December 4, 2019 — Meeting Transcript

I, Layla Hall, the president of Clayton High School's Black Student Union, would like to, on behalf of the Black Student Union, thank Dr. Doherty, the superintendent of our schools, the committee, the families, and the members of the Clayton High School community for recognizing our efforts to positively change the lives of others in and outside of the district. I've truly enjoyed serving as a president for the past two years, alongside with the help of Dr. Powell Walker, who took the initiative to take over BSU, Mrs. Young, the activities coordinator, and with Dr. Waynes, who stepped in this year as our new assistant superintendent. I'm looking forward as well as the rest of Black Student Union to this year's upcoming events, where we have a lot of agenda items planned. Thank you for your time.

So we would like to take a picture of all of you guys in the back and recognize you, and we'll publish it. But I do want to just recognize first off, we do have Mr. Sankey and Ms. Paul Walker, Dr. Paul Walker, who are in the audience, and I do want to recognize them. All

right, so we're going to go take a picture.

Okay.

With the students, yes, right now.

Thank you. Bye.

All right. Thank you, everybody. I know sometimes it takes time to take pictures, but I think, look, it's all about students, so it's important that when we recognize students, we take pictures too. Yeah. So I just want to honor that. So we have another, we have another

recognition. So hopefully you put your tennis shoes on. So in the School District of Clayton, we don't have a Teacher of Year Award. But we do do one award for our educators and it's called the Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award. And it's a really incredible award. One, because you're nominated by your peers. And so oftentimes the people who are nominated by this do not even know that they're being nominated. And then the other thing is that you're selected by your peers after a pretty intensive review. And so we have our Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award winner here tonight. And it's Patty Casu, who is a kindergarten teacher in Maramango. She's already started. I will tell you that I've done this for many years, for the last couple of years, doing the Emerson Award and going to schools and giving this award. It's usually a surprise. And this was probably one of the most amazing surprises because the whole staff was hiding in the gym They thought that they were, she thought that the Stanley Cup was coming. And then when she realized it was about her, everybody was crying. So Patty, I'm going to read a few things about what your colleague said about you. And just so that way the board gets a gist of who you are as an educator. It says, over the course of the 27-year career at Merrimack Elementary, Patty Kasu has built strong relationships with students, parents, staff at Merrimack with enthusiasm, welcoming smile, and a love for learning. Everyone at Merrimack is drawn to Patty's heartfelt, energetic, and genuine spirit, and that is so true. Her loyal and trustworthy nature make her someone people turn to for a listening ear and advice. Patty's work ethic is an example to all. She constantly pushes everyone's thinking to bring the best outcome for students and has a strong knack for problem solving and overcoming obstacles. She has high expectations for students and achieves this through structured, playful, loving environment she creates in her classroom. And it's, you know how when you walk into a classroom, you can just feel it? And that's how it feels when you walk into Patty's classroom. Every student who enters her classroom feels safe, healthy, engaged, supported, and challenged both academically and socially. Patty Casu is one of the most committed teachers at Merrimack Elementary, and it's an honor to recognize her for the district's Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award. So Patty, thank you so much for all that you do every single day for the students that walk into your classroom. You are truly deserving of this award and just really appreciate all that you do for our students. You have a systemic impact on our kids, and it's really amazing. So I want to just recognize Patty Casu. She is here tonight, supported by her principal, Patrick Fisher. So, Patrick, do you have anything? Thank you. So, do you want to go get a picture with Patty? We should go get a picture, yes.

We'll go get a picture. Oh my God, he's so nice. You guys coming? Okay, so we are moving on to our public comments of the meeting. And we have three public comments. Just a reminder for folks, time is limited to three minutes and the board won't respond to the public comments. However, the administration will reach out and respond as appropriate. So the first person is David Gulick.

Good evening. Good evening. So I just wanted to come here and officially introduce myself to all of you. I know some of you, but not all of you. Dave Gulick. I have kids at Merrimack Elementary. And in April of 2020, I'm excited to say that I'll be running for a seat at this table. So I would imagine over the course of a few months, I'll be pinging you guys off and on. And I thank you in advance for your support. And I thank So thank

you. All right. Next is, thank you, David, is Chris Win.

you. All right. Next is, thank you, David, is Chris Wynn.

Good evening. For those of you who don't know me, which I think all of you do, but for the audience, my name is Chris Win, I have been a resident of Clayton since 2013, and I have four children in the district, all of whom started at the Family Center and now who are at Glenridge and White Owl. Over the past six years, I've been very much enjoyed my role as an active member of the community, and I've frequently volunteered in the schools where I have seen firsthand the importance of education in a child's life. I'm here tonight to let you know that I, too, am going to run to be a part of this board. And if elected to this board, I will do everything I can to ensure that every Clayton student has access to a high-quality, equitable education. And in the words of Elsa, my daughter's favorite Disney character, to always be willing to do the next right thing. Thank

Good evening. For those of you who don't know me, which I think all of you do, but for the audience, my name is Chris Wynn, I have been a resident of Clayton since 2013, and I have four children in the district, all of whom started at the Family Center and now who are at Glenridge and White Owl. Over the past six years, I've been very much enjoyed my role as an active member of the community, and I've frequently volunteered in the schools where I have seen firsthand the importance of education in a child's life. I'm here tonight to let you know that I, too, am going to run to be a part of this board. And if elected to this board, I will do everything I can to ensure that every Clayton student has access to a high-quality, equitable education. And in the words of Elsa, my daughter's favorite Disney character, to always be willing to do the next right thing. Thank

you. Thanks, Chris. Okay, and then the next one is Robert

Whitman. Clayton School District Board Members, I'd like to address you tonight on the proposed protocol, communications with the superintendents. The proposed protocol has the stated goal of maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of the superintendent and administration. I reviewed the protocol carefully, and it seems to me that it leaves out a key stakeholder in the process, the voters, parents, and students of the Clayton School District. Each member of the Board of Education is elected individually by the voters of Clayton to represent the Clayton community in the governance of its public schools. The proposed protocol seeks to increase efficiency by limiting communication between board members and the superintendent. Whatever the policy might offer an increased efficiency, it will subtract in the ability of individual board members to gather information to effectively perform their governance functions. The policy requires board members to communicate in writing to the board president when they want to speak with the superintendent. Board members are asked to refrain from telephone or in-person communication with the superintendent This is not inclusive and does not respect individual differences in communication styles. Written communication with a multi-day response will serve to sharply limit the ability of individual board members to gather information or share their constituents' concerns. The complex issues the district encounters are more likely to be understandable in conversation and in-person interactions. The present communication methods allow board members to solicit information and form the independent opinions on decisions their voters elected them to make. The policy even makes responses to these written communications optional at the discretion of either the board president or superintendent if the question is, quote, not strategic or, quote, too time consuming. Many governance issues will not be strategic and good governance will require the investment of time to educate the board members. Achieving good governance may even require board members to ask and have answered out-of-the-box questions which might seem just to satisfy curiosity. The question is, who decides what is an acceptable communication? Board members are not elected only to ratify the decisions of the superintendent and board president. Each board member is elected by the people to represent them. And each member has a right to have their questions answered directly. School board members cannot properly exercise their responsibilities to their constituents if they cannot freely gather information directly from the superintendent and the school administration. I urge the board members to reject the proposed policy and retain the power delegated to them by their constituents, the voters, parents, and students of the city of Clayton.

Thank you, Robert. Okay, we don't...

Well, good evening, everyone. So first of all, I hope all of you had a good Thanksgiving break. I hope you had some time with your family and were able to decompress a little bit. I was very grateful that I had my family here and my younger brother in town. three girls stayed with me over the thanksgiving break and i was grateful to spend time with their family i was also grateful when sunday came and they went home and so uh it was fun um but yeah it it was a it was a great time so i wrote to the community about the importance of practicing gratitude uh last week right before the the break and uh it was something that i worked on over the uh holiday but i think it's something that we need to remind ourselves is this isn't something just happens around this time of the year it should be something we practice throughout the year So tonight, as part of my communications, it's going to be a little bit longer than I normally do. And the reason I'm doing that is because I'm giving an update about our current reality of where we are with our strategic plan and wanted to give the board an update about that. So I want to start off by just kind of thinking about talking a little bit about. Of course, this is not. Just the term strategic plan and. I think that all of us kind of have a mental model about what that means. And I have trying to challenge myself in thinking about, we want to think differently about this. And so I have been thinking about what that could actually be in terms of what it's actually called. Because I think sometimes even having that name, I haven't come up with anything too creative. But as I think about it, when we're doing strategic planning, we're doing strategic thinking. We are creating our roadmap for where we want to go. We're also making sure we have a strategic focus and making sure that we don't have many, many, many initiatives that we're working on, but we're really narrow with that. And so what I keep thinking about is that this is an opportunity for us to be future focused in our planning and for us to ask that question, what future are we trying to create for our students? And so as part of this work, we have, as part of the, so when I'm talking about this, I'm going to use the term strategic plan, but it's more than what we maybe have in terms of a mental model. And I really want us to try to challenge that mental model of what we've done in the past with our strategic plan. So when we're thinking about this, the way we've been approaching this is like, what questions do we want to answer as part of our strategic work? other thought is what are some real-time dashboards we're going to create to progr to monitor our metrics and making sure we're coming back to the table on a timely basis to make sure that we are doing quarterly reviews of our strategic plan and a yearly reset of it so that way we have an opportunity for us to constantly come back to the table and make sure that this continues to be a focus for us as a district instead of just being one time a year and then ultimately making sure that we're focusing on student growth as part of this work. So when I think about this, we've used the term great to greater, but really I really think about that we as a district have an opportunity as a highly academic environment to think about how we can move from excellent to transformational. And I think that, and I've shared this with in the past, is that we don't want to be complacent on our excellence. We want to continually examine and think about how we can be better and make sure we're evolving so that way our students are getting what they need to be successful, not only in school, but in life. And that's why we had this conversation over the last year in terms of what we want for our students as the profile of the graduate. And I will remind you of something I said at the last meeting, we're not going to ever use this as these are soft skills that our kids need. These are critical skills our students need. And so we use this as the basis of the foundation of the work that we started. And we started this work last year in developing the profile, but we had a launch meeting in October. We've had several small meetings after that with administration. We had our communications lab with another set of teachers focusing on strategic plan. And what we've done right now, we're at the point of trying to narrow down what we've heard through that work. And what did we hear? Some of the things that we heard was that we need to make sure we're taking care of the social, emotional well-being of our students. We need to think about providing our students with authentic experiences, relevant experiences. There needs to be some opportunity for personalization and inclusiveness and equity, innovation. and individualized instruction. And so when we're thinking about, when you look at that list, you might think to yourself, what's the difference between individualized and personalized? And when I think about the difference between individualize and personalized is that when you're thinking about being individualized, it's like how are we differentiating for students based off the content that we're providing? How is the teacher actually differentiating for the students with the content that they're providing? personalizes that the students are driving the content. And they're using their passions and their desires in terms of helping them reach our standards. So it's very subtle, the difference, but it's very powerful. And it's harder to be more personalized. But I think that's what we need to move towards. so the questions that we've developed in draft form is that these are the type these are the questions we want to answer over the next one to three years and the questions are how will the school district Clayton provide the most equitable and personalized learning experience for its students how will the school District of Clayton best support the social emotional developments of the students now we're still working on the the wording of this but you get the gist of this these are the things that we want to answer for ourselves And by doing that, by looking at these questions, we were going to get into smaller work sessions to think about if those are our questions we want to answer, we need to develop the priorities around those. And then we need to develop action steps. And the process for developing those action steps is highlighted here in this draft form that we're going to use. And I've been doing so much reading around strategic planning over the last few years. And one of the things that really stood out to me recently in somebody that I was interacting with and who actually referred me to a great article is that when you're thinking of an action step, an action step doesn't necessarily mean that you're implementing something new. An action step could be under, it could also be, it could be something like We're going to take time to research and study something. And then the other thing is that we could be implementing a new idea, or it could be the refinement of a current structure. so it's important to define that when you're thinking of an action step where does it fall underneath those three and then we're then it's really important that we not only as a district have fiscal health but also that we have are aligning our resources to whatever action step that is we have to make sure there's responsibility on this and then we also have to think about what are those potential challenges and barriers that we might face as part of that as we move forward And also the thing that the board always has us hold us accountable to is the accountability. What's going to be the evidence and the metrics? And how do we connect that to our profile? So if you see up here, This key right here, what we're going to do is after we develop those action steps, we will have a very transparent key that will be shared with the community on our website, shared orderly with the board. That will be an opportunity for us to color code our action steps and to show you where we are with those. And then it'll be an opportunity at the end of the year to say, is there anything we need to change? Anything that we need to revamp? And that's part of what that evergreen model means, is that there's going to be constant board oversight over it and input. We also are going to make sure that the evidence is informing our direction. And just like we do in our schools all the time, we plan, we do, we revise. And it's really important for us to make sure that we're coming back to the table and coming back together as a leadership team deciding, is this working or is it not working? I really firmly believe that this is the direction we need to go as a district because we do great things for our children and we do have academic excellence, but we have the opportunity now to think about how can we set the standard for the way education can look. and the potential of the possibilities that we provide. And I think that we are doing great things, but we need to start doing some formalizing of some of those, and we need to build on what great things we're doing. This is not a model that we're stopping doing all the things that we're doing. We're already doing some really innovative things that other districts aren't doing. An example, conference English program. That is an incredible program that we have in our district. That's an innovation. Is there anything that we need to help do? Do we do to help improve it and support that program? Maybe, but we need to build on our successes and, but we also need to start challenging ourselves to say, you know, this is the way we've always done it. We can't just continue to do say that we need to say, maybe we need to think differently. So that way our students are saying, you know what, this is more relevant to me and my learning is enhanced. The other thing I think is really going to be important as part of this work is that I want to initiate a new initiative protocol. the reason i and the reason i'm sharing this with you is that we have amazing educators and amazing people in the community who have great ideas but what often happens is that we have a tendency to say take those ideas and say okay let's add that let's add that add that and then we end up having initiative overload and we tend to do too much if we need to make sure that we're narrow with our focus and when we're thinking about a new initiative protocol is having sometime a system in place that when we are a new idea comes to us let's put it through a protocol and see whether or not it fits with the direction that we're moving with our current strategic plan and if it does and if it's a great idea where it could potentially fit later on maybe down the road or if it could be added this what we're doing but we want to make sure that we're being purposeful about not adding too much onto our plates The other thing I want to share with you is that the timeline is that my goal is to have a draft to you at our first board meeting in March. So we have two months to finish up getting the drafts of those initial action plans and that chart I shared with you. And so in January, I'm working with Joe to get a working session together for the Board of Education to have a deep dive into this work So that way you can ask some questions, share your thinking, share some ideas that maybe you've heard from other districts. So that way we can incorporate that as part of this work. So and then that would also give us some time to say if there's any budget implications for anything that we want to look at for next year. So this is just a quick snapshot of where we are with this. I feel really proud of the work that we've done so far. I think that we're moving in the right direction. I think we're going to be building on the work that we're doing around educational equity, making it even stronger. I also think that that personalized learning is the direction to go and the social emotional well-being without compromising our academic excellence. and I just want to make sure it's stated that, I want to state that too. Because sometimes when people think about personalized learning or social-emotional learning, they think that we're not having high expectations for academics, and I'm not saying that. We need to hold ourselves to a different standard and maybe think differently about how we're teaching. So that's where we are. So, go ahead. I don't see if Adam wants to do a check-in. Do

