001I would like to call the May 8th school board meeting to order Wichita Public Schools will be the District of choice in our region where all students and staff are empowered to dream believe and achieve would you please join me in a moment of silence thank you our colors are presented tonight by the Curtis Middle School jrtc Cadets it's command sergeant major Liliana Rowe first sergeant Angela Palacio Corporal Phoebe Lemay and Sergeant Shawna Leal Sergeant Leal was just selected by the leadership honorary Cadet board as the honored weary Cadet for our middle schools so congratulations to you on that would you please rise for the presentation of the colors color March the two hold left face present arms you may post the colors otter arms post colors please join me on the Pledge of Allegiance
002I pledge of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God the indivisible with liberty and justice for all order arms colors dismissed foreign [Applause] [Music] thank you very much to the Curtis leadership team for the colors first item of business Patrick first item of business public hearing on republication of the general fund and the at-risk funds in the 2022-23 budget for anybody on the public hearing for the change in the budget see no one Diane do you have a motion I moved to close the public hearing on the republication of the general fund and the at-risk funds in the 2022-2023 budget second the motion was made by Diane and seconded by Stan please cast your vote we have to wait a second now you may vote
003foreign Hazel's not here I know motion passes six zero the hearing is closed next item next item adoption of the amended 2022-23 budget for general fund and at-risk fund and budget report Diane I moved to adopt the amended 2022 2023 budget for the general fund and at ferrisk funds and the related budget report hi second moved by Darian and seconded by Kathy please cast your vote motion passes 6-0 next item under reports superintendents student advisory Council thank you all very much for coming it's always a pleasure to get to see you and hear what you're doing good evening everyone my name is Alexis Youngman and I'm a senior at Northeast Magnet High School hi my name is Celine Tran and I'm a sophomore at Northeast High School my name is Japan Bennett and I'm a
004senior at Wichita alternative and my name is Mackenzie and I'm a senior at Wichita Heights High School before we do get started I do want to say thank you to all of our Wichita Public School teachers since it is Teacher Appreciation Week and then on April 18th 120 students met downtown for the super super SAC meeting and we discussed ways to support Student Success and the new graduation requirements for the class of 2028. I'm going to be starting us off with our Icebreaker questions the first one was what or who motivates you to stay on track to graduate we found that many students look to their family and their peers for motivation and many students also had self-motivation and they were very committed to their future um the next question was how are students who
005are meeting academic standards recognized or celebrated and we found that many students are recognized by the honor roll and that many students would like to be recognized with optional public recognition social media assemblies an example of assembly they were talking about maybe student of the quarter student of the month kind of in front of the host school but a majority of the students wanted more public recognition okay and for our next or our next Icebreaker question is what are the reasons and causes a student can get off track so one of them is mental and physical health a lot of students were especially affected by the covid-19 pandemic that happened in 2020 and not having enough support system from friends family and teachers and some of some sort and certain groups of people that students
006tend to hang out with so more of like a bad influence and some students are overwhelmed because of work school and Etc and lastly some students are affected personally from their personal life and their personal home foreign next question question five was what are what opportunities are there for students to get back on track if they're falling behind um the first one was after school tutoring that some students benefit from another was um Saturday school which is offered at Northeast but we thought that it could be beneficial to other schools in the district Extended Learning opportunities communication between the teachers and the students teachers accepting late work and not just giving it a zero and other things like Edgenuity which is an online resource for students use to like credit recovery and then kind of
007the main question that we were there to answer was in regards to the fact that the Kansas State Department is changing graduation requirements for the class of 2028 so we were given a list of post-secondary assets which the class of 2028 and Beyond would have to pick two of those assets to be able to graduate so you were asked what assets we would recommend be added taken away or taken away um or kept on the list and so the kind of the overall consensus that we all had was that we think the more things that are on the list the better because one thing might work for one person but not work for someone else and vice versa so the more things that are on the list the easier it'll be for more people to
008succeed that being said there were some that stuck out to us that we liked and then some that we didn't like so much so the ones that we did like were a GPA so like 3.5 or above we thought was a good way to measure college readiness or would be a good asset also extracurricular so like you have to be in a club for a couple of years or have a certain amount of hours committed to a club or an extracurricular sports or something like that um also we thought life skills classes would be a good one industry level certification um culinary careers but add like a marketing or business element to it like I know some schools are doing coffee shops so we really liked that and thought that would be a good one
009also foreign language because a lot of colleges do already require a foreign you that you take a foreign language maybe three to four years of foreign language could get you a requirement or if you get the Seal of by literacy also community service hours we thought would be great internships especially for those people who want to go into the workforce rather than College um and then there were a few that we didn't love so much one of them was teacher assistant because I know a lot of kids at my school who are teacher assistant kind of just sit in the back of their class on their phones the whole time so we didn't think that would be a great one and then we didn't love the 90 attendance and then we also didn't love the
010act just because someone might not really do a whole lot in school and then score well on the act so we thought that GPA was a better way to kind of balance how you're going to do in college so yeah those were Austin all that we have for this so do you guys have any questions for us I see no questions but I really appreciate the report that you gave to us so that we can read it and what yeoman's work you've done thank you so fast of course we really appreciate hearing from you all yeah we all appreciate the opportunity to be here so and then there was one more thing I as all of you probably know this is Dr Alicia Thompson's last board meeting so on behalf of supersuck I just wanted
011to say thank you so much for all you do I've been so grateful to be a part of super sac and I'll hold all the experiences I I had with it close to my heart that's largely because of how kind and welcoming just how great of a superintendent you were so I know that you'll be greatly missed and I know you have a fabulous retirement [Applause] awesome thank you guys thank you for doing that that that probably means as much to Dr Thompson as any reception she's had so thank you foreign next item under reports good news I'm not sure how to how to top these amazing young people it is indeed a joy to have a chance to work with them and I think you're going to get to see several of them in
012just a few minutes as we celebrate our first good news item of the evening this is always a super cool opportunity to meet the young people that represent the best of the best in their classes that are our top scholarship winners and I'm eager to hear the total figure because I have not heard that figure yet and it is usually one that is quite impressive so as we get started I am pleased to welcome Miss Amanda kingry our assistant superintendent for secondary schools to the podium thank you all right um good evening president Logan vice president Albert Dr Thompson and the board members it is uh really hard to come up here and speak after those kids they did an amazing job I just sat there I was like wow they're so articulate um great
013job for them so today we're going to celebrate some of our seniors just like um Wendy said these students are all our top scholarship recipients at all of our high schools and so we're going to recognize the top 10 as well as anybody that received forty thousand dollars or more but I would love for these are they going to come in or are we just are we going to be able to see them because I would love to see them all right um so we're just going to start with each and every school but before we do that um I really want to recognize everyone who helps support these students to get where they are today we have all the way it's not just a high school effort and we have to make sure that
014we understand that it starts all the way from pre-k all the way up so all of our elementary teachers and administrators and staff and to our middle school and our house our our high school sorry have prepared them for today but also our families and so families thank you for being here today because we know just like you heard in the report from the students it takes a village it's not just one or two people it goes from the family to the school in the community that support these students and then also most importantly the students are the ones that have to put in the work day in and day out to get to where they are today so these students are obviously prepared for the next level because they were able to show that
015by receiving these scholarships and that's really ultimately our goal for Wichita Public Schools is for us to prepare students for the next level and for that to be either college or career Readiness and life Readiness and so these students have absolutely exhibited that lastly I really want to recognize our College and Career Center our counselors as well because without them they are the ones that are sharing all of the scholarships with our students they are giving them exposing them to those opportunities and letting them know what's out there they are also the ones who had to collect all of this data and it is a chore for them to come and try to collect everything from all of these seniors so the numbers that I have today they are the numbers that we were able
016to to collect we know that there's probably still some more out there so again be cognizant of that you're going to hear some really large numbers and we know that there's probably much more out there but this is what we were able to gather so we are going to celebrate all of them but before I bring all of our students in I want to share some numbers specifically for you so 2719. that is the number of anticipated seniors that we anticipate to graduate from the class of 2023 for this school year so 2719 students that's a lot a lot of students that we're preparing for a career and for college the next number I want to talk about are the number of students that we know for a fact are receiving scholarship offers and that
017is 826 students that have already been offered scholarships through our colleges and then last but not least the most important number the number that you guys are waiting to hear like Wendy said the total that we have been able to collect from students to know that's going to be offered we're at 55 million 595 dollars so we are that's a large amount so at this time I'm actually going to let the building administrators I'm going to let them come out and they are going to share with you the names of the students and where they might be attending thank you members of the board Dr Thompson Leroy Parks principal at Chester Lewis asked principal Chester Lewis I'm also responsible for the students at Town East Learning Center that's in partnership with Simon Youth Foundation our
018students we have here tonight are Brenton Horsley who will be attending WSU Tech Casey Pham is going to Friends University Tejeda is attending Wichita State University Gibran Bennett is going to Kansas State University against my will and Jordan Chad is going to WSU and I'd also like to acknowledge Miss denea Kramer our counselor at town or at Chester Lewis programs she works with the students at Town East and the adults and also our College and Career coordinator this is Amy Alvarez so thank you all right next we have um East High School and so we have principal Sarah Richardson who is going to share her information all right thank you board members and Dr Thompson and Miss Kingery uh my name is Sarah Richardson principal of Wichita High School East Mr Parks is like like
019the biggest fan yeah um late yeah just stay close to me my friends stay close to me uh so we are graduating the 145th graduating class of the original Wichita High School which is nice little East this year and that's pretty exciting class of 2023 and these are uh six of our top 10 Scholars as a total the 145th graduating class has a total of 21 million 742 dollars and some change uh reading math is not my strong soup so we're very proud of this class 21 million so uh I'll just go through uh our top scholar winner is Miss Cara Kinsley and she's going to uh St Louis University next year our second is MD zuhair who is going to the University of Southern California Miss cania Johnson's number three going to mcverson college
020uh Max Christy going to Morehouse College [Applause] Elizabeth mcwabbey going to the University of Kansas and Augustine Al going to the University of Tulsa so we're very proud of them and I do want to introduce our College and Career coordinator who works with all of our seniors just not through six uh Cami Kennedy and we're very just a proud of everybody that has worked so hard to get these kids where they're going and don't forget where you come from we'll miss you next up we have Heights High School and we have Eric Philippi the principal who's going to share the names thank you very much good evening my name is Eric Philippi I'm the principal at Wichita Heights High School I'd like to go ahead and start our introductions uh with Miss Lauren Welch always
021holding applauses till the very end because I think I was I was awkward on my part uh Cliff uh Hosea jihana socar Miranda Arambula Mr Austin Vaughn Miss Mackenzie bino who I believe you guys just heard from miss Emily McCallum and Mr Carlos Silva and I would also like to introduce our new College and Career coordinator Miss Shanna Lacy [Applause] all right next up we have North High School and we have Stephanie Wasco here to share her students I'm very proud to introduce the following North High scholarship recipients our first recipient is Kylie Lavalley and Kylie is attending Wichita State University mayleigh Hansen mainly is attending Wichita State University Gracia Nunez palomares Gracia will be attending Newman University Zane Bumpus Zane will be attending Kansas State University Ares Hudgins Aries will be attending the University
