial reasons we have some families that are doubled up due to medical reasons um things like that temporary living in hotels or motels uh transitional housing shelters drug rehab domestic violence things like that and then we do have what a lot of people can think about the homeless and that's parked cars and Tents um unfortunately this year we have had um people living in garages um we do have families that have lived in tents we do have families that lived in in campg BRS um

069so when we talk about fixed regular and adequate it kind of give you some examples so we have students that live in a house that house is fixed and is regular but the house doesn't have running water the house doesn't have heat so that's not adequate so to us they are considered homeless um we have families that are staying with various friends you look at that as adequate because they have a house over their a roof over their head and they're staying with friends um but it's not fixed and it may not be regular so they would be considered homeless and finally the last like I said living in in tents or places like that um you could look at that is regular because that's where their regular living is but that's not adequate nor

070is it fixed and so any of those kinds of things would make those St students for us be considered homeless now I want to kind of share with you the numbers that we've served over the years you'll see the fluctuation in the history and part of it is due to um when the reauthorization happened they took out the wording of uh awaiting foster care it used to be that when students were waiting not necessarily in foster care yet but we're a waiting to be placed they would be considered in our program that is no longer part of the law that is now covered under a different section um and so those students are not not counted in our numbers um you can also see kind of where the pandemic hit and we had um less

071students reaching out for services but we still had a significant number um you can see now our numbers right now are above and beyond what was 2122 um I predict that we will probably exceed the 22 23 numbers this year um most people will come to the conclusion that's because we have more homeless in witchta I would say that's probably a good conclusion but I will also say that it is probably due to um better training of our staff who can better identify those students and get them Services which means that we can um get them enrolled in our program also um we have kind of done a campaign for public awareness to make sure that um we have posters in hotels motels um any kind of programs that we may have out there that

072that we may be able to to connect with to provide those services so we do have more community members that contact us now um we also unfortunately have a high um Refugee population this year um and newcomers we work closely with the multilingual Educational Services to identify those students they are again thank you Shannon and your team you are fantastic they definitely reach out to us whenever they feel like there's a family that's in need um we've had some really sad stories come through um you know a lot of them come over with the intention of they're not coming over the intention for themselves but to better their life for their children and so education is one of those important goals that they always have um they don't come over with the intention of being

073homeless um unfortunately some of them have had to um pay Ransom to get their children back who have been kidnapped because they tried to um a lot of Venezuelans try to get them into the military we've had a lot of refugees from those areas um but so they do have some some sad stories when they come over and and again they're not necessarily coming over with intention to be homeless it just it's a situation that happens when they get here so we want to make sure that we embrace them and get their kids the education and and why they want to be here so so let's talk about the educational rights of the homeless students and most everyone would think well they will have the same educational rights as the rest of the students and

074that's absolutely right they do and and that is what our program makes sure is that we are are making sure those students receive the same educational rights as students who are not homeless um some of the biggest key things that I want to take out of this is the immediate enrollment homeless students are and we are required by federal law to enroll them immediately in other words if they walk in and say I have no proof of address because I am homeless we must enroll them must enroll them without proof of address without documentation without immunization shots um you must get them in school immediately and then that's what our department does is work with them to get those records um we also have some wonderful School staff that that jump on that immediately and

075start contacting other schools and other districts hey we need these records um we help parents get driver's license birth certificates social security cards things like that so that they can continue on and don't have those issues later on um they're also allowed to remain in their school of origin School of origin is basically the school the student uh went to before they became homeless so for example if a student was in Adam's Elementary something has happened they have now become homeless and they have now moved into say the area for Benton um we allow them to stay at Adams we do that by making sure they receive Transportation um the family has a choice to move their student to Benton if that's what they choose to do some do and I will tell you the

076reason we don't encourage them to move because we' like the kids to have stability in that school of origin um but I will tell you there will be some families that don't have vehicles and they feel very uncomfortable when their student isn't close to them and so moving where they have moved sometimes is is their comfort and so Mom can walk to the school and get the kid if something is wrong um things like that but as far as educational wise we encourage them to stay where where they are um and then like I talked about unaccompanied youth so unaccompanied youth are allowed to enroll themselves without a proof of legal guardian and so I'll kind of explain when an unaccompanied youth is is here next but that's the big one is that when a