you want to do a check in?

Hello, everyone. So first I want to say that the District Advisory Council had our second meeting. Dr. Doherty came by and talked with everyone for a little bit, and it was a good meeting, and we're just still laying the foundations, and things have been going really well with that. I also wanted to talk about CFC, which is the Clayton Fall Classic, which is our speech and debate tournament that we host. It was a huge success. We had 500 competitors. We did end up having 350 judges and over 20 schools, and things ran really smoothly, and we've heard a lot of great feedback about it, so that was great. Our Globe, so our school newspaper, was just in Washington, D.C., and they received a ton of really cool awards. So this is for all high schools around the country. They won the best multimedia story of the year, which is Why Do We Still Play Football?, That story also won the sports story of the year, and then also there was the photo of the year taken by Michael Mellinger. So I just wanted to highlight that, that they're doing some really neat stuff over there. Finally, the last thing, which I don't know, Dr. Doherty, did you talk about the thought exchange that we... I don't think so, because I think it's been since the last... Anyway, well, the high school did a thought exchange where we talked about what are some things that the administration can do to help students out at the high school, and I wanted to share a little bit some of the feedback with you so you could hear about that. The biggest running theme throughout it was time and really focusing our time at school to the learning that we're doing. And so a lot of folks have been talking about flipped classrooms and how that's been, especially with technology coming into play, that that has been a little bit detrimental for them as a student at the high school, that it's a little bit harder to come to school during the day and do some of that work where you're not getting that lesson during the day. So that was one thing that came up a lot. Something else was the individualized learning that folks have really been pushing for that and hoping that that can be something added to Clayton and that testing to individualized testing. There were lots of comments about homework, but the last thing that I thought was really interesting was there was a few comments about a four-day week which were rated pretty high on the Thought Exchange. And so as we talk about our calendar today, I personally think it's a really neat idea And so I think it's just, you know, as we talk about going from excellent to transformational, I think that it's something that we can always keep in the back of our minds that there is, you know, we can go push outside the box and at least think about some of these really interesting and innovative solutions. So, just one. Sure, go ahead.

Are we doing flipped classrooms? Is that why?

It's up to the teachers at this point. So some people are doing that, and you're getting

some feedback that that's not. I have

multiple classes that will do videos at night, and then during the day we'll come in and do practice problems. And so it really depends on the teacher. It's very, you know, it's up to them. Thank you.

Thank you. So we're going to move on to 6.01, which is a draft of the 2020-2021 academic calendar. That's Chris. again this is an information item um as much because chris is going to kind of give us a heads up of where the calendar committee is and then kind of i guess share more from there

bigger since i'm up here for three items in a row i'm gonna take up as much of this table as i possibly can so let me pop this up real quick okay um good evening i hope everyone's doing well tonight so this is a draft of the 2020-21 calendar and what makes the calendar a little unique this year is that our good friends of education in jefferson city passed legislation kind of issuing a mandate that school districts could not start school any earlier than 14 days before the first Monday in September. First Monday in September is always Labor Day, so essentially it's 14 days before Labor Day. The law actually used to say that we couldn't start 10 days before Labor Day, but if we had a special board meeting and an agenda item and went through the steps that we typically do to publicize our calendar, then we could essentially... waive that waive that mandate um this year there is there is no in the new law there is no option or no work around it's you are you are locked into starting 14 days before the first monday in september so for the 2020-21 calendar that magic day is august 24th so that kind of becomes the the start of school uh four and every district in st louis county save one is starting school on the 24th there's one starting on the 25th that sean do you remember who that yeah i know there was one there was one district that kind of kind of went against that so we knew that the calendar was going to present some interesting challenges this year when we went into this development process one trying to get you know the number of days and hours that we need to get in and you know not end up going to school through the middle of june two trying to trying to to look at this in a way um that'll let us maintain the practice of having final exams, first semester final exams before winter break at the high school. And it also gives us an opportunity to look at how we organize different components within the calendar. So we went through a process that worked with you know, our central office administrators, our leadership council. We had a calendar committee comprised of teachers and parents and other administrators throughout the district. Dr. Tony Arnold, by the way, Dr. Tony Arnold is watching the live stream at home. He's recovering from shoulder surgery. I know he really wishes he could be here with me because he's heard how much fun doing the calendar in this district actually can be. So I wish I had a picture of him or something to put up on the table. So hi, Tony. so we even met with the principals advisory council over at the high school and got feedback from that group. And, and, you know, surprisingly, I mean, obviously we heard very loudly from our students at the high school that we needed to really, you know, any, any calendar solution that we entertained needed to be one that kept finals before winter break, uh, especially with, you know, the conversation that we're having about, um, just mental wellbeing and stress and all that, that that was very important. Um, But we also heard it come very loudly from the parents as well. So even our parent population recognizes that that is a good break. We also looked at, based on some feedback that we received, ways in which we could reduce the number or increase the number of five-day weeks that we have throughout the calendars. So we tried to kind of look creatively in the way that we arrange early release days and looked at opportunities where we could take the time that we use in three early release days and turn that into, instead of having three early release days, kind of a full release day for professional learning for our staff. So that let us build in more five-day weeks throughout the calendar. The other interesting piece about the calendar this year that I should have included in part of my introduction is The school districts now are only required to build a calendar based on hours. It used to be days and hours. It used be 174 days and 1,044 hours. So it's now only 1,044 Hours. And DESE puts some limits on what has to be a minimum and what can be a maximum amount of instructional time you can have in a day, but they basically have given you the flexibility to say if you can go, you know, as long as you get your 1,044 or the number of hours that you feel that your district needs to deliver curriculum instruction, then we're good with your calendar so and that to what Adam said earlier is kind of the flexibility that some districts have that have gone to a four-day school week there are districts that do that in the state of Missouri the majority of them are rural outstate school districts and they've done that to reduce transportation costs but it is you know there are districts out there that are making that type of calendar work so Obviously not something we're going to look at for next year, but certainly something that if there's enough momentum behind it, we could look at exploring. So that's really kind of the key things that went into this year's calendar development. Our plan is at this point to put this out for our parents, put this draft out for our parents to look at. In this Friday's e-news, we're circling back one more time with Professional Relations Council, which is our teacher group, next week. And then we will bring this back here for approval on the 18th. And then assuming that we don't make any major changes between now and the 18th, probably in the spring, start working on a 2021-2022 calendar kind of based on the tempo that we've developed here so we can get back to our practice of having a calendar schedule approved two years out any

clarifying questions go ahead Stacey

thanks Chris Win know I know from being on the calendar committee this isn't easy work could you tell me what's the difference in the number of days first semester versus second semester now is first semester quite a bit shorter

thanks Chris I know I know from being on the calendar committee this isn't easy work could you tell me what's the difference in the number of days first semester versus second semester now is first semester quite a bit shorter

yeah first semester so the difference So there's two ways to think about this. In this proposed calendar, first semester is six days shorter than it is this year. So in the proposed calendar, there's a 16-day gap between first and second semester. In our current calendar, it's 11. And that difference has fluctuated from as little as nine to as much as, as 14 in all the different years that I've been doing the calendar, just based on how winter break falls and where a lot of the, a lot of the things within the calendar that you have minimal flexibility to, to move around. And, and that was part of the conversation that we had with Milena and the curriculum folks. And then that Dan had with, uh, particularly all the teachers that teach semester long classes at the high school. And, um, They all feel like what we've got is still a very workable calendar for them to use, especially given the goal of trying to keep those finals before winter break.

Thanks.

The exact same question, so a follow-up question on that. Chris, did you... Did the committee so far consider, because of the difference between the two semesters, and that sounds like that's going to be the most that it's been for a while or ever, I guess, was 16 days?

It was 15 or 16 the very first year that we moved finals before winter break in 2003 or 2004. Okay.

So I guess my question is did you guys consider not having early release days or – the election day off for semester just so that it increased the days, the first half?

So early, you know, an early release day really only reduces instructional time by two hours. So, you know, not having, for example, not having three early release days in there while that grants, you know, while that gives you back the equivalent of a day's worth of instruction, it really, you know, you really don't get that time. You're adding guess you're you're only adding back the time that you're taking off of classes on those days you're not really gaining additional days of instruction and in terms of the election day i mean that is the that's the presidential election in in 2020 so i think that that is a day that we definitely um you know we kind of developed a practice of not having students in school that day and using that as a professional learning day so it's definitely a day that we don't want to have students in school yeah

any other clarifying questions Thank you. Appreciate it. So we're moving to your next thing. So, yeah, don't get up. So now we're moving to study items. And the next one is also on the academic calendar, but it's policy, 7.01, policy IC.