022of Vermont Adia file Adia will be attending Sweetbriar Eden Shockley Eden will be attending the University of Kansas Diana kolchada Arista Diana will be attending Wichita State University Katie blessman Katie will be attending Butler Community College and our last recipient isn't here with us tonight we would like to recognize her as well Taryn Sinclair and she'll be attending Tabor College foreign okay next up we should be having Northeast yes Northeast Magnet and so we have Ben Myrick here principal of Northeast to share his students good evening we have four of our uh 10 Scholars here I'm going to read those 10 names and we'll recognize uh particularly the four that are here so who you see in front of you from your right to left Kalisha Lawrence Henry uh followed by Angelique Gray Rachel Hickman
023and Jalen Armstrong others in our top ten were Morgan sensel Ethan Sorenson Jaden Chung riham Rahman karice prophet and Trinity Snyder [Applause] so you're probably going to move this too all right um so next up we have Northwest High School we have area code for Haldeman the principal there at Northwest foreign good evening we too have several missing but six of our ten are here so I also will read off those who are here first Leslie Bravo Jasmine Diaz Lisbeth Diaz Jacob lamb chennanye atonier and Tyler Smalley and our four who couldn't make it this evening Christina Gutierrez Brayden Huang Cesar Garcia Lopez and Marcelo Perez thank you okay next up we have South High School and then we have the principal Travis Rogers thank you good evening we have 12 here tonight from South
024High School Chris Bowie Maya group Diego Avalar Anthony Martinez Cassie Bonner Lydia Harper Tristan Sauls Christiana Pittman Ruben Freya Darman Eric Moreno Elena Pineda and Bowie udara [Applause] all right I think we're going to try I know it's going to get a little uncomfortable we're going to try to squeeze you down a little bit more so we can get some more students in here so next up we'll have Southeast High School and we'll have principal Ben Mitchell here to read the names for his students foreign good afternoon everybody I'm proud principal Ben Mitchell Southeast High School and we have some of our great graduates here so I'm going to read their names off first so when I read your name off can you step forward so they know who's who so first is adolfine mulimba
025mbala and can I just do a short brag she came to the United States in 2019. that was her freshman year she now speaks four languages because English was not one of our first languages and she'll be going to WSU also next is Isaiah Silman [Applause] next is Jada Hall I call her vice president [Applause] Nakayla Thomas Mr superintendent I want to brag she's going to your alma mater Langston and last but not least that's here is Najee Dixon who is going to the flagship HBCU Howard University and I also want to read off uh the students who are not here Sam Samuel eckenim Diego puga and Aaron Baker those are our Southeast golden Buffalo all right next up we have West High and we have Mark jolliff the principal at West High to share
026his names good evening and uh proud principal Mark jolliff of Wichita West High School go pioneers and here we are first uh our first three that uh and the three that are present uh you hear Perez Gonzalez all right Katie vielta [Applause] and Israel Cervantes also read our other remaining names that weren't able to make it tonight whether baseball or other events but Kaden Dotson Ava Tate Emily Corral Alondra safuentes sahus shura Haley trailer and Annabelle Ramos all right before we dismiss all of you because I know it's probably a little crowded over there um can you do me a favor if you are a teacher or administrator or staff member of one of these students can you please stand so we can recognize you thank you and most importantly if you are a family
027member in this of one of these students up here can you please stand so we can also recognize you [Applause] all right thank you everybody for being here and showing the support um congratulations to all of you we know that is a lot of hard work to get here it just doesn't come easily so we know that you put in the effort thank you guys good luck on your future I know that the staff are going to miss you guys greatly but can we just give one more round of applause congratulations to all of them thank you oh my goodness what a wonderful opportunity to recognize students who've worked very hard and done the right thing and they're going to come back and do us proud I know it absolutely Dr Thompson as people are
028leaving I go ahead keep leaving but I also want to take this opportunity to not just thank just the teachers and parents and Community I would like to also thank all staff because there are people such as secretaries and custodians and counselors and everyone else that also play a Big M impact on students so I want to make sure that I acknowledge all staff who have supported these students to help them to get to this point so let's give a round of applause to everyone okay we'll give just a moment to clear the the audience as they want to leave because we have bigger and better things still to celebrate we've got great things going on in this District okay next item Patrick next item 2022 challenge award recipients mine will pause what a joy
029to have our students here they've worked hard they deserve to be recognized by everyone it was special to see their faces and it was also really terrific to turn around and watch the faces of the parents and the family members and the audience The Pride that they have in their young people in in our kids was really special and that's what it's all about when it comes right down to it so we celebrated Excellence with our students and their achievements Miss Kingery mentioned the village the elementary schools and the middle schools that it takes to help our graduating seniors get to where they are so our second good news item tonight gives us the opportunity to welcome two familiar faces back to the podium Miss Betty Arnold and Mr Jim McNeese who represent Wichita schools
030on the Kansas State Board of Education and who have made several appearances in our district to celebrate our challenge award-winning schools for the year so I saw several of you in the audience if you are a challenge award principal than you are why don't you all go ahead please and come forward so as Mr Miss Arnold and Mr McNeese have the opportunity to celebrate you you can receive the congratulations of our board as they're coming down I just want to Echo the thanks to Betty Arnold and Jim McNeese for coming tonight because we appreciate what the state board does and how they help us and it's really nice to see you in our district and at our presentation so thank you very much for being here okay good evening president Logan vice president Albert board
031members and superintendent Thompson thank you so much for allowing us to be a part of your good news presentation for it is indeed good news when we can celebrate 13 schools within 259 that have received the challenge Awards this award is based on outstanding and uncommon test results and state assessments based on math and reading for the 2022 school year those schools that we recognize and I do want to thank the marketing and communication Department because they just went all out and helped us celebrate each individual school as we presented them with their Awards those schools are at this point I have to put on readers Elementary we have Cleveland Traditional Magnet Earhart Earhart Environmental Magnet Griffith Elementary Kinsler Elementary McLane Science and Technology Magnet minnehawk core magnet Ortiz Elementary price Harris communication magnet K-8
032we celebrated Hearts manduel language and middle school was Allison Traditional Magnet Pleasant Valley Middle School Mayberry cultural and Fine Arts Magnet and Wilbur Middle School I could have been another name for this award it would be in spite of I like that you see in spite of the challenges that these buildings faced when we look at the economic status when we look at the high predictors that marginalize the success of these buildings merged 6 successful said inspire in spite of this they put their best foot forward and with so much appreciation for what you have done for those students I celebrate you I thank you again uh for all that you have done because when we say all students guys that means all it doesn't matter your background it doesn't matter the economics it doesn't
033matter the race it doesn't matter you are a student in Wichita Public Schools you have celebrated those students you have done well and I get emotional because you touch a part of me that appreciates the career choice that you've made and so from the bottom of my heart and I am going to leave a few words [Laughter] but from the bottom of my heart thank you so much and thank you board members for allowing us to publicly celebrate these great buildings in 259 I always feel like there's so much great stuff going on but very little attention and if I had a Pom-Pom for each one of these buildings I still would be cheering so guys thank you so much for all you've done and I'm going to allow Mr McNeese to at least have
034the word [Laughter] uh congratulations to uh these principals for the schools they represent and they do represent them the success of his school starts with a principal keeps going with the faculty it's the buy-in of the students it's the buy-in of the parents and it's a support that you as the board give them you know it's a it's a collaborative effort it's a team effort but on behalf of the State Board of Education I want to send our appreciation for the hard work and dedication that you have just demonstrated in schools that if we were in a betting system you would not be the ones we'd bet on you know the odds were stacked against you you got your students and your faculty and your communities to buy into success so thank you very much
035and look forward to seeing you again next year thank you well we understand as a board this is a big deal for schools to win this award so we are so so excited to have all these principles and 14 Schools that's a lot of schools wichita's doing a whole lot of things right out in our buildings so thank you principals for being here fitting that our third good news item tonight Falls during teacher appreciation week and Falls just after one of our challenge Awards schools happens to claim our honoree as one of their very own so I'm going to invite Mr Tim Elson forward and I told him that I would try not to embarrass them and say a few words about how amazing he is and why he's standing before you today to be
036recognized so for 35 years the Devore Family Foundation a private family foundation in our community has had enough gratitude and respect for public servants that they have selected an honoree from the Wichita Public Schools from the city of Wichita from Sedgwick County to be honored as excellence in public service award recipients and I can't help but Smile as I look across the table at Miss Hedrick because she was one of those award honorees when she worked for our school district not only did has the Devore Family Foundation celebrated and honored and held in high esteem these individuals but they also put their families Good Fortune behind the awards in the form of a check that the honorees receive that they can use to apply to whatever goodness in the community that that they support so
037for 35 years we've been ganging up on award recipients because it's a surprise when when we come out and let them know that they've been selected and this year was no exception right so Tim thought he was going to the zoo for Earth Day and took some of his Science Olympiad students there Tim is an eighth grade science teacher at Wilbur Middle School and is well known for Quality Science Olympiad teams and I think you all had just qualified or received Science Olympiad recognition at the state level second place in the state so he was having a great day and celebrating with the kiddos right near the petting zoo and Mr Lynn his principal was having an important one-on-one conversation with him over to the side by the barn while we were all pouring out
038and waiting to conspire when he walked over towards us and I think by the time he saw his parents in the crowd that's usually the moment when they realize they've been had I was watching your face he saw his family he knew something was up and we were all able to congratulate him for being selected as the 2023 excellence in public service award recipient from the Wichita Public Schools [Music] thank you so the unique thing about this award is that it recognizes individuals from the three honoring organizations where not only the amazing things they do in the classroom or at work but also the amazing things they do in the community and I'm going to give you a few highlights this doesn't begin to scratch the service but it gives you an idea of the
039servant heart that Tim has and the um the love that he has for his students he's actively involved in Science Olympiad actively involved in Kansas Association of teachers of science instrumental in creating Regional conferences for teachers or no cost benefiting his peers facilitator of regional Science Olympiad competition you heard about the Statewide success of his team he heads the school's recycling program he's an avid coach at Wilbur he's a mentor for second year science teachers in our district and has a model classroom that we use to show new teachers how it should be done and he has received the district's good Apple award three times so there is more that we could share great stories that we heard from your students and in fact it was apparent who nominated him for this award which I
040think speaks volumes about the quality of instructional leader and caring human that we have in classrooms so Tim on behalf of all of us the Wichita Board of Education congratulations thank you very much [Applause] thank you very much um I just want to say a couple quick things first off because Betty Arnold had pointed out in spite of Wilbur Middle School in spite of of our demographics and and who we are we fought really hard we took second place at our state tournament and um I wanted to give a quick plug about the National Tournament because it's going to be taking place this year in Wichita State University Friday May 19th and Saturday the 20th so if you want to see National stem competitors it's open to the public if you want to stop by
041and see that they take the top 120 schools from the entire nation including a little bit from Canada and Japan and out of those 120 schools I wanted to point out that in spite of where we are Wilbur was ranked 121st we missed it by this much but I didn't want to also real quick uh thank all the people that support me and all the things that I do because I do not do this by myself I am not a self-made man and I I cannot do what I do without the support of everybody including my uh lovely fiance and daughter who are in the room right now if you guys want to stand up and wave and the whole village that was mentioned earlier including Mr Lynn Mr Lynn could you please stand up
042for me he has been one of my biggest cheerleaders uh my my superintendent could we please give a round of applause for her last thank you Miss Thompson for everything Dr Thompson um and and everybody else on the board and my custodian that takes out my trash and just everybody like I couldn't do it without all of you guys so thank you [Music] thank you for allowing us the time to celebrate this evening what wonderful good news students buildings great teachers man we don't get better than this so thanks to all of them for being here this is a joy next item please next item under reports service employees International welcome Isa we're glad to see you good evening thank you president Logan vice president Albert Dr Thompson board members quite a bit of positivity