077student walks in and says hey I need to enroll myself we consider them unaccompanied and we make sure that they get enrolled in school and then we ask questions later so who are our unaccompanied youth they are children or youth who are not in the physical custody of their legal parent or Guardian um a lot of people would think foster care like I said that is not foster care these literally are children that are not a ward of the state they don't have a legal custodial parent or Guardian they're living with um we some call would call them couch Surfers they are generally our um a lot of our juniors are seniors that is who we have as unaccompanied youth um not a lot of but I mean we have that's who they are um

078I have have had unaccompanied youth um in elementary school generally when that happens DCF gets involved and those kids are placed or Grandma's been trying to to get custody or sometimes when that happens is because a parent goes to jail and they have not made plans things like that and so um we do consider them unaccompanied youth but we but we know eventually that they will be accompanied by somebody um but uh we currently right now have 91 unaccompanied youth in our program that is that's a it's not a high number for our program but it is a lot High number for what people think about um so think about that as these are kids that are living with friends and and family members or maybe living on their own um we've had unaccompanied youth

079living in cars but the fact that we have 91 unaccompanied youth that means there's 91 youth that don't have a parent that still want to get their education and so that is important that we support them the best way that we can to make sure that they finish and graduate so someone would say you know what are the reasons for kids being unaccompanied and why don't we we call the police and say hey we've got an unaccompanied youth um that's not our job our job is to make sure they continue the education that they that they deserve and so un youth can be unaccompanied for a variety of reasons they choose to leave home they could choose to leave home due to um issues with parents drugs neglect abuse um they can also uh Sometimes

080some of the homeless shelters have an age limit and they can't bring certain age children into the shelter so maybe the little ones and Mom will go but the older child can't and um they run away from Foster Care they go into foster care but they end up running away as a minor and so they become an unaccompanied youth with us um the big one is aging out of foster care they age out of foster care and still enrolled in school with us and so once they turn 18 they're out but what do they do they come and unaccompanied youth because they don't have a custodial parent or guardian and so we try to make sure we work closely with the um the the neglected and delinquent team that does are incarcerated and Foster Care

081youth to make sure that we capture those kids hey you're getting out let us know we we have supports for you over here too um and then some of them are just asked to leave they don't agree with their parents rules parents kick them out for whatever reason um teenage pregnancy unfortunately um sometimes sexual orientation um you know just parents just ask students to leave and they're just just on their own and so um that's when we come in to make sure that they get to continue their education and so that they don't feel as if they're they just have nowhere to go so here are some common barriers when you're looking at overcoming educating homeless students and and let me just point out these aren't barriers that we have created these are just general

082barriers um to think about when you look at our homeless kids um we've talked about the need for documentation um transportation is a problem we do transport we still follow the transportation the 2.5 miles um but we also help if that doesn't help we we provide city bus passes we've done Ubers um we've done gas cards for students that actually have vehicles um we try we've done bikes for students that um walk to school and are the 2.5 so some of the elementary kids have a hard time getting to school and say hey if we got you a bike and a helmet and a you know cool lock and you know and and a lot of them just are like yeah that's great so um they have La you know lack of food um there's

083communication issues not only with language barriers but there's also communication issues with technology you know a lot of our families don't have access to Internet technology things like that which people people are surprised these days that people don't have that but they don't not everybody has that and not everybody's fortunate to have that so um they've increased behavior issues there's a lot of distrust in Authority because people will call our program and say hey I really need the help but I'm afraid you're going to turn me over to DCF uh you know or um we have refugees families that come in that have had um bad experiences with authority and so they think well I I don't want you putting me in a database and my name out there and so we have to very

084much tell them that you know that's not what we're here for we're here to help your student be educated we're not here to um you know turn you in um you know we will we will if we see neglect or abuse or things like that but it's not that's not what our main goal is our main goal is is to make sure that we keep kids educated um then there's the lack of hygiene products um sometimes there's shame from peers and adults um and sometimes they just being scared of the shame if somebody finds out I'm homeless they're going to make fun of me they're going to think less of me um adequate supplies to attend school don't have paper pencils so we do suppli all that um and then just lack of adequate sleep

085if you're not in a if you're a homeless situation you're probably not getting much sleep and we all know everybody's been there get a fuzzy head when you don't have enough sleep you've got you know your mental and then you start having health problems and so a lot of our students you know fall asleep during class um things like that over sleep in the morning and don't make it to school and so um those are some of the the barriers that we have with some of our students so these are just some of the resources we provide you can see a picture of our one of our or a resource room we caught it on a lucky day that it was nice and organized for you but um I have some have some great people

