Board of Education - December 13, 2021

001this meeting of the december 13 2021 board of education is called to order i'd like to welcome everyone present and those viewing viewing this meeting the wichita public schools will be the district of choice in our region where all students and staff are empowered to dream believe and achieve we are very pleased you have taken the time to join us would you please join me in a moment of silence thank you we are honored tonight uh to have the east high school jrotc cadets madison fowler mackenzie bisel carol laura i'm going to say that one more time to make sure your mom hears that correctly carol laura and nate doe if you would please rise for the pledge of allegiance you may post the colors forward march oh ladies and gentlemen of the united states

002of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you east high jrotc we appreciate you [Applause] patrick first item please first item under reports superintendents student advisory council welcome to the board of education hello my name is carlos sosa i'm a senior at south high good evening my name is melissa mejia and i'm junior at south high so just a little bit about what we did the last meeting we got the privilege to make what was it crisis bags i believe is what the title was we got to put teddy bears together along with some books for children who are are for first responders who respond to children who are in a time of crisis um along with that we also got

003to uh i believe uh make some blankets and basically got to bond together as as a as you as a as a district you know as a community and then it's it brought a brought a sense of humility to me and i know my peers as well to be able to sit down and do something do something for someone else and that's kind of um one of the reasons i look forward to super stacking things it's uh i'm not speaking for myself i want to speak for those around me and uh take that letter so this past meeting we got to put together crisis bags for first responders who respond to any accidents where children are present and make them feel like they're safe and have something to take away from the situation that's positive

004um while we were creating these care packages we not only got to bond as a group but i also believe that it makes us realize how how much of an opportunity we have to get to put these bags together not only because we're also part of super sac and making an impact for people who aren't probably in the best times as we are but also makes us be grateful where we're standing in life right now and being able to not only be part of super sag and contribute back to the community but also be going to school in a good district so uh our testimonies are pretty brief so we'd like to open up for any questions you guys may have you guys would like to ask away any questions from the board carlos melissa

005i'd like to say we are also grateful for students like you and that's why we work as hard as we'd like to think we work and we appreciate everything you do for us as well so uh please tell all your other members of super sac that uh we appreciate them and we're also grateful for them dr thompson um they forgot to tell you what wonderful singers they are ah we had a we had an awesome time um singing christmas carols uh so they all ended up being the dj so they requested all the songs and then i had to go find them and then we had a good time singing them as we were doing our community service so again they missed the most important part and that was their voices i thought maybe they

006were going to do a solo right now for us they could have anything prepared [Laughter] [Music] thank you so much patrick next item please next item under reports good news facilities division customer service award well excuse me good evening board members superintendent thompson we have two good news items to share with you and before we invite luke forward with his visual effects um which are pretty dulled on cool i wanted to take the opportunity to acknowledge all of the really cool banners that you would have seen on the graphics when you came in and if you didn't have the opportunity we might be able to run that again at the end of the meeting as you're leaving if you have the opportunity drive down douglas downtown douglas there are banners on the light poles that

007our fourth grade students from across the wichita public schools had the chance to submit design ideas for and sean chastain has been working with the wichita downtown development folks since early this spring to create a really cool and very visible opportunity for students to intersect art and community and it's it just warms my heart i drove down douglas yesterday when i was coming home from a meeting downtown just so i could see the banners so i would encourage you to do that and think about the commitment and the connection that arts and our community plays for our students each day the second thing before we introduce our good news items is to acknowledge and honor and say thank you to ben blankly ron rosales and mia turner who enjoy their last evening of good news

008with us tonight as seated board members and who conclude their terms of service on the wichita board of education and i just want to say thank you on behalf of a grateful school community to all three of you for your service and invite you if you choose to say a few words to do so but more than anything to acknowledge for those who are watching the meeting live and who may watch it after the fact the amazing service that you contribute to the wichita public schools for the mighty salary of zero dollars i think honestly most folks in our community don't have any idea that you all serve dozens if not hundreds of hours every month and there is no compensation for service to the board of education and that is really when you think

009about servant leadership and commitment to community it's really extraordinary what you all do to serve and support our kids so as i said on behalf of a grateful school district and a grateful community i want to say thank you to all of you and invite my colleagues to to join me in a round of applause for the three of you as you conclude your board service julie yeah i um just want to publicly thank ron and ben and mia i've truly enjoyed serving on the board of education with you i do know how many hours you put into this and your dedication and devotion and um we've worked together as a great team and i appreciate the three of you and the great team members that you've been with us and first and foremost i

010want to say i never questioned ever with any of you your complete and total dedication to the kids of this district and so i want to say thank you to you i'm sad you're leaving us i'm going to miss you but uh thank you for your service to the kids of wichita public schools ernestine i too want to say thank you thank you mia thank you ben thank you ron it's amazing because i know that school districts around the nation they get paid for it and we do it for nothing but you guys have really stretched beyond ron you really have been just i said earlier the swiss knife of the school board that you're available to just about any kind of research or any kind of idea and with your your whole life you

011are kid decorate decorated kid dedicated and we really appreciate that and we know that you're going to keep on being kid dedicated maybe decorated too that's true [Laughter] so i look forward to watching your life as it goes on from here thank you so much thank you and ben you've been not only the good parent that kept us grounded but you've also been the one that has always reminded us that we're here to change the world to make sure that the education we're giving is the best ever and you keep on doing that for us from the citizens land and i know that you're going to have a great career as you go forward making the world a better place mia you've always been one that speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves you

012also reach out and quietly correct us if we forget something or if we're headed you just kind of quietly say well this is kind of what i thought and it stops us to think and you've just been really wonderful i appreciate keep on speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves we appreciate you thank you thank you ernestine cheryl well i just want to echo what my other board members have said um i i've been on the board quite a while and honestly and truly with the board that we have right now we have accomplished so much and taken so much heat but still come back and watched exactly what we should and that is what's right for kids and ron and ben and mia you have been superstars in making sure that we never

013forget it's about the kids whatever we're doing we always focus on them and i am greatly greatly going to miss all three of you thank you very much for your service and i think i'm going to during my board of education remarks at the end i think i'ma uh kind of give you my thoughts on that at the at the end of the meeting that way i don't get too emotional to start um but ben ron or mia is there anything you'd like to say at this time mia i i just uh want to thank you all uh you all were very welcoming to us uh you know you never made me feel like you don't know what's going on so you don't have an opinion and i want to say congratulations to the new

014members that are coming in and i wish them the best but i just wanted you all to know everybody to know i'll still be serving just in a a smaller capacity so i won't stop serving so and thank you again for all your help you guys are some magnificent people and me outside the board you guys have reached out you all have been fantastic so thank you and mia won't even be a smaller capacity it'll just be a different one yes ben um sure uh so um it's been a heck of a four years uh yeah you know when when we started this this job the um the the a former board member once said that boundary changes were the hardest thing that a board of education would ever have to tackle um and we

015haven't done one of those so uh yeah um yeah it's uh it's been extremely rewarding for years i'm glad to have been what i think in the right place the right time making some tough decisions on behalf of of our entire community and i i'm really i'm really happy and i'm really proud of the work that uh that we achieved together thank you ben ron yeah i just want to say thank you to everybody and um again um you know the leadership that's that's displayed here uh from all the different aspects of all the things that go into education is represented here and along with the of course the parents especially uh to make sure that your kids get to school and do what they need to do and and and the in the students

016you know again i i still teach and i appreciate uh all my students and then i see the ones that were here and see some out in the audience but um really still encouraged to see them uh still being active and doing what they need to do doing the right things contributing to society and uh and i think a lot of that has to do with the leadership in this in this room right here and it's been an honor to uh represent i'm this this building's where i graduated from and and i really it's uh really reflect on that it's been an honor to uh you know communicate and engage with some of the people here and throughout all the other uh feeder elementaries that not only through north high but heights and northeast magnet

017again thank you guys thank you ron as i mentioned a moment ago we have two good news items to share with you tonight the first is to celebrate customer service and it's a little bit of a different twist through our work with the four disciplines of execution and the focus on our strategic plan our facilities division has created an opportunity to recognize customer service provided by the various departments at the service center to our buildings knowing how important it is that those of us that work in central office support our schools and the manners in which they need to be supported so here to tell you more about the really cool trophy and the recognition opportunity that the school service center has created is luke newman our division director of facilities thank you wendy as

018she said my name is luke newman i'm the director of facilities and tonight i have the honor of presenting our inaugural facilities division customer service award recipient so this award was created to encourage and recognize high performing departments with demonstrated excellence in communication initiative problem solving and leadership customer service is such a huge part of what we do in the facilities division and directly correlates to long-term goal number four of the strategic plan which is ensuring that schools are trusted as safe places we created this award to promote a culture of customer service and highlight the top performing teams and facilities the trophy before you was constructed in-house by our millings electrical and sign shops and will be awarded to one team recipient in the facilities division each semester the selection committee evaluated feedback received

019from our schools for all 21 shops and departments and i'm excited to announce that the custodial department rose to the top for their many critical initiatives success successfully implemented in the 2021 school year which required outside the box thinking swift action and strong proactive communication our custodial manager albert jackson is here tonight to represent the department albert if you wouldn't mind stand up waving thank you albert and that takes care of my last uh point was to which was to ask you to help me in congratulating them on that much deserved win so thank you for clapping uh one more time if you wouldn't mind joining me around applause good job uh any questions on uh what what we're doing with this or um it's been a it's been a fun a fun thing for

020our division and to to see people uh get excited about it and as you can see there's pictures uh that rotate through the front of the front of the award and some comments that that we received from our schools and um so it's kind of a neat thing to be able to rotate through facilities and for people to be able to proudly display in their departments so ernestine i want to know where you're going to put that right away is it going to be where the custodians can see it and where the public can see it it's it's been sitting in the custodial department out at the service center for the last probably five five or six months i'm a little delayed in in presenting this to the board um but yeah they've they've been

021so they know you know about it all right okay thank you julie i think this is super cool um our facilities division are they're just rock stars as far as great customer service and i think this is just a really nice way to uh to highlight that and and to share the love so uh thank you to whoever it was that thought of this and and of course the the trophy itself is it shows how talented your team is and they're great imagination at skill so thank you to luke thank you to the custodial department and all the facilities division for your great work absolutely thank you thank you luke our final good news item tonight is as good as it gets as amanda kingry our assistant superintendent for secondary schools comes forward it's also

022my pleasure to invite the eight young people currently seniors in our schools to come forward and these young people are being recognized as 2022 national merit semi-finalists these students represent the best of the best in our district and in our country so as as they come forward come on game come on uh you will have a chance to meet them and hear a little bit more from miss kingry about these phenomenal students you guys go ahead and come over here without further ado all right good evening so i have the honor of recognizing these students and so when we get to the part where i call your name if you will step forward or at least wave so we know who each of you are so we are here to recognize the national merit scholarship

023program who has named eight semi-finalists from the wichita public schools the 20 20 22 semi-finalists are east high students miles crawford [Music] not here okay vivian liu eva mckenzie samuel morris varun verma and those are our east high students we have heights we have heights high school student taller phipps and northeast magnet high school student alexander gleason so if we can give a round of applause for all of our students so how this occurred so high school juniors entered the 2022 national merit scholarship program by taking the 2020 preliminary sat national merit scholarship qualifying test which served as an initial screen of program entrance the nationwide pool of semifinalists representing less than one percent of the u.s high school seniors i'm going to say that again they represent less than one percent of our high