043this evening I see um a lot a lot of good things are happening in usd259 I think it's about time for the disc jockeys to start queuing the Alice Cooper records and everybody's kind of ready to get on and have the school year be over with I think we've successfully gotten through it I do appreciate those of you who've taken the time to talk with me about some of the teacher and paraprofessional concerns and and working on the behavior work group with us I think that we've had some productive meetings in those I really appreciated the ones where the school board members one or one or two of you showed up I felt like those were probably the most productive meetings and I appreciate your contribution to those things and so you know at this
044point in time we just hope to continue need to work on those issues and continue to have an open line of communication and we hope that next school year is ready to start and move through with a new Direction and and get things where we want them to be so thank you very much for letting us have an evening to talk to you and let you know what's going on and and I I can't say that I've stood up and down so much since the last time I was an usher at a Catholic wedding so thanks for the exercise [Laughter] next item under reports United teachers of Wichita welcome Katie good evening superintendent Dr Thompson ble president Cheryl Logan Boe vice president Diane Albert and Billy members Dr Thompson I did not know it was
045your last meeting and you have just done so much for the school district and your positivity your energy like we we appreciate you and I know that um everyone's going to really miss you so thank you for all you do um today kicks off Teacher Appreciation Week our teachers go above and beyond every day for our students there are so many ways that that we can show that we appreciate our teachers but honestly the best way is by electing pro-education candidates who will fund our schools and fully fund special education I wanted to let you know that we recently passed along our workload survey to District leadership overall we received a strong response rate from our staff when 1861 responses from certified staff in terms of morale we're pleased to see that more than three
046quarters of certified staff reported that USD 259 is a good place to work and approximately 80 percent of our certified staff reported that they intend to return to their building next school year however there are still some areas of concern that emerged from the workload survey for example there's a significant number of respondents that reported that students do not always follow codes of conduct and there is a lack of support for some instructional initiatives as for student conduct we implemented a behavior work group this year and I'm so thankful that many of you attended the meetings I felt that they were very productive when you were there and we appreciate you I was very hopeful after attending the March meeting and I know Julie and Diane were there thank you for being there that we
047were going in a great Direction but I was disappointed when nothing came from that April meeting and our team was told that it was advisory and that nothing may come from the months of time spent discussing these important issues I do have two questions for you to ask your leadership team regarding the behavior work group the first one is what goals were set for the group to accomplish the school year the second one is what will be implemented from this work group Next school year to help improve student Behavior I'm having a really hard time telling our teachers that we spent an entire school year meeting on this important issue and that we have no communication or action to show from it I recently sent a request for a Boe policy regarding an ADA appeal
048process this is my third request for a conversation with the board about the need for this process and I look forward to your response soon thank you guys for everything you do for our teachers and I know that um I just appreciate you always answer our teachers emails and calls anytime we have questions I'm Cheryl you've answered my call I think at 9 30 at night so thank you for always being available we know this is a volunteer position and our teachers appreciate you so thank you next item next item public Communications we do have three speakers tonight uh speakers are allowed three minutes and you may not talk about specific buildings teachers or students in your presentations our first uh person to speak to it is Jesse broski and I apologize if I mispronounced
049your last name all right hello president Logan superintendent Dr Thompson and the rest of the members of the board thank you for allowing me the time to speak today I'd first like to congratulate again all of the the students we've seen up here today and all the faculty and staff it's really great to see them being uh just appreciated for for the hard work they they do um anyway I'm addressing you all as over the course of the past month our state legislature has passed multiple bills into law that will negatively impact their LGBT plus youth as many of you may know House Bill 2238 or the fairness and women's sports act disallows trans individuals from participating on sports teams associated with the gender they identify as Senate Bill 180 also known as the women's
050Bill of Rights disallows trans individuals from using the restrooms and locker rooms of the gender they identify as engaging in gender consistent Sports and being included in gender consistent facilities are part of what we call social transitioning which is an integral part of the trans experience I believe that these new laws will have deleterious effects on the mental well-being of our transgender youth turban at all 2021 found that children who can comfortably socially transition are less likely to abuse cannabis the study also found that adolescents who socially transition are likely to experience adverse mental health outcomes including attempting suicide unless they are protected from harassment during their transition Olson at all 2016 found that trans children who are supported in their gender identities experience mental health difficulties at the same rates of cisgender students whereas
051trans children who are not supported experience higher levels of distress these two studies are some of many that highlight the importance of social transitioning from our for our students mental well-being I can also go on about the impacts this can also have on their physical health and hormonal transitioning of our trans students but I can't do this topic Justice in only three minutes regardless it can be said that these new laws have may have unexpected consequences for our students mental and physical health fortunately is possible for the officials Administration and faculty of usd259 to help ameliorate the effects of these laws for example the fairness in women's sports act allows the creation of co-ed sports teams which may include all individuals regardless of sex assigned at Birth and gender identity the creation of coed sports
052team allows for the inclusion of our trans students positively impacting their physical and mental well-being it additionally demonstrates to our students who are assigned female at Birth that they are not inherently less capable or less athletic than students who were assigned male at Birth furthermore single person gender-neutral restrooms may help Comfort individuals who would otherwise be forced to use the restroom of the gender they do not identify with these are just some of the several options the board can take to help support our trans youth I look forward to seeing what other routes the board May develop and I also want to add this is especially uh I think worthwhile to mention considering this week is children's mental health awareness week so kind of consider these in light of all of that I thank you
053for your time thank you very much next person is Mary Drury people welcome Mary thank you I come to you from Texas but I grew up here in Wichita Kansas good evening thank you for the opportunity to present to your school board tonight my name is Mary Drury and I am a chapter leader with foreign links around the globe better known as flag is a U.S Department of State designated sponsor for J-1 Visa exchange programs or to put more simply we match busy everyday American host American families with an International High School student to host for a school year our students come from South America Asia Europe and even Africa to experience what is likely to be what it what it is like to be a typical American Teenager this year will be our 30th
054year to participate in the J-1 Visa Exchange program we have been assigned visas to match approximately 500 students with a volunteer host family for this next school year flag is in the Wichita Area the Wichita School District this week to promote our programs to your Elementary School families I will personally deliver 20 000 Flyers to your Elementary School families uh teachers School administrators area churches and local community by the end of the week we will have sent home approved Flyers with each of your Elementary School students tabled at least three athletic events and have met with several high school and other administrators within the district we hope this is just the beginning to a stronger and growing presence within your District as of today there are still approximately 100 spots remaining in USD 259. for
055international exchange students this year I've told that you've never met you've never met reached your maximum before we appreciate your District's willingness to make so many spots for our International exchange students and to work with us as we support our Grassroots International diplomacy efforts we have promised to carry out on behalf of the U.S Department of State you see very rarely will the everyday American family be able to make such a difference on a global scale however by opening their homes for a school year they are building a bridge that supports International friendships views and kindness around the world they are fostering a positive view of Americans abroad included in the handouts I brought this evening is additional information about flag in our programs and information on the two community outreach events we are hosting
056while we are here in this area this week I will also be around until the end of the school board meeting in if any of your high school principals or other school administrators has questions about flag or how our flag or how flag supports our students thank you for being a partner to flag and to all exchange programs um organizations in this effort together we're building friendships around the world we're making a difference on a global scale thank you thank you Kareem Williams Karima Williams good evening hello when you open Webster's Dictionary and look up the word leadership the definition reads as follows the action of leading a group of people or an organization Integrity communication influence empathy courage and respect these and so many more are a few qualities that describe Dr Alicia Thompson
057for the last 25 years six as the usd259 superintendent you have served us with dignity Grace and Poise and today we simply say thank you my name is Karima Williams and I am the career specialist here at Wichita North High School I'm also a Wichita native and a proud USD 259 product I attended Lee Overture Elementary Robinson and Southeast High School I've had the opportunity to leave Wichita and to return and could not be filled with more admiration and pride as I see you as our superintendent I would like to take a few moments to express our appreciation and gratitude on behalf of Jag Kansas and our students never one to take the easy or most traveled Road Dr Thompson you have courageously led us through both good and turbulent times you masterfully let us
058as we went from face to face interaction education to zoom and team classroom settings you have been battle tested questioned doubted and even shown this then and yet you've always remained stoic encouraged compassionate and decisive throughout your serve you've you've always remained accessible approachable and willing to listen to anyone within our district rather a popular decision or not you have always kept the students as your number one playing priority helping to ensure higher graduation rates provide additional votech and and trade school training and bringing back culture and pride within our walls sorry you gave little brown girls a face they could identify with Philippians 4 13 says I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me you serve that is proof through prayer hard work and stay in the course you can truly achieve
059anything and everything I'd be remissed if I didn't mention that you did this all while being a wife a mother and a community and a serving the community of Wichita in your various board positions Dr Thompson you are to be saluted saluted for your vision of our education system saluted for your tenacity saluted for your gift and your grind I can only imagine the long hours many meetings and attention to detail to successfully navigate our district Dr Thompson thank you thank you for thank you for leaving your mark moving forward thank you for keeping the students your number one priority and thank you for supporting Jack K and other leadership programs you Dr Thompson has served as our modern day Miss Nancy Garvey we are so proud of you we appreciate you and we will
060miss you thank you for your service to the district [Applause] I just want to tell Dr Thompson while you're doing this um I have my class watch the school board meetings because you know they like to feel like every decision is one person's or they don't really know how it works so we watch the meetings and so I had them come up with words that describe Dr Thompson and so you will see in the picture frame or all the words that the students gave me to describe her and I'm number one was beautiful so you know the students think you're very beautiful so so thank you very much thank you very much we appreciate your coming your words speak from for all of us so thank you oh she got her popcorn and Hot Tamales
061she's ready to retire next item please next item consent Ernestine do you have anything you'd like to pull no I do not okay Stan no consent agenda items to pull I have nothing to pull Diane I do know Nicole Julie nothing to pull Kathy I just have one E11 E11 okay could we have a motion to accept the rest of the items I moved that we um accept the consented agenda other than item E11 E11 right okay is there a second is E7 or E11 e 11 e 11. okay uh I don't have a second I'll second it okay it was motion made with by uh Julie and seconded by Kathy please register your vote the agenda passes six zero let's look at E11 Kathy I think this is going to be for Mr Luke
062Newman you know me I'm always asking questions but doesn't a teacher like that when a student asks questions not a teacher good answer okay I'll get you for that okay under kitchen remodels um it says various sites I I just want to know what criteria is used to determine which buildings need kitchen remodels or is it on a rotation basis or a priority needs basis well unfortunately I don't see Fabian here um we relied heavily on on him and the nutrition services folks my question was um what is the criteria to determine which building is going to be selected to get these kitchens remodeled is it a rotation basis or a priority needs basis a combination of a little bit of all of that okay so typically they have projects that they have and they