086that work on that but we keep we get donated supplies and stuff to do um some of our our things um but again what we do is help with the Medan enrollment Transportation the basic hygiene food clothing um medical and dental help we don't actually do medical and dental but we can help um with glasses this year we've helped um a couple of students who are diabetic to make sure that there is a testing kit and testing strips at the school for them so that they don't um miss school um school supplies document assistance as I talked about during and after school fees um like CTE fees we've helped with um books and things like that and then we just basically what we can't do we connect them to outside services and so we have

087lots of outside services that we work with um that we can refer families to when we can't actually help them and then we have additional resources for graduating seniors which is a a special place in our hearts so um right now we currently have 71 seniors in W our program and 35 of those are unaccompanied youth um we assist with cap and gown and other graduation needs it depending it depends on what our donation money is we we're limited with some of our federal funds but um with some of our donation money sometimes we able to to get Hood senior hoodies and and things like that for them and so we want to make sure they get the same experiences we write letters to colleges for unaccompanied youth so that they can fill out their

088their fasta um as independent and receive um all of the financial aid that they are deserving um we also write letters so that we verify they're not necessar unaccompanied but just homeless so they have they can wave College wave college application fees and we do a project graduation every year last year we went to we'll probably do it again this year Dave and Busters we take the kids there get them a meal get them game cards let them go have a fun time um come back do a little um giveaway for them we usually have um bags for them for them to take to college most of our kids which is very very happy to say that most of our kids do end up going to a post-secondary school um and so we we do

089that every year for them to give them something to kind of look forward to for graduating um so having said all that how do we pay for what we do um first of all we get a mckin vento subgrant each year this is a um competitive grant that has to be written it is federal funds that pass through the state um we are usually it's one of 12 one of 14 this year this last year to get the grant um we will write it every single year it's not formula funded it is basically here's what I want to do here's how much I need and then the state Awards what they can what they can um to us and then we have uh part of our title on set asde is required for homeless students

090so we we set that aside um donation monetary and non we could not do what we' do if the community did not help us we have some phenomenal community members that have been longstanding donators um that have that give money on a regular basis or just call and say hey what do you need um we have a church that it can continuously brings us snack bags so that we can provide to students um we use Facebook a lot to to put out there hey we're going to do this program does anybody can anybody donate some some towels or some things like that so um our community and even our District employees this year stepped up we do a holiday distribution and it was We did an angel tree this year and and AMAC and Service

091Center phenomenal amount of donations that came um just from those employees and I even had nutrition services that said you know they apologize oh we don't have all of our stuff yet you know some of our employees are waiting to get paid and I'm like oh you know that's that's just just some of the community things and even our District employees that support our program um and we also this year were fortunate in the last couple years to have the ARP hcy money which is the American Rescue plan homeless children and youth funds um they are um past what we got for eser so this is a separate pot of money that we got specifically just for um the homeless and so um that actually expires in September but that has um allowed us to

092do um some things we've added new FTE positions um last time I presented we collaborated with T-Mobile to do some cell phones we still have those cell phones this have been kind of successful but for the more more of we were hoping for unaccompanied youth but more for like our families which is fine as long as somebody's getting the phones and using them um we'd be able to increase our supply before we could only give uniform school kids two uniforms now we can give them four to five which means they don't have to wear the same uniform twice in a week and they have the option of of laundry at the end of the week um resource books we do summer packs we've been able to do extended Motel stays for some people um we

093talked about some of the transportation things we've done District uh professional development and we've able to take in our database that we use things to to bulk it up a little bit to do more data collection and more um outcomes um we purchased a van we actually purchased a van to help with um getting families to appointments and and other things and then I have some long-term Subs in that are that help with some various stuff so again this program exists to support U our students in transition and it takes a wonderful team of people to pull all of those things that Denise just shared to pull them off um and just to um in summary say thank you to our community and our district for uh the ongoing communication and collaboration because it wouldn't

094be possible without that as well at this time we just want to thank you for allowing us to share and see if you have any questions okay Hazel so first of all I want to say that you are part of unsung heroes that we have in our district we have many but um I had opportunity to visit your program after meeting them at a district meet and greet and I want to say first of all that you are very organized your food pantry your your clothing closet your household essentials stitial Essentials um you do so much in family support I was able to attend a family night where you had there was like standing room only there were tons of families children and and families and played Bingo and you had gifts and it just