024school seniors across the nation and this includes having the highest scoring entrance in each of our states so they are in the top of our state so again congratulations to you guys this is a huge huge honor we're very proud of you so one more round of applause congratulations guys and before they uh walk away we also want to recognize um the parents and the family that are here today because we know that it takes support of our families for them to be as successful as they are so if you guys can please stand [Applause] and one more group that we would like to recognize any administrator or anybody from the staff from their buildings if you guys could please stand so we're open for comments or questions i'm going to anticipate julie's question i

025think we have a tradition where we embarrass you and make you come to the podium state your name again and uh i know you get asked three trillion times a day but kind of what your plans after high school are stan anticipated but then but then i want to make a comment absolutely um yes please um one at a time we're putting you on the spot and tell us your future plans and goals where you want to go to school what you want to study uh so i'm alex gleason from northeast um i haven't quite decided on what college i'm going to but wherever i'm going to be i'm going to be studying astrophysics wow nice go ahead go ahead and stay up there [Applause] my name is vivian liu and i also do not

026know what college i'm going to yet hopefully some of my early decisions will come out soon and i am planning to study aerospace engineering awesome [Applause] uh my name is toler phipps i go to wichita heights high school um i want to say what an honor it is to accept this award and represent my school so thank you guys for that and i also have not decided on a college a lot of my application decisions were based off if i got this or not so now that i have this i'm looking to finalize so thank you [Applause] hello my name is varun verma i'm a senior at wichita east high school and i'm planning on studying business and computer science at a school that's yet uh undecided but thank you all for the opportunity hi

027my name is eva mckenzie i go to wichita east high school i'm still waiting on my early decision school as well as some others before deciding where i'm going to college but i hope to be studying biomedical engineering or orthodontics [Applause] my name is miles crawford from east high school and i'm going to be studying materials in metallurgical engineering at the colorado school of mines [Applause] hello my name is sam morris and i will be studying mechanical engineering at an undecided college [Applause] i i want you to all anticipate the scholarships coming in um that uh it goes hand in hand with uh being a national merit scholar i happen to have a national merit scholar in my family and she completed her entire education through uh receiving a phd from northwestern and didn't pay

028one single penny her entire career college career so hang in there yellow yet money will be coming your way thank you julie ben um so i was a 2001 national merit semifinalist and went to college and studied engineering so those of you that have engineering in your plans hopefully you'll be a little cooler than me but i understand you're just as nerdy [Laughter] cheryl i just want to say congratulations first of all to all of you it is a tremendous honor to be recognized as a national merit scholar and it's not only an honor for you it's an honor for our district to have this many national merit scholars in our district and it speaks to the quality of the education that our students receive you are going to i'm not a bit surprised that

029you haven't decided what schools you're going to yet because this will change the opportunities greatly for each of you so big decisions for you and your family are ahead and i'm sure when we recognize our scholarship winners in the spring you're going to all be among them with the highest amounts so congratulations we are so proud to have you as part of our district thank you thank you one more round of applause [Applause] outstanding patrick next item please next item under reports service employees international i do not see mr freeman here tonight so we'll go to the next item oh sorry yes uh next item is utw yes next item under reports united teachers of wichita britain lewis welcome mr lewis yes brent lewis president of united teachers of wichita and they just left the

030room but carlos and melissa and these national merit scholars are the reason we are all here and it's fantastic to see them bring their talents and their voice here well we are here tonight to express our gratitude for the volunteer service you all provide to wichita public schools on behalf of our wichita community these are often thankless positions and you can never please everyone even during normal times your courage and commitment to make tough decisions and do what you believe right for our students and staff during an unprecedented pandemic crisis is commendable vice president blankly thank you for being thoughtful and caring about the students and staff of when facing the difficult challenges of a large school system your leadership in finding practical solutions for complex problems has been valuable mr rosales thank you for

031being a strong steady advocate for our students and staff of color and for always speaking up for the needs of english as a second language learners in our schools you have also been a consistent voice in support of student involvement in athletics and other extracurricular activities for a greater connection to our school communities ms turner thank you for bringing a voice for the students who often fly under the radar of the many special programs that command a lot of attention in our school system you have shared your personal and family experiences within our schools and have highlighted the needs of all students in a clear and effective manner dr thompson and all members of the board thank you for remaining steady during turbulent times it has felt like the weight of the world has fallen

032on the shoulders of the schools in our community as we have many challenges to work through in hopes of emerging from this pandemic someday your leadership will be key to our success now schools are one of the safest places a person could be in the united states and we all agree that everyone should feel safe in school and now the widespread pain and disruption this pandemic has caused families in the wichita community arrive at our doors with the students we serve every day as educators we empathize with the struggles students face in their lives and value personal connection is crucial to being effective in the work that we do teachers have a lot on our plates we care about our students and do everything we can to show that within a productive learning environment we

033are doing our best to deal with the upheaval this pandemic has created in our students lives there are limits to how much classroom teachers can meet their needs beyond providing a quality education in a productive learning environment we also want to recognize the monumental tasks that building administrators are working through and appreciate all the support they can provide to care for the range of students needs for them to be ready to learn in our classrooms we are in this together we are all dedicated to the work of providing quality public education and opportunity to wichita children regardless of their zip code thank you patrick next item next item public communications public comments are limited to the items on the boe agenda or items within the jurisdiction of the board uh uh speaker's comments are limited

034to three minutes on the registered topic there will be a timer up in that corner for you to easily see and but they must not include personnel matters regard concerning district employees or matters that would violate the privacy of students we're pleased to have uh three speakers tonight the first one is raymond sipholt our second speaker is mark ritchie welcome mr richie no rush plenty time president research deputy thompson members of the board my name is mark ritchie and i live at 4700 west 13th in wichita thank you for this opportunity to speak to you up until 1994 all members of the wichita school board were elected at large this method of election created a school board that is almost entirely white and it was largely made up of members from a small section of

035east wichita there were no members of the boe from the area north of 13th and east of i-135 for some time there are only two members who lived on the west side and only one who lived south of douglas rarely was there an african-american african-american member there had been none who were hispanic to solve this lack of representation some patrons proposed that there be created six or seven districts where voters could nominate and then elect their own members of the school board the school board in place at that time did not want this instead the school board proposed a plan that would divide the district into six areas each with the board member who lived in that area plus one member elected at large nominations would be carried out in each district followed by an

036election that would be that would be by all voters in the school district the board's proposal was adopted in an election in 1994. this plan takes care of the geographic problem but it does not allow voters in the district to actually choose who would represent them on the board i did not support this plan nor do i support it now this plan could create the situation where the person who has the support of the majority of voters from the district does not win the vote for the city-wide vote and thus is not elected each of you has run for election to the school board under this plan you know personally what it is like to run a campaign in an area created from approximately one-sixth of the district and then switch to a campaign that

037covers the entire city you know from your own experience that putting together the organization and the money required to run city-wide is difficult the difficulty assures that the candidate with support from outside of the candidacy street has a clear advantage nomination and election by voters in a single district is the ordinary way elections are done in this area in wichita only the mayor is elected city-wide members of the city council the county commission and even u.s congress are nominated and elected by the voters in that area none of these are required to run across the entire city the entire county or the entire state usd 259 is the only political body around here where it is possible for a candidate to get a majority in a district and then be defeated by voters and from

038outside this area this is not representative democracy thank you for your time thank you mr richie and our third speaker is sam morris hello i'm speaking on behalf of all the national merit semi-finalists at east high and we have agreed that it would only be right to use this platform you've given us to speak out against the implementation of the srg grading system that will be going into high schools next year we believe that if we are going to be recognized as examples of student success within the district we have a duty to speak for the interests of the student body as we see them from everything that we've read and heard this system would do nothing to help anybody involved it would burn the already overworked teaching staff by forcing them to rework their

039teaching systems and this system would not only cause students to go towards the middle of the scale artificially making it easier to pass classes in raising graduation rates but it would also cause the students not to learn much more why would we want to show all students as average when so many of them are exceptional the fact that there would be less difference in student grades means that future students may not be able to stand out from their peers making them less competitive in college and scholarship applications even during the pandemic we've managed to thrive and compete under the current system we know what is in place now is imperfect but we believe that standards reference grading would be far worse so we implore you to please not implement this system next year thank you

040for your time thank you mr morris and and patrick next item please next item under education every student future ready strategic plan schools are trusted as safe places dr thompson i'll turn it over to you to introduce the topic thank you mr reeser this evening we will have a presentation as we do every board of education meeting around the work of the strategic plan giving updates answering any questions about any of the topics and so tonight we will be working in goal number four and that is schools are trusted as safe um places and we have of two of my colleagues i think it's about three of them that are going to be presenting these two of you okay two of my colleagues um dr vince evans and mr gil alvarez will um we'll take

041it from here thank you dr thompson president reese members of the board i'm gil alvarez deputy superintendent and with me this evening is my co-presenter vince evans assistant superintendent of student support services tonight vince and i will share part two of strategic plan goal number four at our last voe meeting we presented on the same goal number four but it was about our physical spaces and how we create safe civil productive learning and work environment in all buildings within our district you all participated in that wonderful interactive activity with terry moses last time we met so tonight tonight's presentation will focus on the indicator of success employability skills to increase skills and competencies for staff and students to experience academic career and personal success the presentation will include our mental health pilot update new resources

042on our district web page resources excuse me on our web page employee assistance program data and our behavior skills that promote employability skills dr evans will start us off with information about the the success of our mental health pilot good evening president reserve boe members and superintendent thompson i am sorry to inform you that i am not as entertaining as miss terry moses and i do not have a kahoot for you this evening i will try my best though to get you some good high quality information strategic plan goal number four states that one of our employability skills is to increase skills and competencies for staff and students to experience academic career and personal success this evening mr alvarez and i will be sharing updates on initiatives that we are using to meet this need

043and specifically i'm going to bring your attention to two of those initiatives the first of which you see on the screen now i'd like to talk to you with you about our mental health intervention team it's also known locally as the kansas opportunity support program and for the sake of not causing any confusion tonight i'm simply going to be referring to it as the mental health intervention team the objective of this initiative is to eliminate barriers for students and families who need clinical therapy and access to the services of their community mental health centers that all sounds very fancy but what does it really mean and i would explain it best by taking you back to an old adage that i know that you all know by heart and that's it takes a village to

044raise a child so what do i mean by that when you look around our community there are ample examples of people that are helping to support our students it's not just parents it's not just the schools we have churches businesses non-profits and if you look at the very bottom line of this slide you would see the praise community mental health centers and you might be thinking yourself vince i'm really not sure what that is and i would tell you that you know examples of these organizations locally there are places such as comcare the mental health association and the kansas children's service league so with that in mind what are some of these barriers that are listed in the objective and i would give you a description of this if a parent decides that they have

045a child that needs mental health services and they start to work with an organization like the mental health association that group might say your student qualifies and we would love to begin providing therapy for your child after school but this is where the barriers can come into play that parent might work in the evening that parent might not have quality transportation to get their child from the home to the mha they might have schedule conflicts that arise and so what the mental health intervention team aims to do and has done so successfully now for four years is to eliminate that barrier by opening up our school doors and saying community mental health centers come on site and let us provide those services here where we can eliminate the barriers i'll give you a real example

