February 2, 2020 — Meeting Transcript

Okay, we're going to, it is 7 o'clock, and we're going to call the meeting to order. So adequate notice has been given, and we're gonna do the Pledge of Allegiance. And who is gonna lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Adam is gonna lead us again in the Pledge

Thank you, Adam. I promise I won't always ask you to. Yeah, there you go. There you go. There we go. So just a, we were, as all of you know, in terms of recognizing our own, we were going to start out with a Merit Scholar reception and then recognize the Merit Scholars. Just because of the weather, the potential weather, which seemed to fizzle out a little bit, which is good, we decided we'd move that to the next meeting, which, by the way, is at the high school. So our February 19th meeting is at the high schools, so just FYI. So what we're going to start out with is recognizing our own as in ourselves. Right? Because it's board appreciation week next week. And so, actually, I want to start out with, all joking aside, you know, we sometimes don't always recognize each other. And so I just want to say I appreciate each of you. And I have just a little something for each of you. So, and I'm going to pass. It's a little note

for each of you, here you go, here you go.

And what I've done is I've just written a note of appreciation, and then what you do is you pull it open, and it has just a quote, right? I don't know what the quote is because I didn't open them all, but it's just a nice kind of a quote of appreciation. And so I just thought it's a small gesture of my appreciation for each of you, but I really do appreciate this board and think that it's important for us to appreciate each other.

Thanks, Joe. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank

you. And so then we're going to move on to, do we have any public comment? Okay. All right. So, okay. No public comments. So then we're gonna move on to superintendent communication.

Okay. Thank you. So beyond just celebrating school boards, we're also celebrating National School Counselors Week. And so I just really wanted to make sure that we're saying publicly that we are so fortunate to have incredible counselors in our district. It's a multifaceted position doing many different things supporting our students and really they do so much in terms of leading the work around the social emotional development of our students and making sure that they're there for our students especially when they're in need and also being proactive with our students so that way students have the right tools to handle adversity and to deal with struggles and problems so if you have a moment to say thank you to our school counselors it would go over really well so thank you And as Joe said, we are celebrating National School Board Recognition Week. And this is an opportunity for us to formally thank you for your work. And we know that this work is a volunteer job. You're an elected official, but you're giving your time and there's not a paycheck to it. Sometimes when I go over to the high school and I do a presentation about governance, sometimes I get the question is how much are board members paid? And it's interesting for people not to understand to understand that board members are not paid for the amount of time that you give to this role. And ultimately, you make really important decisions that have a long-lasting impact on our students. And so I want to say thank you because each of you brings your individual strengths and passions to the table, but I also know that you also have a collective voice that helps make decisions that will have an impact on our schools and in our students. And I know sometimes that's not always easy, but it's really important to recognize that when you bring those differences to the table, it actually makes us stronger. And I want to say thank you. The other thing I just want to say to you is that you set the tone for being learners. I always refer to myself as the lead learner, but I would say that this board has really taken on that role as well in terms of leading learning and being examples to others in the community and really appreciate that. So I want to say thank you, and so we have a few things to give you just to recognize your service. And so we have one thing that is to keep you warm. And so I'm going to go ahead and pass these out to you, and I'm going to pass them out to you,

Can you look at that? Sure. Are we allowed

to get whiskey? Not that kind of warm.

So you guys can go ahead and open

those.

Thank you.

And this is from the district to say thank you. Yes, I wrap gnome,

Barbara. Wow,

cool. That's really nice. Thank you, Sean. That's very nice.

So actually, that's from all of us in the district. But I went ahead and got something a little more personal for you guys. And this is from me. And so as you probably see me all the time, you probably don't see me without something like this in my hand all the time, a notebook. And this is really important to me. I have a series of notebooks that I keep throughout a year and it's a way for me to collect my thoughts. It's for me to collect the thoughts of others. And it's also a way for me when I have that pen to paper, it helps me remember things more intently. And so I always have a journal with me and it's really important to me and I often go back to it and refer to it. And so what I did was I got each of you a journal. And in this journal, on the very first page, I wrote a quote that reminds each of you individually. So I thought of you individually, and I put a quote in there that I think represents how I see you. And so I'm going to hand those out to you, and I'll just take a moment to take a look at that quote. know that I truly appreciate the support that you give me as superintendent and truly appreciate how you push my thinking and how you support my growth and help me be the best leader I can be in this district. So.

This is like a movie where like, you two are competing. Well, I brought you all a car.

you're welcome so

thank you for all that you do

So over the last few weeks, I've been spending a lot of time in our schools and working with parent focus groups around our strategic planning process and just wanting to make sure that everyone has a collective understanding of the work that we're doing and also giving them opportunities to give some input around that work. And I look forward at some point to bringing that back to the board table. And Joe and I have been looking at the calendar and thinking about a way that we can do that at a potential future meeting, and looking at how we can build that into the time that we already have established. So we'll talk about that a little later. But it's really been really well received going to each of the schools and engaging our faculties. And it's really fostering a lot of excitement. Um, the right now we are kind of starting the season of curriculum reviews. And so over the next couple months, we're going to be bringing forth a lot of different curriculum reviews, um, for you to, uh, know a little bit about and, and, um, I think it's important to know that there's been a lot of work, a lot of collective work that's been put into these collective, the curriculum review. the curriculum review process. And we've also been very intentional about how we bring that work back to you, and we don't want each review to feel like it's inconsistent. So we want to make sure we're coming together, and when we're coming together we're being consistent about the way we're presenting this review process. And so you know that we have curriculum coordinators across all the content areas, but the way we're designing this is that Since Melaina is in charge of teaching and learning, she's really going to set the stage for all of us. And then the curriculum coordinators are going to just share the goals. And then Melaina is going to bring her back around in terms of how do we see the impact of that goal playing out in our schools. And so we're trying to be very succinct, but with enough detail that gives the board enough information about the direction that we're moving with our curriculum reviews. And so tonight, we have the library review. And I wanna say to you is that we're bringing these goals forward as not as the board, we're not asking the board to change the goals because we came to you as part of this review process to get information from you, to get input. And right now we're really bringing back what we've come up with, and this is how we're moving forward. So it's really informing you how the direction that we're moving forward and so so we just wanted to make sure that you understood that I have had just wanted to share with you is that I have had the privilege to be selected to be part of a an administrative cohort that is nationwide that allows me to work with administrators from across the country and including Alaska that we meet once a month virtually, and we talk about the library standards from the American Association of School Librarians. And we're giving input to the work and talking about how we as leaders can help foster leadership with our librarians. And so I was very excited to be nominated by Victoria Jones, and it's been a great learning experience for me. So at this point, we're going to have Milena and Victoria come up. Oh, shoot, I keep doing that. Sorry. Adam, I apologize. I have it on my sheet. I always just forget to... We're going to have Adam, and then we'll have Melaina and Victoria.