095really and the church was there and they were helping and feeding everybody and so it is just a great program um I do want to just say that you do take donations from anybody and everything and the other thing that I really appreciate was your opportunity that you had to adopt seniors where you accepted donations that went specifically to seniors who were graduating and that was a really kind and good thing to do so um I requested this presentation because of I was very impressed and I felt like you were um nobody really understood what mckenny vento I didn't and um it's very essential program to our district and I thank you for all your work and your dedication and know you took over a big job when the previous director left and I appreciate

096your time thank you thank you melody thank you thank you for the presentation I have a a funding question and um with the ARP and the hcy funding it has done some wonderful things um have you are you going to replace it with another funding stream have or the items that you were able to do will they just go away how will how do you plan to transition so when we when we started we we kind of built a transition plan knowing that these funds would end at some point um some of what we have done is and what I'm trying to do now is um educate District staff a little more so that they can assist in some we all have a design actually at every building so every building there is a a

097design that's a contact most most of them are social workers a few of them clerical but um and so my goal is to create some some more um manuals for them so that they can um help us with some of the the things that we will not be able to continue to do um we really aren't doing anything we haven't done we were just able to kind of ramp it up a little more so I you know the the uniform we may not be able to continue to give them as many but we still will be able to give uniforms um you know we're looking at um I have a few people in my department there at least I know one person that may retire so there's um there's a lot of things that we're

098looking at changing and and um trying to automate in our in our department as well so that we can keep some of that stuff going so sure excellent um yeah I that's perfect when you add to what you're already doing I mean that is what a lot of the eser dollars were allowed us as a district and other uh organizations to do second uh followup it has to do with mckin Bento so it is a federal program also that really has been around for just decades um can you tell me what is from an from a setting us apart from maybe other districts other school districts specifically what would you say are our shining Beacon um I'm required to work with a lot of the other District Liaisons um so every District in Kansas has

099a liaison and I will tell you that some of them don't even know they're the liaison um because they're such a small District that it's like they're also the superintendent and then you look them up and you call them and they're like I didn't know it was Leon but um we are fortunate enough to have a department of people um that work on mckin vento um other areas around us don't have other people that help them um they are one person and they do all of the work that my team does by themselves and so because of that we are able to offer more services such as um the clothing room um we are able to actually make sure that um my folks spend a lot of their time at the schools visiting the kids

100and so because of that um they're because of the they're there they're able to go and actually see the kids where they are you know they can take the kid their backpack at the school they can go to the house of the family and meet with the family um if you were just one person with 1600 kids couldn't do that so that's kind of what puts us above and beyond and I do know um the former liaison she had created a lot of good resources and documentation that they would come other districts would come to her and ask her hey do you have a forum that does this or hey do you have and when we got the ARP money we actually had a lot of those things in place already so so to me

101it's the ability and the fact the district has recognized that it takes more than just one person and so because of that we were able to create a department that is um passionate about what they do and and can doesn't just do the 10 things that the district Le aison has to do is able to go above and beyond Project Graduation things like that so yeah and I would just I have to we're talking about Cynthia yes Martinez yes so just have to invoke her name because she's done so much over so much time one last question is uh migrant Student Records how do we what's our process I can't really speak to that that's more Shannon benoit's area Okay um the only part that we get is is once they're they go to dunar

102and they get them enrolled and they decide what school they're going to place them at they sent we have what was called an um enrollment residency questionnaire for our program they have the the family fill that out it comes to us we call the family and talk them hey what's your situation what what's going on and then we qualify them for homeless or not but um the rest of that is done by Shannon and her team so are you Shannon no DD sorry my hand um okay so if they're but if they are deemed homeless what it still goes to Shannon yeah they start with Shannon first because she she she does the placement of the educational side so that she knows what schools have what programs and and where to place the students and

103then they'll let us know we've we've received a family and we believe that they qualify your services so what we do is then we step in and make sure um you know Shannon's Department also has supplies and things like that that they do but we also can help with that we have a little more donations than she gets and so we we usually step in and say let us do the let us take care of this family so you can take care of these families um and then we just make sure that as the student goes on and they're still homeless that they can stay in their school of origin that they get the transportation they need and and things like that so we really share the families together um just make sure they have

104all of the support they need absolutely thank you yeah okay thank you NOC I just wanted to express my appreciation to you uh the other mcken vento staff as well as Cynthia Martinez and our Community Partners uh several questions uh the first of which uh what advice would you give to our school board and our district leadership team on how we can more intentionally and proactively support our homeless our unhoused students so that's the first question how can what what can we do a better job at at a systems and policy level oh that's a tough one there's so many answers to that question but um you know I will tell you one of the thing one of the um things that the city is doing I'm on the homeless task force right now and