046of that from our district one of our elementary schools go back with me before this initiative started so it started in 2018 2017 school year this school this elementary school was serving three students through a community mental health center we knew there was more students that needed assistance there but that's how many are actually being served the mental health intervention team initiative was put into place and one semester later just one semester there was 38 students being served from 3 to 38 in one semester's time mr alvarez next slide please so this is not a usd259 initiative we have some thanks to give out on this one this was actually developed and enacted in 2018 by the kansas legislator legislature and much thanks goes to our local state representative brenda landwear for putting this into

047place also from a local standpoint i have to give props to my colleague terrell davis he did the initial work to get this off the ground and to my colleague that's here tonight melissa zimmerman who runs this on a day-to-day basis she is our district's behavior director some facts that i thought you might appreciate about the mental health intervention team to date it is currently served 580 students this year in our district that number will continue to grow throughout the entire school year as new students are identified as being in need of support it's currently in 37 buildings in our school district and that number has grown every single year the mental health intervention team has been in existence this year it took a giant jump of 13 new schools largely due to sr funding

048we also have as i've mentioned previously community mental health centers that work with us and those folks are comcare the mental health association and the kansas children's service league and we make this all run through a generous grant from the state as well as our general fund and those aforementioned esser dollars so who does what when it comes to this relationship and as you can see at the top partnership is key everyone has their roles to play so if you work for one of those cmhcs via comcare or the mha or the kansas children's service league you're going to provide one of three things either case management those are really our folks that serve in a mentorship role they're largely out in the community they're doing home visits they're supporting students to get what they

049need out in the community or on-site therapy that's what i mentioned previously about us opening those school doors and bringing people on site or medical management if you're a parent that says hey i have this diagnosis and i need this help with meds that's really somewhere where the cmhc can shine as for wichita public schools we call our folks that work on this initiative our behavioral health school liaisons i'm very proud to say that we have 10 new behavioral health school liaisons this year again thanks to our esser dollars and they work hard on reducing those barriers that we talked about making sure that students are getting the wrap around services that they need and they also are in charge of tracking and collecting our data to prove that this works and we do have

050four years worth of data and year after year it has shown that this helps to improve academics behavior and attendance for students that are participating in this initiative i just want to say thank you to everyone that's involved with it is an absolute asset to our students we are very thankful for everyone that's put it in place you have one other item that i wanted to share with you tonight and i mentioned that the mental health intervention team has been in place for four years now this initiative the mental health matters webpage has been in existence for less than a day this is brand new as of today so it's cause for celebration and i want to go and while i'm thinking about it give props to some of our colleagues this would be hilary

051trudeau stephanie anderson and dr holly yeager those are some of our program specialists and they along with a team put this page together and the reason for it is this last year in may we put out a survey and went out to the community to the staff and to the students i don't know how many of you have ever put out a survey before but the response rates can sometimes not be so great there was eighteen thousand five hundred people that responded to this survey and one of the number one absolute things that they said that they wanted to see as a priority in wichita public schools was more information about mental health supports and the mental health support for our students and so this page has now been launched and it talks about initiatives

052not only within the school district but initiatives that are in the community as well and some examples you might find if you were to visit usd259.org mental health would be things like this one's timely coping with stress in the holiday season if you're somebody like me that's starting to have that anxiety build because you haven't done any of your christmas shopping this would be good timing you could have resources by building so for example if you heard me you're at home right now and you're thinking i wonder if my school has the mental health intervention team you could look and find on this webpage it has information like suicide awareness i know that every year every single employee in wichita public schools is trained in suicide prevention i just had my training last week very

053important one more example is a parent crisis helpline that's run through the state for anybody that needs help 24 hours a day and much much more so please we welcome you to check out our brand new web page and with that i'll turn it over to gil alvarez thank you dr evans you've previously heard sean hudsmith our chief human resources officer and his team present on compsych our new employee assistance program this year this was another strategy that we enhanced significantly this year in response to employee feedback this seemed like an ideal time to bring you a couple of key data indicators from the early work of this program so if you look at the slide you can see this is third quarter usage of our comp psych resource and this is when i say

054third quarter this is really from august to october so we're continuing to monitor every three months but in 2020 we had 205 employees that took advantage of com psych and this year between august and october we had 893 employees take advantage of our compsyc this is an increase of 688 employees that use compsych from august through october so we are excited about where we're going with this this support system for our employees as well the kansas state department of education defines a successful high school graduate as having the academic preparation cognitive preparation technical skills and employability skills to be successful in post-secondary education in the attainment of an industry recognized certification or in the workforce without the need for remediation so it is important that our wichita public school graduates have the preparation and skills

055listed and bold on the definition we see here for those of you familiar with the rose capacity standards which were identified by the kansas supreme court as the framework for the success of kansas students these are the very elements around which the state's vision and our wichita public schools strategic plan are constructed in past presentations this definition also ranked true for our graduation goal and graduation plus plan providing options for our graduates to be successful in whatever post-secondary opportunity they choose our goal number four also focus on employability skills so students can experience academic career and personal success based on the kansas social emotional and character development standards which are also known as sccd standards that were adopted in 2012 and revised in 2018 our district's behavior work group created behavior and employability scales these

056secd standards encompass practicing good citizenship as respectful responsible empathetic and ethical individuals through making healthy decisions practicing personal safety understanding risk prevention promoting a positive school culture problem solving effectively and valuing excellence a quick review of the rose standards illustrates that what we identify as employability skills in these scales are the foundation for student success across the seven rose capacity standards at the elementary level which is pre-k through fifth grade we call them behavior scales at the secondary level 6th through 12th grade we call them employability scales so why are behavior and employability skills important as our district continues to support the whole child we believe that each student has worth and dignity and is valued and understood through essential behavioral supports these behavior and employability scales are a systematic tool we can use to

057transparently plan teach and measure each student's employability skills and work habits so what are behavior and employability skills behavior and employability skills articulate a learning progression toward a set of learning goals required for our students to be successful in school and life as well as for post-secondary success these scales allow teachers to consider behavior separate from academics providing an additional window into the learning process that is often hidden in traditional grading and reporting separating what students know and can do academically from their behavior and work habits is an important component in a standards-focused environment behavior and employability skills can help everyone better understand and support student behavior and work habits through a learning approach rather than just a disciplinary approach the behavior and employability skills as well as all academic standards are available for your

058review online at w www.usd259.org standards and that is on the screen as well so what specific standards do our behavior and employability skills represent starting with social development standards which focus on social awareness which demonstrate awareness of others thoughts feelings and differences interpersonal skills demonstrate communication and social skills to interact effectively with others within relationships personal development standards focus on self-awareness which identifies understands and expresses personal thoughts and emotions in healthy ways self-management understands reflects upon and uses strategies for managing thoughts behaviors and setting goals character development standards focus on decision making skills which demonstrate responsible and effective decision making in a variety of settings problem solving skills develop implement and model effective problem solving in a variety of settings core principles demonstrate traits of good character in a variety of areas such as honesty

059kindness self-control and perseverance we then have our work habits scales which focus on work completion completing work by the designated time participation and engagement in learning which is listens participates in class and engages in the learning process on a consistent basis and following directions know and act in accordance to classroom routines and verbal or written directions so tonight we covered the mental health intervention pilot and the resources available the usage of our employee assistance program and the alignment of our behavior and employability skills to the kansas social emotional character development standards this work of goal number four plays an important role in our schools to be trusted as safe places so that we continue to create safe civil productive learning and work environments and increase skills and competencies for staff and students to experience academic

060career and personal success as we continue to monitor the success of our strategic plan we know the impact the pandemic has had on our staff students and community which is why the work outlined in our strategic plan may be complex but vital to the success of our district and our community so at this time we are now open to any questions you may have dr thompson i don't necessarily have a question i guess i see that there's some question someone has put their name up but i i just wanted to just kind of make sure that there are folks out there parents or anyone that's interested in knowing exactly what your students are learning whether it's through our social and emotional learning or any others um mr alvarez gave a a website address and i'd

061like to repeat that www.usd259.org standards and those are the things that teachers use to be able to teach your students in any content area any subject matter that you're interested in those standards are there for you to review thank you dr thompson cheryl sorry as we have moved into and are working through uh covet in our district how greatly has it impacted our availability to collect data to extend our plan to move into new areas with the plan because i know the mental health project started four years ago but we've just expanded it greatly because of we got some esser funds but also we just have the opportunity to do that so how greatly has it impacted our strategic plan pieces well i know for what the pandemic has definitely impacted different areas obviously whether

062it be around the employability skills that we want our students to maintain as well as academic success as well so as we look through our strategic plan with graduation or even student achievement increase it's definitely impacted because there's been gaps in in the learning that we want to continue to close those gaps because we want to close not only the achievement gap but opportunity gaps but even our make sure that we increase our student achievement as we continue to move forward with it but there's definitely been some obstacles because of the pandemic definitely especially when we went to remote as well as on site and we're switching back and forth so we want to maximize the learning for our students and hopefully with us being back in school and being able to see them face

063to face that we can actually use our intervention programs to close that gap and we are collecting data not only for this area but for all of our areas of our plan is that correct that is correct and has has it slowed us down with that data collection well we always want to measure and look at the data now as far as are we at the same pace that we would want to be if we didn't have a pandemic possibly not we we need to continue to do the things that we know both for employability skills as we support the whole child as well as academics so increasing student learning increasing student achievements definitely as well as continuing to increase graduation rates is an area that we want to continue to improve okay with that

064said i'd like to place a motion if it's okay with the board president okay it has also been um it had this pandemic has impacted our ability to be able to um give the state assessment i'll just say that one in particular when you didn't have students on site last year you could talk about fast bridge you could talk about any of the assessments that we give we have not been able to give those assessments to all students for a period of time and so this year because now we're back we can get our numbers back up of how many students we're assessing because last year even with our state assessments there were students that were not in school and so we you know we had to ask parents to bring their kid to school

065to take the assessment many families chose not to do that so even within the state assessments we didn't have a get gauge for our data as far as that is concerned alongside any of the other assessments that we were given to students some of those teachers bless their hearts were trying to give the assessments to kids when they were at home i mean so it did impact our ability to be able to gather really good data to really see um the um you know how students were doing or not doing because of the not that ability to be able to have a student face to face throughout the pandemic well this board worked very diligently and we all of us except mia were on the board at the time that we developed the strategic plan

066and set it in place for five years with beyond our circumstance beyond our control with the pandemic it's really kind of put a bit of a roadblock in front of us to be able to move this plan forward is that kind of a true statement it is true and the teachers and staff worked very diligently to try to keep moving along the best that they could with the situation that was in place but it did have an impact on our ability with us to move our strategic plan data forward right and so i would like to move that we extend the the action cycle for every student future ready strategic plan which is currently scheduled to conclude at the end of the 22-23 school year i propose that the current plan be extended by two

067years to conclude at the end of the 24-25 school year in order to allow teachers students and administrators to overcome the uncertain impacts of covid and regain an upward trajectory of success as part of this timeline i move that in the fall of 2024 we begin our community listening journey in order to evaluate every student future ready plan and to to develop the next strategic plan for the board of education to approve in april 20 2025 i put that on the table as a motion for us to consider i'd second the motion okay it's been moved in second and ernestine well i was just going to comment on how excited i was about the expansion of employees assistance assistance program again with the covid and with all of the other stressors going on in the