All right. I also want to say that I've had such a great time working with all of you, and thank you for the work that you do, and I now understand how much work goes into this, and even more that you all do than me, and it's just nice knowing that there are folks who care about who we are and what we're doing, so I appreciate that. So for some student... communications. One, the musical The Wizard of Oz at the high school was this past weekend and it was phenomenal. It was just unbelievable. I got to go pop in for a little bit although I was out of town that weekend for speech and debate but I heard it was just unbelievable and the parts that I saw were really amazing. For some elementary news, I heard that Captain had a family dance and so just excited that they're always doing stuff over there. And then I talked about the eighth graders were supposed to come into the high school to get acquainted, but that got moved to April 3rd or 4th because we had a snow day on the day that they were supposed to come in. And then we had DECA districts yesterday, which is an organization that focuses on youth competition around business. And so we had over 30 people qualify to state. which is unbelievable, and we had a really strong showing. And then we're continuing with Clayton Conversations, which is something we've talked about a little bit, but the direction is changing still in what we want it to be. So it's a place where students can come together from all across different grade levels to talk about issues facing CHS students and some ideas to solve them. And so we've taken a little bit of a different direction and tried to have students facilitate conversations instead of having faculty members do that. So I went into the meeting and I helped facilitate our little group, and this time we were talking about homework after our thought exchange that I brought up a few meetings ago where we talked about what were the biggest things that stressing out our students at CHS. And so homework was the most, you can look on the thought exchange at the words that came up the most and no surprise that homework was one of them. And so we had a conversation about homework and kind of some ideas. Do we want it to be meaningful? Do we want it And so we had conversations about that. And then at the end of it, we all put in an idea for what our group thought was the best way to solve, the best way to improve homework at the high school. So that's been going really well, and the direction's becoming clearer every time that we do it. And lastly, I sent out the first email to the student body. And so we, I know we talked about that last, that last board meeting, but that was something that I wanted to start doing. And so, uh, I waited in part of, it was thoughtful that I wanted to wait for around a semester before getting myself, you know, under, I wanted to understand exactly what was going on and I wanted to get my feet under me before really going out and sending emails to the student body, but now that I've had around a semester, I feel comfortable and and feel informed about what I'm saying. And so I sent out the first email, and I'll be starting what's called the student rundown, where I'll give the student body some information about what we've talked about at the district advisory council meeting and at the board table so that they can feel informed. So yeah. Thank

you very much. So now we're going to have the library curriculum and program self-study year two. And just again, as a reminder, right, this is the reason why this is an information item, not a study item, because this is really just an update. This is not to change the goals, but just to give us an update on where they are.

Good evening. How are you? So we're gonna focus tonight really on kind of three chunks of this. One chunk is gonna be the last time that we came to the table, just a quick overview of what we presented at that point, what we heard from you and how that informed us moving forward. Then Victoria will talk about the goals that we've decided on related to library curriculum. And then I'll pick it back up to talk about moving forward as a consequence of these goals, how will we look different in the future? So when we came to the table the last time, there were three areas that we were considering including. So we called them at that time inquiry, equity, and leadership. And we were thinking about these through three lenses, the idea of pedagogy, the idea of staff practices and skills, and then materials. And each of these lenses would really be evident within all three of these areas. So when we came to talk about those, a couple things that we heard from you related to really thinking more broadly about the role that librarians can play. So in thinking about district work particularly around our equity goal within the district and the work that we're doing around social and emotional learning, what is the role that the librarians can play within those pieces. Thinking about our collection, so the materials that we have available to students within our libraries, and ensuring that those are well-rounded. Considering ways to collaborate with other curriculum areas, so to make sure that its library is not insular in and of itself but more broad. And then that idea of how will we measure the influence of these areas? So once we get to goal statements, how will we end up measuring those pieces? So Victoria's gonna talk about how that has influenced our thinking to our goal statements now.

So the first goal focuses on inquiry, and inquiry has long been in the school librarian's wheelhouse. It's kind of what we do, but through our study over the past two years, we've kind of come to a new expanded view of inquiry, and we realize it's much more than our traditional research that we've been teaching kids. It also includes innovation, maker spaces, engineering, problem solving across all the disciplines. And then our second goal is around leadership. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education scoring guide for the new exemplary library program, six of the 21 indicators are in the category of leadership. And Sean spoke about librarians as leaders. So we believe that librarians are in a unique school-wide position that can affect change across grade levels and disciplines. We can break down silos between subjects and help connect the dots for our teachers and our students for all of the learners. And then through goal number three, our librarians will use an equity lens to curate strong collections and provide programming that emphasizes diversity. Our goal is to make sure that our students have mirrors that reflect themselves and windows to look into the lives and experiences of others. But beyond providing the materials, we also want to make sure that we're promoting those diverse resources and that our students and teachers are accessing them. Because if they're just sitting on the shelf, then we're not really doing what we could be doing.

So then when we thought about how will we look different as a consequence of the work on these goals and thinking about making long-term change, we wanted to present this to you through the lens of both the profile of the graduate and then we had given you a new copy of the American Association of School Librarian Standards, which are relatively new for us also. So the inquiry goal, we think from the profile of the graduated allows us really to focus in the area of intellectual curiosity and creative thinking. And then from the ASL piece, it's really that first column around inquire. So that idea of building new knowledge by inquiring, thinking critically, identifying problems and developing strategies for solving problems. The leadership strand from the profile, we feel like it really touches on that idea of collaborator and self-actualized. And from the ASL, it's allowing us to think cross-curricularly about all of these standards. One of the things that we think is really important about these standards is librarians can't own them. that they have to be a part of the work across all disciplines. So Victoria's already done some work with all coordinators to have them be familiar with these and see through the lens of the work that you do within your content area, how are you already touching on some of these areas? So we'll continue that work. And then the diversity goal is really about diversifying the materials and how we promote them to patrons. So from the profile, we really feel like it's focusing in that empathetic piece as well as sorry, as well as the culturally competent piece. And then from the ASL piece, it's about this, the columns around include and curate. So from a measurement perspective, um, as we continue the work within the district, um, around the profile of the graduate, and then thinking about better connections with the ASL standards, we're already planning from a district level to develop, um, some, some measurement criteria that will help, uh, in the measurement of success. both in the profile that we think will also influence then these goals. So while that work is happening district-wide, librarians would look to develop updated standards of professional practice for the librarians, so how we go about evaluating our librarians. We'll also be looking at how we go about the evaluating the profile of the graduate. Measuring the inquiry and diversity goals could prove to be more tangible for us. So we'll know that we're doing it if we see children engaged in more activities around inquiry. And if we see more content areas being connected in those areas. And then we'll know about the diversity goal really to that piece of is our collection both more diverse and are children accessing those materials and teachers accessing those materials? So patrons. Patrons. as a whole. So that's the work that we have done at this point. We feel really good about these goals and we're really thankful to you for the support that you provide to our librarians and the work that they're doing.

Thank you, Milena and Victoria. We really appreciate it. Does anybody have any questions for Milena or Victoria? Sorry, Amy? I just have

one, and I'm sorry. I know this is informational, and when I was reading through this stuff, I just had one question that popped into my mind, so I'm sorry if this is not informational. But I was wondering how with the work with dyslexia and struggling readers, how we're incorporating that into what you guys are doing with the self-study with the library and all this great stuff and how that fits in.

Actually, well, the American Association of School Librarians has just released a, I guess, a statement about librarians as literacy leaders and what our role is. So that's something that librarians at our next meeting, after we talk about what went on here and our report, we will... be looking at that. And we work really closely with our reading specialists. In fact, I just had a webinar with the two reading specialists at Y down last week to look at what materials to help them curate materials and what's appropriate for students who may be striving to be better readers And then also we have digital collections. So we're offering, yeah. And we have, what's great, we bought into a consortium through MoreNet that provides a lot of our digital databases and things. We bought into OverDrive. You might be familiar. That's how the public library gets their audio and e-books. And they have a new student application. It just came out last spring, and we bought into it at that time. And so our students can access books. They can change the print, change the background, all of that. But then also they have audio books. They can access our collection. And then depending on what level, they can access that level of the public library collection. And our students all have digital virtual library cards. And we did a rollout of that last year at parent-teacher conferences. And we've been informing teachers. We did big trainings at each of the buildings to inform the teachers that they can use funds also to purchase materials that would kind of be in that library collection, but they can assign those materials to certain students for a period of time. We'll be on top of that. No problem.