So policy IC essentially just takes the changes in legislation that impact the school calendar and updates our academic calendar policy to reflect the new law and the legislative changes. though there's nothing really controversial about it i mean it's it's it's the law that we have to follow to build the calendar so it makes sense that we would have a policy that that also follows that law to put that into practice

any questions or comments about this one yes jason can you just tell us state why we uh why they made this policy uh this law

Um, well, I mean, I would never try to speculate what's on the legislators mind when, when they actually vote that, um, I've actually been to Jefferson city and testified on similar bills in the past. And historically it has been the tourism lobby, um, that has brought this type of legislation forward. Um, quite honestly, it all revolves around the state fair and not having public schools, um, in session during the state fair in, in late August and trying to get, you know, two more weeks of, of, of tourism, down in Branson and Lake of the Ozarks. Those have historically been the senators and representatives that have led the charge on legislation to regulate the start of school.

And what happens if we were to vote no on this? I'm just asking, will you be sued or what's

going to happen? I'm not really sure what the teeth are for having a calendar that's not compliant with With the law, I would imagine that might affect your state funding. We'd have to go back and ask that question.

I would like to get some information on that. I just want to know what the repercussions are if we don't accept this.

Don't accept the policy or don't approve a calendar

that's in line with state law and if we don't except the policy as well?

Well, I think the law supersedes the policy. So whether or not we have a policy in place that is in line with the law, you know, the umbrella there is that there is a law that, you know, to follow but I can we can certainly you're wondering about

like what if we don't what if we have a calendar that starts before what happens

because it seems like this is a very this is problematic to me in more than one way more than just us trying to figure out now we gotta shift our whole entire lives around teachers have to cut still a bit of sacrificing here and there um but also i mean from um and what the reasoning is behind it is problematic uh you know trying to create more business for a certain demographic a group of people in a certain area that's problematic to me if that's the case we should shift all types of things around to make sure i'm doing well so well and then so

the further challenge which we'll have to watch this legislative session to see but um because school districts have essentially pushed later into june so now the legislature is actually talking about um legislating a mandated end date as well so they're going to really really tie you into yeah no probably earlier yeah

yeah

no for earlier in the year yeah so we would end up with well not you wouldn't necessarily end up with a shorter i mean i'm sure that i don't anticipate even if they legislated an earlier end date to the school year that desi would change the amount of instruction that were required to deliver so then we would be able just to you know we'd have our bookends and we just have to kind of rearrange things to figure out how we're going to fit everything in the time that we're given i mean i you know i agree i mean there's there's an element of of local control that this law completely takes away and i think that you know anytime i've been up testifying in that that against that and i mean all of sean and his colleagues have said that i mean this is this is a dis you know a calendar is a decision that should be made by your local school board because that gives you the flexibility to um you know to set a calendar that works for your community your curriculum and your priorities but i mean that's that's not where the law is right now

so we'll put in the executive summary for the next meeting um we'll get some information see what would be the ramifications

Awesome. I appreciate it. Thank you all very much.

Other questions? Adam?

Yeah, I had two quick questions. The first one was about they're both about wording but one of them is it talks about that the student attendance the board approval for academic calendar designed to maximize student attendance that is aligned with the district's student achievement goals. I was wondering if we would want to change that to like the profile of a graduate because that is our student achievement goals or something that's a little more concrete because we have some of those things in place? I mean,

generally these policies are just written with generic language like that. I mean, we can certainly do that. I think the thing that we would have to do is then just put a pin in this policy so if in eight years it's not the profile of the graduate and we're using different language, then we'd have to go back and revise the policy. I think that's why it's written just in general terms like that.

Sure. The other question was about the sentence, attendance hours will be counted only if the students are under the guidance and direction of teachers engaged in the teaching process. I didn't really understand what that

meant. So the high school has a 6.42-hour day in terms of instructional time. But you're probably actually, if you're there from the start of first hour to the end of eighth hour, you're actually there for more than 6.4 hours. So there's points in the day, lunches... free periods, those types of things that don't generally count towards instructional time. We actually, I mean, one of our technology folks, Chris DeWile, is our core data guy. So there's people that have to go through and comb through every day to figure out what our instructional minutes are and actually report that out to DESE. So that's why. It's just the difference between what the state considers to be instructional time versus the time that you're actually there at school. Thank you.

Any other questions? Yes, great. So

this is a bit in the nature of commentary for me, but I just would add that, well, one, thanks, Chris, for doing all this work to try to bring us into compliance with what is a pretty frustrating legislative process, but also throughout the legislative session last year, the legislative advocacy group that's a combination of several St. Louis County districts at a number of our meetings they tracked this issue and we had MSBA legislative affairs folks and others that kind of explained it as it was progressing and kind of as it moved through the session so it's a good resource to kind of understand where this came from and I will just say too this happened in spite of a lot of protests from lot of school districts not just ours but a lot of them that like ours are already exceeding the maximum or the required number of hours that we have to provide so it all sort of happened despite a lot of people saying hey please don't do this to us and here we are anyway

yeah the the bill that actually changed this was I mean it got loaded on to an omnibus education bill in both houses during the last week of the session and got passed because there were so many other things attached to this bill that everybody wanted to get passed, that this was kind of what everybody, I assume, just swallowed hard and voted on to get that bigger bill passed.

Yeah. Any other questions or comments? Yes, I'll be sure.

So, Gary, you're saying there was a lot of protests against this, right? Absolutely. Did we protest against it? Were we down there? So even though it was a lot of protests, you think we should still not protest? Is that what we're saying? I'm just really asking. What do you think? Should we just let it go and just accept this? Or should we continue to push back on this? I mean,

I would be... I WOULD CERTAINLY ADVOCATE FOR ASKING LEGISLATIVE MEMBERS TO CHANGE IT. I DON'T THINK THEY'LL BE SUCCESSFUL IN THAT BASED ON JUST THE NUMBERS OF THE WAY THE VOTES WORK. WE ALWAYS

TALK ABOUT Joe and I always talk about the largest elected officials in the state are school board members, correct? I'm sure if we got more school boards on board, maybe there's a way to then overpower and cause even more of a pushback.

so MSBA was very much against it and they spent a lot of time we're actually organizing folks against it but I do think that

since I, we're probably going to have to follow this. We're going to, I'm going to suggest that we probably follow this law for this calendar, but I don't, I do think that if there's an opportunity, because I think what's happening, it's going to happen is that people are going to feel the reality of this next year. And then it's going to then be an opportunity for people to come back together and say, is there someone who would be putting, put forth a different bill or something that could change this? And I think that there is still opportunity for change. I do think that, and I've heard that On Kansas City side, there was a group that was also starting something that potentially we could look at to help support, you know, something that's moving forward in the future. But I don't think this is – I personally don't feel like this is going to go – smoothly as some people think I think people are gonna be really feel this next year and then there's gonna be like a groundswell of people who might say let's get together and start thinking about this strategically look at this because I think it's gonna really impact people hard next year

you know if any district is not doing it is not going to follow it for their calendar next year you're not aware of any no

we actually met all the school districts met and we talked about being consistent with the start day, trying to be as consistent as start day, and also trying to be consistent with our spring breaks. And so every St. Louis County school district I know is following this. I don't know any other school districts in the state that are not.

Any other thoughts, questions? All right, Chris, for the trifecta. So we're moving on to 7.02, Communications Foundation and Central Office Staffing Reorch.

Okay. Um, Sean, am I, am I starting or yeah. Okay. So great. Um, all right. So thank you guys. I'd be delighted to continue the trifecta here. The chair's just getting comfortable. Um, so this is, we, we had some staffing turnover in our, on our communications team here within the last about month and a half. And that gave us the opportunity to really look at, um, how we're organized, to provide the services that our communications team has? And are there any other things or programs within central office that could be supported differently and work more effectively if we were to look at reorganizing our staffing? So Dr. Dougherty and I sat down and kind of brainstormed a different way to organize our communication staffing as well as we took this as an opportunity to have a conversation with our education foundation about them seeing this as an opportunity, to bring their own staffing on board, something that they've been talking about for quite some time. And I think that all the stars aligned to do this in a way. And in thinking about how we really wanted to restructure our communications team, what really drove kind of my thinking behind all this was just the way that our communication is evolving and continues to evolve. In the email I sent to the board earlier this afternoon with some clarifying information, I talked about in my time here at the district people have gone from the evolution has been people have gone from readers to skimmers, from skimmers to browsers and now we want to go to browsers to to listeners and viewers. So just the way that we're delivering content. And I think that if each of you were to think about what is the way that you probably receive the majority of your news content and your information, it's probably usually from something that you're holding in your hands and looking at that. So looking at a way that we can be more focused on digital communications, I think will really give us an opportunity to communicate more effectively, not only with our parents and with our staff, but with the community as broad. It will also give us the opportunity to be a little more effective with the way that we support our staff throughout the district with our website. There's a lot of districts that have comparable communications programs to us at Clayton that have dedicated resources to supporting their website, whether it's a full-time or a part-time webmaster. But that is... That is just a direction that everyone has moved over the last three, five years. And quite frankly, this gives us an opportunity to go there as well to allow us to leverage that resource. In looking at all of this, we also found a need to support our OASIS program a little differently than we've been doing it right now. So bringing in the additional administrative assistant, which is the only person increase in budget that we're actually seeing through this proposed reorganization lets us provide some dedicated resources to helping with the oasis program to helping manage volunteers so we've seen kind of increasing needs and increasing requirements for the way that we're going to register and screen our volunteers throughout the district over the last two or three years and we only anticipate that to continue growing it also allows us to support the Clayton education foundation. So it gives the Clayton education, foundation access to a support personnel to manage their day-to-day communication and correspondence as well as track donors and that sort of thing. And that model tracks back to, to, to a number of different things. Um, one, when we first envisioned how we wanted to set this model up for the Clayton education Foundation way back in 2008, when we sat here with the board, uh, It was set up that there was a part-time development director slash executive director, pardon me, and then part of a support person, administrative support person to work with that. And at the time, those of you that were, I think you might be, you were here. Were you on the board yet? 2008, 2009? So if you remember, we actually got together a group of fundraising and development professionals to kind of help figure out what kind of staffing models and everything that we needed to look at. And the biggest thing that they said to us is You know, the person that you want to be going out there knocking on doors and asking for money can't be the person that's updating the donor database and sorting through the mail and doing that sort of thing. You have to have somebody to kind of take care of those day-to-day tasks so that your development person can be focused directly on development. So that was kind of our original model. We moved away from that over the years for a number of different reasons when we were looking to trim $20,000 here or there off the budget. But I mean, a lot of people, when they talk about our foundation, look to Ledoux's Education Foundation and the success that that foundation has had and this proposed reorganization. aligns with the staffing model that they've had, that they've been able to be successful at. And quite honestly, if I have to look back at what the foundation has accomplished over the last year, and I think there's been a lot of growth there, that's only been since the foundation has hired administrative assistants. So we've actually had more than just a halftime person being able to work on, you know, being able to do that work and move the foundation forward. So with regards to the foundation, what this proposed reorganization does is essentially flips the responsibilities between what the district and the foundation were funding so the foundation ends up ends up funding what is essentially the leadership position or the development position and the district takes over providing a portion of an administrative assistant to support them I think that's

questions you want to add something i'm sorry before

i think that when we in developing this model it was not it wasn't just about um what we thought was what we need we needed to look at what our needs were and so we we did an analysis of like what are those needs that we have and and right now i think the other thing is that we're doing some outside we're we're paying outside consultants to do some of this work already for us and if we had someone that was in-house we wouldn't have to pay outside consultants to come in and do some of this doing especially around video production and i think too is that we're getting feedback when we're using more video and putting more videos out there that has people are connecting to that and giving us a better picture of what we're doing in the district and so um i just wanted and it's not only just supporting what's happening chris's department this is going to also support what's happening in human resources department it's also going to support what's happening You know, it could support teaching and learning. So, I mean, there's other ways that this is going to be able to support, and technology with having someone who's really a webmaster. And I told Chris, I said, the thing that I want most of anything is if we can get the person who can figure out our calendar on our website and to make sure it coordinates all together, then that's worth every penny that...