068world right now i'm just real excited this district has had an employees assistance program since about the 80s i think but to have this expansion i want to know is it free for employees to go get counseling yes it is and i want to just remind everyone who's listening we had an employee program but it was not as robust as we heard our community say and as mr alvarez and mr evans talked about when we did the survey we asked people what you say mental health what does that mean and the staff was overwhelmingly telling us the things that they needed and wanted from this program and then our human resources department went out and sought that out and then brought it back to the board and then you all actually spent quite a bit

069of money of your esser dollars to be able to build that program up to be able to meet the needs of what the the teachers say that they wanted and because you met that need it's pretty evident that whatever they asked for they were delivered and now they're using it is what we wanted you to see right and that's what i'm excited about is that that increase of people being able to actually meet their needs have their needs met but that's a bad problem that was where i was thank you thank you ernestine cheryl i appreciate you uh making that motion and i think i can support that motion i just wanted to make one clear up one thing because of the uncertain impacts of covid and the fact of regaining a trajectory of success

070which i think is the essence of what your emotion is i just want to make sure go over the time frame or timeline of what brought us to today and i'll ask dr thompson to confirm if anything if i'm off base here my understanding is because there's a inherent conflict between uh employability and achievement they're two different subjects we get torn in different directions some of us want to go strictly on talking about standardized testing and achievement some of us want to go strictly employability skills so-called soft skills while not ignoring achievement the kansas department of education if i understand went on a listening tour themselves and it was the business community that really raised the level of future ready in the consciousness of the kansas public would you would you say that's correct yes

071sir and then at that time we started our strategic plan and made it five years and then we had kovitz still struggling through covid and now what this is attempt to do is to continue that balancing act between what the business community is asking us to do and that is graduate students who are actually employable have skills and are well maintained and then at the same time uh bringing along that piece of student achievement and that's the timeline that's in my head i just want to make sure that that's fairly accurate or somewhat accurate uh that is correct your timeline of the events and things that you identified are correct okay well this this motion makes um complete sense to me then um any other comments before we take a vote all right we have

072a motion on the floor um and it's basically is to extend the uh strategic plan uh from 2223 through due to the uncertain impacts of re uh covet and regain an upward trajectory of success and that there uh is a listening tour you mentioned a listening tour that would start and um excuse me when is that again it would start in the fall of 24. okay we have a motion on the floor motion carry 7-0 yes ernestine one of the things that makes me confident about this boat is i am so impressed with our strategic plan it has been a wise one from the very beginning and we've just seen pieces and parts just be put in that make it work i feel excited about it it's not like i i can't see any way

073to improve this strategic plan right now because i just really think that we've just got the pieces that are that are fitting just right i just am excited about continuing it because it's such an excellent strategic plan and it's one that's got the pieces in it that you all are putting together that the different parts of the departments that we've got going i think that we're really served well to have the strategic plan continue until that time thank you thank you ernestine uh patrick next item please next item thank you gil thank you vince next item under education 2022 legislative agenda as we do every december before the legislative sessions officially begin we work with stakeholders and to come up with ideas or thoughts about what we would like to take to legislators as an

074agenda to be able to have a solid plan of things that we want to go out and visit with our legislators at the federal level alongside the state level and our local level and so we started this about four maybe four years ago building legislative agenda for the board of education um and and making sure that when we go we have our ducks in a row and we can utilize all the stakeholders who would like to join in for that advocacy for our students and our teachers uh and be able to not just teachers too but actually the entire staff to be able to go out and advocate on your behalf so mr terrell davis is here to talk to you a little bit about uh your legislative agenda for the 2022 session welcome terrell

075thank you president reeser vice president blankly seen board members awesome superintendent dr thompson it's my pleasure to present to you tonight our 2022 legislative agenda we've got four items that we are in support of and then three items that we would oppose first item is high academic standards to help prepare students to meet and or exceed the rose standards and to be successful in college and or career environment that is in alignment with the gannon case [Music] outcomes in terms of the additional money from the getting case are all tied to the actual rose standard so you'll see rose capacities and so we support having those high standards to help all of our kids to meet those secondly follow state statute and fund 92 of the excess cost of special education as a state we've

076hovered around 71 percent we've even dipped down at 69 percent but actual statute is that it would fund at 92 percent number three is legislation to stop runners with school bus cameras and appropriate fines we want to make sure that all of our kids are safe not only on our campus but also as they're getting to school and it's important that we stop those individuals who run past those stop signs on our school buses and we're in support of legislation to help enforce bus cameras and appropriate fines for those individuals number four is a temporary reduction of capers mandatory waiting period for working after retirement to 30 days as we look at our staff issues across the strait across the state excuse me in the nation on in terms of staff shortages there are going

077to be more and more people who may be coming out of retirement to work and so we want to decrease that waiting period to down to 30 days so they could retire in may and be ready to teach in that next fall number five is a temporary reduction to the additional caper fees placed on school districts and or employees returning to the workforce after retirement again one of the the deterrents from school districts hiring people in capers is the fines that either the school district or the employee will pick up when those individuals are quote unquote double dipping and so we want to see a temporary reduction in those caper fees with those individuals number six is improvement to the bond and interest state aid formula designed to accurately reflect the growth in average assessed

078validation for school districts that deals with uh mount leavenworth or uh then worth piece that has a zero assessment piece they're actually factored into the formula and so it kind of brings everything down because of that community and so we'd love to see that community taken out of the formula it's a better representation of kansas if that community is taken out of the formula number seven is continued expansion of the mental health pilot and dr evans did an awesome job of kind of explaining that that is an actual baby of the wichita public schools myself and dr thompson i think we're on the job about six months and we started going into meetings with legislators on developing that mental health uh pilot if you remember the initial pilot was for six school districts 10 million

079dollar proviso wichita got 6.7 million dollars of that 10 million proviso and we've been able to expand that program every year uh with the expansion though we want to make sure so when we first started it was 100 funded by the state then it went down to 75 percent we want to kind of fight that to make sure it stays at that level so we want to see expansion but we also want to see the state put money in that so that it's not taxing school districts not just wichita but school districts across the state and so we want to see proper expansion with the budget that go along with go along with it so three things that we are in opposition of first thing is any reduction or modification of the funding for the

080five-year plan as approved by the kansas supreme court we are in year three now we have two more years and then we move to the apiu and we don't want any modification of that no plans at this point in time keep that plan as is and let's not modify that again that's tied to the rose capacities and so we'll be able to truly evaluate if you will school districts based on the additional funding and their ability to meet the rose capacities number two is any attempt to remove or limit the judicial branch authority contained in article 6 in the kansas constitution that's been a big issue the last couple of years they've never gotten enough votes for that and it's kind of dropped off last year and so we're hoping that we'll continue but we

081also want that to be out there that if it was to come up which is all is opposed to any kind of modification of our kansas constitution to take any authority away from our judicial branch and then last one is legislation supporting tuition tax credits or any form of vouchers to schools which are not maintained developed or operated by the local elected board of education and that's a voucher system a voucher by any name is still a voucher and we're in opposition of any voucher system of any school that's not operated or has a responsibility to this board or their local school board and so that's our 2022 legislative agenda uh there are some things on here that you don't see anything about critical race there because again we do not teach critical race theory

082and so it's not on our legislative agenda but please understand that if there is a attack against our district in that area we would defend ourselves and testify against anything and make sure that the record is set straight in terms of what we teach and do not teach concerning critical race theory which we do not teach in the wichita public school system or in any public school system in kansas or america period any questions terrell that was pretty straightforward uh did you uh the special committee that met just recently uh did they speak on any of these proactive or negative uh issues uh absolutely so i was on uh schedule to testify on day two uh there was an hour allotment for myself the superintendent of kck and the superintendent of atchison we were to

083give a 10 minute uh testimony in a five minute q a period uh i went first and after 45 minutes of our one hour allotment uh the other two got a chance to talk so to speak um the big thing is the rose capacities so the legislators would love to tie school funding to state assessments and they then quote the court case in terms of the additional funds given one of the questions that was given to me was basically just setting the bar that actually the court case speaks to the rose capacities not the state assessments state assessments were what we use to identify that there was a learning gap if you will across the state in terms of minority students as well as free reduced lunch students and their more affluent peers but the

084court case ties funding to rose capacities and so it's going to be important and imperative that we're out there telling our story of how we're having success on the rose capacities including the state assessment and other capacities that are involved in the world's capacities ernestine as far as you know is there any opposition to the financial support of this expanding uh mental health part we're so grateful to to representative landwehr that uh brender landwehr being helping us get this set up and is are you sensing that there's anybody saying oh we shouldn't have a mental health support in the schools or is there are they seeing the sensibility of this so that's a great question so there's there's no opposition where the issue comes in at is how do you fund it so again this

085original program was a 10 million dollar proviso and it was 100 to the school districts in terms of being covered from the proviso in year two the expansion they didn't add money to the to the 10 million what they did is made school districts then fund 25 of it and so they took our 25 percent and then kind of spread that out to increase the pilot if you will so what we would have loved to have seen is an additional 5 million keep it at 100 for school districts and then expand it that way and so what we're pushing for is to make sure it stays at 75 which is where we're at now and that we don't necessarily have to pick up 50 what it could potentially end up being is an unfunded mandate

086if we're not careful and it's a great program and it it does benefit kids and families but again we can't add another unfunded mandate any other questions for terrell if not i'd like to move that the board authorized the district to advocate for the identified issues and to continue to work with our legislators regarding the issues that would impact our district basically tell our story in a that would anything that would affect our school district for the upcoming legislative session i second it any discussion on the motion it was moved by me and seconded by ernestine motion carry 7-0 thank you terrell appreciate your work on this area and appreciate your time up in topeka thank you patrick next item please next item under education 20 2021 stealth after school and summer program report dr

087thompson thank you for this opportunity to be able to share some information around our step after school and summer project programs and so we actually are passing out some information about it so that you can kind of see this is actually a program that helps us to be able to work in the areas of science technology engineering art leader and leadership health and other opportunities for our students and so this these programs happen in the summertime and they also happen in some of our schools uh after school is out and so today i have two of my colleagues here that will share with you kind of a little bit more about the program and what we're doing and how we're monitoring the data and things that happen within this particular program good evening president reserve

088vice president blankly superintendent thompson and members of the board my name is jennifer hartman and i serve as the program manager in our grants and development office tonight i'm here to share a little bit about our 21st century community learning center's grant funded programs which you may know as stealth after school and summer you have in front of you a copy of our annual report which breaks everything that i'm going to talk about tonight down into greater detail but i'm appreciative to share some of the highlights with you this evening we've had incredible challenges throughout the course of the pandemic but despite that we've also had great opportunities to adapt grow and serve students and families in new and different ways to start off i want to give you some background on stealth for those

089who may be unfamiliar as i said we're a 21st century community learning center's grant funded program these centers establish the goal is to establish these centers that provide students academic enrichment opportunities along with activities that are designed to supplement students regular classroom academic programs during out of school time all stealth sites are funded by this title 4 grant which is awarded for 5-year periods we currently have 10 of these sites each in various grant years however for the purpose of tonight's report i'll refer to the eight that were in operation during the 2020-2021 school year as dr thompson mentioned our name is an acronym and it stands for science technology engineering art leadership tutoring and health every day we offer homework help or and or tutoring focusing on math and english language arts after school