Thank you very much. The report was just really it's exciting kind of what you guys have ahead of you and it's very clear and yeah I'm particularly impressed with you know really going with that idea of being leaders for the district and that it sounds I mean I know you have been and to kind of put it down on paper and to have it channeled towards some certain specific areas. That's great. So I have some, my questions might fit for as we're going into this curriculum review season, you know, that this might fit for all more or all curricular areas, so it might be more of a Milena question. And I do have a few that are specific to the library. So one question I have is, and you just mentioned it, Milena, this idea of with diversity, the measurable being something like more content, more books, more whatever. And I guess my question for you guys to think about is more than what? You know, like, so do you have a baseline so that you're going to know that it's more than we currently have. Because I thought that as I was reading it and then to have you say that.

One of the things that Victoria and I have talked about is kind of an equity audit. And the librarians have tried some different tools out and are looking at exploring some tools to sort of, decide whether it be as a grade span or as a librarian group as a whole, what's the way that we're going to go about sort of assessing what we have and then making decisions about what's the improvement. So how do we improve from there? What's your

goal and how are you going to measure it?

So that's coming still within the work that we're doing.

Okay. Should I keep going? Okay. Also on the diversity piece, I wondered, and this does get into specifics, but you guys mentioned something about challenging prejudices. And I wondered within that if you also were including kind of challenging stereotypes and biases too.

Definitely.

Maybe you need to, I guess maybe I would suggest actually having those words in there because I don't think prejudice is, capture some of those other things that I bet you're going to be challenging people's thinking, students' thinking. And then I also wanted to mention something about I talked with several students from our Black Student Union at the high school, and they happened to cover something that really made me think about the work that our literacy folks do and that you may do. They mentioned something about that they've noticed the increase, and most of these kids were seniors, that they noticed the increase in reading books and maybe the core books that they're reading with black protagonists and that, but they also said it'd be really nice to have more reading around you know, African-American protagonists or stories that are not always about adversity and struggles. Okay, so you guys are thinking about that, that show some of the kind of the range of experiences of all groups of people. Okay, great. And then I wanted to ask about the parent board input piece. I didn't see any parents as being involved in the curriculum committee, and I continue to. I know I've raised this before. I have heard from community members that have wanted to be on curriculum committees that want to give their time and haven't been able to. And as a board, we're not on these. We're not this year doing assigned to particular central office staff as we had been in the past. So I am concerned that we're missing that parent community input at each stage. I know they're more helpful at other stages of the study and the review process, and I hope that we, and I won't be on the board, but I hope that we kind of figure out a way to get back to ensuring that parent community input as a part of our reviews. I think that's all.

This might be a bit background, but could you just maybe explain a little bit the staffing? I guess I'm more thinking about the elementary levels because I've been in more elementary libraries. Are you talking here about the staffing, two library and then one ed tech? Can you just talk about what those positions actually are and what they do, and are they... What else do they, I know some of them have duties outside the library too. Can you just maybe give us an overview of what staffing those positions are? I mean, I know the librarian, but I don't really know who else those people are or what else they do. I'd just be interested in that.

Yeah, so at each elementary school we have a full-time certified librarian. The librarian also, all three librarians also have duties like lunch or recess duty. And then each library has a library assistant, and that person also has duties outside the library. And one of our concerns has long been that the duties vary depending on the school, and it's up to the principal to decide where people are. are spending their time. But in one school, the library assistant has quite a bit more duty than the other two. But the expectations for the services from the library are the same. I would say teachers in the district talk and parents in the district talk, and they compare. And one library assistant spends more time doing duties. So that reduces the amount of time she can devote to the library. Their duty, the library assistants do most of the clerical work. So the checking in, checking out, reshelving, organizing things. They also work with the librarian to do some of the different programming and may assist the librarians in some of the teaching. Librarians do teaching, they co-teach, they collaborate with the teachers, we plan with teachers. And then our ed tech specialists are the ones who really teach teachers and students about technology applications, and they also co-teach and co-plan with teachers.

So is it true that the EdTech staff, is library or library responsibilities kind of their main thing, or is that not the case? No, it is a

separate department in Clayton. I put them together mostly because of that middle school piece, because at middle school we shared an intern, and when that position was cut due to finances several years ago, it cut a half a position from ed tech and a half a position library. At the middle school level, we do kind of do some job sharing. When a teacher's having a tech issue and the ed tech is teaching in another class or working with another teacher, then I go or my assistant, oh, we know how to sort of fix things, you know what I mean? We've helped each other out. And when we have something going on like an author visit where I need to be there and my assistant needs to be there, the ed tech will bring her laptop out and work at our circulation desk so we don't have to close the library. That's sort of unique to the middle school because we lost that position. Yeah.

Thank you. Other questions? Jason? Yeah.

How closely do the teachers' curriculums... work with the librarians' curriculums? Like do you all work close together like, yeah.

Our curriculum doesn't work without. Our curriculum is very process-based, so without content of what's going on in the classrooms, we really, you know, it would just be going through the motions. So to make it really meaningful and engaging for our students, we collaborate with the teachers. And at the elementary schools, they have ongoing meetings where the ed tech and the librarian and usually the reading teacher Coach then reading coach will all meet together with the teams of teachers to talk about what's coming up in the curriculum and how can we take a lead on some things and where does that fit in our standards and how can we Take things off of your plate and vice versa. And at the middle school and high school level, everything we teach is through the content areas, through the classes.

One of the decisions that we made in thinking about this leadership goal and thinking about that connection of curriculum areas was to take the librarians and spread them among the other content curriculum committees. so that we had a librarian in social studies, so that they're a part of that work also to then really be able to deliberately make those connections and more purposefully work together as opposed to sort of going to search for it, having it be built in as a

process. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Like it's built into the process, like they're directly connected. If the teacher, if this librarian wants to recommend something, it's there because they know that that's the content that they're working on at that moment in time. Right.

And we've been looking at the role that librarians play in curriculum writing also during the summer. So for the same purposes, like as we're writing it, let's develop the partnership in that piece also.

Gotcha. And my other question was, I lost it because this is a good part of the conversation. Dang it. Okay, I'll come back. Anyone else have any questions before I come back? I actually

do have a question but I have a comment. This is the first time I've been involved with a library curriculum review and I just wanted to compliment you. I really enjoyed reading through this and I think it was done really well and I

Thank you. I

love seeing how you tie the goals into the strategic plan, and then also how well our strategic plan fits with the . It made me feel good about where we're heading as a district. But I also really like reading it because

But I was really impressed with the, like, depth and wide reach outside of those.

Thank you.

Anyway, good job. Thank you.