105I don't know if some of you guys have have heard of that but we are trying to do um functional zero with our homeless and and it's hard because a lot of our families aren't looked at as homeless because when you say to somebody you're homeless and they say but I live in a but I live in a house and they go well then you're not homeless okay but how many people live in that house is it a house with one bedroom that has four families living in it um is it a house where if the landlord finds out they're living there you're all out um we have families that are scared to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night for fear they will wake somebody up um and

106so I think really it's it's just about listening and and really finding out what their needs are and what we can do and and I think it's more than just a usd259 issue it's it's a it's a community issue that we have to work on and I appreciate that the board have allowed us to share about it and inquired about it because it is kind of one of those hidden gyms that you don't realize how much they're doing for our families you answered my other questions Cathy thank you thank you for being here for these kids before I got on the board I never in my wildest dreams would have imagined homelessness in our schools so two years ago it was an eye opener for me so I'm very grateful for this program and I

107know there's many others I'm all about resource ources and you do have this resource closet with items in there can you tell me a few things like where would one go if they wanted to donate if someone's watching this board meeting right now and they're thinking gee I might not be able to give money to it but I sure could go ahead and donate things to it where would they bring them what kind of items and are all of the items supposed to be brand new or can they be slightly used inform us on that so we can get that word out to the community and thank you so much um yeah if you go on the district website you'll see in go mckin vento you'll see our information on there um my number's on

108there as well as the administrative assistant um You can call that number and talk with her um we actually have a um a separate entrance at AAC if you want to come and donate and we can let you in and um just make a time and an appoint just let us know when you're going to come so we make sure somebody's there what kind of items from is zero to yeah so we are um so we're uh our program is holistic in other words we serve all the whole family so we also don't just serve um the students that are enrolled right now we if their family if they're enrolled and they're part of a family we'll serve all of the students so even if they are um infants um 0 to five we have

109we serve those um and so we have donations of um you know formula and diapers and things like that but clothes um gently used clothes does not have to be brand new we actually are fortunate enough to have a washer and dryer so if you do bring stuff we go ahead and wash it right there and and hang it up um you know uh coats we can always use coats hats gloves things like that um we do celebrate our families when they move into permanent housing and so that's one of the things that we always try to do is give them a housewarming basket of just some basic supplies um we have families that you know just because you move and get a permanent house doesn't mean all of a sudden you have a windfall

110and you're you're you're rich it just means you were fortunate enough to be able to find a home but now you have to put things in that home so we don't do Furniture but we do actually connect them to other places that do Furniture um there's a place called his Helping Hands that we work with to do some of that but we provide um anything that you may have we've provided coffee pots we've provided um some of our families that live in hotels don't always necessarily get a hotel that has a kitchen so we've provided crockpots or instapots or things where they can actually cook at home um and not have to always go out and eat um dishes um you know generally if you and I will I'll be honest if you call us

111and say you want to donate something if we can't take it and use it in our program we know somebody where we can so if you don't know where to take something usually sometimes we'll take it and say hey that's fine we we know that this shelter could use it or this program could use it so yeah superintendent yeah I just want to again thank you guys for the great presentation um I can see why Dr poite Stole the dollar bill metaphor because it's it's right on um and and some of these dollar bills that we work with in the mcken vento are are as torn and tattered as as any of our other students but you know it's our strategic plan is every student future ready and so this this leans into that that

112every single student matters um we have seen uh a good increase in graduation rate um in our mcken vento kiddos too over the past few years so um you could probably see a theme it's all tying back to that strategic plan from the the data that we shared from the equity Department from the Jag K presentation and this too so um great work and keep up the good work thank you guys thank you thank you ladies I see no more questions so thank you very much for your presentation and your time this evening thank you and before we move on to the next item I just I saw councilman Brandon Johnson from district one walk in and join us for the meeting so welcome councilman and your family thank you for joining us this evening

113Patrick next item next item consent Kathy do you have any items to pull let it be reported I have nothing okay Julie nothing to pull Hazel I have nothing nothing to pull Melody it's okay is it E6 E6 that's what is on page seven the nonviolent crisis interv okay so Melody is pulling E6 is that all that's okay I have nothing to pull Stan no consentant items to pull knock nothing to pull Bes E6 which has already okay do I have a motion to accept consent items except for E6 I make a motion I second it okay Julie made the motion Kathy seconded it if everybody can cast their votes point it toward Rob Joseph motion passes 70 Melody thank you uh this is really for um educational purposes um for the everyone that's here