090staff works closely with school day teachers to ensure that students are focused on the standards that they need the most assistance with placing a focused and intentional effort on meeting or exceeding grade level standards sites also offer focused enrichment time daily centered around one of those theme areas mentioned as part of our name the activities vary greatly but always align with those central themes some of our most popular activities include makerspace centers culinary carts art projects drumming science experiments gardening and robotics we've been very intentional about ensuring that all enrichment activities align directly with curricular standards and help students make progress towards their academic goals social and emotional learning is also woven throughout the program from the time that students arrive for snack all the way through tutoring and enrichment so that we focus on

091educating the whole child and students are empowered to grow academically and socially our program goals are set forth by the state and include that all students reach high academic standards at a minimum attaining proficiency or better in ela and math this means that all program enrolled students receive tutoring support and that day school teachers of at least 60 percent of students who assa who are assigned homework report increased rates of completion number two all students will graduate from high school one of the many ways we look at this is that ninety percent of participants would not be suspended during program eighty percent will not be engaged in violent acts and all will participate in activities that integrate real life problem solving arts stem recreation cultural opportunities and activities with service learning finally number three family

092engagement will be embedded in the entirety of the program we offer a variety of educational resources and services to families of all students with a goal that 80 percent of families surveyed indicate satisfaction with communication and are engaged in the provided opportunities our annual evaluation prepared by greenbush educational service center indicates that we are either meeting or very close to meeting all of these established goals at all program sites before we jump into the recap of the year and the data i want to take a minute to recognize and thank our site coordinators at all of our program sites christy why is it adams shelley westhoff at cleveland madison walden at ortiz faith palos and nicole margaim at park claire moxley at linwood devin kuzmal at spate hannah evans mendoza at washington marcia gear at

093white tiffany reeves and danielle jones at anderson and sarah pets at gordon parks academy in addition to these site coordinators who oversee programming this school year i'd like to take a second to thank deland osborne who served as site coordinator at linwood before accepting an assistant principal position and lyndon moore who served as spate site coordinator last year these individuals are driven tireless creative and motivated and they truly embody a student's first mentality now i'll talk for a few minutes about our program's pandemic response as schools closed in march 2020 programs came to a screeching halt across the state as we regrouped throughout the spring and began discussion on what that summer could look like our staff indicated an overwhelming desire to connect with their families throughout the pandemic through through the course of the

094spring we held a series of meetings that led to the summer suitcase one of our stealth principals had previously worked in another district and had this idea for a fundraiser and we loved it as a way to reach families instead so after school teachers jumped on board and were the driving force in bringing this to life from here the extensive and complicated planning phase began once we had to go have the go-ahead from district leadership we moved quickly to communicate opportunities to families and create a sign up mechanism our stealth staff again was the driving force for this project each grade level summer suitcase kindergarten through fifth grade contained 14 activities planned by our after-school staff with the directive that they needed to be interactive engaging and shouldn't involve technology since that was a still

095a significant barrier at the time the lessons were compiled into instructional flipbooks supply lists were generated and the ordering began the pandemic had created significant supply chain issues which still rings true today but despite that we were able to procure at least 90 percent of the supplies for all activities in each grade level and while we're talking about the summer suitcase i would be remiss if i didn't thank our operations team the print shop purchasing department warehouse and receiving teams were outstanding and this project would not have been possible without them we assembled the suitcases at the amac gym since it provided ample space for materials adequate workspace to complete the project and space for social distancing our after school staff once again completed this work and our stealth teachers are some of the best

096in the business anytime i sent out a sign up sheet they were the first ones and had it filled within minutes and one of them even commented that you know you have a dedicated staff when you can ask them to count 82 popsicle sticks 450 times in a row and they don't bat an eye they're truly the heart and soul of this program and i'm grateful for their steadfast commitment finally we distributed the suitcases on june 18th of 2020 the empire the entire project took approximately five weeks start to finish and we were able to serve 1 746 students through this project in an uncertain time when they really needed this connection to school parents were thrilled and 95 percent of the respondents to our end of summer survey felt that this provided meaningful enrichment

097during the pandemic i've included a complete breakdown of this project in the insert in your annual report the start of the 2020-2021 school year presented some new pandemic related challenges for our program gratefully we received significant flexibility and grace from ksde on our requirements related to the grant so we were able to make this work within the parameters set forth by the district as well as city and county health officials so that left the question do we do in person virtual or both short short answer we did both some sites offered both in-person and remote options to ensure that my school remote learners were also able to take advantage of these enrichment opportunities we did not have any notable issues with sickness throughout the year and we were able to continue to offer in-person programming

098the entire year with the exception of the time period around the holidays when the entire district went remote even during that time we offered virtual programming homework help and technology support for all students and families in-person programming throughout the year had additional safety considerations in place including masks social distancing personal water bottles and cohort groups we put all program partner visits on hold and reduced our average daily attendance by 50 percent as you heard earlier our program goals indicate that family engagement and community partnership is meant to be embedded throughout our program this happens in a variety of ways and was yet another part of our program that was altered by the pandemic for most of the 2020-2021 school year our partners were limited to providing services virtually but luckily they were ready and willing

099to jump in in support no matter what it took this outside connection is critical for students and allows them to see that people outside of their immediate school building care about and advocate for their success some of the partners who adapted to continue to serve students during the school year included but were not limited to prime fit tanganyika wildlife park k-state research and extension and exploration place family engagement also took on a new look and as sites continued to connect with families in various ways whether it was through technology help centers to assist my school remote students virtual family nights or simply updates through remind or other messaging services now i'm going to show you how after school works for our kids the data you're about to see reflects the importance of after school and

100how it is how a targeted intervention such as after school can really make a huge difference when it comes to student success you'll see the academic behavior and attendance data for eight of the ten current sites our two newest sites anderson and gordon parks had not yet joined us so we'll be excited to share their progress next year keep in mind that our stell students represent some of the highest needs students whether that's academically behaviorally socioeconomically or any other number of risk factors that may affect their progress our program is specifically designed to help move the needle and ensure that these students meet or exceed their standards after school programs are proven to improve behavior increase achievement and create a sense of belonging for participating students which is critical to supporting the whole child we'll

101look at our overall program data and the difference that stealth is making for our kids but you can find the data broken down by site in your annual report in front of you throughout the school year we serve 296 students and when you multiply that by the number of days that each site had programs we serve students a total of 38 554 times last year again that's approximately half of our normal number because we had to had to cut our attendance but in order to maintain those social distancing requirements on the screen you'll see the track standards data for english language arts and math students who participate in stealth are represented by the blue bars on the bottom whereas the general student population is represented by the green bars in nearly every grade level students

102who participate in our program have outperformed their peers in both ela and math our intentional focus on tutoring along with the collaboration between the school day teachers and after school staff to ensure that we are targeting the appropriate skills and standards has created incredible success as we look at this data fast bridge screeners are used to assess foundational skills and we use these screeners in math and english language arts to determine if students are meeting the benchmarks in these areas if the students aren't meeting benchmarks this allows schools to see which students need additional intervention typically we administer these three times per year in the fall winter and spring and in the charts you can see that from fall to spring students made significant growth in ela stell students again outperform non-participating students however it's

103worth noticing that all students gain ground even throughout a challenging year state assessments are another area where stealth students performed exceptionally well over the past year and as referenced in the charts above stealth students are doing incredibly well and ela and math scores are exceptionally high our grant does not require us to track our science state assessment data but it's a key performance metric for us since we have such a heavy science focus and the science scores for participating fifth graders are slightly higher than the non-participating peers we expect to see this to continue to grow even more in the coming years finally behavior and attendance data stealth essentially focuses on reducing behavior incidents and combating chronic absenteeism by placing a priority on building relationships between students and staff across grade levels students in our

104program often struggle in these areas and stealth provides a way for them to learn to be better both charts on the screen along with anecdotal evidence provided by program staff indicates that students who participate have better relationships with both students and staff and are more connected to their school communities the behavior data on the left indicates that we have a couple of tough grade levels still but remember that we serve some of the highest needs students and we're constantly working to improve those relationships on the right is our attendance data reducing the rate of chronic absenteeism is a significant piece of the every student future ready strategic plan stealth has proven wildly successful in combating this problem with students who are involved in after school being in attendance more days on average than students who

105don't participate this is a huge win for our program and we're very excited about that now that i've shared some of the data and the numbers i want you to hear about the impact of our program from someone who's who's not me and i'm going to introduce terry manning our principal from adams elementary she's been one of our biggest supporters of after school programming and terry before you start i'm going to see if the two uh people who have queued in want to ask their question at this point or oh julie sure i'll go ahead and ask my questions um you haven't gotten to the budget piece yet not yet um yeah that you may answer this when you get there but um this is a really exciting program and a really nice presentation tonight

106i really appreciate it i especially um like the community partnership and family engagement pieces that those are included in this and of course your data is wonderful seeing how how it's impacted the kids towards success um it sounded like you said that we're just starting the second year of a five-year program is did you hear that correct we have ten sites and they're actually all in various phases of the grant so we have four schools that are in year five of their grant so we'll be looking at reapplication then we have three in year four one in year three and two in year one okay very good yes and um and this is an entirely grant funded program yeah that's that's fantastic yeah those were my questions so thank you very much for this great

107presentation and i'm um look uh forward to hearing from our building principal thank you julie terry all right thank you very very much for having me here um when jennifer asked me about talking to you this evening it occurred to me that i needed to go to the to the source which were our staff who are working this program when we think about how this has impacted adam's kids third grade teacher diane van berkleo states the kids that go to stealth are learning how to think differently and ask more questions i think they're developing confidence they look forward to stealth second grade teacher donna joe hunzinger states stealth has helped establish relationships with students and staff across grade levels which holds students in higher accountability both in stealth and during the school day students are

108excited to participate in activities they don't always have the opportunity to experience during the school day and our incredible coordinator christy wise says the smaller groups allow teachers to really get to know the students cooking gardening drumming coding sewing tv broadcasting and choir are just a few of the many things that our kids get to do our students are getting to experience activities they may not get to do if it wasn't for stealth the partnerships that we've created with the extension office with the master gardeners is absolutely incredible these gardeners are typically retired volunteers that love coming to adams each week and they've all built great relationships with our students one of the master gardeners delivered hand-written notes and pictures from gardening to each of our kids that was in his group and the kids

109were elated to receive this from mr mike stealth provides a safe place for kids to be after school and parents are thankful for this we're working hard on social emotional learning by providing many opportunities to collaborate appropriately together with the goal of this cooperation continuing into the school day we have at adams more than 75 students that attend monday through thursday this is a huge help to our kids but a great support for our families as well that need that extra care for their kids after school i've actually heard parents tell their kids if they get in trouble during the school day you're not going to stealth tonight we've had students that have had to go home sick during the school day and i've literally heard them crying in the office because they don't want

110to go home because that means they're going to miss stealth tonight stealth seems to be seen as a privilege for our kids and so much fun that kids just don't want to miss out adams is at 9th and oliver and we're located in a food desert through stealth we've been able to build a garden on our playground where kids are learning how to grow fruits and vegetables and then actually eat the fruits of their labor we've got lots of great opportunities ahead as we are writing the grant for the next five years to include a larger garden and a much bigger focus on farm to table i was initially worried about our teachers i didn't want them to burn out with all of this after school and summer work that they're doing but our teachers