So some students had a question about looking at the idea of literature appreciation and how that's one of the goals of the AASL as well. and how to connect literature appreciation, and how it ties into the high school and the middle school specifically, where you don't just have one teacher, so you know how much time in the day students are reading, and how to increase time for students, especially at the middle school, but especially at the high school with time that they get in class, in the school day to focus on independent reading.

wish there were more time for them to do that so I was excited to hear about your homework conversation because I think that's where our competition lies so I yeah it makes me sad sometimes when I visit the high school and I run into somebody who was a voracious reader at middle school and I say what have you read lately and they name the things that are assigned reading I know that our You know, English teachers at the high school have made a very conscientious effort in the last few years to have independent reading as a part of the curriculum. Where before, actually, I would say it was a lot worse some years ago, where there was no choice reading. When my daughters went to Clayton High School, and one of them graduated ten years ago, the baby. But there was no such thing as independent reading. There never was a choice. It was only the assigned reading at the high school. So I think we're heading in a better direction with that. We try to do things like promoting summer reading or having at the high school now we have Project Lit which has drawn in a lot of it's a national program that we learned about at one of our conferences and it's really promoting the reading and discussion of diverse literature in the YA realm, and we're thinking of starting that at the middle school. We do promotional things like reading the award winners. We have at the middle school and the high school reader selectors who, after a committee has narrowed the list down to 25 books for the Missouri awards for high school and middle school, then this group can read all 25 books from August through winter break and then vote on those, and that narrows the list down to 10 or 12 that the whole state votes on. So we have programs like that, but we're always looking for ideas. So if students have ideas or if students at the middle school, we also have a book club in a bag that kids can check out. But if you guys have ideas, we're really open to what those would be as well.

Yeah, and when you just said that, a few students had this really cool idea in talking about the idea of having librarians in certain curriculum groups. And I think that one of the ideas was if librarians, especially looking at honors and AP-level classes at the high school where there's really no time for independent reading, that having a librarian helping with that curriculum could be really helpful to get either some more diversity in the reading and some more time for that independent reading. So I thought that was a neat idea.

That's a great idea.

My other question was, while putting this together, how much contact or how much engagement did you have with teachers while putting this together? Because I didn't really see a lot of that in here. But maybe it's for me to assume. I just want to know how much. And then the second part of that question would be, how much requesting do they give you of books and different things that they want in the library? So that's a two-part question.

Yeah, sure. So the first part, we have a list of our committee members, and they're mostly teachers. It's mostly teachers. We tried to get representation from all the schools, all of the different, we used to call them key stage levels, but the younger grades, the middle grades, and so forth, and then also we have an ed tech and an administrator. So we had a lot of input from them. And then I would go back to the notes. We had people kind of reflect individually on our standards and where they thought we were doing really well, and then also where some of our relative weaknesses were. And then they got into groups and discussed and fleshed out those ideas even more. And I kept all of their notes as well. So as librarians were working on this report, and I can't say it's my report, we did it collaboratively, we kept referring back to those notes. And if we had questions of a specific teacher, we're like, what did you mean when you wrote this kind of thing? So we tried to keep checking back in with them over the process. And to answer your second question about teachers requesting materials, that is probably about 50% of, of what we have in the library comes from teacher and student recommendations. Um, so we really, we appreciate those cause we can't always keep up with everything that's coming at us.

Yeah. Right, right, right, right.

Cause there's a lot being published and, and some of it's very, very good. And some of it isn't.

Right.

Any other questions? Sorry. Just one thing. And I'm sorry for sort of the, um, side chatter over here. I just wanted to point out, and this is not the nitpick, but I think in the staffing chart there's maybe some a mistake in the student population, so I would just maybe check that. I think we have it off, frankly. Oh,

I'm sorry.

Just because people... We don't want people to think there's 100 more students. I got it from one

of our registrars. Right, and less teachers. So sorry about that.

I thought it was that much bigger. I really did.

I was like, wow, Glen Ridge is so much bigger. I got it. and she probably just mistyped it when she

emailed that to me. Thank you. No, no, no, I

appreciate that. And you know what? When it was such an outlier like that, my little statistical mind should have questioned that. I appreciate that. I wondered why it was so

true. I had written one question to Sean and Joe, and that is I am wondering if If this is something we're going to want to get back to, I guess, I don't remember how long ago. It wasn't that long ago we started. We had requested, the board had requested that the that there was a page or so on any budget implications. And I know you kind of, you described it in the narrative. And so, yeah, that would be good for us to know.

Well, that's actually my mistake. There's one thing missing from the document, which is we always give you the financials from Mary Jo's office, and I just forgot to put it in there. So that will come in the second version of the report also of like what we have spent. And then the second piece about your question about budget implications moving forward, one of the reasons why there isn't a page here is because Victoria and I had a long conversation about there's actually really only one thing that we're suggesting as a budget increase. Everything else we feel like we can handle without this. And it's the elementary budget related to collection that we're looking for an increase, partially because we haven't had an increase in that since the last time we came to the table. So that's been flat. And also because as we start to think differently about digital materials, and you can speak more to this, but the digital materials are more expensive than print materials and sort of how we curate those is a little bit different. And so that's really what we were looking at, the only implication for, so normally like we bring forward like professional development things and all those, we are not, no, we are not. And then the staffing, The way that we phrased it in here was to say, we probably need to have some conversation about staffing, but it has to fit into a bigger conversation about staffing across the district. So as we have that conversation as administrators and thinking about that, that this would be a piece that we would talk about and try to figure out what are our priorities district-wide around staffing.

I wonder if... whatever that page is that you add, you might want to at least, even if we're figuring out how to kind of move funds from something, at least having it clear that we needed this another half position. I think it's important that that doesn't get lost, that kind of what we're needing and what we're fulfilling. I mean, I think it's great when we figure out ways to do it without increasing the budget. Okay. Yet I'm not sure we want to lose that, just like you were able to say, we got rid of that half position. I'm just throwing that out there. You might not want to lose that. I

didn't mean to imply that that was how we were going to approach it. What I meant to imply was when we come forward with staffing as a whole within the district, that it would fall within that piece. We've really debated about what to do about staffing because we really don't feel like it should fall within a curriculum review process, but with programs that are programs and curriculum areas, it feels a little bit different. So we wanted to acknowledge it here knowing that if we were going to bring something forward, it would come forward in something coming from HR as an overall staffing

piece. Right. The whole big picture.

Yeah.

Thank you both. We appreciate it. Okay, so we are going to move on to study items. I will say this first one which is the BOE onboarding really is more of an information item this time because what we're going to do is push it to a study item for next meeting. So maybe I'll just set it up and Amy you could add anything. So what you have in front of you, right, is you should have a packet like this, right, which is you've seen the packet. but this is now assigned sections, right? So Amy and I went, and Amy did very nice color coding. Thank you, Amy, in terms of who would do what section. And what we'd ask you to do is have your section ready And we'll share, there's basically a Google Doc that we'll share with everybody so we can all work in the Google Doc. We'd ask you to have your sections, either you say, hey, they're great, or you revise them by February the 17th, which is President's Day. So that we can have a discussion and we will put this as a study item on February 19th. We just decided we needed, we weren't really, it would be better to do it that way than have a discussion today rather than, you know, have people do some work right ahead of time. And then with the hope. that we would go ahead and approve it at our first meeting in March, which is March 5th, I think, maybe. Is that right? March 5th? So that we would have plenty of time to have the plan and be ready for basically the onboarding, right, of new members for the April 7th election, right? So that's the plan, just so... So it's not really meant, yeah, I know we put it on a study item but it's not really to discuss, right, is what, I don't know. Amy, what would you add?

No, I agree. I just, I don't that I'd add anything other than just a clarifying question. So are we all going to be, do we, are we supposed to be making our changes within the Google Doc or?

Yes. Okay. Yeah, because that way then everybody can kind of see them as we're going, right? And so the idea is that it's one joint document, right, that we can all have access to, right, and we can make them.