063have um how much they would potentially cost so some years we may have a little bit of money and then some years there's a little bit more money and then you have to look to see you know where in the process you know how it's going to impact um the enhancing what's going to happen and doing the lunch experience for students so for instance one year everybody kind of got something they we got we were able to kind of take each of our kitchen areas and remodel them totally if you go if you were in before they were remodeled you see that it was you know the walls were kind of plain it was just kind of pain in here but then the students were able to design things and they were able to remodel
064physically the space to make it more appealing so they were like sometimes you go to secondary you'll see them sitting in stools and they'll be sitting like at a restaurant table like things instead of the tables that we used to fold in and fold out we a lot of the schools we don't have those in our schools anymore so one year they did all all they prioritize that each school is able to design and then they were able to get this particular time this year the money is there and they looked at some of the needs that they had so there are schools that may not have trade Ledges for them to put their trays on to pick their food up so they it's a variety of reasons why or how they make decisions it's
065basically the need who it could be who's next in line or it could be the cost how much money is available for the projects and can they afford which ones they can afford to do so it's just a variety of ways there's a few of the elementary schools in District Five that are in dire need of more space for a kitchen because the students are eating in the gym and it's I think I'm Peterson might be one of them and Benton might be another one so I didn't know if they're on the list okay so if you're talking about more space in their kitchen there are some schools doing the bond those expenses would not you to build more space would not be something that we would be able to afford to do with nutrition
066services money because that money is not that much so if you're looking to add additional square footage to a building you're going to be looking at more things such as a bond issue or a large Capital outlay program of those types of things and as we are looking at schools for the facilities plan those are all things that you'll be able to see in those reports and then at some point the board is going to be able to prioritize where those large Capital outlay expenses will lie okay great that makes sense so if I can add to that yes um what I do know about I don't know exactly why these specific sites were chosen but I do know that their their goal the intent of the projects is to give them to create more
067satellite kitchens basically to where they can prepare more food on site rather than having to do it at the service center and then bring it out to the buildings so it's just expanding their ability to cook out at the sites and kind of reduce that load centrally is my understanding but I don't know strategically why they picked which sites wasn't there a time when our schools did cook the meals long time ago so there was a long time ago and we removed a lot of those kitchens that where they cooked um I think I know Cessna had one back in the day and Chisholm Trail had one and so those kitchens I am not sure exactly what has been done with those kitchens but I know that they've been remodeled to something that is usable
068today but we used to cook some schools did I don't know if all did but I know that some did cook on site okay thank you sorry I couldn't answer your question no that's okay you did find Mr Newman thank you very much and you can answer ask questions anytime you like okay I'd like to make a motion to accept E11 kitchen remodels various sites second motion was made by Kathy and seconded by Julie that we accept the motion please click cast your vote motion passes 6-0 next item next item under policy second review proposed update of student records and Enrollment Services policy okay we did have this on our agenda last month and this is our second read so we will be asking for a vote tonight are there any questions or concerns on
069this policy I am seeing none do I have a motion to accept I'll I'll move I moved to adopt current policy 5505. motion was made by stand seconded by Diane that we accept board policy 5505 as is been presented to us please cast your vote motion passes 6-0 next item next item under finance budget report so we have our two fine ladies here to visit with us this evening around our budget as we have always kept this rotation we've started this work in February and so here we are in may we are going to spend some time visiting with you around Esser dollars and having some conversations about this we want to make sure that we'll also take this clip and have it available on our website underneath our Esser dollars so that if there's
070anyone who is interested in learning more about the district and what we have been using the funds for and the things that have been impacted by the covet relief dollars they are answer funds they are available there as well so without further Ado I have two of my wonderful colleagues here to share our answer report good evening president Logan superintendent Thompson vice president Albert and members of the board I'm Susan Willis your Chief Financial Officer and with me is Addie Lowell our director of budgeting I will be giving the the PowerPoint tonight but Addie will be answering the questions because she is the Esser expert um I think tonight certainly has been a night to celebrate our points of Pride and really um a lot of this if not the majority has been under superintendent
071Thompson's leadership in no small way Esser funding the historic investment in public schools I think this is a major point of Pride and she should she should take this moment and and enjoy all of the all of the information we're going to present tonight um is in no small part due to her her leadership so we thank you for for helping us through um what has been a few a few challenging years even even Beyond covet even Beyond some of the other things but this this funding has been no small assignment I asked staff today I said well how many accounts are we tracking and they have 000 account lines open just for Esser tracking purposes so just to give you the volume of transactional data that's flowing through these Awards we've been under two
072audits specifically that looked at Esser transactions and we've had no expenditure findings related to these funds so there is a lot of good work it's not perfect but with when you're talking almost 270 million dollars worth of spend in a three-year period and we're doing pretty well so we did want to take the opportunity tonight to kind of walk through where we're at and I'll first start with a reminder of the infamous acronyms um we'll start obviously like we typically do with uh the first uh coveted relief package was was actually called cares we we called it cares because that was the the name of the federal act the coronavia the Corona virus Aid relief and Economic Security Act within that act that was passed just a couple weeks after um kind of the shutdown
073due to covid we um the Esser fund was created and that's that Esser is elementary and secondary emergency relief fund So within cares Esser was created but we didn't call it us or we called it cares and so that lasted for about nine months until the second federal aid package was passed the coronavirus response and relief supplemental Appropriations act and so that created the second Esser fund so we now have an sr1 and sr2 and then just a few months later in March of 21 a third package was passed the American Rescue plan and then we have the third Esser package so tonight we will be talking about sr1 sr2 and sr3 and so those those are acronyms that you will make note of as we move forward our Esser timeline has become a much
074shorter slide much less busy because we are now down to the last 18 months of the SR period uh tonight we're giving you an Esser update at 9 30 of 23 we need to be done with sr2 and then May of next year we'll probably bring you a final kind of update of how the final months will proceed and the 9 30 of 24 we will be done with the third Esser package and then unless something happens at the federal level we will be finished with Federal covid relief money so let's talk a little bit about our Sr funds in action if you remember this slide we've presented this a few times as we were planning for the SR dollars we have really tried to keep these four important points at the focus and at
075the Forefront first of all obviously the initiatives that we looked at had to be allowable under the Esser rules there were a number of criteria 15 or so different allowable categories and so whatever initiative the district wanted to follow it had to fit into one of those 15 categories it had to be vetted through a state committee and that it had to be approved at the ksde offices and then by the Kansas Board of Education so there were many points of review as these initiatives moved through the system we also thought it was very important that whatever we were doing it needed to align to the Strategic plan because that's that we set those goals in 2018 we didn't want to start on different paths we wanted to bring those learning loss gaps that had
076been created due to covid in our strategic plan kind of fixed those things so we're going to show you a few data points tonight where I think we're accomplishing those goals initiatives should have had measurable outcomes with data to support and obviously as we come towards the end of the Esser period either the initiative will have an end date or we will have some sort of other sustainability plan so just to kind of share just a few data points this these are third grade reading proficiency numbers for kindergarten through fifth grade and I if you're going to ask me details on the slide I'm going to have to over to Dr Thompson because this is not my wheelhouse but this was some information we presented to Kisa last week when they were visiting on site
077and I thought some of it was very powerful particularly since we have embedded these Esser dollars in those same categories as as our strategic plan this is a good example we are investing about three million is that right in letters about three million dollars in letters and so that is a huge investment of professional development for teachers in addition to that focus on on that third grade reading proficiency goal um that that that these three areas became non-negotiable for our elementary teachers and you can see over the 2021 school year the 21-22 school year and the 22-23 school year particularly in kindergarten those letter name frequent is that right frequencies yeah no fluency fluency I'm gonna get it letter name sees the letter sound fluency right and the word segmenting scores have all increased year
078over year and so we're really seeing the the impact I think of focus and the impact of the teachers that are doing that let that science of reading that letter is training and then as you go into the word segmenting and nonsense word fluency in the first grade you're seeing again increases going in those years and then you're getting into second and fifth grade where we have um whatever that acronym is the C BMR over those years again you're still seeing growth which is again a a lot of what we're trying to accomplish we had loss we want to see growth back up those scales and we're seeing it so not only are we meeting our strategic plan goals but our Esser dollars are supporting that so that to me is a very powerful statement
079that our dollars are accomplishing what we wanted them to accomplish I think to as you look at that second goal of our graduation getting that those graduation rates to where we want them to be that 2018 to 2022 period of moving from 74 to 80.4 percent a 6.4 percent increase particularly the one percent jump from last year um with 21 subgroups showing improvement over that period of time that is in large part due to focus on this area but in no small part due to Esser funding on initiatives if you look at the right side of this slide summer school that's an Esther funded initiative Within Reach an Esser funded initiative restorative practices an Esser funded initiative Extended Learning opportunities additional counselors the tutoring mentoring those are all Esther funded initiatives so we're seeing impact
080from those Esser dollars in our strategic plan goals and then finally just to show this is the district average ACT composite score over the past few years we had been cranking along and showing Improvement we had that dip but here here we are we're coming back so again we're seeing those areas of improvement in in no small part due to Esser funding so I think again we have a lot to be proud of these are just three data points that we're tracking there's there's a lot of other sub tracking mechanisms going on but we wanted to share those tonight okay now we're going to get into a little bit of the weeds of the expenditures and kind of where we sit so as of March 31st that was the last quarterly report we sent to
081the state um we had basically there are five pots of Esser money the sr1 which has been spent for a while right that was the original allocation we were awarded 17.9 million dollars this was the only award that had a non-public component to it so we spent a little about about just shy of 17 million dollars and the rest went to the non-pub schools and then also within that particular award there was a special ed component and so the sr1 had those two sections sr2 also had a special ed component but we were not required to serve non-public schools they had a different funding source for the non-pub so we didn't we didn't have to split our award and then our sr3 direct was the final award and there was no special ed component so
082of our Awards the 17.9 million dollars of Esther 1 has been fully spent and it's been fully spent for a while the sr1 special education funding has been fully spent the sr2 direct which was 75.5 million dollars all but 2.5 million dollars has been spent so with that we have just 2.5 million dollars to spend by 9 30 of 23. so we are in great shape to complete that award um sr2 special education has been spent in full and sr3 100 almost 170 million dollar award we have spent almost 90 million of that money to this point and so we have about 80 million dollars left to go so really I think we're very well situated to kind of complete the Esser period and have this money fully spent by the end of the reporting
083periods so just as a reminder here's the sr1 kind of breakdown again if you recall schools were shut down we we kind of scrambled with learning packets and some Licensing in those last three months of 20 and then we had some remote learning as we went into the 2021 school year so we basically geared the district up very quickly into a some sort of one-to-one student technology system that kind of we had hoped to have that everything in August of that school year it kind of went into the fall um because of a backlog but we spent two-thirds of that first Esser package on technology uh we spent about not quite 16 percent on on personal protective equipment coveted testing vaccine clinics coveted sick leave for staff just to basically to kind of maintain those