111are giving a hundred percent during the day and then absolutely loving the opportunity to teach fun and engaging activities in the evenings either to their own students or many of the teachers have chosen to work have chosen to work with different grade levels so that they're building even more mentoring relationships within the school our students get to work with trusted adults who are mentoring them students are learning fun new science and experiencing reading math and writing in highly engaging ways and this is all totally free to our parents it's a win-win for everybody and we're so grateful to have this amazing opportunity for our kids at adams thank you terry for sharing that before i wrap up i do want to touch on our summer program that we held in june of 2021 we started

112this presentation talking about how the pandemic had altered our summer plans in 2020 so i thought it was only right to share that we were able to make a safe and impactful comeback in 2021 not all of our sites had summer program written into it but thanks to additional support from outside grants as well as title services we were able to leverage funds and offer a four-week summer program at all eight of our stealth sites last year we offered breakfast and lunch at each site and many of those also served as community lunch sites for for families to come in as well transportation was available at select sites and the entire program was once again free for participating families for some students this was their first time back in our building since a pandemic began

113so it was a great chance to prepare them for the upcoming school year on average last summer we saw 320 students per day in our program finally i want to touch on the services that we provide in the grants and development office to support these programs i need to start by thanking my colleague kim kennedy who couldn't join us this evening she is our grant budget technician and she ensures that all state and federal reporting is completed all district accounting procedures are followed and all funds are used judiciously kim is the other half of my brain for this project and i am very grateful for her support she's essential to it to our program the eight sites that were in operation in 2020 2021 had a total overall budget for the entire lifespan of their

114grants totaling two million nine hundred two thousand five hundred fifty six dollars of that salaries account for 76.3 percent of the overall budget which reinforces our belief that the most value comes from relationships formed in after school the remaining budget is allocated for things like consumable supplies stem equipment enrichment supplies like sewing machines culinary carts as well as math and literacy resources we also have things like required travel student transportation at select sites and various other program needs that are budgeted into the into the grant students also receive a snack daily during after school that is provided at no cost through the after school care snack program facilitated by our nutrition services department our office also ensures that all the pieces of the stealth puzzle fit nicely together while each site has some autonomy to

115choose their own specific activities and daily schedules that best fit their school communities we ensure that programs are all aligned to achieve our goals one of the main responsibilities of our office is to ensure that grant requirements and outcomes are met and we work closely with the district's assessment and research team to provide data to both external evaluators and our site leaders every semester our schools track daily attendance with easy reports which is a system that allows us to have a real-time look at our numbers know exactly who is in our program to target our instruction and makes us safer with its enhanced check-in and check-out pers features we also work to share the importance of after-school programming with the broader community through storytelling via our monthly newsletter social media and the website another critical

116service that we provide is consistent relevant and quality professional development opportunities for our staff in july we held the stealth summit where program leaders gathered for two days of professional learning and heard updates to program procedures throughout 2020 we also provided virtual bite-sized pieces of professional development called stealth snippets that leaders could listen to at their own convenience topics included things such as family engagement during coven 19 program sustainability and more finally in addition to these and general program support we put together continuous quality improvement plans for our sites using achievement data and site visit observations along with staff student and parent feedback to ensure that our program is functioning at the highest level and we can address any possible areas of concern before they become larger issues as we look at potential opportunities for

117reapplication when grants end this also gives us data we need to strengthen those applications so what's next for stealth i'm pleased to be able to say that we were awarded funding this year to add two new sites to the stealth program you've heard me reference anderson and gordon parks this evening and they're the two newest sites on in our program and they are on board and serving students this school year i'm excited to let you know that after a hiatus last year due to covet we'll be back at exploration place for our lights on after school celebration on april 12th and i would invite you all to join us for this important celebration of after school programming in our district and interact with our families when we hosted this event in 2019 we had numerous

118families tell us how meaningful this opportunity was so that their families could participate and finally i invite you all to connect with stealth to stay up to date with everything happening in our program the three main ways you can do this are following us on social media we're on facebook and twitter at the handle at wps stealth visit our website and while you're there be sure to sign up for our newsletter which goes out once a month with program updates and stories from across the program and finally we would welcome you to join us for a site visit the best way to see what our program is is all about is to come out and experience it for yourself i'd be happy to help facilitate getting you out to one of these sites and seeing

119the program in action at this time i'd be happy to answer any questions you have otherwise i am grateful for the opportunity to share about our program with you this evening and thank you miss manning for joining us jennifer my very first school visit after being on the board of education was the visit the stealth program at cleveland eleven elementary in october of 2017. wonderful so yeah and that seemed like ages ago but that stealth program uh still has an impact on me today so please tell everybody uh we we appreciate their efforts in this area cheryl thank you very much for this presentation it's my pleasure people don't realize we have programs like this going on for our kids that literally extend the school day and the learning for students my question is about

120the schools that are going to be finishing this grant and you have talked about reapplying how are they is it possible for them to get a second round of this grant it is possible we work with the building leadership to make sure that that is something that they want in their buildings and that their staff can can support um we don't want anybody getting burnt out so that is a building level decision and then if they decide to reapply that that is something they want in their building we work with them through the grant writing process okay and is the same process done to bring new schools on because i know you brought two on this year so building principals have the option of talking with their staff and deciding if that's what they want

121to do that's correct okay how does this interact with other after-school kinds of things that we have going on in our buildings there are latch key programs in some of our sites they they operate in completely separate areas and we have some separate requirements we're a little more academically focused than than say latchkey but both have a different and important place it's just a matter of what families need and what best fits and there's no funding cost for the parents for this correct correct well thank you very much i appreciate hearing the program thank you cheryl ben uh yes ben blankly district one i am i also echo stan um in in going on a site visit to stealth was one of the first things that i did on the board um and yeah i

122would encourage community members to contact uh your office because it's it's really cool it's uh i think i think the one that i went to was a culinary arts if i remember right um and uh and then in 2019 uh my kiddo and i were able to go to the lights on for after school um and so we're gonna definitely mark our calendars for april so thank you and terry i think uh i think you said it best i mean uh the teachers are generally pretty excited about this program too even though it's basically extending their their work day and could maybe you explain why what is so different about stealth that really gets them engaged i think sometimes getting to work with kids of different grade levels that they don't typically work with has

123been great i've watched primary teachers working with fourth and fifth graders and they're loving it but they're also able to do a lot more science which we don't have a lot of opportunity to do during the school day um and so there's a lot of hands-on work the kids are having a ball the teachers are having a ball teaching it it's just it's a really happy environment for all of them and it's not just sitting behind a desk having a science lecture given to you it's engaging you'll see them up and down the halls with robots running around and they're outside in the gardens and they're all over the place thank you terry any other questions for the speakers and this was a presentation for the board information and no action is uh necessary but

124we do appreciate it jennifer and terry thank you patrick next item please next item consent ron do you have any consent items to pull i have nothing ernestine i have nothing ben ben blankly district one i have nothing to pull stan reese or district four i have no consent items to pool cheryl cheryl logan at large i have nothing to pull this evening julie julie hedrick district 2. i would like to pull e5 and that is the bryant opportunity academy storm shelter edition yes mia i have nothing to pull ben blankly district one i move we accept the consent agenda except for item e5 i second that moved by bin and seconded by ernestine motion carry 7-0 uh julie uh item e5 yes e5 is regarding architectural consulting services for a storm shelter edition at

125bryant opportunity academy and i just i just wanted to pull this item to highlight it during our bond issue program in the district we provided what we called safe rooms or storm shelter rooms at all of our attendance centers we did that throughout the bond issue however at that time bryant uh was not open as an academic center it was a facility that the district still owned um but we weren't utilizing at that time for student attendance so consequently bryant didn't receive a storm shelter so i'm really pleased to see now this item on the agenda i'm really pleased that we are going to move forward and provide this storm shelter at bryant we need all of our kids in the district to be safe and we've always talked about that we had storm shelters

126at all of our academic sites we need to have one at bryant as well so i make a motion that we approve this consulting services so that we can get started with design and engineering for the storm shelter and then i anticipated a future date we'll see some construction bids for the project so i move we accept this item moved by julie seconded by cheryl and julie i appreciate you uh giving us the information on why this storm shelter is is lagging behind it was closed during that period of time so it's good that we're getting caught up here and we have a motion on the floor [Music] motion carry 7-0 thank you patrick next item please next item under policy flight 4 second review proposed consolidation of learning services policies policy 1215 administration and

127organization of the school program update in first paragraph policy 1226 guidelines for scheduling classes update to aip2 policy 1450 school age programs updates to aips and administrative responsibility to the elementary office is this the final uh yes the final reading of this of these there were no questions about this last time it it was a cleanup of language uh but if there's any concerns or discussion on about it today we can if not i'll entertain a motion then blankly district one i move to accept the proposed policy revisions i second moved by ben and seconded by ernestine to approve the policy changes that motion also carries 7-0 uh patrick's next item please next item under operations east high school science wing dr thompson first before i say anything i'm going to give a shout out

128to east high school i'm going to give a shout out to the building administrator and all of the staff at east east is a wonderful facility it is beautiful it is one of the most beautiful buildings we have in our city and we know that it is important not only to um the students and families but it's a community kind of a pillar in our community so um as we have this conversation there's going to be a lot of [Music] uncomfortableness that will happen for people at east high school and we want to acknowledge that and let them know that we appreciate their ability to be able to be flexible during this time we're going to try to stay as close as we can to the building administration and team there anything that they need

129all of the things that are going the adjustments that they're going to need to make we will try to be as accommodating as the district can be and i wanted to say that first and foremost so again thank you to east high school for all of your um accommodations and flexibility that you will endure during this time what is what's going on at east i'm going to let the smart people talk as specific and give you all of the specificities of it however there is some structural things that we need to work on at east high school and so we um are going to do this um fairly quickly in the and and move fairly quickly and try to do this as quick as we can so people can get back into their spaces uh

130so with that being said i'm trying to talk while they're trying to get the mics and things together i think i have nothing else to say so i am going to now turn it over to my colleagues so that they can use big words that i probably have to look up in a dictionary to know what they mean but they will tell us exactly what's going to happen and how it's going to happen and move us in the direction to really give a wonderful space back and a good place for east high school all right thank you and i'll try to keep the big words to a minimum well good evening president reeser vice president blankly superintendent thompson and members of the board my name is luke newman i'm the director of facilities and i'm

131here with mr kenny saldana our director of design and construction uh and we are here tonight uh to speak to you about some structural modifications that are needed at east high school and outline our plans to address it so over the past several years we have made a concentrated effort to evaluate and restore the building's exterior due to the substantial size scope and cost we have taken a phased approach to addressing the need when we got deeper into evaluating the science wing structure specifically we found some underlying issues that warranted further investigation we hired a structural engineer that specializes in structural diagnostics to conduct a full-scale analysis he concluded that there are in fact structural components that require correction and as a precautionary measure recommended that the science wing be vacated at the end of

132the current semester our design and construction department prepared the 3d renderings that you see before you which indicate the portion of the building impacted to give you a brief overview of what our structural engineer found there is soil settlement that has slowly occurred over the years on the east end of the building that will require adding underground helical piers to stabilize the roof supports require additional bracing and the parapet stone walls above the roof need to be rebuilt the exterior walls need additional lateral supports and anchoring exterior brick requires tuck pointing repair and restoration and lastly there is some minimal concrete repair needed so in the interest of safety we are taking the engineers recommendation and vacating the science wing at the end of our current semester there are 18 science classrooms that are being