I guess how – but then we can't see, like unless people are using a red line, actual red lining, you can't see – The changes that have been, you know what I'm

saying? You can track changes. What we'll do is we can set it up where when we reshare it with you, you can track changes and so you can see the changes.

Okay.

There's a mode where you can go change it so that it doesn't actually change anything but if you would just click a check mark it would change it so it It's like tracking the changes, except you don't have to go before and after. It just does it all for you, and you don't implement it right away, so you see what the... It's hard to explain, but you can see what the changes are and what you want to cross out, so I can... Yeah.

Okay. In Google Docs. Yeah,

it's in Google Docs. I'm used to Word, so... I'm going to figure out what it's called. It's very similar to Word. Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

The first 16 of these are already written, so you're

looking for editing. That's correct. The

other

Those were ones that we talked about, so we put them in, but we didn't put anything into those yet. So thank you for that clarification. So those are more create, right? What we had done, what Amy and I had done for the first part is we kind of cobbled together, quite honestly, what other, you know, we took a little bit of ours, but took what other folks had done, and we just didn't do that for the last four because they were more specific input per our last discussion or so.

And we do have a document, and Lily didn't, and I think Gary too, the board ethics document that we created, we can dump in there too because that was already something that we started. So I'll make sure that that gets in there as well.

Okay, go ahead. So this will be, what I'm about to say isn't necessarily a critique of any particular language, but it's more about the tone. It seems a little micromanaging. A little bit. Are we able to also get feedback on that at all? Okay, cool. Absolutely. I want to make sure. I know it's just a skeleton. I don't want to go into that tonight. Yeah, yeah.

No, no. The idea, and that's why we wanted to have a little more time, Jason, because to that point, each of us is going to work on a section, but then we're all going to talk about the entire thing on February 19th, right? So you don't have to just speak to your section. You can speak to any section or the tone. Make some

notes, whatever. That's right. This was

just really kind of to prime the pump, right? To get us thinking and going. It's not meant to be the be all and end all. That's kind

of how I kind of took it.

I

think that, yeah, and I think there's parts that are really important for onboarding and for being a good board member, in my opinion, and that aren't that aren't any of the items. Like, for instance, and I don't think we as a board have figured this out either. We haven't gotten to that, which is in kind of the book that we read, the idea of debating. So there's really not a section that describes how we're supposed to have those kind of discussions and when in the board meeting. Well, I think it's you're adding a structure, so it's kind of sort of happened that we don't do it in information and we don't do But we haven't really talked about how and when we're going to have, besides work sessions, when and how we have back-and-forth discussions and big-picture discussions and things that I think your point's a good one about micromanaging. I mean, when you look at this, this is all about kind of how to be well-behaved as a board so that we function efficiently and effectively. But it's missing something about it. about kind of the value and the importance and the vision that the board can bring. It's kind of missing that, that I think is a really important part of our work. And maybe it's not supposed to be that. Because I know you wanted to keep it to 10 pages or whatever. So maybe when we think, when you guys think about the onboarding, that you think about some way of really talking about this is what we do, and this is our role in the district that's, I don't know, the richer, deeper, more meaningful aspect. and the hashing out stuff that really matters for the district. This doesn't get at it, and I would hate for this somehow to feel like, for a new board member, okay, I got it, this is what I do.

Well, I think you should bring that forward on the 19th, right? I mean, because what we'll do is make this more... I don't remember

how to say

it. This will be more robust, right? And then hopefully we'll all have reviewed it, and we can talk about those kinds of things. Absolutely. Any other... Yeah, Adam?

Okay, so I... Here's, you'll see a little thing. I'll show you really quick so that you know how to do it. But there's a little button over here that says, there's a little pencil. And if you click on that, and then you go down to suggesting, you see that little green? So I made a change in my document, but it didn't actually change it. It just showed the change. So if you click that, you just go into it. Yeah, it's called suggesting. And then also the other thing is, I was going to, I've been working on some ideas for a student rep. copy of this, so I'll bring that up at, I can prepare that for the 19th too.

One thing I really like about this is that this process that you guys are suggesting, I'm not very good with Google Docs either, but I know my kids are and I know you guys all do it in school. So I think learning this as a learning and teaching each other tool is good for all of us. I was also relieved because when I sat down tonight and I saw this on the table and I saw my name next to something, I thought I had not prepared for something that I was supposed to do tonight. So I was relieved to find out that that was not the case.

We want to give everybody ample time, and we hadn't really assigned it to give people ample time. So we just wanted to make sure we had time. Yeah. So any other questions or comments about the process, right? Again, we'll do our homework February 17th. Please have your stuff in. And then we'll have a discussion on the 19th with the hope that we approve it on March 5th so that we can have plenty of time to have a robust process figured out for onboarding. Right. Temple minute. Good. Okay, awesome. So then we'll move on to 7.02, which is policy JHD student counseling program. Robin.

Good evening. So tonight policy update JHD is up as a study item and the policy that was included in your information for this evening is just based on MSBA's revised policy based on House Bill 1606, which was passed in 2018, which basically charges DESE with developing a process that would involve a multifaceted advisory council to help review a district's counseling program. And so at this point in time, I would recommend that the Board of Education approve policy JHD with the recommended changes.

Any questions about this one?

Adam? I'm curious about the individual student planning and how that's changing from what it already is. Is there any big change? I know that we go through like college. We'll meet with our counselors at the high school for 15 minutes, but I don't know. Is that changing?

No, the updates to this policy won't impact that. What this really focuses more in terms of just the biggest difference from the current policy that's in place is the formation of the School Counseling Advisory Council.

Other questions? Stacey?

So several times in the document they mentioned career counseling, like academic and career counseling, but I didn't really see where maybe in a couple places it talked about that including college. I don't know, the word... Maybe that means employment. So I just didn't know if there's anywhere to add something about college planning. It just kind of says career planning. Maybe I missed that.

You know what, that is something I will bring back to the counseling team. It could be a revision in terminology as it relates to the comprehensive school counseling program standards. And so I will take a closer look with the team to see if that is when they say career, I know it involves helping students determine what careers might be of interest to them and then the different pathways to reach those career goals. But that is something I can definitely bring back to the team for further review.

Thank you. Other questions or comments? I just want

to make sure Stacey's clear about what Stacey's asking. So Stacey's saying that there wasn't much of college counseling mentioned in here, right? Is that what you're saying?

Right, they kept saying career

counseling.

But there was nothing, I don't know if that includes college to get to your career or just career after high school.

And you're going to clarify if this document wasn't strictly about like career in general. Because there's also a document, a policy around college counseling. Isn't there something like that around college counseling?

No, that's different from this one.

Okay.

Good question and we'll get it clarified.

Can I build on that just for a sec? I think that really is an important question because I think it raises, I mean given our demographics and kind of what we strive for the majority of our students say it is college. And so I wonder if this is just kind of the way MSBA recommends it for, so it fits for all schools throughout the state, and if there's just room to add that or to change the wording for us. And that wouldn't change the intent and meaning of the policy.

Yeah. Right.

Any other questions? Thank you, Robin. Thank you. Okay, so we're moving on to 7.03, which is policy JECC, assignment of students to grade levels. Melaina.

I actually just saw a typo that I have on the mic.

