How can we embrace an organization that has been credibly accused of doxing and harassing social activists? How can we embrace an organization that pays for US police departments to attend militaristic styled crowd control training in Israel? Picking the ADL is like a vegan choosing to eat at a steakhouse because they can get a side order of green beans cooked in animal fat and in the process ignore the giant oozing dead carcass sitting on the plate. This brings me to the ADL's half-baked curriculum and we've heard this from more than a few teachers. It's milk-toast stuff, generic, something middle schoolers would have put together in a group project. Let's love each other with the names of a few civil rights icons thrown in and all roads lead to Israel. It's a fig leaf and what it lacks in innovative anti-hate teaching, it makes up for in the silencing of any discussion they don't want to hear, including the pain of students who don't agree with their politics. So I ask you, what is the point of you trying to float a $150 million bond to build sports fields, lab facilities, when the presence of the ADL robs this normally high functioning school of its very soul of inquiry, critical and independent thought, discussion? Our award winning magazine, The Globe, has been rendered mute on this topic despite initially inviting discussion. We need to start from scratch and be intentional on finding an anti-bias vendor.

Our award winning magazine, The Globe, has been rendered mute on this topic despite initially inviting discussion. We need to start from scratch and be intentional on finding an anti-bias vendor. Former committee of students, alumni, teachers, parents, citizens, whoever, we need to do this soon before this tail wags the dog. We cannot let the ADL's snitch principle become our culture. I know you can do this. I know you're committed to these kids. I've watched you work hard the last meeting I was here at, which spanned more than five hours. Don't let your hard work be for the benefit of an organization whose singular mission has nothing to do with the well-being of our kids or our city. And lastly, I'll say I sit on the Clayton's Equity Commission and we work really hard to make this an inviting city to everybody. Putting the ADL right at the basis of the foundation of our city doesn't help with this process. Thanks very much. Jolina Peng. Good evening. My name is Jolina Peng. I graduated from Clayton in 2016 and WashU in 2019. And now I work in K through 12 environmental education and I live in this district. And I'm here because I'm deeply uneasy about adopting the ADL's No Place for Hate program. So my concern is not whether we address anti-Semitism, but who we ask to define it for our students. The ADL today is a major lobbying and advocacy organization.

So my concern is not whether we address anti-Semitism, but who we ask to define it for our students. The ADL today is a major lobbying and advocacy organization. In 2024, it spent about $1.4 million lobbying Congress, much of it on Israel-related legislation. Its CEO has said bluntly that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism and promised to fight anti-Zionism through lawsuits, research, and lobbying. When that worldview underpins a required anti-bias program, the district is no longer just teaching about prejudice. It is endorsing one side of a live foreign policy debate. And that has real consequences in Clayton. Jewish students who feel afraid deserve protection and solidarity, and so do Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian students, some with family under bombardment, all trying to make sense of the news. When a politically aligned outside group is empowered to decide what counts as bias, those students here that advocating for Palestinian human rights or criticizing any government might be labeled bigotry. That does not make anyone safer and it tells part of our community that their grief and conscience are out of bounds at school. The good news is that we have other choices. As mentioned earlier, programs like Facing History and Ourselves, Parseo, News Literacy Projects, and the Chekology Platform have independent evaluations that show gains in empathy, pro-social behavior, civic self-efficacy, historical thinking, and more caring and democratic classroom climates, along with big jumps in students' ability to spot weak evidence and identify reliable sources. And none of them lobby Congress. Here in St.

And none of them lobby Congress. Here in St. Louis, the Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, as mentioned again, has a dedicated education staff and a speaker's bureau. And yeah, so with all of these options, with all these options that are built to teach what anti-Semitism is and what it actually is not, and to warn how misidentifications and the false equation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism might be used for political ends, I ask you to consider my ask of you tonight. So first and most urgently, of course, is to pause the planned expansion of No Place for Hate at Weidon and Clayton High School. I think that this deserves a transparent review. I also think you should adopt clear criteria for any outside anti-bias partner and potentially consider convening a working group of educators, students, and community members, Jewish, Muslim, Arab, and immigrant families to compare ADL materials with alternatives. Confronting anti-Semitism and all forms of hate, I agree with everybody here, I'm sure, is non-negotiable. Handing that task to a highly politicized lobbying organization is a choice. And tonight we're asking you to make a better one. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Agenda item three. I will turn it over to Dr. Patel for superintendent communication. Great. Thank you. Welcome everyone and thank you for the public comments. We will be responding to those at a later time. So appreciate you taking your time. Superintendent update.

So appreciate you taking your time. Superintendent update. We did not have a recognizing our own specific agenda item, but I will go through quite a few programs that we have that I would like to recognize. So first off, I wanted to share with you last week, I got an opportunity to visit the Weidon Theater Company's production of Elf. And it was fantastic. We were able to see our students on stage shine, a lot of cheer, a lot of laughs. They were surprised that I've never watched the movie Elf myself. I think everybody's like, wait, what? I know, I know, it's a shock. Oh, thank you. See, I'm in good company. But we've got more. But the students were fantastic and they did a great job. And of course, we have our outstanding teachers who support our students to not only achieve academically, but also achieve on the state and in different arenas. So with that, I wanted to thank them for their performance that night. And then we also have our students on stage quite a bit this week. Yesterday was a choir concert at Weidon. Tomorrow is an orchestra concert. And I know we have plenty more coming up as we head into the winter. And then next, when we talk about commitment of students, I wanted to highlight our girls tennis state champions. This is the third year in a row that they have gotten this and the fourth time in the history of the district.