133displaced as a result and east high school staff as dr thompson said has done a great job creative creatively problem solving and freed up eight spaces inside of east high school the other 10 classes will be relocated to the b building of wsu tech's city center campus located just south of east high school as indicated on the map shown those spaces are currently being remodeled and will be ready for the teachers when they return from winter break on january 4th and i'd like to take this opportunity just to give a huge shout out to wsu tech dr sherry utash and her leaders over there they've jumped through significant hoops for us really on a moment's notice and have even gone as far as to relocate instructional programs in order to give us enough space it's

134been a great partnership and collaboration and i just can't say enough to express the depth of gratitude that we have for them so in conjunction with our efforts to prepare for relocating staff out of the science wing we conducted a selection process to procure a qualified architectural firm in the interest of getting them started on designing the structural remediation measures immediately the selection committee received and evaluated five submissions and selected shaffer johnson cox fry architecture who's here tonight thank you we estimate construction costs will be in the 5 to 10 million dollar range and capital dollars will be used to fund it okay which brings me to the next part of my presentation we typically use the design bid build delivery method on construction projects which seedrick is familiar with and this is the most

135common practice in the industry under that method the designer is the only active team member until bid documents are 100 complete the contractor doesn't come on board until the project is put out for bid and awarded to the lowest qualified bidder sorry i lost my space here my spot here we would like to request approval from the board to proceed with an alternative project delivery method called cm at risk on the east high school science wing project we've had great success using this delivery method on both both the east or of both the southeast high school new construction project and the a mac remodel and believe there are some key advantages to using it that will greatly benefit this project to start it gives us the ability to select a general contractor early where they

136become an integral part of the team and provide critical input regarding constructability cost and schedule throughout the design phase this helps to ensure the project stays in budget and reduces the potential for change orders arising from constructability concerns and unforeseen conditions it also presents the opportunity to condense the project schedule by procuring long lead time items early and accelerating critical path construction activities this deliver delivery method will allow us to go through an inter interview process to select the partner and team that we feel is best suited for the project and will give us more flexibility with subcontractors selection and provide provide more transparent open book pricing and lastly with all key team members collaborating early this method generally promotes a more cohesive project team than a typical design bid build approach would so per

137state statute the board must consider five key factors when determining whether or not to approve the construction manager at risk delivery method which also called cm at risk so the first question is will cm at risk provide substantial savings of time or money the answer to that is yes cm at risk will allow us to keep a closer eye on the budget as the scope develops but more importantly enables us to start construction sooner and save significant time on the overall schedule the second question is will the ability to overlap design and construction phases be advantageous to the project again the answer is yes our hope is to have an early design package complete so we can get started on some critical construction components before the rest of the design documents are done third question

138is is an accelerated schedule required to make repairs resulting from an emergency yes this is a fairly obvious one the sooner we can get them back into the science wing the better the fourth consideration is do project phasing or technical complexities require integration of design and construction teams the answer to this is yes the scope will be complex and involve numerous constructability logistics which will be compounded by by our current supply chain issues and shortages the ability to have a contractor on board early to help us work through the design issues material availability and scheduling will be invaluable and the last question is will the use of cm at risk encourage favoritism or diminish competition the answer that is no we will have a diverse selection committee involved in every step of the procurement process

139and all qualified contractors for a project of this all local qualified contractors for a project of this size have the capabilities to deliver a cm at risk project so a quick rundown of our procurement schedule the first step is to publish an intent to consider cm at risk as your delivery method and to open it up for public comment at the next board meeting which is what we're doing tonight so that that was published on december 7th and there were no registered speakers to speak on it tonight so that checks both of those boxes the next step is to publish our intent to issue an rfq so we can't actually issue the rfq until that has been published and run for and runs for 15 days so our intent is to then issue an rfq

140january 4th immediately when we return from break and that will be on out on the street they'll have the opportunity to submit up until january 17th and then we will take a few days to evaluate the the qualifications that have been submit submitted and shortlist our contractors for interview so we'll shortlist three to five uh cm contractor firms and at that time they will submit their their fee proposals to the state the state will score the fees we will have no knowledge of those fees until we have scored their interviews and submit our final scores to the state and they'll provide their scores on the on the fee and that's a way to make make sure it's all above board and we evaluate based on qualifications and interviews and all that and then the fee

141is is a secondary consideration and the fee can't be more than 25 percent of the selection of the selection consideration i guess so the next step after that will be to we will come to you in uh beginning of february at the at that board meeting with recommendation for the cm firm and we will be off and running at that point and you won't see us again until probably around april or may depending on the bid packages that we can get prepared and i'll cover that a little bit more here in a minute and that will be the point in which you approve the price the guaranteed maximum price julie oh sorry i know i'm cru i'm covering a lot here you can go ahead and finish this okay i apologize okay um so the

142design and construction schedule our uh we're targeting may to have the design documents 100 complete but we are hoping another advantage to utilizing the cm at risk delivery method is that you can have them start work potentially a little bit sooner and so we're really hoping that we can get some early bid packages complete particu particularly for the helical piers for some of that soil stabilization i think it's enough of a separate scope of work that we could probably maybe accelerate that bid package while they're continuing to develop the final 100 complete design documents for everything else and that would allow us to potentially start construction even sooner maybe march or april so that's why i say you might see us a little bit sooner um than march or april if we're ready to release

143an earlier an earlier package to the contractor to proceed and all of this is being accelerated and pushed in the interest of trying to get them back into that building in the school year in the 23 school year not going to put a hard date on on that yet until we've had some critical conversations with our team members but but at some point in that school year i anticipate we will definitely be getting back in so that brings me to the recommendations there are two recommendations and then we'll open it up for questions the first recommendation is it is recommended that recommended that the board approve the construction manager at risk delivery method for the east high school science wing project and then the second recommendation is that it is recommended that the board enter

144into a contract with shaffer johnson cox fry architecture for design and engineering services on the east high school science wing project an amount not to exceed 550 thousand dollars and with that i will open it up to questions and i've got my colleague here to help me answer those as well and uh apologize for taking up all the mic time kenny [Laughter] and i apologize for jumping in there um julie yeah thank you guys i've been hearing about this project and so i'm glad to get all the details and facts tonight and i first of all want to echo dr thompson's uh comments earlier because i have heard uh from some teachers talking about the challenge of trying to get the semester finished and grades in and then also trying to get packed and moved

145so i do also want to voice a word of appreciation to all of those teachers that are having to pull double double duty here at the end yeah here at the end so thank you thank you to them um second of all i'm very pleased to hear that the plan is to keep the old building and to make repairs um you know there were i heard rumors flying around that we could potentially tear it down and start over and i was i was i was not wanting us to go in that direction so i'm very pleased about keeping the old building and doing repairs and i'm very confident that with your design team and with your engineers that they'll be able to make those repairs successfully and we'll get a lot of years out of

146out of the building in the future and it'll be safe for our students um as far as your state statute and uh the cm at risk considerations because of the fact that it is a unique delivery system and goes against the typical um design bid doing design work first and then taking competitive bids and approving the low bidder i agree with you that you have accurately answered these questions that there's a definite yes yes yes yes and then no also glad to hear that you're intending to work with local contractors um and this delivery system is definitely the way to go because of the need to have the substantial savings of time and the need to be able to work out the technical complexities with the design and construction teams and i also so i

147very much support and want to make a motion that we do approve the construction manager at risk delivery method for the project and then lastly i have total confidence and faith in shaffer johnson cox fry as they work on the design of this project so i also want to make a second recommendation that we enter into a contract with shaffer johnson cox frye architecture for the design and engineering services on the east high project so those are my comments i will let others speak as well but i'm pleased absolutely but that was one motion correct uh yeah and one motion two recommendations okay uh bin yes ben blankly district one um to my understanding east high is is is basically uh pieces of it were built at different times is that correct yes um like

148some of them like there's a portion that was an entirely separate building at one point way back in the day and then they were connected at one time um is this particular science wing essentially structurally separated from the rest of the building um i think at one point actually when they when when they made some changes back in the bond they had connected it to and obviously that was before my time but um they had connected it to kind of that main entrance area on the south side of east high so there was like a little addition that connected the two buildings and schaefer's here they might be able to answer it better than i can but um so that was actually a little separate and that connected it um but uh i think that

149does that answer your question and how it's into i think so yeah okay yeah yeah um so uh i i like this cm at risk process you mentioned long wait items being earlier being able to be ordered earlier in the process which i think is important the critical path escalation i'm very familiar with that in my line of work so yeah i definitely want to get that settled down um and also it it there's a potential it might help in a skilled labor shortage because i know the materials and the processes we're working with not not a lot of people are qualified to work on as buildings as old and as naturally historic as ours are um so i i agree that you know getting it started early is better so to my understanding based

150on your presentation because of the internal moves and the space offered up by wsu tech at their at their b building we don't need portable classrooms for this project that's correct we're still going to evaluate you know once we get the construction timeline really ironed out and the contractor on board we'll be able to really have a better idea of of you know what we're going to need through you know for how long we're going to need some some temporary spaces for them um so we're going to reevaluate just before spring break and that will give us enough time if we do determine we need to have portables we would give us enough time to get them out and installed and hooked up over the summertime before they return for the for the fall but

151i have every reason to believe that if we need b building into next school year as well uh wc tech is going to work with us and figure it out to where we don't need it but obviously we've still got eight teachers in east high so we would need to find even more space for them in that building so we'd have to get a little creative but i'm optimistic we'll get it okay that's all i have um julia we'll second your motion that's on the floor good question thank you uh the cheryl first and then ernestine okay okay thank you very much uh obviously none of us would like we're expecting this none of us were expecting this but the bottom line is we have kind of taken lemons and making it into lemonade by

152moving our teachers around and and being able to move as quickly as we can to get this redone and and back into service so i absolutely strongly recommend that we take these recommendations tonight so thank you very much for your presentation thank you cheryl thank you ben for seconding that i was just about to ask if there was a second so i appreciate you jumping in on that ernestine uh just a question so the it is not safe to even use it for this semester then it's i wouldn't say it's not safe we could probably stay in there longer um but just out of caution um you know we really feel the best thing to do is to to move them out of there now and just not not risk it okay thank you and

153if we have a workable plan there's no need to take a risk right exactly there is a motion on the floor if there uh well let me ask if there's any last questions or comments seeing none uh we do have a motion on the floor by julie seconded by ben to take the recommended action while we're waiting on the vote i believe this is our oldest facility now that we mccormick has gone to the retired teachers i think you're right little usd 259 trivia motion carry 7-0 uh thank you for catching this uh uh construction problem we have and uh getting started on it as soon as possible and again i just wanted to give a another shout out i'm just going to do it to uh east high and the faculty and staff there

154and the building administration thank you for what you're doing we know this is definitely not what we wanted to do and but it's not we don't have really a choice because no one would ask any teacher to do anything like this if it wasn't important that we do it and you all have done it and again if we can come pack a box i already told you call me i'll be there whatever we need to do to try to support we will do so thank you again to east high and the staff and faculty and administration there they've had several challenges it is at east this year so kudos to ease die well i will tell you it's about the staff and the leadership they're phenomenal i want to add a little trivia to east

155time go ahead ernst um i graduated from east high with the largest graduating class ever at east high and at the time it was the largest in the united states wow and our class we actually used the b building my homeroom was in the b building and i represented and student council from the b building wow we are back back around with the people thank you that's all circle of life uh patrick next item please next item under miscellaneous superintendents report dr thompson i will be brief i just want to again um just kind of uh well just share with our staff in the district everyone that this has been a um tough comeback from from um last year when our students weren't with us it's been a tough haul and and on top of