There's no way I'll catch another one. No, I called

it the wrong policy on the... Executive summary. So JECC, the assignment of students to grade levels, the things that have changed, I feel like every time I come it's because of the same thing. Because of virtual education and the law that has changed around virtual education that the addition here, first of all, is just language about changing MoVIP to MoCap because the state has renamed the virtual education piece. And then there is the piece about transfer while enrolled in mocap. Um, and so that, that piece is new. So students who transfer the district while enrolled in one or more mocap courses will remain enrolled in those courses in the, the The implication around that is that we would then take over the payment of that if it's during the school year and it's not above the FTE, the full-time enrollment piece. So just sticking with the law. That's really the only change here, so I would recommend moving forward with the policy as written.

Any questions about this one?

I have some. Did you kind of think I might have some? I was hoping we were connected in that way. I guess we're not connected. Maybe we'll connect now. Maybe we'll and very short, but very fascinating. And the reason why I think it's fascinating is because to me this is like the crux of like the tone deafness of the business of education. So work with me on this, right? So I'm reading about, so what is it, let's see. Last paragraph on page five. Right before that paragraph, right? It talks about, it says, in general, if a student transferred to the school district of Clayton from an unaccredited school, the principal or designee will examine a number of criteria to determine grade level or class placement, including age, achievement test, or other performance data, transcripts, course descriptions, textbooks, et cetera, right? And I said, okay, that's interesting because I'm reading the rest of this and it kind of falls in line. But then I start to read like the last paragraph and I'm going back to what I read in the beginning. And then so the last paragraph, for example, says where it says transfer the students of military families, right? It says... like second, third sentence down, says the district will initially place the student, and this is a student who is, okay, let me read it, make sure I'm clear about this. If a transfer student is in the household of an active duty member of the military, including students in the household of certain veterans who are deceased or injured as defined by law, the district will initially, place the student in the same course and programs The student was in while attending the previous district, right? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so it said to me, first I was like, okay, I kind of get it. Then I was like, I don't really get this because it sounds a little discriminatory. So my thought is if we're thinking about equity, an equitable process. I'd be thinking like all kids should be, we should assume that they're transferring and they're coming from, they're on par with the grade that they came from. And then over time, we'll test everyone and we'll figure out whether they are or not, or whether they should stay, right? Or whether we need to tweak a few things. But this doesn't say that at all. This says that If you're basically coming from an unaccredited school district, a poor school district, where a majority of them are in black communities, then we're going to assume that you don't belong in there. We're going to test you off the top. There's no benefit of the doubt here. But... Military kids, they get love. And other kids from, like, you know, schools that are... Right, so to your point

on the first page, if they're transferring from an accredited school district, we're treating it differently also.

Right, right. And so, yes, I just want to make sure we're thinking about this through the right lens. So I just want to making sure we put on our lens here, an equitable lens here, and let's just think about that. Is that equitable? Is this a policy that we want to support? Or is there some way that we can...

reword it

yeah as clayton as leaders can we make this thing work for us

so what i can do between now and the next meeting is um barb and i can talk to the lawyers to the msba lawyers to see so my my question that i think i hear you asking is why are why are we treating why is the language different if a student is transferring to the district from an unaccredited district versus an accredited district a virtual school or if they're a member of a military family exactly okay

It doesn't sound like it's the language. It sounds like it's the practice. Yeah, it's not the language.

So I was just being nice about that part, but it is the actual policy itself.

Yeah.

But I don't want to back into it on the policy part. I always back into the policies, how messed up it is.

Well, why wouldn't it be consistent? Okay. I mean, I think, to me, I didn't catch that, so thank you, but it's like, why would we be inconsistent? I know you can make kind of...

Mm-hmm.

you know, maybe assumptions about unaccredited, but not about a particular child. So you all kind of see that? I mean, yeah. But accredited in every state means something different. Yeah. And for each child, it doesn't mean...

And we don't really play... We don't measure ourselves, our own classes, just by state accreditation standards, really. I mean, so if that's the benchmark that determines whether you go into more evaluation or less evaluation... And I think there's at least an argument that that's not the

right thing. Right, because you can be uncredited for, and Joe, I think you can speak to this as an expert. You can be uncreditated, unaccredited school district, not just by test scores, but through finances, right? And so it's kind of, you know, I don't know how to say this, but yeah, it's just doesn't, it seems like there's some errors here.

Even test scores, I mean, they're aggregate. So you can't, shouldn't make assumptions about a given child.

Right, right, exactly.

Even if partially it is based on the test scores as the district.

So if I can ask a follow-up question. On page 3, so the first time that it talks about a student transferring in. So in general, if a student transfers to the school district of Clayton from an accredited school, this district will accept the units of credit completed in the previous school or school district, rely on the grade level placement in the previous school to the extent that it coincides with the district's program. and we may adjust the student's placement as needed to meet his or her educational needs after consultation with the students. So are we okay with keeping that language consistent across all? Yeah. Okay. I

would

think so, yeah. Because

then

it's saying, yeah, the district can adjust it if needed.

Yeah, when I read that part, I was like, oh, that's love. And then I started to kind of fade off a little bit, and then I said, oh, wait, this is a discrepancy here.

So that'll be the question that I ask to them.

Well, I think, too, that this is not a policy that is like this last year's change of law response to, so we probably have some, we're not under the gun.

Yeah. Any other questions or comments? Thank you, Milena.

Thank you.

All right. So we're now moving to 7.04, policy DJF, purchasing construction bids. Mary Jo.

And I apologize. Somehow my executive summary isn't posted. But it basically summarized what's already in the policies already. And both of them are statutory. Both of them are basically related to each other because of rural districts. They were the ones that were pretty much requesting this. We're actually also seeing difficulty in getting some bids and getting multiple bids when we post them, and that's pretty much what their problem was, as well as the prevailing wage rates weren't really representative of out-state jobs. So the Missouri Congress decided to change that to make it easier for the out-state districts And when it comes to construction, the definition of construction is very broad. So painting is considered construction. Any repairs to buildings is considered construction. So typically whenever they make changes to construction, they make changes to all purchasing because they don't want any confusion in those definitions. And so this will therefore impact all purchases. One thing that's kind of vague in there, but they didn't discuss it in the summary, but it is down in the wording. We've been bringing bid summaries to the board before we go out to bid for anything that's over $25,000. we request approval of that. They have changed that so that if it's already in the budget document and we've outlined it, we only bring them forward if it's a change. So we normally have all of those large purchases outlined in the budget document in the summaries. I'll make sure I am discussing them and then unless you guys wanted to change policy but the only thing that would change is if it wasn't in the budget that we would then bring it forward if it was over $50,000 not 25. Change order stays the same at the $15,000, so what we're doing on construction would not change.

Questions on this one?

I have one. So purchasing supervision, and this is just me thinking about business. It says the chief financial officer will serve as the district's purchasing officer or will designate purchasing officer. I think we should be deliberate about that, or intentional in saying that it should be separate. Meaning like there should be a CFO and then there should be a purchasing officer. Just so there's no funny business. There's no mishandling of funds or going back and reconciling something after the fact to fix something. You know what I'm saying?

So accounting controls already make sure, or segregation of duties that the auditors look at when they report already make sure that that isn't something that I can do. Well, it's kind of a little different for our district because we have a chief financial officer. So some of the outstate districts would just have superintendent would be or a designee, which is often a secretary. So I don't actually approve all of the purchases. There is a staff member that does that. So that's who technically the designee is. But any questions or all the bids all go through me as the main purchasing person. Okay.

That's

what the designee actually means, because my name is not the signature on the purchase orders. It's the other employees.