084Services throughout the first school year um we spent about 12 percent on again those learning plans which included the online curriculum license that was extending DreamBox and Lexi and those type of things getting more um more access so that students from home could access those those intervention services and then we spent about three percent on sanitizing supplies six percent of the first Esser package did go to the non-public schools and you've seen you've seen this chart in kind of the percentages have varied a bit but this is the final final this is what we've reported to the state as we're done with us for one we're not adjusting anymore okay so then we have the second Esser package again through March 31st this one's got a little bit more breakdown it's a little larger award
085again a good chunk of it 22 percent went to student and staff technology primarily staff hardware and software as we moved into the second package over a third of sr2 we have um we have designated for retention strategies that we spend it on bonuses for staff because we needed our people to stay and work for us and not go elsewhere and there were a lot of stresses for staff during those periods of time we believe that was money well spent to retain as many of our talented staff as we could possibly do them 29.3 percent was maintaining operations this was to prevent Cuts because we lost 2600 students during the coveted period and that the board was committed to not um not reducing staff we were still feeling the effects of covids we were still
086having significant staff absences it was not the time to be cutting staff in order to pay bills and give wage packages so we we did spend some of our Esser just to maintain operations and then a nine percent has been spent through the end of March on principal and school needs so this was money specifically given in an allocation to each and every school for them to look at what was happening in their building and respond accordingly with mentors tutoring additional supervision support whatever they needed they had a bucket to to actually do the things in their building specific to their their their stakeholders and then we had just a little bit that we charged the fund for indirect which is basically People Like Us HR all of these support services that we all have
087time in Esser funding but we're not directly funded so we can actually charge the fund a little bit so we did and so that is kind of where sr2 landed as of March 31st as we approached the end of the school year almost the entire 2.46 million dollars left in sr2 is part of the school needs budget because again we even though it's March and there's only three months left to the fiscal year remember we have five months worth of salary coming our way so and a lot of what the schools are doing are paying people whether it's in the form of a secondary job or a supplemental or some additional staff so that 2.46 million dollars will be embedded in school needs it will most likely be almost all paid out by June 30th
088so that changes our chart just a little bit you can see that school needs now are closer to 12 percent that's where we're estimating that final breakdown of sr2 will land okay so in the sr3 package there were three additional requirements um that were that we had to meet in order to to spend these dollars we must engage stakeholders as part of the planning process for sr3 we must be sure that we're posting all of our safe return plans on our district website and 20 of that balance must be focused on learning loss so in no particular order we did want to give you some of the major initiatives that are in sr3 and again this is pretty high level Within These categories there are a lot of smaller initiatives um mental health is is
089a good example we have some big categories of Staffing but there are a lot of initiatives going on kind of beyond what I've listed here I mean we could have again 18 000 account lines there's a lot of different things we could list probably not one something you want to do yet tonight but again in sr3 we're focusing on facilities and air quality we're focusing on Mental Health we're focusing on support for high need students and any of the other learning loss activities which would include additional pair hours the letters we talked about professional development for staff within the mental health category that's where we find our behavior intervention teachers a lot of the mentor mentoring positions like the Future Ready Advocates senior Liaisons it's where restorative practices lives and the expansion of counselors and
090social workers additional security personnel and then High needs students again programs like within reach the Wichita acceleration Academy some of the Jag programs and then some of the Extended Learning opportunities so again pretty high level a lot of things going on in sr3 it's a it's a it's a big chunk of money um we have spent almost 53 percent of it we have planned 47 percent so there isn't any Esser kind of sitting on the sidelines waiting for somebody to come grab it right it's it's allocated it's got a plan it's moving right so there we're we are essentially done with with Esser and we'll cover that in a little bit more detail in a minute but there there the planned pieces the big planning is still kind of wrapped up in the facilities work
091and that's where you'll see on this chart that kind of that highest green line that's the majority of the work that still is unfinished is going to be in that facilities and air quality work which makes sense because it takes longer to complete we're still kind of in process there so we have we have we have no concerns that we won't be finished but it will take us the full period of time to kind of finish up so kind of as we put that all in one kind of large graph you see that on the right side you've got the summer learning all your after school and support programs and all of those other learning loss um initiatives that we just talked about are learning loss category is at 31 percent so we meet our
09220 obligation plus 30 percent is in wrapped up in facilities and air quality work which we feel really good about because that's long lasting right that should pay dividends for years to come and then the rest of it is kind of spread over again more retention work through bonuses maintaining operations technology some support for high the highest needs students and the mental health so a lot of things are happening in sr3 I think that's a pretty good breakdown of of the across the gamut of needs across the district not that we met everyone's needs right sometimes we had did have to say no although we said yes a lot probably more than we've said in seven years um so that will be kind of a hard habit to break as we get towards the end
093of Esters we'll have to get back into well we can do that we just have to do something else what are we not going to do right um okay so we talked about the the the the the the the 20 goal how did we do on the engagement so the sr3 engagement work started with a survey in the spring of 2021 we shared this with the board that the groups that um so that's parent student community and staff all responded um the three top priorities at that point activities to address the unique needs of of of kind of our high needs groups Mental Health Services and supports and providing principals and school leaders what they needed and so I think we met for the most part most of those goals in addition to that that
094initial engagement work we formed an Sr Financial advisory committee and we had stakeholders representing foster care special education Native American English language Learners Juvenile Detention the NAACP city council a whole lot of kind of buried varied stakeholders to give input on what we were doing what else could we do and we had a few meetings we did a few emails back and forth so we think we we engaged um you know fairly well again not not necessarily perfect um because there's still a lot there was still a lot of moving pieces but I think we did we did invite that engagement we invited our utw partners to engage our SEIU Partners to engage we did a second survey in May of 22 to parent staff students and community and we will do a third survey
095here hopefully sometime in the next couple weeks to that same group in addition to our website engagement opportunities there is a link on the website that anyone at any time can provide feedback to to what we're doing and how we're doing it and then obviously through our various social media channels so um I think we did pretty good pretty well through that whole process that second survey response again aligned very nicely with the first again it was a lot of social personal support academic support for those that have the high needs for that support Behavior those type of things so again nothing that was really out of line from the first survey so again that kind of showed us that we needed to continue on with what we had been doing instead of starting something
096new so that that's and I think that's what the third survey keep doing what you're doing we need those additional supports where we've identified them and then we do have the usd259.org Esser that does have our safety and operational plans they really haven't changed since the beginning of the school year nothing has nothing's really been modified there but essentially we have check marked all of those sr3 boxes and that we've engaged our stakeholders we've posted our safe Returns on the website and we've met the 20 learning loss so again we feel pretty good about where we're sitting with sr3 I am going to add in at this time she does not have it on here but um I was waiting for her to say it but there's videos actually also that talk about the spending
097that has happened over the time that we've had our Ester dollars that we've sent out to staff and whomever else would like to look at them because we want to be very transparent about the dollars that we have been given and the success the board I mean you know that you all have asked allowed us to be able to expand those things but we want to be accountable to you as well as sharing with our community what we've used those funds for and the impact that has happened because of those things so again I'm going to encourage the community because across the state you know there's a lot of talk about these Ester dollars and what people are spending them on and we're trying to do our best to ensure that everybody has access to
098what we have access to and that we're sharing the story of the Esser dollars and what's happening and the impact that the dollars are having on our students so please please please if you have not had the opportunity to look at the videos or to go to this website that she's just talked about please go there if you're curious or if people ask you and say what are those people doing with those dollars down there send them to this website so that they can see exactly what is happening with the dollars that we have been given to do this work thank you Dr Thompson so that's good news of Esser the the exit the SR challenge is the exiting from those funds and we've talked about this a few times uh here at the board
099table but we have we through this almost three-year process now we have tried our best to focus on initiatives that were somewhat one time in nature um the the retention bonus would be a good example of that um some of the the personal protective equipment those type of things where they were immediate response needs and we paid them and we we can be done and we don't necessarily have to it's not an ongoing expense we couldn't avoid some ongoing expense in total I mean it's it is 270 million dollars it's kind of tough to avoid people purchasing at that point and so we have about 20 million dollars of direct Esser funded positions um that's 382 FTE about 746 people being impacted by Esser funding in some fashion um another 20 million was used to
100balance the fiscal year 23 budget and avoid cuts so what that means is that at some point when those Esser dollars are not available we will have to do some sort of action in order to balance the budget now I don't we won't have other things have happened during the course of this time it won't be 20 million dollars but it will be a significant number so as we start kind of planning the Esser exit um again we kind of go back to some of those same platforms and pillars that we talked about earlier if as we look at initiatives it has to be aligned and it should be that was the goal up front but if for whatever reason something slipped through we're going to make sure that if it's going to continue it's
101aligned to the Strategic plan that could involve some realignment if the Strategic plan tweaks at all just to make sure that everything is in lockstep then we're that we're aligned with those dollars getting the goals and the outcomes that we that we want the initiative must align to an alternative funding source purpose rule set of rules if we are going to move it out of Esser into another funding so at risk is a good example the the budget amendment you approved earlier this evening gave us some capacity to move some Sr initiatives into at-risk but they must be evidence-based strategies specifically listed on the at-risk list of evidence-based strategies that ksde maintains if it's not word for word listed we can't pay for it out of at-risk funds so that is something that we're looking
102at and determining what can move what are those again looking at those top three priorities of mental health behavior academic supports those type of things what can move into at-risk specifically that's in the evidence-based practice Continuum again if we are going to continue initiative we do want to be able to measure it so that we can report and make decisions as we go if it's doing what we want it to do I think we have to acknowledge though that some good initiatives will have to probably end because there isn't enough capacity to cover all of the things we've been doing with Esser plus all of the things we were doing before Esser I mean that's just the hard facts of again we can do anything we want we can't do everything we want and these
103this 270 million dollars of historic investment while fantastic for the three years makes it difficult as we come out and all of those good things we've been accomplishing how do we maximize the things that are working the best and peel off things that will hurt a bit but not hurt as much so that's kind of our Challenge and our work for here for the next 18 months as we have as we begin the end here are the things we have done so far first of all we have announced that there are no new major Sr initiatives that will happen there we you will still see Esser on board agendas because we will be finishing initiatives but you shouldn't see anything that strikes you as huh this looks new and it's Esser why no we shouldn't
104see anything more like that there are no new positions that will be funded out of Esser if we need a position it will go through the normal budgetary request process and we fund it out of a different funding source if approved the principal School allocations are completed as of June 30th we won't do that out again primarily because we just don't have the the bandwidth to manage 90 schools in that last year of Sr to make sure all of those dollars get spent I mean it's it was a lot to track the school-based spending um we're going to focus on Central District level initiatives in that last year and kind of how we're exiting those things and we are moving the additional counselors and social workers into sped and at risk as we have funds
105available we are looking at at-risk entitle funds for Behavior positions again it has to meet the definitions it has to be if it's title it has to be at a title school so there those items are kind of in the works as far as some of those other positions which I would I would guess that's what of greatest concern to the board we anticipate an attrition model probably an aggressive attrition model but we don't anticipate any sort of major upheaval in any sort of reduction in force we have a number of open positions we hope to transition people into open spots or we'll eliminate open spots and keep some of the SR positions we'll do some of that work over the course of the next 18 to 24 months if not a little longer than