156that all the challenges of not having a substitute teaching staff were down in paraprofessionals everything that could have gone wrong did it did and we're working extremely hard to try to fill vacancies and we're trying to come up with any and everything that we can do to try to ease the pain and then you have other barriers that continue to come in expectations of us and there really sometimes is really no grace given to to us with the accountability that is expected of us and we just kind of and we're here to just continue to push on so i'm just going to just say um i want you to go home over the break close your eyes um and rest um and reflect on um i did this before because you know sometimes you can

157get so many things that are on your list that are really bad and then you just think to yourself there's nothing good in life or ever anything is good and there was a smart person that told me to draw get a piece of paper and to write out all the things that are going well and then all of the things that are not going well or the things that i have no control over and then to begin to reflect on that i was really surprised that all of the things i thought i was going to have a whole 10 pages of things that weren't going well but really it was the opposite of things and so i just want us to just go back to why we've come into this profession and why we do

158what we do and to just dig a little bit deeper inside of ourselves and i know we all have you know things that are going on with us and we need we need attention too but i always just remember about my why and it really gives me more energy than i thought i had when i think about the children that are depending upon us to be able to do the things that we do to be able to make them better but i also know that we need our teachers and our staff to be strong too and so again as a system we need to continue to listen to you i know people say well you don't listen but we will continue to listen about srgs and everything that you all that we're asking people to

159do and we'll try to make the adjustments but we still are being held accountable to improve the quality of learning for our kids every day and so we have to do something different but what that is and how we go about doing that we'll just have to continue to listen and work together to see what we can do to make the best of the situation that we're in and i know this district i've been in here the district for 30 years and i almost was born in this district most of you know my story my mother my mother was having a baby and it was me break broad broke in the middle of a classroom where she was teaching and so and that's a true story so i was almost born in the wichita public

160schools and i have a lot of passion for the people in it you know and and for the organization as a whole um and i just want you all to know that i do love each and every one of you now and i know you don't say you you know you may not even know me but i do love this organization and the people in it and i want to do what's best for it and i always will give 100 to that so i want you all again to have a happy holidays and i want you to rest and i want you to draw all the things that are going what what's so good what's good about working for the wichita public schools and dig deep into those things and let us continue to work

161on the things that are not so good about the school district and let's work together on those things and not against each other because there's a lot of other forces that work against us and we need to continue to work together so that we can do be successful both in our own personal lives and our own profession as well as making sure that our kids are successful at will we can both we can have both of that if we work together instead of against each other so thank you very much and enjoy your holidays and i'll see you on the other side in 2022 thank you dr thompson i do want to give i'll have patrick announce the first next item under miscellaneous board of education reports and requests and we'll take it a slightly

162different option uh order i'd like to see the the outgoing board members have a chance to have the last words so start with julie um a couple of of reports that i want to make um talking about the great things going on in our district and the lemonade and bright spots i had opportunity to attend choir performances at northeast magnet in november and then an orchestra orchestra performances at coleman here a week or so ago and they were both fantastic we have such talented kids in our district sex talented students it's so fun to go and hear them perform and so so that was that was fun to do and great talent and then um i want to also um reflect on um a visit that i had at bryant our um our school that

163we earlier approved um the storm shelter at yeah and um so i had a had a had a visit and a tour at bryant i got to meet meet and enjoyed some great kids um when i got there they gave me uh tickets and said if you see a child with good behavior uh reward them with uh one of these tickets and then they use their tickets in a little store in the in the school and you know i used up every single one of my tickets on a good behavior that i saw on kids and just had some great interactions with the kids and those teachers there are rock stars um so um that's that's my report good things going on thank you julie cheryl yes i just want to say one more time

164i'm glad that we extended our strategic plan out because we see it working we just need to give it a little more time and this allows us to do that before we reorganize and and begin to look at those strategic goals again i am going to greatly miss you mia and ron and ben you've been great board members and we're going to miss you all so thank you for your service and i second what the superintendent said adding i want the same kinds of relaxing and reflecting and forgetting about the school district for a week or so to happen with our administrative team and staff as well because you all also work very hard our teachers are great and our staff is great and we all need a break and thank goodness it's coming soon

165thank you cheryl ernestine i got an opportunity to see the wichita district's native american students act out folk tales indian folk tales it was a partnership with the art arts partners and it was so delightful and the kids were so talented and they managed to do it with one student being the narrator of the story and then the other students acting and acting out the part they were very clever by the way did you know that the crow once had a total coat of a rainbow colored coat and a beautiful singing voice and um there was a there was a tragic fire that and so now the crow has a terrible voice but as a reward the crow no longer tastes good so nobody haunts the crowd but it was was a delightful thing i

166want to also thank mr lewis of the utw united teachers of wichita that was such a gracious thing he started this meeting with of thanking the the board and i want to thank the teachers for thanking us because sometimes we can feel like we're adversarial but we're not and i was so grateful that that the teachers know that we're not adversarial that we're really on their side and we're with the kids and we're with the families and we're we really are doing this because of what we believe about the importance of our children need to have a good education and a safe and creative environment i just thank the staff and all of your administrative staff dr thompson what a talented bunch we have i really i wanted to tell you that somebody who went

167to see the program on the career program on at north high that someone's comment was outside comment was i just thought that that was an abandoned building and they found out that they were doing not only creative things of with automobiles but building airplane parts and the comment that somebody said is why doesn't the city know this why don't we know this that's really exciting that wichita and we really are ahead of the game we are making models of how to educate kids for the rest of the whole midwest and it's not airplane parts they're building an airplane then they're going to sell that airplane and it is going to fly in it's already sold by the way yeah that's just incredible well that's just i really you all know me my slogan he that

168too does not his own horn get his own horn not to i really want to recommend that we see if there are not some companies in the community that would help to fund some billboards so we don't have to use a single dollar that ought to be for kids to advertise how good we are or how what these programs are but that there are some community uh companies out there that probably would be happy to do that because that would um anyway that's the end of my speech thank you ernstein um i just want to say uh i wanted to thank uh mia and ben and ron for your service on this board for the last four or years or or less um you know in the end all we have is our name uh

169whether you're one of the koch brothers and have billions and billions or whether you're stan reeser and half well i won't go into what my income nickels and nickels let's just say there's a difference between uh my first example and me um the at the end uh you're gonna die with just your name and you chose to put your name on the ballot i did not come out the way some wanted but others did i look forward to making new friends but regardless of that election i have three new friends that i look forward to staying in touch with and your legacy is that you serve this board with honor and integrity and your name is not when your name gets put in a newspaper article there will not be a comma afterwards saying and

170then there will be a scandal underneath it your name is clear and clean and you did it with integrity and honor and you did it uh in a outstanding way and your family yeah and your family will know that your friends will know that and uh the best thing about this is that uh our friendship is not over we look forward to making new friends but this friendship is not over and we look forward to staying in touch with you and we know you will stay in touch with the wichita public schools patrick next item oh i'm sorry now now let's get i'd like to give uh the three uh out um members uh to uh have a chance to say their final words does they make anyone wanna go first or mia do you

171wanna go first i'm gonna go first okay again i just wanna thank you all for the opportunity um i promised myself um at the beginning of this year that i would do something that i'd never done step outside my comfort zone and i would have to say this is one of the biggest things that i did but i i met some wonderful people not just here but out in the community i met some great teachers and some principals i met some kids uh so it's been a great experience for me and i have no no sadness about this this is life and i feel braver now thanks to you guys so thank you mia ron yes thank you i'm going back to the report i just want to say we're still on the report yeah

172yeah i just want to say thanks to uh uh colonel hester for putting on a really great uh veterans day uh celebration and um you know he's been uh really an advocate for just highlighting those kind of things and uh as a former vet you know i just uh really appreciate what he's done with that uh program uh the other thing is kind of going with uh what uh dr thompson was talking about yeah it's been around for year you know in the teaching profession and i would say they're you know seeing the students that we saw earlier you know there's a couple of things that they did and i always tell a lot of the students and parents is that basically a couple of things are show up and get the work done that

173means you got to behave and you got to show up for school and you know that's it's a challenge right now you know for a lot of uh students and so you'd be surprised how big of a difference that makes in the classroom you know by having uh the students that are there making good choices throughout the day so anyway again i really appreciated everything that i experienced and learned throughout these last four years and yeah looking forward to seeing what's next thank you thank you ron ben ben blankly district one um it wouldn't be a board meeting if i didn't say the school events that i went to in the prior month um unfortunately uh my family had a little bit of a covet hiccup uh these last few weeks and so we weren't

174able to do as many activities as we wanted to i was able to go to the algebra one slash math eight math academy at the isc uh media services did a great little three four minute video on it that's up on the uh district youtube page you can go find out about how our middle school and our high school math teachers are collaborating to make sure that handoff of knowledge is working better and i did want to apologize to ms lennox the instructional close-up coach at washington elementary she reached out to ask if i could participate in their winter read day this week on december 16th but i have another board obligation um that day so i'm unable to attend that but i would have otherwise um i want to give a nice uh a

175shout out to all of the all the kids and all the schools that are doing spirit weeks and pajama days uh you only have a couple days left before winter break so that's super exciting i know my kid always got his pajamas all ready to go um in 2017 the only people who recognized me at dillons were the insomniacs the people who watched public access television at three in the morning um now uh it's a lot more people um and it's it's it's a little weird um to kind of be stepping out of this role of of advocacy and elected official them um but i'm going to continue that advocacy uh i'm going to be a champion of our public schools always not only because uh i have a kid in the system and so

176i am bought into the success of the district um entirely but i also work for the largest employer in our city that 90 percent of our employees come from the wichita public schools and so the success of our public school system directly affects the success of the biggest employer in our city um and i think that that can't be overstated um and so we all have a role in making sure we have strong essential public schools educating all of our kids and so i'm going to continue to be the squeaky wheel as needed i was kind of a squeaky wheel this last 18 months and before that it was a squeaky wheel on other issues and so i'm going to continue to uh to to raise issues that i think are important um in the

177public sphere and in regards to our public schools and then of course uh covet vaccinations if you haven't gotten vaccinated just get vaccinated um and if your kids aren't vaccinated just get them vaccinated because i can tell you my kid had his second covid shot in his arm and then he was a household close contact and if it happened two weeks later he could have been in school for the last two weeks but because he was a coveted close contact and unvaccinated at the time he had to stay home for this whole time period now he's a smart kid he'll bounce back quickly but our community rates are still going up we're basically as bad now as we were a year ago and this time we got shots so get your shots in your arms

178stay in the game don't get benched because you're close quarantine five million american kids so far between the ages of 5 and 11 have been vaccinated in the united states already 5 million cdc directors said today that they have had zero reports of serious side effects in those kids so for those that are worried about side effects my kid had a sore arm for a day that was it anyways a back plan so now that he's fully vaccinated if he gets another close contact he's still in school consider it it's worth it and that's all i have thank you ben patrick next item please next item new business seeing no seeing no new business moving on to next item i was like wouldn't it be funny if i brought up new business deal with it

179yes that would be hilarious patrick next item adjournment ben blankly district one i move to adjourn cheryl logan at large i second and as we're taking this vote to adjourn our next board meeting uh will be january 10th motion carry 7-0 we are adjourned you