Questions? Go ahead, Lily.

I have some questions and so I guess one of mine is I don't know that I want to have to take the board time to do these because I just want to make sure I understand it. So I can do that outside of this meeting because there's just some questions I have about like I'm just not getting exactly how much we're adding and that stuff. So should I just do that outside of the meeting? Well, I don't want to take everybody's time because it's kind of getting into the weeds but I just want to

So the staffing would be an adding of, so the person who is the community relations person right now, which is a full-time position, that would be a full-time digital media specialist. And then the Clayton Education Foundation is currently paying for part-time administrative support person and so that would become a full-time person that is provide the district and what we it's going to be a cost of about $30,000 we reallocated a few things and with some people who are left we were able to reduce the total amount that there would be an impact so it'd be really an added administrative assistant person a full-time for that

so so then okay if we're gonna get into this so On this that you guys gave us, the director of development, so the administrative assistant becomes the director of development position, and that's part-time. And then the administrative assistant is also part-time, or that's a full-time position now?

currently

what

we had the current model for us is that we had a half time person who was doing half time communications and half time Clayton Education Foundation and we had a part time person doing admin support and so now the Clayton Education Foundation is going to provide the salary for a half time director of development and so so the it's similar what Chris just said we're reversing it the district was paying for and paying for the support of the basically not the director but the person who is leading the Clayton Education Foundation and right now what we want to do is flip it so that way the Clayton Education foundation is paying the majority of that salary and we're paying for administrative support

they should be paying more than they were. They've taken on more responsibility.

They're taking on about $30,000 more.

Will that impede the work that they'll be doing for us if they have more control because they're paying more money for that service or that person? Could it potentially be problematic down

the line? I actually think it would be anything but problematic. I think Sean and I have had conversations for a little while about that the board needs an executive director or development director that reports directly to them. I mean, the Clayton Education Foundation is its own separate 501c3 that it needs to operate at arm's length in the district. So having a position that was supported by the district, evaluated by the district, but still kind of quasi-worked for the board, in my mind, really didn't create... the reporting lines and the lines of control that I think could really benefit the foundation and its work. I think that giving the foundation the opportunity to be more heavily invested in an employee and the type of employee, I mean, the person that you're going to bring in to be director of development is a very different type of person that you would bring in to be an administrative assistant. So to have the ability to go out and recruit that person and hire that person I think is going to give them a chance to really have someone who understands fundraising, fundraising planning, giving, that sort of thing, that's reporting directly to them as opposed to someone who works for the district that is just helping them out.

Basically, Jason, just so you know, historically when the Clayton Education Foundation was started, the district paid for the position for the Clayton Education Fundation. They did not have enough money coming in to even pay for a position. So we took that on because we wanted to build that program. It has now gotten to the point where it's built up so much that they now have the income to pay the salary for their employee. So that's what's happened. So now they are employing their own person, and we are now having an administrative assistant that's helping us with a variety of other things.

questions yeah go ahead

i guess thank you um so my feedback maybe you guys can make that just a little bit it's clear on the first you know the one for one thing it just gets a little unclear there than what you guys described to my my opinion um and the other thing thank you for responding to the question over email and i would find it helpful to also know if this isn't too much work kind of the difference not just in the comparison with neighboring districts staffing but also just the funding i think that would be helpful to know how much how much other districts are paying for their communications department

okay um

is that

some of that is easy to get some of that is not so i mean the salaries for generally the salaries for the you know the top administrators in communications departments are readily available through education plus data that we have but in terms of kind of digging into to all of that uh digging in deeper than that i i would have to ask sean or tony

well whatever you can do easily um because i do i know these questions have come up in the past about being a smaller district and and how many personnel or how much we're spending on communications what you're describing makes a lot of sense um but i think for our responsibility just to at least have a comparison if if we're bending comparable to ledoux or whatever i understand the difference in size and that we still have we have to provide the same things even though we're a smaller district to get all that but i think i would find that helpful to have that information

anybody have any other questions or comments okay thank you very much so we're going to move on to 7.03 which is policy update for dh and di and then i think that's mary jo right yes chris sorry you can't have four only three bub

mary jo can you start by just giving us can you start by giving an overview of the policies

The first one is a way to provide employees and figure out how to explain policy that was updated last year. And our insurance company took a decision to help you guys with that decision. It required two services. So, the policy was to follow the vision of one guy and two services. So, you're still recording when you're talking to a member, but you don't have to do that. That was actually . And then, in addition, it talks about . and that is

So questions or comments on these two, either of these two? All right. Thank you very much, Mary Jo. OK. So we're moving on next to the 7.04, which is the Board of Education protocol on responding to concerns from constituents. And I'll speak to this one. What I basically did is took what we all put together from when we were at the lake at a retreat and synthesized it into a one-pager. So you should not see things that are new to any of you, but it was just this idea that we wanted to... again i think generally we have followed this for the most part this protocol but we certainly wanted to codify it in a written protocol you know kind of broken out into how do we respond making sure that we're coordinated and that we you know look at the legal ramifications that we certainly speak as one body right that we're not kind of um you know that we're a board right that there's the appropriate follow-up and follow-through, and then if we see trends, that we address it accordingly. So does anybody have any questions or comments on this one? Yes, Lily? Okay.

If there's some other more efficient way to do it, I'm happy to consider that if it's sitting down and kind of going through that. So

would you

like me to begin?

Well, you can certainly write it down and send it to the whole board if you want. Or you can – I mean, I don't know where your comments are. So, I mean, if you can go through them, I mean, it's really up to you.

Okay. So the way it will work is that – Would that mean we'd have another time we'd look at it before we vote on it? Okay, so we would just extend the time. So this is a study item, so we're still

going to be, it would come back next as an action item.

right so i don't i think i better say okay i better say that um so my first point is i would rearrange the rationale i i think that and this is what i would suggest is that we start with the rationale for this and really focus on the community rather than us kind of managing each other or our board's behavior so i would say and and i'd make some slight tweaks to some of those but i would say that first of all it's this protocol is based on number three the community and it's not that they they need to feel listened to it's that we are actually you know they are being heard so I would say it like that I would say the second one is that the issue goes to the right place I really like that idea that we're making sure that they get hooked up with whoever's going to answer the question and that it ensures a timely response and it's driven by the best interest of the students and then I would say the odd then grouped together at the last part is sort of what it's doing for our you know working together as a cohesive body that the board is a collective body we don't want to undermine the district work or create legal issues and I don't think we need to repeat the one there's an avoiding long-term damage I don't and that we create consistent, uniform approach. So that's my suggestions for the rationale.

I'll just say that I would support that. I do think that it's always good to start with a positive reason why we're doing what we're doing, and I do think that we were all in agreement that we want to do this because we all had an understanding of how we were doing it, but because it wasn't written down anywhere, there's a lot of assumptions, and that doesn't always work out so well. So I think that there maybe is redundancy and that those suggestions to me would be fine. Thanks.

I might just, just on that, I actually might start with number eight.

That's fine. I thought about that too. Because, I

mean, as I look at it again, quite honestly, I might start with the best interest of the students. And

I don't know what the human element means. I remember it came up in our discussion. I was trying to

reflect what Lynn put, so not to change. But I

think driven by the best interest of our students, and I would say, and our Clayton community. It's not just our students. Yep.

I would say that we're driven by the best interest of our students and our community. And I think we are intuitively empathetic people.

then I'm really struggling with the, not really struggling, but I am a little bit confused about whether or not we want to send the protocol. I'm not sure I like that idea of sending our protocol attached to whatever response. To me, I think what's important for community members to know, and that sometimes makes me uneasy, even when only the president responds, we hear from Yeah, when we hear

going with this, because we talked about this actually at the retreat that was that it would be like a small byline at the bottom. Yeah. That says you'll be hearing a response from the board president on behalf of the board. And it's just like a generic stamp.

Exactly. Because I think it's really important to communicate to whoever that. The reason I'm not writing my neighbor back, which we probably think I'd give some informal response to, is not going to hear from me because I think they should know that. I'm not entirely in favor of it, but I know it's a protocol that we all put together, but that would make it more comfortable for me when I don't respond to the band director telling us some award. I would love to be able to say, that's great, I'm so happy for you, but

So do you, because I'm agnostic about it, in terms of including the protocol, do you all not want to put the protocol with it? Because that's what we talked about. That's great.

Well, I think we did talk about doing a one-liner on the email. We did talk about that. And then talking about setting the whole protocol, I don't remember when that came

about.

I don't know. Okay.

It was

in NSBE. Okay.

they get an automatic response that something will be forthcoming from the board president on behalf of the entire board and then you have your within two days

can have a disclaimer well we can have

the clear

I'm just messing around, but, I mean, it's kind of serious. It's all good. All right, go ahead. What else? Keep going. Keep going.

All right. And then I just want us to consider. I know why we're doing this, and I think uniformity and not confusing community members with different different people's opinions or thoughts on something. I get that. I think to think a little bit deeper on this, to me, I think we also have to think about, and I think it reflects something that the gentleman said earlier, that we are each elected, and we're elected by our community and by our neighbors. And it is a little... We're giving up something by making it only be from the board president. And I think we should just think about maybe we'll come up with protocols where we have some other ways of reaching out to people and talking to our constituents. And I think our constituents, especially if we say it, if we say, you know what? I am not, and I do this a lot. am NOT speaking on behalf of the board I know I'm a board member and and I'm not I'm not saying that what I say might not have more weight I get that but I am NOT speaking on the half of the board I think people can understand that I mean I went to the Board of Alder people had their coffee and two board members were there kind of speaking and answering questions and we've had coffees before and Kristen, I liked when Kristen used to say at the board table after public comment that feel free to call any of us. I think we're losing something in this protocol. And it's just, I just want to comment. I don't know what the answer is, but I think we're missing

something. I do have a comment to that. I don't necessarily disagree with you, but this doesn't prohibit anyone from just reaching out to you and you respond. This is only if we get collective email so any constituent could call me and I could talk to them right but just to clarify what if

they reach out to the whole board and then call you and say did you get my email what did you think that does say you're gonna hear from the board president right and it and it does mean that we won't seek additional clarification as an individual and we don't and I'm just I'm just thinking through

it when it comes to the whole board we have as a board elected the president to lead us and so I do think if something got sent to the whole board and then the person individually reaches out to me that I would have to say following our protocols, and because the whole board is aware of this situation, you'll be hearing from the board president on behalf of the board. And only because of all, like we talked about before, any kind of legal ramifications, me as an individual person doesn't know what's happened. So I think it's a little different than

And I want to jump in, too, just to say that I think we have had situations where we could have been put in legal jeopardy by somebody reaching out. So, I mean, I will say we have to be very careful. And so if there's a bid and somebody then reaches out after, that's the kind of stuff that becomes lawsuits. Or if there's a claim of some kind of mistreatment or discrimination. So the legal stuff is real, and I think we have to be very careful. So I hear what you're saying, and we have to be careful about the legal and also the efficiency and effectiveness of our superintendent because we don't always all know, right? Sean and team are dealing with it, because some of this stuff moves very quickly. And so part of the challenge, right, if we're individually reaching out, right, that can really, in essence, inhibit the administration. And so I think, well, it has. We have examples of both.

and we're making it broader than just the legal ones. And, and we're choosing to do that. So, so my last, my last, um, I think this is my last part that I, I would, um, also want to think about is can we all be informed as long as we don't all respond or shouldn't we all be informed? Not just what's sent back to this constituent. We will all get that as we would your email. Um, But also, can we also know whatever additional information Sean is providing to the president to kind of give the bigger picture? Is there any reason why we shouldn't all be informed about that too? I

don't think

that's a bad idea. That's a bad idea at all. And actually, that's why we have a lot of those memos that come on Friday, those executive memos. If there's issues, I will always try to give that additional information to the board.