106that um and then there's obviously a number of kind of other activities that will be occurring related to us or all throughout the next 18 month period um so before we stop for questions just a quick summary of what we covered tonight um the all the federal packages including the special ed components of direct covert relief total about 266 million dollars for usd259 the goals of the Strategic plan as as we displayed for you tonight have definitely been supported through Esser funds the first Esser package was fully spent has been fully spent for a while the second Esser package is 97 spend the remaining three percent should be finished by June 30th and the third Esser package is 52.7 percent spent the remainder is planned and allocated out through September 30th of 24 and we
107did not anticipate any hardship in getting the funds spent by that date the criteria of that third Esser package have been met and we did share obviously a significant chunk about 15 percent of Esser has been used for positions and budget balancing and so we will have to take action over the next 18 to 24 months to get take care of those things in some form or fashion but that work has begun and we are focusing on attrition alternative funding sources and then where we have a contractual relationship how we end those contracts and so now we will stop and see if the board would have any questions well as they're thinking about their questions I'm gonna I'm gonna just say this has been definitely an interesting ride with these Esser dollars we've learned a
108lot and we've grown a lot as a system on how to really align our dollars to our strategic work and to expect outcomes from them and so we've learned a lot and so the system is better because of it but it was a heavy heavy lift so I'm going to thank the district leadership team from the academics to the operations side of the house for all of your work through these dollars and then I'm gonna also thank the district schools for their efforts in the buildings all of our clerical support and everyone that all of our nursing staff is counselors and social workers and everyone that had an impact or had an input and implementing um the work that was done through this Esser plan and the Esso work that was done so I just
109wanted to do that as the board is thinking of the questions I wanted to acknowledge then I finally like to thank the board of education for your support because without your support we would not be able to implement the things that we brought forth you you Embrace those things and supported us so thank you for your work as well okay I'll begin with the questions the first one's an easy one um you showed the slide on Act and I something that I want to point out to our community that's watching us is that all of our kids take act it's not a select group of students we provide the ACT funding for every single one of our they take it their junior year and all of our students even the ones that aren't planning to
110go on to college still take the ACT so our scores I'm really pleased with our scores if we just hand picked the kids that were going to college they'd look different but I want to know what all of our kids can do and this shows us that I also want to commend you on the work that you're doing to look at what we do in the future when this money goes away because 18 months is going to go by really fast and the fact that we're starting to look at positions hold positions uh you know when I saw the number of people this is the first time I've actually seen the number of people that are involved in in Esser funding and it was 700 and some I've lost the slide but but thank you
111um it 746 people and that's 382 ftes that's more than some school districts have in their whole District correct and so we we have to do this work it's critical and I'm very very pleased that Dr Thompson her team you all are are looking very carefully at how do we not have to go into a major reduction of force because that hurts us all so we really want to plan ahead and you're doing that so I just wanted to put a Kudo and thank you very much Diane for the presentation tonight um my questions on slide six with the third grade reading proficiency and I guess it's really not a question but it's about the letters implementation and that the great impact that's having and we're seeing real results from that and so that's something
112I think that has been a great great addition that we've been able to implement through the covid process but I think that was already starting before covid so um so thank you for that initiative Dr Thompson and thank you for including that on your on your slide Susan because that really does show things that are that are making a great and positive impact where they should be and on slide number 27 beginning the Esser exit uh one of the things that I just wanted to kind of point out is that we're there was a school-based budget for Esser and now we're going to more of a central based budget for this this last year with Esser money is that correct that's right okay so just a slight change for some of the people within the
113district but we're still still moving forward on the expenditures so thank you very very well thought out presentation and very concise for something that's so complicated and so so big so thank you very much you guys did an excellent job Ernestine I have a question on uh I just didn't hear on slide 27 you said you're looking to at-risk entitle funds for the behavior positions where would we get the at-risk and the title funds uh at risk is from the state I presume well thankfully this evening you all adopted a new budget that gave us some additional Authority a little over eight million dollars of additional at-risk funds that came to us this year because of the change in direct certifications for students that qualify for Medicaid so we do have a little bit of
114wiggle room in the budget to start to shuffle some of these expenditures over to that existing budget eight million dollars sounds like a lot of money it disappears very quickly so at this time we're really looking at those CST team members so your counselors and social workers that we funded out of Esser funds and then we're kind of going to see what we have remaining once we get through the closure of this budget year where Esther dollars are falling out to see what capacity there may be in at-risk funds with a combination of title to potentially pick up some of those larger Behavior initiatives as well title funds are that is not special ed fence that is related to at-risk students Title 1 funds and at-risk funds are given to us the same way based
115on low-income students yes okay is that it Kathy thank you on slide seven I think it is so encouraging to Echo what these guys are saying my my colleagues over here that the graduation rate this year is 80.4 I am so excited about that that these structures that have been in place because of these funds that we didn't expect to get and it really has been done to close the gap a little bit I am concerned that there's going to be a drop again because some of these structures might not be able to sustain themselves so I'm hoping that through collaboration and dialogue with those that need to do that we could perhaps combine some of these programs together so that we could keep these initiatives going for our students that might not be so
116fortunate to graduate like these guys are this this is so encouraging and so exciting for our this has been an awesome evening for our district and our district needed this we needed the pom-poms we we needed the cheerleading going on and okay so this is something that we're looking forward to we've got our eyes open we know what we're dealing with and we just need to prioritize just to get our kids across that stage to get their diploma and I am so excited to see the creativity that Administration is going to come up with to get this done so thank you so much for I didn't even need to take notes because you had it so so easy to understand and you were very explicit in your explanation of everything so thank you ladies very
117much and I'm gonna Piggy on back on you just a little bit Miss Bond because our kids when they graduate they leave with market value assets they don't just get across the stage they leave with something that will help them to be successful moving forward and that's the beauty of it we just didn't want our numbers to be up there that's great but what are they leaving with and what can they take with them to to become productive citizens in our community and if I could Echo that you're absolutely right and I think that our community is not seeing that and that's why I wanted to publicly say what an awesome year this has been and I look forward to the next several school years to see what else we can do with the market
118skills that they're going to be having I mean this is just I mean we have two students in our district that are graduating Wichita State Tech and high school at the same time you know they're having a hard time deciding which one do I go to so I mean this is amazing this is just great and we have kids that are graduating and going to make more money than some of us make and they don't even have a high school they don't have a college degree but they have market value assets that will get them where they want to go I think oh Ernestine I'm sorry where are we going well first of all um we once were at 72 percent of all the costs for special ed that was funded by the state it
119was up to 76 percent this budget that passed a week ago Friday at about 10 o'clock at night this special ed funding is going to be only 68.8 percent of what it costs us to educate special ed students the governor asked for more we've asked for more a lot of people have said at least 90 percent we not only didn't get an increase we've got to we got to drop where is the money going to come from where we are going to make up for that money that is going to be I mean we're not even at 76 percent we're going to be down approximately seven percent while calling all sped teachers who would like a position with Wichita public schools because we have various vacancies we'd love to stick you in so we do
120have a tremendous amount of budget Savings in our special education fund because of just that the huge number of unfilled positions that we'd love to be able to fill and just aren't able to and this is a challenge that we've had every single year for the seven years that I have been with the district that you know this is this is a a challenge that we take on every year and and are always able to to fund our expenditures out of special education and we'll continue to do that in the next year so a lot of people and and quite frankly the legislature did fully fund regular education what doesn't make sense to a lot of people is that some of that money has to be drained off to make up for where they didn't
121fund adequately the teaching for special ed and so we've got fully funded for regular Ed But Here Comes This little sound of money during dolphin and you know we we take our special education obligations extremely seriously we and we understand what that there's not only is there some Federal Regulation and guidance that we have to comply and state guidance that we have to come by but it's the right thing to do I mean we need to serve students where they're at and it does that unfortunately sometimes cause maybe slightly larger class sizes on the regular Ed side that that's what has to happen right that that's the consequence of not fully funding special ed is that the General Ed side unfortunately then has has fewer resources to bring to bear right so to fully fund
122education they need to fund fully fund Regular Ad but also fully fund special ed and we're not doing it this coming year yep well and one of the problems is in Wichita that's even magnified because we have so many special ed students they they move here because we give good services and I do know of a family from Nebraska that was specifically moved to Wichita because of the excellent special ed program here and and smaller districts will have special ed but not anywhere close to the numbers that we have so that is a huge issue thank you for bringing it up I thank you all for this report it was excellent you you always do yeoman's work this is even better so thank you so very much next item Patrick next item under miscellaneous superintendent's
123report okay I guess I do have to give a report today huh you're not done yet okay so um I I would like to acknowledge that this is my last Board of Education meeting in this seat unless somebody tells me I've to come and sit in this seat or at the table I will probably sit up there with terrier or sit at home and watch you on TV I don't know what you ever would it's going to be but it is difficult to say farewell to a place that literally has been part of my entire life many of you know that um my mother was a teacher in this school district and uh and I've been um walking the Wichita Public Schools pretty much all my life as a student as a professional as a
124um you know all throughout my whole life this district has really impacted me as a human being you know as I stated I was a student here I was a I think I'll even start I'll start as a teacher not a pair I volunteered in the summer with my mommy but I was a pair a teacher assistant principal principal I worked in staff development in the elementary office and then and the seat here as superintendent I've been impacted as a spouse I've been impacted as a parent so my whole entire life and being as a human being has been impacted by this District I'm going to first off say thank you to the board of education for believing in me and elevating me to this awesome responsibility I did not take it lightly I tried
125to do the best that I could with my little bitty self to do all that I could to support students in this school district thank you to the leadership team thank you for being my second family y'all loved me and beat me and did a whole bunch of things to me and I love you for that thank you to the staff for saying yes to taking the opportunity to embrace the Strategic plan and being part of the WPS family I want to thank all the staff for that I want to thank you to our parents in our school district for 31 years you trusted me and others in this District to take on your greatest asset which is your children so thank you families for allowing us to serve your students and to serve you
126finally I want to say thank you to our students you know I can't think of a more worthy profession or Mission than to strive each and every day to serve the students of this wonderful School District I want to really talk about the pride just a little bit and some of we had some of that tonight but just talk about some of the cool things that have happened over the last seven years we developed a culture changing strategic plan which we've not had in over 30 years and we created one my team knows what of a challenge that was we didn't have a consultant we didn't have anybody we just had ourselves trying to work together to build that strategic plan it brought Focus to our community on the academic work and our Workforce work