Okay, gotcha. I wasn't trying to imply anything. I was just saying we just want to make sure we're on the same page. All right.

Any other questions? Yes, Amy? So I just want to kind of ask a clarifying question. It's mostly, I guess, to Joe. So when we're reviewing, Jason's bringing up good points. But when these policies are on the agenda, and when I look at them, I'm kind of looking at the yellow, looking at the changes. But so, yeah. So I mean, I guess my question is should we be reading these more, you know, in a broader sense? Or, I mean, maybe I've been doing it wrong. I just want to make, because I think he's bringing up really good points, but they're not the yellow, you know, the changes. And so I

want

to understand what we're supposed

to do. The way I would answer that is yes, I think we should always be, because sometimes you'll read it and you'll miss something, right? So you should always be reading the whole thing.

Well, no, I mean, you read the whole thing, but you're not. But, I

mean, to the extent you see something, right? Yeah, I think it is relevant to, you know, I mean. It's a good time to bring it up. Absolutely. Yeah, it's the appropriate time. Yeah, Lily. Can I add to that?

When we talked about, like, doing an equity audit of our policies, we talked about, I mean, that that's a big deal, for one. And I think part of the rationale, and I'm not saying I, I agree that we shouldn't have done it. But part of what we talked about is that we review our policies regularly and we do it like this and that we should be doing it at that point. So to me, it says that we should be thinking this might be our opportunity that we won't have again for 10 years on that policy. And so that we really, we do have that responsibility to look at it broader too. Yeah, I think so. I think that's how we've approached it.

So any other questions on this one? Thanks, Mary Jo. So are you maybe to the next, right? Are you selling .05 policy FEF?

They are basically

the same. Yeah, the

same revisions are in both. One's basically prevailing wages and the other one combines them both.

Great. Okay, then we'll move to checkouts.

So I just want to echo that point, too. I think that it's important, that point about when we're looking at these policies, they aren't just to be looking at the changes and I think of looking at them comprehensively. And that's it. And we have so many policies that we're on this rotation of going through them. And I think about that chart that we use to look at our policies and making sure that we're looking at it with an equity lens, making sure that we are looking at it if there's anything that really doesn't match who we are as a district. And so, yeah, I think that that's really important. And so tonight what I heard was that we need to make sure that the policies that we looked at, the first one around college counseling, making sure that were really emphasizing the college counseling as part of the policy and including that and seeing if that needs to be added. And I would agree with the catch that Jason is an example of how we look at these policies really comprehensively and that equity lens, and I think that we will look at making that language at the beginning of that policy be common throughout all of the rest of the policy. So we'll see if we can make that change. Um, and then any, uh, and then some other pronoun, uh, things that Adam brought up. Yep. Um, okay.

Okay. So, uh, thank you. So we're going to move to action items and the first 8.01 is approval of policy EBBA update. So do we have a

motion Gary? Uh, yes, we do. Uh, I'm, uh, I moved that the board of education approved policy EBBA as presented.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion or questions? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, it passes 6-0 since Kristen isn't here. Okay, so we're moving to 8.02, which is approval of policy IL. Motion? I

move that

the

Board of Education approve policy IL as presented. Second. It's being moved

and seconded, any questions or comments? All in favor. Aye. Any opposed? Passes 6-0. Okay. 8.03, budget revisions number one.

Go ahead. Moved that the Board of Education approve the 2019-2020 budget revisions as submitted. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Passes 6-0. 8.04, budget revisions 2.

I move that the Board of Education approve a revision to the 2019-2020 expenditure budget to reflect total expenditures adjustments of $779,490 as submitted.

Second.

Moved and seconded. Any questions

or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, passes

6-0. Move to the consent agenda. 9.01, I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any questions or comments? All in favor? Any opposed? Passes also 6-0. So we are moving along to board. Whoops. communication does anybody have any board communications Lily

I would like to bring up a request to add an agenda item and my hope is that it's before I'm off the board I would like to request that we it had been taken off the agenda to have a discussion of the equity I'm not sure what we're calling it EQUITY AND EDUCATION OR RACIAL EQUITY. AS YOU GUYS RECALL, WE HAD A REPORT IN DECEMBER THAT WE RECEIVED AND I WOULD LIKE FOR US, I WOULDN'T WANT THE DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION TO HAVE TO DO ANYTHING ADDITIONAL. I WOULD LIKE TO BE ABLE TO TALK ABOUT THE REPORT give some input for when you guys have the final of the year. I know it's coming back up, and you'll talk about more information. I think it would be beneficial for us to talk together. It seems like when equity kind of comes up sort of in different ways that there's a lot of thoughts and ideas that board members have. So I think it would beneficial in that way. I think it could be beneficial for administration to hear some of our questions or input before they come back with the final report since they kind of are already thinking and have a structure to that. And given that Kristen and I have both been doing the equity, we aren't this year because there hasn't been board members assigned, but we had been doing it for two or three years before each of us are off the board to be able to kind of give our thoughts and questions, I think that could be beneficial too. So I am proposing that we add that to an agenda in February or March.

Other thoughts about that? Just a point of clarification, right? The process is, right, somebody brings it up, we'll talk about it, and then we'll decide all together, right, if four or more of us want to put it on the agenda, then we will. So I'm just reminding everybody of the process. But I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

So...

This includes the last meeting that we had. The data, right? Will this include the data? Can we bring that back up as well sometime in February or March?

That was in there. In the report, there were selected parts of it actually in

there. Gotcha.

Do you mean the assessment reports from last year?

Some of that was in the... Yeah, there was crossover. But it was more distilled, which is nice. It was what fits for african-american

students it also includes what each buildings doing and yeah other thoughts I mean anybody opposed I mean I mean I'm just looking around I mean

I mean, I think the consensus is yes, right? So we'll move forward. Thank you.

Okay, well,

you just got outvoted. Sorry, buddy. Okay, awesome. Thank you, Lily. Any other board communications? Anybody have any?

Go ahead, Adam. Yeah, go.

Well, we had our meeting on Monday, and I know that 7.30 is early, so we missed you guys. We were at an earlier meeting. Yeah. So I was looking at the calendar, and our next meeting is scheduled for February 17th at 7.30, but I was wondering if we could change that around, and if it worked better for folks, we could... Oh, is that Monday? Okay, so then... But

that would be awesome, I think, to make it a little...

We could do that Tuesday, the 18th. We could do it after school on – we could do, like, around 4-ish on Tuesday the 18th probably if that works better for –

Do your kids have after school

activities? I mean, right now we have one playing basketball, one or two in sports, but I think we could for a little bit.

Do you have kids?

So if that works better, I'll let everyone know. I don't think we should do that for us.

Don't move it for us.

Okay.

I wouldn't. It should be what works for the students. Well,

I'll... Okay, I'll work on that and we'll let you know what, because I didn't even realize that it was present.

I didn't see this. I still think it would be beneficial, especially if we're not able to make it, for us to know who's on it and why. That would be great, that we have the diversity that we talked about.

We have the debate picked up, correct?

Yeah, I'll get back to them and just make sure and clarify a time. And I'll see if we can do some time after school because I don't think it would be too big of a deal. But we'll check and see what works best for them, and then I'll let you know.