Excellent.

Lily I hear I totally hear what you say what you're saying and I think that especially to the public who is it on the board it seems like there's a lot of you know a it seems somewhat maybe rigid and and rigid and controlling But behind the scenes there's been, and I thank Joe for all the work that he's put into this. And I don't think that this is Joe trying to manipulate situations. This has occurred over the course of several years. you know, occurrences of not intentional but board members, I think, unintentionally undermining what Sean is trying to do or undermining what Admin is trying to do. And like I said, it's nothing intentional. and inconsistent messages getting sent to the public. And I hear you. Like, I agree it is a little bit rigid. But I don't, like, with that said, I don't know what a better answer is in order to try and make sure that inconsistent messages aren't sent to... You know, when Sean is doing something and then he's also got a board member that's talking to the person on the side. I'm not looking at you when I'm saying this. I'm just trying to think of situations in my head. So I don't know what the answer is to try and structure it with more flexibility yet still accomplishing what we're trying to accomplished so I mean I if there was if there's a better way to do it I'm I'm all for it but it was certainly I think in response to too many occurrences that have happened over the past several years that I think you know people were people and admin and board members you know probably including yourself were concerned about and so that's that was kind of the background of what prompted the whole the whole protocol

thing yeah so i think i think this is i in theory i like the idea of uh protocols especially coming from the business world if you don't have protocols in place you're going to get sued or things get things happen or whatever the case may be so you want to make sure you have protocols um and i understand why we're putting this into play Um, and Lily, I understand what you're saying. Also, you want to be able to, you still want to be able that, um, the latitude and reach out and communicate with people. Um, but I do want to say that, um, that there, you know, there is a middle line that we kind of, I think we may have skipped, which is just the idea of training. Um, onboarding as we discussed early on, right? there should be some standard operating procedures that we need to teach each individual who comes onto the board about how to communicate under these types of circumstances or just in general, right? Just general, and they should know this. I'm seeing like there's a clear line to the idea of training and onboarding, which is what we worked on early on. We're not far off the ball here. I just think that we need to think about maybe loosening this up a tad bit, but at the same time talking about training so that we're not stepping on each other's toes or putting ourselves in harm's way when it comes to dealing with a constituent or a major issue, for example. Any

comments or questions on this one? Yeah, Gary.

So I appreciate all of this. I will say that this is something that we need to remember, that seven of us sitting at this table got sued last year. This is real. Like twice we got sued. And there are communications that have gone out by email during my tenure on the board that if there was a lawsuit over one of those issues, those communications would have been exhibits in the lawsuit. And because of that, if God forbid you all ever put me in charge, we wouldn't use email. We would not as board members have access to communicate with people through email. I would eliminate that. Because it's one thing to talk to a constituent. It's another thing to create a record which by law is a public record and cannot be disposed of or hidden. And when you do that, that can be used to in some cases create or in other cases enhance liability that the board and the individuals including anybody who might ever be on this board may have. So while there's certainly a balance here, this is serious.

Any other thoughts, questions? Okay. Thank you. So that would be great. That would be great. Yeah, please. That'd be great. That'd be helpful. Thank you. Um, check out Sean.

Um, so thinking about the, thinking about the calendar, going back to that topic, uh, we're going to include in our executive summary, what's what could be some potential ramifications if we did not follow the law. um but i also just think about this also might be a conversation that we have later on around how we can uh add you know be advocates around fighting legislation or advocating for legislation and thinking about how we collectively work towards that um number two um in terms of the, uh, reorganization of the communications office, we're going to add some additional information that might be helpful to inform a decision thinking about, um, the cost and comparison to other districts. And then also making that chart clearer so you can see how the, uh, how the positions are re being reallocated. So appreciate the feedback. Um, in terms of the number three around the, um, communication protocols, What I'm going to suggest is to think about maybe, again, taking the input because I know that I didn't collect everything from here and I think it might be a good idea if you want to put those concerns in an email too just to Joe and Amy so that they're working on the revision of these. But I think it's important what... When Lynn did this work with us, she was saying how the importance of developing these protocols, but I think that going back to what Jason said is that we need to have these protocols so that when we're onboarding, we have something solid to give people when they're coming in. i think sometimes when it comes when you come into the board you do um you get a lot you get a lot of information and we're trying to make sure that this isn't just work that you're doing for the these seven people who are at the table right now it's for people who are moving forward so i think that your point about the onboarding needs to be something that we need to do and and Um, and I, and I, I think that it's also important for board members to know that you are elected officials who people are going to come to you and ask you for, ask you questions. And it doesn't stop you from being a listener and, and knowing that sometimes just being a listener and understanding that, and then, but still also respond, being collected, being consistent with your message, like, and someone will get back to you about that. I think that's important to know, and it's not keeping you from being good listeners to the community. So, um, So that's my checkout.

I just want to say one more thing. I want to make sure people don't walk away with the wrong impression of what Gary's trying to say. You're right about the email becoming a problem. a public document that can be used against us as an exhibit. Definitely. So we're not trying to say, he's not trying to say it is a lack of, we want lack of transparency. We're just trying to say, we need to be very careful about how we communicate, which goes back to what Sean just said about, you know, onboarding and understanding how to, how to really communicate effectively with constituents. Cause we're not, this is all new to anybody who's first time running as a elected official. Yeah. And it's just good to have that kind of training, the language on how to communicate it. Thank

you. So we're moving on to action items. So 8.01, approval of policy IGBB. Do you have a motion?

I move that the Board of Education approve policy IGBB with the recommended changes as presented. Second. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Are there any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Passes 7-0. Okay, we're moving on, thank you, to 8.02, the approval of policy IKF, graduation requirements. Motion?

I move that the Board of Education approve policy IKF as submitted.

Second. It's been moved in seconded. Any comments or questions? All in favor. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Passes also unanimously. Okay. We're moving on down the road here to 8.03, the Board of Education Protocol, communication with the superintendent. Do we have a motion?

I move that the Board of Education approve the protocol for communication with the superintendent as presented.

Second.

it's been moved and seconded any questions yes i

am i'm going to read um i sent an email to sean and joe several days ago about about this protocol and i would like to read what what i said and then invite you know what you can invite anyone

do we want to bring that up that's the other one i don't know if we're going to

bring that up on the

screen chris do you want to pop

that up

Go ahead and read your piece.

I think everybody remembers this is the protocol on communicating between the board or board members initiating communications with the superintendent. Dear Joe and Sean, I want to let you know ahead of time that I am unable at this time to vote in favor of the proposed communication with superintendent protocol. I say now because I think If I had a wider context and we generated a more comprehensive picture of additional communication and board superintendent administrator protocols that we will, that we are going to be developing and the subcommittees that we may be attending. I would feel more comfortable supporting it at this point. I am concerned. It may be too constricting and may inadvertently jeopardize constructive flow of information. such as feedback that we hear or that we want to give to Sean, sharing new ideas or new learning, brief informal clarifications before a board meeting or before a meeting. So going back, it may inadvertently jeopardize constructive flow of information and the authentic strengthening of board superintendent relationships. It also seems to concentrate the communication flow rather than equalize, equalize and ensure the flow of information to all board members. It concentrates that communication flow to a single board member. And then I just threw out kind of ideas or thoughts that I have, cause I I'd like to make it kind of a, a win-win or that we come up with something rather than just voting against something, um, ideas that I can think of that, that would be improved. This would be perhaps we could discuss. The overall plan that we have for protocols and those for communications that are going to facilitate our board learning and our feedback. And identifying and committing to those additional protocols that we're going to be doing. So, for instance, that we're going be having working sessions and this is what they're going to be. That we're going to, that Sean's going to meet with each of us know reach out to each of us with i don't know what they would be but to to have an idea of the big picture that's going to ensure our learning and good communications two another idea is perhaps all the board members could be cc'd on what is requested and whether that request is granted or rejected like if you two decide no we don't have the time for that or um or if you decide that it's not appropriate for us to meet with sean about a particular topic that all board members know so-and-so is reaching out to Sean to talk about whatever that is and then a third idea is that that we revisit and vote to approve a protocol as is each year or tweak the protocol each year not just when a new board is created and new officers are elected that it's not just going over the protocol but it's really saying is this what we still need or is this working and what do we want to do? Or at some future point, maybe it's not that meeting. And then a third thing that I want to just throw out for us to think about, and that was in the book that we all were given, is that we haven't talked about whether votes for board protocols should be unanimous, but in that book it suggests that. And so I think we should think about, because they're the things that we're all, I mean obviously if it passes, all of us have to follow it, but There's a reason to have all of us, like, to come up with protocols that we all can stand behind and that we all feel comfortable with. And that might mean compromising on work. Yeah. So those are my points.

So I just want to, because I sent a response to Lily, so I just want to share with you all how I responded, which is, and I won't read it, I'll just summarize it, which is, So I think those are important points. However, I do think this protocol, a couple of things. One, we talked about, you know, we referenced the book and I referenced that we in the spring agreed. I thought we agreed kind of to how we were going to work. And quite honestly, not all of us have followed it, right? WE'RE NOT ALL FOLLOWING HOW WE HAD AGREED TO, AND SO IT CLEARLY NEEDS TO BE WRITTEN DOWN. AND I WILL SAY, YOU KNOW, SPEAKING OF THIS BOOK, THE GOVERNANCE CORE, RIGHT? I THINK THERE'S A GREAT, YOU KNOW, IT SAYS EFFECTIVE TRUSTEES, WHICH IS SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS OPERATE FROM A STRATEGIC CONTEXT RATHER THAN A TACTICAL OR ADMINISTRATIVE CONTEXT. THEY UNDERSTAND THAT THEY ARE NOT ON THE BOARD to administer the organization, but rather to govern it. And I think we've had some challenges with folks in the weeds and the administrative level, not the governance level. And I think the idea is to support our staff, specifically Sean. And I will say that of the protocols, Sean asked for this one to be created because it was important, because there's a challenge. And so I guess I feel strongly that this protocol needs to, you know, maybe we can tweak it, but we need to move it forward because we're not, we're compromising. A board member can be a facilitator, right, which is what we should be, or an inhibitor, right, to the staff's work. And I think we want to be a facilitator. And, you know, we are not the staff. We don't do the work, right? Sean and his team, right, or whomever is superintendent in the school district does the work. And I guess that's my concern.

May I say this? So the origin of this document, it came by way of our training that we had, right, with Flynn. And I think the training wasn't the best in the world. I think we all were there. I'm sure some of you all might know.

Okay.

But a lot of us witnessed it. We were all experienced it. To me, I think the outcome, I don't think it was complete. And so...

I can stop for a second. It didn't come from the training. This protocol actually has been what the board has generally followed, right? And what most boards follow, right? I mean, and so it was really codifying with some added stuff from governance core, whatever, what most boards follow. Right? I mean, it wasn't, so I mean, it isn't provoked by the, you know, remember we had that whole packet of stuff that we kind of had snippets of this and that. Right. So that's really more work.

Can I add something really quick?

Yeah, go ahead.

So I skipped that. I said that I've been researching board protocols throughout the country, and there are some great examples of ones that I'm happy to share. Palo Alto has their protocols. They put them all together. They don't have individual ones. And they have a whole comment on the importance of a strong relationship with the superintendent. And it isn't part of – I mean, there isn't that kind of restriction. I am not saying that there hasn't been issues – at all, but I think there's examples of ones that aren't as tight as this.

So...