127within our community we survived covet maybe we did we survived covet and all of the operational challenges and and things that happen during that time but we did it we did it team and we rocked it so I'm grateful to for you for all that our graduation rates continue to increase not because of accident by purposefully intentionally Mr Alvarez building infrastructure to support that work we know that safety continues to be a critical Focus for us but we did keep ourselves safe during some really tough times when safety was of concern to most we've transformed our College and Career Readiness Endeavors within our school district man we have come a long way on that side from that strategic meetings when those families were like it's not all about college give us something else to work
128with and so we begin to build that work and thank you for that and then it's punctuated at the end of this year by ribbon cutting ceremony for our future ready center for advanced manufacturing on May the 19th so we even have a ribbon cutting come up for this Future Ready center right next door to us that place is amazing and it is going to prove that it is going to be impactful to this community and the workforce that we need I'm also excited that we have a new superintendent Mr Kelly B lafield and I'm going to wish him well and everything that he does and I'm going to do everything in my power to support him during his transition we have also extraordinary team leaders who are poised I don't know if you know
129this but you have a Dynomite executive team they are the best in this country I've worked with a lot of people in a lot of different places with the Council of gracious schools Chiefs for Change and nobody stands up to these folks I'm telling you so hold on to them tight and love them and treat them with kindness because they are to be celebrated and then as a parent as you know I still have a daughter that will graduate next year I will still be on the sidelines except for Kelly said I can't come in for 180 days but from the sidelines I will be cheering on the Wichita Public Schools till the day I die because I am definitely WPS proud for those of you who are wondering what I will do next the
130short answer is to rest they must have heard me talk a lot of everybody knows I like popcorn and Hot Tamales and I mix them together and that's how I eat my popcorn and so that is exactly what's in this bag so the whole District probably knows that that's my favorite thing to do so I will just spend time eating popcorn and Hot Tamales and resting and catching up on Netflix shows that everybody talks about that I have no clue of what they're talking about because I don't ever have time to watch them I'm going to be catching up on time to devote to my family my parents are healthy my family is healthy and my daughter will be graduating soon and I look forward to celebrating and spending time and being in their presence
131because I have been absent for quite a bit of time but I'm going to give them that time and I have of course everybody is asking yes I have had a number of offers to go back to work and I'll consider what's next after I have the opportunity to rest and reflect but believe me it will not be full time it will be part-time or projects or board seats to sit on to serve in our community because again the that's what I was born to do and that is to serve and I will continue to do that in some kind of form or fashion lavanta already is out there she's nodding because she's they worried me to death about doing some things and I'm going to do them as soon as I eat popcorn and
132hot tomorrow and then there's a new one and I'm gonna once I catch up then I'll call you levanta I love this community love this school district everybody knows that and I love my family um which is all of you and I can't wait to celebrate uh as you guys continue to do great things for kids because I already know you're poised and you're ready to take it to Greater Heights right so I love you all and I thank you for everything and I'm out [Applause] I hate to tell you this Dr Thompson you're not out yet okay I forgot I'm out on July fourth until then I'll be on the ground we got graduations I should speak to that uh I'm telling saying goodbye but I'm going to talk about graduation so we've started
133some graduations this week um some of our sensory graduations I've been participating in those those have been great um and then we are moving into next week where we'll start a full comprehensive groups of of graduations our feet will hurt make sure you schedule your manicure your pedicures anyway afterwards instead you can get one too and so make sure you'll be ready for those graduations wear comfy shoes don't try to wear your cute shoes Miss Bond you got to wear some comfy shoes to stand for long periods of time so we'll be able to finish out our graduations there's some fifth grade graduations coming up and some all kinds of activities coming up we got our grad our our Botanica for our longevity and retirement that I don't have um it's on there well yeah
134and then we will have our employees thank you for all of our employees for their service at the year end bid at the Cedric County Zoo so we have so many more things to do and I have so much more work to do until July 4th and we will see you all at all of those activities to celebrate the end of the year and to culminate all of our kids 2 000 and something of them whatever Amanda said walking across that stage and that's why we do what we do and we'll be excited to receive those students so I now are in my report thank you for let me do the addition okay next item next item Board of Education report and requests Kathy it's been a busy month it's been a very busy month
135I typed it out okay I attended the stealth night at Exploration Place a phenomenal evening those those people did a wonderful job putting that together I attended the JROTC national award wearing two hats that of the Board of Education and my Dar I attended the super super SAC at the wind search stadium that these students were talking about very impressed very impressed with the things that they that they offered and the ideas I really hope that this board can Implement some of their ideas because it not only shows that we listened but it shows that you know we need to they know what's going on in the schools we're not in that building every day I attended Wilbur Tim elston's for excellence at the zoo and it was just really an exciting thing to see
136him and and just a little side note I saw a lady there that used to work with my father and it was actually Tim's Aunt so that was just really kind of a neat It's a small world and the older we get the smaller it gets I attended the Cloud Elementary for reading which was very impressive to see all of those books that are given out to our students I substitute I sub in Derby and I've been subbing very frequently lately and every chance those kids get to read they want to read they'd prefer to read than go on their Chrome their Chromebook so I was happy to see that I was able to attend Mitch Lin's outgoing principal at his retirement party so that was exciting I got to see other teachers from Allison
137and then from where he used to teach I attended the luncheon of Assistance League of Wichita for the awards for our students I volunteered with Pando at Wilbur for the you are for you reality that was exciting to see I did it at North High also the month prior these kids have no idea how much clothes cost I mean Wilbur they're like what that's that much yes that and you can cut that on your budget no no man I need clothes as well then you need to cut food I mean I don't know what else to tell you I want to give a shout out to Terry Moses I sit on the crisis team as part of this and I'm she is doing a phenomenal job with the safety of our buildings for our students
138our staff and our teachers I want to just go ahead and give a little bit of an update of what we talked about school safety experts say there is no single answer to prevent School violence School leaders should draw on layers of precautions emphasizing human factors like staff training and supportive student relationships and that's one of the things we heard also at super super Sac was building relationships with those students that shows that that a grown-up an adult really cares about the person that they are not just because they're a student in our school in in 2022 there was 460 updated cameras installed 143 43 cameras were added five video doorbells were installed and 71 additional card readers I'm very impressed with that thank you so much for because that was a big concern of
139mine last year that I went went to you with and I just said you know after that Vivaldi is that no that's a composer of Vivaldi Uvalde okay I'm sorry really just you know I really I'm a real I'm a proactive not reactive I really want to make sure things are in place or we've done everything that we can the monitoring of online activity is going well safety service monitors alerts received from software filters designed to recognize keywords and they're on top of that there are specific trainings coming up in July and August affording our Educators training and youth mental health and first aid safe schools training and for substitute teachers there will be training and I do believe that their ID cards and correct me if I'm wrong are going to be able to
140go ahead and get into the building and lock the doors as a substitute teacher I'm very grateful for that I don't have one in the district that I serve as a substitute so I think that that's a good idea I attended the fight fentanyl awareness festival with USD 259 students who created a movie out of the Teen view magazine that they've created that you might see around some of our schools I attended the Pando star awards and I watched the movie with the students as we just said I was also a guest speaker at an event speaking about the promise of some of exciting things that are happening in our district Kelly bielefeld has now called me the um the district's cheerleader believe it or not so I am I'm so excited about this I
141do have some new business um although we're at the end of this school year I'm already thinking about the upcoming school year in order to bring more order in the classrooms and to decrease distractions I wonder if this board could begin to dialogue about banning cell phones from the classroom with strict consequences if a student brings a phone into the classroom Northwest High School has done this the entire year Eric Holderman at Northwest has had much success prohibiting phones in the classroom phones are allowed during passing periods and at lunch time just not in the classroom I would even go as far as to ask if we could create a policy to reflect this the caveat is that this would be a district-wide district-wide and the consequences would need to be consistent with all schools
142they must be enforced consistently throughout the district the elimination of phones in the classrooms will eliminate distractions allowing a teacher to teach and the students to learn and it will decrease violence and put the focus on education not socialization socializing I I wondered you know I don't know the process of new business it's not something that I feel like we need to discuss this evening but it is something that I would like to discuss perhaps at the next board meeting and putting it on the agenda yes yeah go ahead if that is a board request just write it up on your um yeah it's just I don't know if this is a request or it's a new business because it's something that I would like to begin to talk about before the school year even
143approaches Us in August okay I think it is a request so if you could just put it on the request form well all that talk and I could have just written it down okay um Dr Thompson I would like to say something to you you are many things that people have said about you all evening tonight but there's only one word I can think of beloved you are a beloved person amongst the community and the district I wish you well I'm grateful that I had the time that I had with you although it was a rough start but we ironed it out and I'm grateful for your grace that is one thing that you and I discussed and we have Grace and forgiveness and I'm so grateful for that you're a great teacher a mentor
144and a wonderful leader for this so I thank you from the bottom of my heart thank you Kathy Julie um this I think what we've experienced tonight other than the fact that it's Dr Thompson's last night where that that part was not good but all of the but all of the all of the scholarships and um seeing our kids and the awards of our schools that this piece that we're experiencing tonight and then graduations is the absolute best part of being a board member and um we um though these things that we've experienced tonight and the graduation ceremonies that we get to be a part of just absolutely make us WPS proud um I've been a part of this school district for a long time too just like Dr Thompson and Cheryl Logan and I
145love this district and I am so proud of it and I'm so excited for the graduation ceremonies coming up and it was it's so great that our kids have received so many scholarship dollars and have their assets when they graduate and I echoed also that I've loved working with you Dr Thompson and I'm sorry to see you go but I am thankful for the service that you've had in this District so Diane well Julie I'm going to say some of the things that you were at with with us as well on just different activities that we do each month and so I also attended the GRTC national awards ceremony where more than 200 awards are presented and there was also a change of command for the district course staff and those students serve the JROTC
146students at a district level across all the different schools and the leadership programs in the middle schools I also attended super super Sac where you we broke up the students into smaller groups to discuss different topics as they presented to us tonight and so I sat on on one of those groups to just hear their thoughts and process on different things I also attended the reading opens the world family literacy and book fair at Cloud Elementary and Julie was there as well and we also heard a Roundtable discussion that included parents Educators administrators to talk about their collaborative effort to spread the joy of reading and how to empower parents with tips and tools to support their students and their education and so as a very heartfelt moment when you listen to one mom that
147talked about the excitement that her little son was showing in reading and how he wanted to go to the library more often and that was influencing his younger siblings as well I was greatly honored to attend the Wichita business business journals 40 under 40 to celebrate our Clerk of the board Patrick green and so I it was a great honor to be a part of his recognition um in a city-wide recognition for just the great work that Patrick does and the exceptional service that he does to the Wichita Public School and to us as board members so Patrick deep gratitude thank you for all the work that you do for us and and you make make our lives a little easier with our organization so thank you very much um I also visited with Heights
148High School and one of the things that Heights High School is really working on their their coaches and their sports are really aligning the why of why academics is so important to sports and they're showing them what recruiters want to see in the academics they're showing um how the students can get scholarships if they want to be a division one player if they just want to go to Butler Community College to play sports or if they just want to get any type of certificate or a scholarship for playing sports the the coaches are really sending the students down and saying you need to raise your GPA and you can get this much more for scholarships they're really giving them the reason why and what the recruiters are looking at to help those students really excel