But even if not, can we still get something, some information, a memo or something

on

how that's going, how that went, and then how it's going to work next year? Do

you want me to include that in this when I sort of as – separate thing okay

any thank you any other board did you have something here

at the risk of embarrassing a certain student rep Adam talked about the DECA presentation I heard through the grapevine that there was part of one of the DECA competition presentations actually involved our student board process so just appreciated that that was brought from this room outside and I heard good things about that presenter. Awesome. Cool. Who what? What did you say? Yeah, I didn't hear what you said. Oh, he placed. Great. I think it was cool that you talked about what we do as a board and another kind of realm.

So the project was create a solution to a business or organization. And so I talked about the idea of student representative and increasing communication between the administration and the board and the students. And I'm working on it with Reagan Wade, who helped with kind of some of the beginning ideas and worked with us before it was really an idea. And so we're doing that. But it was actually something that I was going to present to all of you at some point later when we talk about should we keep the student rep because it's got a lot of information about it and the history behind it. So it worked for two reasons because I can use it for a lot of things.

Any other board communications? I have a couple that I just want to make sure I say to you all. So one, just really almost for the sake of the public too, so the The slate of candidates is set, right? So we've passed the date, right, in which so the – and we have some of the candidates here. But, you know, in ballot order it will be Christine Wynn, David Gulick, Gary Pearson, Kim Hurst, and Nathaniel Millett. So that is what will be on the ballot on April 7th, right? Okay. That's one. Two, I do, and Sean mentioned it earlier, what we think we're able to do is we had reserved February 24th as a board work session. But we believe that we can take a portion of the, we can actually not have that extra meeting. And on February the 19th, we can tack on a work session to talk about the strategic plan. So I'm excited that we can kind of not have the extra meeting just to save you all the night. So that's what we're planning on. So just FYI. I know people's schedules are busy. So just more on that, right? Sean will get more on that. And then just two other things very quickly. You have probably seen that there is a lot of buzz at the state level around various legislation, including charter schools, right? I will say that for the first time, at least since I've, you know, in my three and a half years as a board member, MSBA called me. They were, I mean, they're so concerned. They actually called to say, you know what? We really need you to advocate. Please tell your board members. So I am telling you that, you know, there's legislation right now that's kind of on the moving towards the floor. And so if you have an interest in advocating, you know, to kind of protect against what kind of charters could do for the district, then you should do that. It's helpful to write notes, send emails, make phone calls. But the other piece I want to say is when we've talked about this before, we want to make sure we protect our district and we're as proactive as possible. So what Sean and I have talked about is really forming almost an exploratory task force to see if, to see if, It makes sense, because there are some school districts who are thinking about sponsoring their own charter school just in case, right? It's what St. Louis Public did, right, because they're legal in St. Louis Public and they've done that with some success, by the way. So we want to, not that we want to start a charter school, but we want to look into is that even an option for us, does it make sense, depending. So what we're going to do is I've asked Stacy to join me just because of her public school background and Sean and Robin and I, the four of us are going to kind of get some more information report back to you so I just wanted to share that with you doesn't mean we're doing anything it means we need to get some more information because it everything that I hear is that I'm sure something's gonna happen around charter schools right that yeah well exactly right did it it really feels like this is different and you know yeah so And of course, just a reminder, charter schools right now in the state of Missouri are only allowed in Kansas City and St. Louis City or an unaccredited or provisionally accredited district. Clayton is none of those, but they're thinking about expansion. And that could really take away from both our students, create competition, and from our finances. So it could be a challenge.

Yeah, I mean, just to maybe pile on that a little bit. I do think it's really important to learn more about the charter school process and what they mean. I'm speaking from my own process of learning that. People in general who support education and our schools and public education generally don't know what charter schools are. what that means in our particular state education environment. So, I mean, everybody can form their own opinion about them, but I just want people to understand what it means when a charter school, you know, comes into existence and what it means for the district. And so as much as we can learn about that and then as people look to us as people who know something about it.

Please do. I think that's really important, and I think that's part of this work that we want to do is that I think even everyone at this table needs to have a common understanding of it as well. And so how can we make sure that we're building a mechanism to educate this board around

that?

So this is an interesting conversation because this is something that can affect us greatly. Either way, you know, if you haven't done the research, we don't know. But then I'm also thinking about the city and how we didn't really advocate hard for the city to not have charter schools. And some people will say it was helpful, but I mean, I've seen a lot of charter schools come and go. It was disruptive to people's learning. education and I just want to make sure that this is what I'm saying about yeah we are all about Clayton our particular region, our community but at the same time we also need to be about St. Louis in general because now this is starting to catch fire and it's starting to affect people and when it starts to affect people we start to think a little bit differently so I just want to be mindful as we're looking at this think about as we're advocating one way or the other, like how what's happened in the city of St. Louis and how that was like the test, the testing for who was affected, what was held, people were devastated, the whole nine

yards. And Jason, I think that's a great point. And what I will say along those lines is that the Missouri School Board Association, so Sean and I were both at the last legislative advocacy group, right, where there are seven school districts kind of in St. Louis County. And what I will say is MSBA is not a fan of charters because of what they've done to the city. And the challenge is you don't have the same accountability, right? You don't have a board like this. 50% of them have failed. And when they fail, the kids go back to the public school district anyway. And so it's really mixed reviews in terms of some have done okay but some haven't. And so yes, we need to have a regional perspective and And what I would say is... It actually brings me to one other thing, which is we are also just along those lines going to have another gathering of this St. Louis kind of board PLC, right, that we have, which is really more regional flavor. And we had an SLPS board member last time, which was nice, and hopefully we will have again as we but we'll probably have a planning meeting coming up. And what we're thinking is this next one will be on early childhood. because it's pretty clear that there is a regional push to think differently about early childhood, both in the city and the county. The county seems to have a better immediate mechanism just to put a sales tax potentially on the November 2020 ballot. The city is still working out kind of how that would happen. not that it won't happen, but maybe. So just even to your point about all things regional, I think that's an opportunity too. So as we plan that, I hope that everybody can participate because I think that could be really a great regional opportunity to really think differently about all the things we've talked about, you know, quality and access and equity and regionalism and all the good things there.

Just to support your argument about the regional meeting amongst the regional board members. You and I have discussed this before, the board members are probably the largest and most powerful elected body in the state. We don't act as a collective. But if we thought about this as a collective, we could push a lot of legislation in a certain way that benefits students, benefits schools, benefits the region. And I think I would encourage us. I missed the last one. I forgot what I was doing. Something very, very important. But I encourage us to go to the next one just so that we can be representing and understanding the power behind us as elected officials and as a large body, what we could do if we got everyone on board to think about how to make some changes. All right.

The PLC and that legislative advocacy group that meets every month too.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, because, I mean, right now the legislative advocacy group is pretty cool. It's us and Maplewood Richmond Heights and Kirkwood and Webster and Normandy and U City and special school districts. So, I mean, there's only 23 school districts in St. Louis County, and seven of them are represented in this legislative advocacy. So it is powerful, right, to have seven districts meeting monthly to talk about. And we had a great, you know, Susan Goldhammer from MSBA gave us a nice presentation on everything that's going on in the legislature, so.

The next one's February 28th.

All right. Anything else? Yes. Any other board communications? We haven't picked a date yet, Lily. We're going to have a meeting coming up in February here to pick. Probably April. But, I mean, we haven't picked it yet. And we haven't picked where it will be. We've tried to, you know, move it around. Obviously, we hosted the first one. And then we went to Pattonville, right? And then we went Kirkwood. And so we'll see where the next one will be. Anything else? All right. Do we have a motion to adjourn? Move that the Board of Education adjourn.

Second.

All right, all in favor? Aye. All right, it passes. Thank you.