I have a question about a protocol that I would want to check in and see if there are other questions that I can wonder about. I don't know. I will say that for my I did say that this is something that we need to talk about because I do think it's important because there's there's some types of inconsistencies and I feel like it isn't fair to some board members who are following that the protocol that we established on that part and so I just want to make sure that we're being consistent and I think that that's what though that's what our ultimate goal is to be efficient and consistent but not without compromise I don't want to compromise relationships but

well I have a lot more to go So if I may. Yeah, go ahead. All right. So I do think the document is restrictive. I think it puts a lot of power into one space. And Joe may be the most ethical person in the world, but the next person who comes along may not be the most ethical. So I want to make sure that we're thinking about the now and the later, right? What the future looks like in this position with this kind of power. And then it's also hard to go back and vote things to undo a vote, to undo a policy that we put in place. It's hard to get those kind of votes. I also think that in a way that it's a bit vindictive. I'm not saying you're vindictive, either one of you. I'm just saying it feels a little bit vindictive and punitive. And I think we need to be thinking about what kind of precedent we're trying to set when it comes to equality or equitable relationships on the board and power and then like what we personally feel about a certain person or whatever the case may be. But we've got to make sure that it doesn't look like what we just described here or what I just described here. And I may be wrong, but I just want to make sure that So, yeah, that's what I want to make sure we're all on the same page about

that. Yeah, so, again, I think looking at the big picture about this, I wholeheartedly agree that it would be in our best interest to have everybody supporting the protocol as a group board. But, and, I shouldn't say but, and I also feel very strongly that and I think we all believe this that we are elected as a body and it's all seven of us so having one person having access to the superintendent and advocating individually is is not how we are meant to run as a body so whether we want to look at when there's something sent to the superintendent that's not just the president that's copy which is the typical way but that we copy the entire board I mean I would be open to that I think it's a little bit more extreme but again we're we don't want to be vindictive we don't want exclusive of anybody we don't want that happening and yet we do need to have an understanding that the superintendent's job is to run the district and if he's trying to manage all seven of us coming to him weekly or multiple times a week with requests for um ideas or needing feedback on things that that could get very overwhelming and would take away from his ability to run the district and so I mean I'm being redundant about this but my feeling is that this is meant with the best of intentions we can't account for everything of course we want us to have a positive relationship with each of the board members and yet we can't have one board member or two board members having undue influence and making requests and having input without the collective seven of us having an understanding of what's happening.

I just wanted to say, and obviously I'm the newest board member here, so I kind of came in, I don't know any different, but... I don't feel like following his rules has impacted my relationship with Sean. Like if I have a question for him, I still email him. I just CC Joe and Joe never responds. But I just, I think it's maybe I've always taken it as a way of the Joe's just protecting Sean's time so that if I start emailing him three times a day, that Joe could step in and say, Stacy, like, you know, lay off. But I don't feel like I don't have access to you because of this. I just copy Joe. That's all. So I don't know, like, again, I don't know any different, but I haven't, it hasn't had like a negative effect on how I feel about my relationship with Sean. I don't know that I'm not emailing him as often. I mean, I think I'm still contacting him as often as I would otherwise. I just know that I CC you and, you know, hear from Sean. But I don't know, for what it's worth.

Go

ahead. So I want to... also had a little bit of context regarding the idea that this would be unanimous I mean to be honest I don't know why this wasn't on the consent agenda because when we first talked about it nobody spoke against it so I thought that it would be unanimous that said I mean to be if we spend any more time talking about our internal protocols or regulatory processes or whatever, instead of thinking about the big picture job that we're supposed to help do here, I will be very disappointed and frustrated. And if we have to spend more time to get to unanimous consent on everything, that's not the way this legal entity is structured. It's not the way the laws are written. It's not It's just not how it's done. And so I would be very much against spending additional time to get to unanimous decisions about, frankly, anything. But obviously it was not, when we had public comment about it, it was not as uncontroversial as I thought that it was. So I think it's important to consider that. I think that there may have been some confusion even in some of the comments that were shared about what was actually being mandated. There isn't a prohibition on individual communications. This is a communication coordinating strategy. We need to make sure that someone other than the one board member and the one employee knows that communication is happening. And when you elect an officer, when you elect a president, that has consequences. And part of that consequence is you're putting someone in charge of managing the communication flow. That's structurally healthy and provides for efficiencies. So it's not requiring anybody to abdicate their elected responsibility. Rather, it's empowering the entire body only to make decisions, not one person. So I mean, I guess just to summarize, it's not as unanimous or uncontroversial as I would have thought, but I do think it's pretty important and yes, we have failed to do this properly as a whole and we need to make rules saying we're going to do it. So I will support it now or whenever we vote

on it.

I'm just going to build on what Gary said just a little bit. I mean, I think that we have spent a whole lot of time talking about, you know, I thought that this was an action item because I know that last week this was a study item. So we talked about it. We all talked about it last week. So, and I mean, I'm starting to get a little frustrated because we're here as a board to be talking about, I mean, I understand, I don't mean to say that governance isn't important because it is super important. But it's more important that we're sitting here talking about kids. And we've got real issues like dyslexia and equity and other things that we should be focusing our time on instead of bickering back and forth about this. And I mean, like at this point, it feels to me like we've spent a lot of time on this. We need to move past it and we need to get move on to the more important things, which is, as Sean would say, the kids that are North

Star. I have a couple things to say here. So, you know, I actually appreciate us spending this type of time on this stuff because this is what I call the basis of how we're going to function. If we don't have this in order, then it's going to be hard to go forward and really focus on the things that are most – that we're saying are most important, right? So if our foundation isn't straight, then it's gonna be tough to really be effective at our jobs. But I also want to make sure – now, I wasn't here last week. So if I was here last week, I would have said this. I would have said that, you know, Sean's our boss. I'm sorry, we're Sean's boss. Edit that

tape.

So we're Sean's Boss. And I'm not trying to pull rank, but I'm just saying in the theory of how this operates, we're the board and we're Sean's bosses. And I would expect Sean in any case to be able to manage any relationship he has or any communication with any board member. If he feels like he's getting too many emails or, you know, frequent visits, I think Sean's going to have to or any superintendent will have to say, hey, I understand and manage that expectation with that particular board member. I think before we even jump to having all these protocols, which I think, I have to say, I like the protocols. I like that. But I just think in this particular instance, when it comes to boards, in my experience, there's always a free-flowing dialogue and a lot of latitude that I have with talking to any board member, whether it's the CEO, some team, whatever. If I'm on that board, I can talk to them and communicate with them any time of the day I want to. But there is an understanding when you're hired to a board or when you're appointed to a board on how to operate. And I think, once again, this would be eliminated going forward if we had the proper onboarding and training that needs to happen so that we can all function appropriately. So I just want to make sure we're on the same page about that. And once again, we always talk about spending time on things. Our job is to spend time. So I'm not trying to push back on Gary or Amy or anyone in particular. I want to make sure we understand that. But I hear that often. We're going to spend a lot of time. This is a time-consuming process, and it's a constant delta. It's always changing. It's a moving target, and we have to spend time. Otherwise, we're going to miss some key points and do something that we wish we hadn't done.

Can I just say one thing before that, which is I do think it's an important point to note that at least the way I read this and the way I don't think this, and I think Stacey said it well, I don't think it says that a board member can't communicate with Sean. It's just, and I think Gary made an important point, it's just that sometimes you need to have a quarterback because if we had, if we all, right, if all of us seven times communicated with Sean every day, about something every week, call them every week, whatever. It could start to be a challenge. That's what we're talking about. We're not talking about you can't. We're talking about that we're trying to, as a body, be careful that we're not overdoing it, right? Because we might only think of our own one, but if it's times seven, that's to me what gets the challenge. I have

a couple of things. One is, as I think Jason said something about the president is going to change. And I think there has to be for sure then consideration insurance that there's not bias on the part of the president or whoever, you know, that there is a fairness about the okays and the whatever for each board member to have that contact. The other thing that I think we haven't gotten to, and it's going to be a longer discussion, I don't mean for it to be tonight, but The other point I was trying to make is that we focused, our two first protocols are probably stemming from issues that people have had. And I remember Lynn saying protocols shouldn't be all about fixing problems. And so we haven't talked about the protocols about how we're all going to learn, how we're all to whatever it might be related to students. We're not even yet focused on those. And so as I said, if I had a bigger picture that we're actually going to build in protocols so that we ensure, I don't know what it is, that we have working session or whatever it is that um because i really do think that our board meetings this year have been pretty light you know and we've done a lot on policies and and other things and i we haven't had a lot of learning um and a lot of kind of looking at curriculum whatever it might be but um i i would like to see the bigger picture of where i don't know if you guys have that in mind or if we're having lynn come back but i'm not clear of i'm not even clear if lynn's coming back i'm not clear what the big picture is with the protocols and that would be super helpful to me

really quick does do should we put in writing in this protocol whether or not this applies to the student representative Like, does this communication apply to the student representative as well? Like, when we say the board, we're including him too, I

guess. I didn't know.

I mean, it should

probably be . Oh, I'm sorry. I'm thinking about the other protocol.

i mean

it's not the same position right

that's why i'm saying it either maybe should be clarified if it does or doesn't also pertain to that because of that spot

something we should discuss

because it might not again it might not always it's not going to always be adam who maybe is a good self policing on his time with you know with sean but i don't Just something to think about, adding in there. I definitely

think that's something to be thinking about. In a bigger picture, it's sort of like what are the protocols for the student representative. So maybe that's a separate protocol, not in this. Maybe it's a whole separate thing. Personally, I think that's what I would suggest.

Other thoughts?

Adam? Yeah, just on that, I think that it'd be nice to have a separate protocol in general for the student representative concerning a lot of these topics. And so I didn't feel the need to go into any of that now because I think that that's something that can be more encompassing. And I do think on this note in particular, I think that there is a different relationship between the student representative and the superintendent between the elected board officials. And so I think that that is something that we can work on later, but I don't think it would necessarily work wonderfully for this.

Yeah, and there's certainly a lot of other policies that are already existing that predate having the student representative use it. I mean, I don't read board members to mean that because that would mean all of those other instances now mean that. So I would not read that into that. I haven't thought about it. No further questions?

Other questions or comments? We do have a motion and a second on the floor, so we do need to vote. Other questions or comments. So all in favor. Maybe we ought to do a hand raise just to make sure. All in favor, raise your hand please. Yeah, it's a vote for it. We have to vote one way or the other because it's a vote. So we have to either vote it down or vote for it. So vote for. We just said there are five yeses. Are you a yes or a no? Okay. Any opposed?

Okay.

It passes five to two. Motion passes five. okay consent agenda moving on 9.01 um

even sean thought that we should maybe if i heard you're right then we should probably think about this a little bit but we're all saying that we're going to pass it anyways All right. I just want to make sure going forward, this is how we're operating. We're just going to be ramming stuff down the road. Well, to me, hold on, let me just say this. I just feel like, you know, I mean, I think we have some really good points we made tonight. I know some of you all felt some of those points, and yet still we're going to run this through. So I just want to make sure, this is how things get real dicey going forward with relationships. Now, I'm cool with this, but I just want to be sure you all are okay with it. That's not a threat, oh, Jason's going to come here and start threatening everybody. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that this is how it looks. You know, I don't think we're very comfortable with this. I think the origin of this, how this document, what we discussed in spring prior to this, but the origin of this document and how we got to this point was a bit messy.

So I respectfully disagree. I mean, you have your opinion. I have my opinion. I think it was more important to move forward. I think it Was a great discussion. And I do think we should have taken into account lots of what was said. But I think it was important to move forward What happens

if we don't? What happens if I don't abide by this rule? What do I do now? What's going to happen to me? Yeah, so there's no protocol. I just still email Sean. I'm just saying, we didn't even think this through. So what's the repercussions? This is what I'm saying. So we're so fast to vote stuff through on a status quo. To me, this is all status quo. It's like no one wants to just think it through.

We did have a time. It was a study item. You weren't here that day, unfortunately. Jason's not here. We should

slow down.