149in their academic performance I visited with Adams Elementary Northeast Magnet High School and then have we've started the retirement Ceremonies for Dr Thompson just this this afternoon and so Dr Thompson it's been an honor to serve with you it's been a pleasure to get to know you professionally and personally and thank you for all the initiatives that you have done this evening uh it was referred to that all the great work that you've done will last on for many years to come and I would just like to Echo that sentiment and and just have a heartfelt deep gratitude for everything that you've done in the district and your service and commitment so thank you very much Ernestine okay sorry we can work our way back yeah that's what we were doing see sometimes it keeps
150you awake when I call on you out of turn well one of the coolest things that I've been a part of is in in recent weeks was when one of the teachers in this District went to Mr Alvarez and said I've got an idea for a grant that would help kids to love reading not just do it and by golly this Grant from the American Federation of teachers was funded and that came to some schools here in this District and the AFT National president this is a teachers organization nationally Randy Weingarten came to Wichita to be able to be at that to see the results of that wonderful Grant and give away thousands of books and um I'm going to put a picture online of Gil Alvarez and a whole lot of high District personnels
151including me of course standing there handing out these free books to these kids and the kids are saying can I have another one can I have another one and they're Gathering they had books that were in Spanish as well as in English this was the schools involved were Pleasant Valley and cloud and what 14 Ortiz and that was such a cool thing the title of it was called reading opens the world and that was a wonderful experience to just watch those kids it was interesting because the AFT president nationally did some reading for the kids and I don't think I'll get to put this picture on online because I don't have the kids parents permission to put but to have the kids just with their mouths open as they're just listening to these stories it
152was just a wonderful experience I have also attended the Assistance League scholarship thing what a kick that was and I they put each of the school board members at different tables so we've got to be with different kids around the room and that was so what and this young man that was at my table was one of the ones tonight that was up here and he kind of winked at me and we shook hands we kind of shook hands like yeah we know another over here but it's so wonderful to see these kids in that circumstance and and so many of them have have come from situations where this was not who are going to college or even going to WSU Tech was not really in a possibility so that was kind of cool I
153want to share with you that some recent National tests and National stats have come out less than 50 percent of all adults in the United States can say who what the three branches equal branches of our federal government are that's the adults but I'll tell you something else that was on the news this week only 22 percent of our eighth graders could be eighth grade proficient in U.S history what is worse only 13 of 8th graders were proficient just proficient in understanding civics way back when I first started on this board I started to talk about we needed to have more Civics in our schools all the way from K through 12. and we got coveted in there and that sort of wiped out any kind of we were just barely holding on for a
154while but I really and by the way I have already spoken to Mr beelerfield about this but it really we have got to take Serious the whole purpose of tax money supporting public education is so that we will have an educated electorate and to have less than 50 percent of the adults the other thing I want to point out is we are so excited and I am thrilled that we have moved from 70 percent less than 70 percent graduation to 80 percent graduation but think about this that still leaves 20 percent who drop out before they hit the senior year and our system as we have it government is taught in the senior year that means 20 percent of our students never learn government now that doesn't account for how come that more than 50
155percent of our adults can't even say the legislative judicial and executive branches of the federal government you notice I didn't ask you guys to name them raise your hands you think it'd be 99 percent stance okay but anyway I I just really and I'm I'm not putting this down as one of my little paper things because I want to just give Mr beelerfield a chance to get his feet on the ground but I want to ask the rest of my colleagues here to for us to begin to think of a way that we can put Civics in even where's Rod Rob we could make computer games with Civics for gosh sakes and kids could learn it that away one of the ideas that I've had the approval from the principal at um Gordon Parks is
156having some kids create videos that teach you know remember the old I'm Just a Bill I'm only a Bill on Capitol Hill why can't our kids create some of those videos and then we could show them not only on our websites but we could we could put them out in public well that's the end of my I'll get off my soapbox now about that but I just we've got to begin to have civics and I am thrilled that we've got our CTE but we now need to save every person no matter what their job is a citizen or has an impact in this country so we need to hit that part and I just thank you Dr Thompson because you heard me a long time ago and you've you and I agree that through the
157coven we needed to drop that issue and drop that hot potato there but I thank you for your leadership and your just the conscience that you've been for all of us I've been connected with this Wichita School Board probably longer than any of you because I began teaching here in the 70s and I have never in the teaching that I'd done before that I've never had a superintendent as qualified as you as qualified it all of them have got some qualities they all of them have like ability to make plans ability to do that but you seem to hit them all you just hit the community part you hit the great ideas part you hit the details to make sure that they're carried through you you hit the part about picking tremendous leaders to be
158under you almost nobody I know can do all of that you're just magic you're going to probably disappear shortly after this and we'll find out that she was she was magic and she went poof and disappeared but thank you thank you okay thank you Stan um I would just like to thank the teachers out there and especially since this is teacher appreciation week I know that they are performing small and large Miracles every single day in our classroom also want to say congratulations to our seniors and I'm glad Miss Bond brought up the graduation rate tonight that is one issue that I want to keep stressing and I think of one thing we are forgetting every once in a while is uh the behavior issue is going to be needed to be talked about in
159a broader concept of what it also will mean to our graduation rates so I just want to congratulate our seniors as you enter your last couple weeks of a school and also I also want to say thank you to Dr Thompson but I also want to say thank you to her family as well all of us make sacrifices to do this as our teachers do as our parents do as our students do but we don't do it alone and so I've had the great privilege of meeting Dr Thompson's Family and they're great people and I'm sure they're happy to have you back I just want to touch on three things that I I learned from Dr Thompson in this short period of time [Laughter] it feels very short working with Dr Thompson if it has
160gone by very quickly at one of our very first meetings after covet had broke she said something to the effect like let's we need to use grace and patience and I was sitting right over there and I thought you know that's kind of the kindergarten teacher approach to this I think we're gonna need a little more substance on this covet thing but you know I have kept going back to grace and patience not only on the school board but in my private life and with my family with my friends it was the greatest lesson I've ever learned from you Dr Thompson and I hear your voice every single time I get in a tough situation and I see and I and I I will always remember your grace and patience and it just also shows
161you how far ahead of us you were at that time because while I was sitting over there saying what's that got to do with what we got to face with covet it turned out that it was everything to do with it and the second thing was how to stay focused I've never I've been involved with many organizations in my adult life I have been through a lot of strategic plans in various organizations I have never been in an organization or private business that really stayed focused on once they made a commitment to a plan and you were our leader on that and you made it easy and I think that's another thing I'm going to keep taking away from you is when the storms come and I think Kelly this this will be great advice
162for Kelly When the storms come it the key is to keep your Dr Thompson focus and so that's what I hope to do continue too and that's and the last one is um when you visit a school of Dr Thompson and you see the little girls look at Dr Thompson and they see their potential that that has been the greatest highlight of my career so far as I apologize for crying but I maybe it's because I was a father a father of three girls but I think we sometimes forget how important diversity is and when people see somebody that looks like them it can mean the world and so I will never forget those looks sorry sorry so emotional thank you Cheryl you never apologize for that that that is that is so true my
163goodness wow how do I top all of this folks I I've been at many of the events that they've all talked about so I'm not going to go through them again I think there is a couple of things though that I want to highlight and that is I had the pleasure of being at arcatia accreditation meeting it was a full day and the team presented at that meeting and they the team was there to kind of give us suggestions and help on what we continue to do to get get better and and they did that they were a great team but I walked away thinking oh my gosh this district is so moving in the right direction and I think the chart that we saw in the the budget hearing piece shows that we're making
164percentages of growth every year with our kids and whether that's graduation rate whether that's third grade reading scores any of our formative assessments we're moving in the right direction and I give you and your team a lot of praise for that because that didn't happen by accident folks and and we've got to keep moving because we're doing the right thing for kids and as I think about going into the graduation season and I am the going to be the proud grandmother of three seniors who graduate this year and and I'll get to be on the stage with two of them and I'll probably cry my my one of my grandsons told me very clearly Grandma you may not hug me on stage so I won't but I'll hug him at home because and uh you
165know our kids are proud of themselves I'm seeing that personally with with my grandchildren they know that this is the first step of a lot of other big steps that they're going to take in their lives and I give so much praise to this District to Bringing these kids along and getting them to graduate um you know our teachers teacher appreciation week is never enough but thank you teachers we could not do it without you we could not do it without you you're great people and you serve our students extremely well um Dr Thompson I I have said this before I'm old and actually I started teaching in the Wichita District in 1969. it was Dr Thompson you could have said a lot of things haven't said that's when I was born [Laughter] you know
166I I started with almors and have been through and with a lot of superintendents since then some who stayed a long time some who stayed a very very short time your time wasn't anywhere close to long enough you are by far the best superintendent I've ever worked with [Applause] um you know when when we gave you your challenge when you were hired in we said change community relations that's happened in Spades she is known everywhere um we said develop a strategic plan that we can use that will guide us if you walk out to our school service center now and talk to a plumber they can tell you what they're doing that applies to the Strategic plan to help kids in schools I bet you couldn't do that in 99 percent of the districts across
167the country everybody knows our goals and they know how they fit into our goals and that was not an accident that was lots of hard work done by you done by your team done by building principles done by teachers done by custodians done by Paris everybody has a buy-in into that strategic plan and they know that it's the driver of our district and that's what if you go out and you say dream believe and Achieve everybody knows it everybody knows it I bet you all know it don't you and and you know yes this is not your last day but it's your last board meeting and I just from the bottom of my heart thank you for everything that you've given and how much stronger this district is now yes than it was when you
168came here and I don't know how thank you isn't enough but it's all we can say right now and we appreciate you greatly and we will miss you greatly you have the right to respond if you want to [Laughter] then you would cry okay next item next item new business Kathy does hers on a request I don't see any other new business next item next item executive session Diane I move the board recess into executive session to discuss pending negotiations between the Board of Education and the United teachers of Wichita pursuant to the employer employee negotiations exception under the Kansas open meetings Act and the meeting will resume in this room at approximately 9 15. second okay the motion was made by Diane to go to Executive session and seconded by Stan please cast your
169votes we are adjourned to Executive session motion passed 6-0 I am going to call the board back into session from our executive session uh Diane I move that the board recess into an executive session to discuss pending negotiations between the Board of Education and the United teachers of Wichita pursuant to the employer employee negotiations exception under the Kansas open meetings Act and the open meeting will be extended and resume in this room at 9 45 9 45 a second was moved by Diane's or motion was made by Diane and seconded by Kathy please cast your vote I'm sorry motion passes 4-0 we are in executive session pull the meeting back to order we are coming back from executive session Diane I move that the board recess into executive session to discuss with the board's legal
170counsel a matter which the board is a party pursuant to the exception for the matters which would be deemed privilege and the attorney-client relationship under the Kansas open meetings Act and the open meeting will resume in this room at 1005. I second okay and motion was made but I by Diane to move to Executive sessions seconded by Kathy hit the button I did no no everybody's voted yeah yeah motion passes 4-0 we are in executive session I call the meeting back to order from executive session do I hear a motion for adjournment so moved it was moved by Diane and seconded by Kathy that we adjourn the meeting all those in favor favor raise your hand motion passes four zero thank you we will see you at our next board meeting