114as well as uh within the community I was looking at this nonviolent Crisis Intervention um Team control item and it may seem uh you know as I as benign but actually what I'm relating it to um are issues that we may have in the building in terms of looking at uh student safety as well as um staff safety administrator safety so when looking at this particular policy um just a question that I had is whether or not the curriculum because that's what this is about it appears as though the CPI curriculum was updated updated um for a training that is no longer includes a particular hold for staff members um and so that training rather than requiring the district to pay for additional training learned that team control method uh CPI has granted us the

115free option to uh learn teach this whole through a video library and the reason why I raised it once again is because I wanted to be able to have access to the video and you might ask why uh the reason why is because I simply wanted to know what it is that individuals that are working with our students that are working um it could I don't know if it's students that go through this training but individuals that are working with our students uh in particular I wanted to be able to see what it is that they're doing U from these different holds and the non-violent uh interventions uh how it is that they look at what triggers uh the incident or or the behaviors that cause the individual to become violent and uh you know

116what are the methods that are taken and interventions that are put into play in order to avoid uh violent outlash or behaviors that we see once again again I looked at it from the lens of an um a student uh as well as a parent of a student or a grandparent of a student uh as well as staff and or administrators so it's I don't think that there's anything that needs to be done it was I just simply wanted to have an opportunity to speak to it uh because student safety is very very important uh as well as staff so thank you for for that opportunity okay you're welcome do we have a motion to pass item E6 uh I move that we passed item E6 and I would like to be able to have

117access to the video and then the other question I had was who else can have access to it is this anything that the public can have access to those are the questions that I had superintendent you want to address that sure yeah to clarify a couple things on it so this this training is for staff not for for students um it's training we've been used well I I wanted to have access to it right but you you had a as you were talking you had said something about you weren't sure if this was for students or not right so I just wanted to clarify this this is for staff okay um about 80% of the training is about um non deescalation tactics um verbal deescalation sometimes manipulating the environment to deescalate monitoring triggers um that

118sort of thing so um but there is a component of it that you know when a student uh is so disregulated you know there we have to take other safety measures such as this uh specific example with the team control um the the answer in in a broad sense is yes to the curriculum I don't know I would have to check about spec what you know who can see specific pieces of it it's copywritten so um that's why you know we pay for our staff to be train so obviously the board would have access but as far as the ability to send it out in any kind of public format I would would have to check into that but um but yeah for sure you guys can uh can see it and use it and

119like I said we've we've used it for I don't know quite a few years within the district it's a pretty pretty well-known standard um for uh keeping everyone safe students uh staff and trying to deescalate as best we can situation so I'll look for that followup thank you okay okay we have a motion do we have a second I second motions made by Melody seconded by ha if everyone can cast their votes you did it motion passes 70 Patrick next item next item election of officers to the Board of Education in accordance with bue policy 0100 organization of the board at the board's first meeting on or after the second Monday in January of each year the board shall elect a president and vice president from its members each of Whom Shall Serve from one

120year or until his or her successor is elected the election of officers shall be by open ballot board policy stipulates that each member may vote for any member of the board and successive ballots shall be taken for each office until one member receives four votes the new newly elected president and vice president shall assume their duties at the conclusion of the meeting at which they are elected president first that's true for um results of the first ballot for president of the Board of Education Diane Albert votes for Stan reer Julie Hedrick V votes for Stan reer NOC vong votes for Stan Reeser Stan reer votes for Stan Reeser Kathy Bond votes for Diane Albert Hazel Stabler votes for Stan Reeser Melody McCrae Miller votes for Stan Reeser with six votes Stan rer is the next

121Board of Education [Applause] president we'll now uh begin ballot in for the office of Vice President thank you Joseph thank you sir for uh first ballot for the office of Vice President Diane Albert votes for Diane Albert Julie Hedrick V votes for Melody McCrae Miller KNC vong votes for Melody McCrae Miller Stan reer votes for Diane Albert Kathy Bond votes for Diane Albert Hazel Stabler votes for Diane Albert Melody McCrae Miller votes for Melody McCrae Miller with four votes Diane Albert is the next vice president of the Board of [Applause] Education okay Patrick next item next item under finance budget report okay Susan before you come down let's go ahead and take a five minute break for the board to have a little break just for a minute before you come down here sorry I

122did that a little out of order we want to build up