Unfortunately. I'm not

saying. No, unfortunately, maybe not. Because I'm just saying, I know you don't like it. I know you don' like it. But I'm just saying it's just interesting to me that we don't even have a repercussion. Yeah, but Jason, with all

due respect, you have your opinion and we have our opinion. And we are a board. And we voted 5-2. I'm sorry that you didn't get your way on this. What's the

repercussion, Joe? If I still continue to email, am I going to get fired? Am I kicked off the board? I'm really just asking that question. This is how we need to be thinking. holistically like what's the what's the whole process look like why didn't you bring that up in the discussion because i wasn't here last week no no we just had a huge discussion about it because i had i had no idea that you would be so fast to say okay uh ready let's vote that's the way action items work you have a discussion it wouldn't matter anyways right because i mean everyone here was like hey i'm i'm at it i'm voting for it All right, so this is what we show. This is how we do it. I

respectfully disagree. So let's move on to consent. Motion for consent?

I move that the Board of Education approve the consent

agenda.

Second.

Any questions or comments on consent? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? OK, it passes 7-0. I do want to note that there are three donations. So the first one was girls basketball, and that was for the Clayton Girls and Sports Booster Club for $500 for girls basketball shooting shirts. And then the second was from Ms. Penny Engelsman for $4,500 for the Clayton High School English Department. to support the Alan D. Inglesman English Department Scholarship Fund for a writing scholarship. And then the third one was from the Modestus Bauer Foundation, and that was $3,500 in honor of David Tischler, the class of 2020, on behalf of Gene and Richard Tischler. Okay, so we're moving on to board communication. And as we go into board communication, just before we kind of do just a reminder, right, that we have filing December 17th, right, in terms of candidacy for the board. And this is typically where folks would give an opportunity for board members to kind of talk about their intentions. So Kristen, you want to start?

Thank you. Growing up, I was taught the importance of education. It was something our family talked a lot about, giving back to community, valuing others, our differences and our similarities. And I continue to embody these values and try to teach them to my children. And it's a big part of why I chose to run for school board and why I have served for the last eight plus years. So I do want to say that it has been one of the most rewarding and challenging experiences I've had by serving on the school board, paying it forward with other board members, community members, and educators who believe in public education and the right for every child to have a strong foundation and a love of learning so they might reach their full potential. We are fortunate that our leadership believes in the art of teaching and encourages our teachers to take risks, encourages our students to step out of their comfort zones, to use their creativity and critical thinking to be innovative and inspired. Not only to be talented artists, competitive athletes, and true academics, but also to be empathetic, self-actualized, and productive citizens. Our district continues to push boundaries and remains at the leading edge of excellence in education, and the board is the voice of the community, and it is imperative that new voices have an opportunity to be heard at this table. It is my belief that serving three terms is adequate time to make a difference, and for me, it is time to pass the reign to another committed individual. So it is with the greatest respect for our students, our teachers, and our community that I will... We'll leave this board in April. It has been my honor to work with each and every one of you, and for those who continue to strive to see every student and to empower them for their future. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve our students and teachers. It has been a privilege.

Thank you for your service. Yeah. So Lily or Gary, do you guys want to? Want me

to go? Yeah, go ahead.

OK. Thanks, Kristen. That was very nice. And I was just going to say it is an absolute privilege to serve our children and our community. And I look forward to making my announcement next meeting. So I'm going to pass tonight.

Gary? I thought you were going to buy me a little more time. I think, as some of you know, I've been a little bit probably critical, maybe even harsher than that, about this practice of talking about what we're going to do during public meeting. So I guess it's best awkward for me, but that is what it is. So I decided that based on that, I would kind of make my announcement early and not have to wrestle with whether i thought this was the right time to do it so i did put that out this week um uh so um tried to act on that but i i do like to take this time the more i thought about it to think about well why is it important to me and why did i decide that um that i want to run for another term um and and to me um the most important thing right now in the near future for this board is what we heard from Sean about tonight is that strategic planning process and whether that's always the best term or not that's the that's the one that we're using and I think it's going to be really important for this board and all of the people that are part of it to help to both develop and implement that plan And so I was thinking about what is, if that's the important thing that we're going to be working on, where does the focus need to be? And that just draws me back to what I've said before, the importance of this board and individual board members really having a big picture and yes, strategic goals. oversight and focus is just so clear to me and it's something that I'm really going to be emphasizing for myself. And I hope that anybody who considers doing this or is doing it or thinks about doing it will think about that too and not think about what I think sometimes historically this board has done, which is get a little too in the weeds and tend to micromanage but try to grow past that and really think about the big picture and the strategic value that we can bring and help with that oversight and long term focus so that's what I'm going to really try to work on and I do hope that I'll be one of the three people that gets to do that and look forward to that process

Thank you. So does anybody have anything that they want to report in terms of committees? Are you

dividing it up?

What's that?

I don't have a committee thing. Just briefly, the Sustainability Committee met on November 21st and Linda Goldstein, who leads that, is meeting, just to let everybody know, she's meeting with the Mayor's Advisory Council. And they're thinking of some work to do around sustainability. And that will be exciting. And one other thing that was mentioned that maybe Tim or maybe you can answer for us is She also said that the city is being asked to be part of a case study in terms of energy management and that there's been some school districts, U.S. Green Building Council is doing this, and that Parkway, at least Parkway schools, and she thought maybe another school has been asked to do that. And I was just wondering if that's anything we've ever been asked to do or have thought of doing.

I can mention it to Tim and see whether or not we've been asked.

And then the other question was whether or not there's still a sustainability club at the high school, because she's wanting to have us kind of hook up with them and see what they're working

on.

As of right now, I don't believe that there's a sustainability club, although we have many clubs. There's a green club. There is the Student Action Committee, which is working a lot around sustainability, so we have a lot of groups focusing on it, but there's not this point that I know of a specific sustainability club

yeah I just wanted to give briefly that the at the last Clayton Education Foundation meeting they said that nominations are open for the Hall of Fame Clayton Hall of Fame and I think it's maybe every other year and this is one of them where they also seek nominations for a distinguished educator which could be a current or former educator in our district. So I believe that the nominations are online and they're taking them through the end of the year, through December 31st on the website. I

think those can be posthumous too, right? Yes.

Thank you. Yeah, so unfortunately, well, this part isn't unfortunate. So I had a meeting on November 15th with CRSWC. The unfortunate part is I brought my vet receipt for my dog instead of my notes. So I'll read you that. But so I'm thinking back to November 15th, so Joe might need to help me here. I believe the main thing of importance for this board is that the renovations are going well, but I think we're over budget and they're going to be coming back to this board because we need to. We're going to have to contribute some more money. And I don't think they know what that number is yet. Okay. Mary Jo, do you remember what the number was? And that was the main thing I wanted to convey from the meeting.

So no, they're not fully aware of what the cost will be because of unknowns. So there's parts of the project that we haven't hit that phase. And one of the major concerns is the office renovation. So part of the desire to move the office into the new wing is because there's issues under the floor, and we know it's probably water issues that will require substantial mediation, and that was a change under the gymnasium as well. an issue that we've had in the past over by the swimming pool so we've had continuous issues underground in that building as we have in all the grounds it seems to be everything's in the dirt and so she's not anticipating anything more than about 200 000 um and so i had already included in our request when i asked for additional funding at the end of last school year for an additional 125 000 in addition to what patty has in her contingency So she's exceeded the contingency in the original budget, so I already have an additional $125 budgeted in our budget. So when we come back, it won't be something that we will need to add. We already have approved it. So we've already planned for it.

Thank you.

We should be OK.

Any other committee reports? So we did also say this is the time, speaking of protocols, where we would raise issues to put on a board agenda. I just want to note that Adam and the advisory committee, so really the advisory committee had brought one forward, which is, I think Adam spoke to it before, which is really the idea of gender-neutral bathrooms. in the district I will say that Sean and I had some conversation about that and thought that maybe what we ought to do before we put it on the agenda is do a little research on it like what are other folks doing and bring that back to the board and then determine but I'm opening it up to what you all think right I'm not saying that's what we have to do I'm just saying maybe it would be helpful to get a little more information because we're I don't know that we have a lot of information is that fair Sean

Yeah, I think it would be important for us to see what not only just in the St. Louis region, but what other school districts are doing across the country and thinking about. And I also think it's important for us to think about getting some input from students. and taking some time to have some conversation. I had some conversations with students last year around this topic, and I think it'd be a good idea for us to continue that conversation and determine what are the needs that we need to look at, and then that could be a potential conversation that we have as part of our capital improvements.

What are your thoughts on that approach, right? On the approach of... Looking into it, getting some information before we just determine we're just going to put it on the agenda.

I think that's a great approach, and I would also look into any costs involved. Like, are you talking about building new bathrooms or just converting current ones? That would be another question I have.

Yeah. I think it's a good idea. Go ahead.

I would say, I mean, we've been hearing ideas on this since my daughter was at the high school as a senior. A push for that with the principal. And I think if we're going to study it, what I would like is to do it quickly. I mean, there's districts. I mean, just go to Portland or Seattle. You know, you're going to find examples of how more progressive districts. I mean this is my opinion. So that's how I would approach it, going to more progressive and not spending a lot of time researching it and overthinking it.

Yeah. I'm looking at more of how you can retrofit the current situation that we have to suit our needs. Adam, did you have a question?

Yeah. I was just wondering, this might be my misunderstanding of adding something to the agenda, but wouldn't it be added as a form of some sort of study item first? And so wouldn't we have that information that you're talking about there included in that to then be moved to an action item?

We certainly could. We had just talked about getting the information and then potentially adding it just because we're, I mean, I don't know, it's what...

Yeah, I think what we have to do is kind of, we'll determine a timeline in terms of how we're going to get this information. And then I would suggest then we would determine where it would best fit in terms of as a study item. It might fit as when we're having conversations around all the other projects that we're doing. So I think it's definitely be a study item.

Yeah, I

think what we're saying...

What are you

asking? I'm asking that if we're adding something to the agenda as a study item, which I don't know... I'm understanding that that's not... So if we're adding somebody as a study item wouldn't all that information that you're talking about and the study of it, wouldn't that be included in that report? So I don't understand why we need to do a study and then add that to the study. If we're doing a study as a...

Can I ask a clarifying question on this? Because I'm confused. I'm sorry if this sounds like a silly question, but I'm just going to throw it out there. So when we're talking about the gender-neutral bathroom, are we talking about that kids can use the bathroom of the sex with which they identify, or we're talking about just a separate bathroom that says gender...

but that's not what they're talking about. Okay, so this is where we end up going into conversation. Yeah,

yeah. So

I think... You're right, you're right. But that's why, like I...

Yes, so we would study those kinds of and look at... That would be part of what you would... Correct. So we don't have

an answer to that question. Yeah, and

so Adam, I think the answer to your question is we're trying to figure out where it best fits, right? I mean, potentially, right? Is it a capital? Is it his own item? Is it... I mean, I think that's what we're saying, right? We're going to go get some information and then figure out where... Yes, I'm asking.

Yes, and it's not a capital improvement. I believe this has to be an item because there's legal stuff with it. And I only brought

that as part of our project. Right, I know we're going to have to

consider that. So I guess I'm saying I think it needs to be a separate item that we talk about.

I definitely think it needs to be a separate item. So it sounds like, I just want to reflect back what I think I'm hearing, that everybody would like to put it on a future agenda. We're going to determine which one because we've got to get some information. I do think, Lily, to your point, it's been talked about a lot. So this is not a one-year study, right? This is go get some information and figure it out with relative post-haste, right? Is that fair? Yes, that's our protocol. Are you now or have that been? No, we're going to vote to put it on. Yeah, to put it on agenda. All right, well, I just want to make sure the discussion was done before we vote, right? Are you guys ready to vote? Are you ready to vote? Okay, who is in favor of putting gender-neutral bathrooms on the background? All in favor say aye. We need a motion. You want a motion?

That doesn't count as a motion what you just said. He can't make a motion.

He can, but I don't think he did yet.

Okay, I move that we put gender-neutral bathrooms on a future agenda, an agenda this calendar year. How about that?

Second.

All in favor? I'm sorry, any discussion? Any more discussion? Any more discussing? All right, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, pass unanimously, 7-0. Thank you. All right. I have

an

agenda comment.

Oh, please go. Yes.

So... i am i was really disheartened that equity was taken off the agenda for tonight and i have a little thing i just want to say about that because um i read the explanation i was contacted by several people that were unhappy with it and planned to come tonight to hear about where we are and I've really thought a lot about Jason's question about the difference between equal and equity. And I think about equity, and that is the idea of taking whatever you need to do, resources, time, whatever, to get to the point where there's equal and proportional representation. And we're not there with our African American students. And so... I think at a board level, equity means that we need to be spending time at this table talking about issues related to our African-American students. And so taking it off an agenda, I don't see it. I know it said we're going to have something in the spring. I don't think that's soon enough anyway, but I don't even see it on there for the spring yet. we need to be talking about issues of access, opportunity gaps, achievement gaps. We all know this. We should be talking about it more often, not less. And one of the parents that wrote me cited Phil Hunsberger, who's been presented twice for our district on the Courageous Conversations. What he said to us last time was, the best friend of any oppression is silence. And she said, you know, and I was like, ugh. So I have two things. One is as a process, I think something like that maybe we should really think about that the board talks about. I know that you guys do it in agenda planning, and logistically that might be difficult, but I would have wanted to talk about it as a board. Are we okay taking this off of an agenda when we have lots of people eager to hear how we're doing with this? And then the second thing is more substance. And I think waiting until spring is too long as far as we want to hear about how we're doing with assessment and HR and, you know, with the racial diversity ideas, what's happening there. And even the idea that it's going to be communicated to us sometime in December and then we're having a meeting in the spring on it, that's not informing the community in December. So...

So just to, do you mind if I respond to that? i think that um you know we work to really be transparent about our work and so um we said we did a very comprehensive report on this at the one of the last meetings and it was almost like a 30-page report on this in in may and so one of a lot of the work that we're doing is in progress and so when and this wasn't voted on to put this on as an agenda item it was something that was asked if we could put an on there as an item to talk about we felt like it was important for us to give a mid-year update about all the work that we're hap that we are doing but that is going to be public i mean that is something that would be shared and be part of board docs it would be shared to everyone and then we would come back and give another comprehensive report that we'd be coming back to and talking about all the things we're doing so so it was there was gonna be a lot of things that were going to be redundant that we were talking about that we just reported in May that we felt like let's give a mid-year update about all the things we're doing and I would say that we are we are having making progress we're doing more around systems in the district with especially around the gifted program we're looking at our classrooms and so I just we are going to give an update and so that was the logic behind it because we had such a comprehensive report that was done in May and so

If I can say this. When you think about the test scores that come back from the students that are African American, you think about in business that would be a fail. As we discussed at one time when I first saw those numbers, I think it was last year, I first saw the numbers and I was just kind of shocked by it. I felt people were laissez-faire about it. But it would seem to me that it should be on our agenda almost every time we have a board meeting just to talk about what are we doing to make sure we're on these scores. Now, I'm not saying a big comprehensive conversation about what you're doing, what the movement is, but more so just talking about it each week because we want to know how are we going to get these scores up? How do we reach these kids who are struggling in some of these areas? uh all that so to me it's just you know i think it would be great to have almost every other board meeting where we discuss that because it's a big part of our our evaluation of our numbers of our testing our scores and our a lot everything right or how we're number one in the state or whatever we are so we i think that it should be on our agenda it should be on everyone's agenda in my in my mind so

any other thoughts

Can you specify what was on the agenda and what was taken off? Was it the mid-year report that you were talking about, or is it something different?

At the beginning of this year, there was a... conversation with during the board goal when I was establishing my goals. And so it was asked if we could put educational equity on an agenda item to talk about again as an update. And so we had just found an agenda and put it on there. After looking at what we just recently did in April and May, and we thought we would do another update December with all the things we're doing. So we're getting reports from all the building principals. We're getting a report from all the departments and central office and writing a report to the board about that. And so then we were putting, so we are still going to do a report around our education. We were planning on doing it anyway, but that was a request at the gold meeting to have a conversation about it.

Community members knew, so I guess it's because we have

posted. We have that kind of master list. And so, you know, the master list is the best guess, right? And so, in essence, kind of Sean and team decided that it would be better not to do it. Well, we still had some information we were still gathering.

So we weren't going to be prepared for it for this meeting. So we had some data that we were still collecting.

Any other thoughts on this?

So can we consider having it on the agenda like almost every time, almost every other time? I'll leave that to the board to make that decision.

A little more what you mean by that.

Mike, we should have a conversation about what's happening in equity and equality with African-American students in particular every time we have a meeting. If the results of these scores are this low, let me just ask you a question. If we had test scores that were low and something else, would we be discussing that all the time? If that was a major part of how we got money, for example, from the state, if it was a major part You don't think when we discuss that, when we're trying to figure out how do we get these numbers up? How do we improve these scores? Well, we might ask the staff to figure that out, but we as a board

wouldn't talk about that every time. But as a

board, we would be like, yo, I know we got all this stuff we want to talk about, but this is really important. It'd be like on our topic of our dinner like almost every other time. And all I'm saying is if you look at the scores... It should be on the agenda almost every time we have a board meeting, even if it's just a matter of let's look at the scores. Where are we this week? What's going on?

Yeah, I think the challenge with that is that you wouldn't see material difference in two weeks, right? I mean, if you're talking literally, if you go to what you're literally saying every two weeks, right, we meet almost every two weeks, sometimes three, you just wouldn't. You wouldn't have much to say. But it does

keep the ball in front of us, right? The focus is in front of us. Because I promise, it's easy to go from May to next May. One whole year. Without even really talking about the severity of these test scores. Go ahead, Stacey. I was just

going to

say that just because we're not talking about it at the board table doesn't mean Sean's not talking about it with his staff every day. And I'd like to believe that he is.

Right, but I'm saying I can't give that kind of latitude because history shows that that's not always the case. This is not... History shows that this is not always the case. I mean, you know it, Joe. So we do give updates. If it was, it would be different.

I would say that the data that we have, we only collect a lot of the test scores that we get for standardized test scores when we get those one time a year. And we try to give a report after we get those through an assessment report. And last year, if you saw, our assessment report really was focused on the diversity of our district. And then the other thing, too, is that we wouldn't have enough data that we would be producing to be able to give a report on every single time at a board table we have formative assessments that we use in the in the district as benchmarks but I don't know if that would be data that we would be sharing we could share overview of that but we don't collect that that often we're looking at test scores every single time I mean we could give highlights of things that we're doing in the district but I think that we wouldn't have that data for every other meeting

But I'm sorry, it may not be just test scores. It may be... It may be hiring. It may be some sort of personality. It may be, I think it could be a lot of things. I can't think of all the different measures or metrics we can use to discuss where we are in the current moment. But, I mean, it would be nice to have it so it's in front of us because it's easy for us to put, for it not, for it to slip by us and it'd be a year before we even did anything. Like, it's almost like we had the exercise of dealing with statutory tuition was like, got that off our back. Now we can breathe a little bit. And then it's like the next issue is on the horizon. And then that's when we start to deal with these types of things. And I'm saying if we are allegedly as progressive as we say we are, then it should be on our agenda every other time. Or we can treat it as like this is kind of a bane of our existence. Like shit, like we have to discuss it every time. Thank God. You know what I'm saying? So, I mean, that's what I'm saying going a whole year.

So can I just say one thing here, which is so I think what I'm hearing, right, lest we get into a discussion about equity, right, we have to be careful, right, because it wasn't on the agenda, is equity. at least two board members, saying that they'd like more information and a more frequent opportunity to discuss it. I mean, is that what we're... Is that what I'm hearing?

And you're... I think the other part is we took it off the agenda, okay? I have concerns about that, that what that communicates... Well, because it doesn't. We got additional communication, but... The community doesn't necessarily... I think that's really not... I'm really uncomfortable with taking that particular topic. We did it with statutory once, and we did it now with this. And so that makes me really think... It just... Given the nature of the topic, that I think we should be especially sensitive to removing something that's so important Can I just

clarify in fairness, though, statutory was for legal reasons. So we just want to make sure that was for legal reasons because we had, that was my understanding.

We probably should have had that figured out before that meeting so that we didn't even have it on the agenda. And that might have been true with equity, too, that you knew you wouldn't, it was too soon or whatever. But it also

speaks to the point you're making, which is, It's kind of, I'm not trying to put us in a bad position because we're all a part of this, but it's kind of like we just kind of like just did it. It's kind of like how we're treating it is like let's just throw it on month four. I'm just saying, I'm just saying. Like we put it on there and then we're like we don't have enough time. We figured this out.

I guess from my perspective... The way I see it is a little bit differently, which is that we made our best guess at the beginning of the year, right? So and that's the administration made their best guess at the begining of the year when they'd be ready to best give the information. If they need a little more time to create a better, more thorough report, then I say we give them a little more time, right? I mean, so, I mean, that's – it wasn't to somehow secretly say, no, we don't care about equity or we don't want to – yeah, I mean, it was really just – and so maybe we need to think about – we might need to communicate it better. But I hear what you're saying. I think the intention was to, let's have the right information and let's have the kind of report.

I think that was it. I think you're right. I'm just saying that it's not intentional. That's what I'm saying. I think it's more about like it's just this is the status quo. It's like we can kick the can out of the road This is kind of how it's always kind of operated. So I'm just saying we should consider that. Now, I know some of you all might disagree with that, but this is the way it's always been. The results aren't the same. Nothing's gotten better. Nothing's changed.

So I will disagree with that because I would say that... you if you ask anyone in our district in terms of our staff this is something that is a constant focus for us in our classrooms and our professional development in the conversations that we're having and I think that that is you know Maybe I need to do a better job of communicating about what that looks like, but I, I mean, it is, it is prevalent in a lot of our conversations. And so, uh, and I would also disagree that we're not doing, there's not change. I mean, we are seeing change. And so, um, but maybe it's not as fast as we want it to be. And that's why on strategic plan, we made sure that equity still continues to be a focus, an intentional focus for what we're doing as a district. But I would say that this is something that is, you know, very, very prevalent in all the work that we do. And it has become a part of every conversation that we have. And so- But

they've absolutely been on there. I mean, whatever preliminary data you have, that would have been great to hear about.

I hear what you're saying. Okay. I absolutely hear what you're seeing. So-

Okay. Any other thoughts, discussion, comments?

I'll just kind of follow up and then I'll be quiet. Yes. It'll take a second. My comment was, I just wanted to reiterate that my understanding was that equity was a through line in everything that we do and that most of the conversations we have, whether we're talking about the gifted program or whatever we're talking about for the night, has an equity component to it. So that makes me feel better because I'm learning about what's going on with particular topics and then also it seems like the they're taking into consideration how it affects our African-American students too. So I've been really happy that in most conversations that we have, there's an equity component incorporated into it. But I do agree that if there needs to be just like a universal update, that's great. But the other thing I just want to say to you, Jason, and I know that you and I have talked about it, is that the test scores, I don't want us to – the community to think that we judge an African-American child solely on their test score. There's a lot more that goes into a well-rounded person than just what you see on the test score, and so I don't know if the test score is moving or not moving, but the child might be making major, major unbelievable strides in all sorts of areas of their life, and the test score might be moving a little bit, and it doesn't mean that the school district isn't being successful I just want us to be make sure that we're looking at more than just a standardized test score

so I'm going to suggest stop but and then we

could sorry

because we've in essence managed to have a discussion on equity at the end of the meeting um our portion of it and so I'm going suggest that maybe we stop talking I mean I think point well taken great points we need to digest that and like is there something else like that somebody wants to say otherwise I think we should adjourn sorry no it's good sorry

Yeah,

one last thing. It's about the same thing. No, not about equity. Seriously, we're talking about equity. No, not on the agenda. No. One last thing. Not if it's about equity.

No. It's not about equity. Okay, go.

How can

I phrase this? Come on, Jason. All right, all right, let's go. I'm just saying. I think you're right about, yes. Okay. All

right. Thank you. Does somebody want to move to adjourn? Is there a second? I second. All in favor? Any opposed? We adjourn. Thank you.