March 5, 2020 — Meeting Transcript

We're going to start in about two minutes where we get our other board members. I want to

call the meeting to order, say that adequate notice has been given, and we are going to start with the pledge. And Patrick, you're going to have somebody lead us in the pledge. Where are we? Flag, maybe. Do we have a flag? All right, well, we're going to do it anyway. It's okay. We're going to do

to the

flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation,

under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. OK, so we're actually going to start with a student presentation before we do recognition.

Yeah, this is actually part of our recognition. So for those of you who are new to the board meeting, what we do at the board table is really invest time making sure we're recognizing our students and community members at the board table. And it's also unique that the board will go into schools now and have their actual board meetings. So we're really glad to be on the roadshow and seeing all the great things happening in all of our schools. So we're going to turn it over to Patrick Fisher, who is our principal.

Thank you, Dr. Daugherty. As Sean just mentioned, I am Patrick Fisher. I'm the principal here at Merrimack. Like I said, this is our first time hosting a board meeting, so things like the fact that we don't normally say the Pledge of Allegiance in our cafeteria, we now know we need to make sure we get a flag next time, so we'll be ready for that. We like to learn from these things as well. So I'm only going to talk real briefly because mainly... This isn't about me, this is about this fantastic group of kids that are up here to share a lot of what they've been working on throughout the school year. And I think you guys are gonna be more than impressed. So I'm gonna turn it over to Skyler who's gonna lead our events for tonight.

Good evening and welcome to Merrimack Elementary. We're so proud to have our school board here at Merrimack and cannot wait to tell you just about some of the great things that are happening here on a daily basis. Last year, As part of the district's process of creating a profile of graduates, Merrimack took a step back and worked with our school community to think about our mission as an elementary school. As part of this feedback was collected from staff, students, and families about what they wanted from their school, at the end of this work, it was clear that we needed to start to look at school in a very different way. The skills our students will need to succeed in the future go beyond just basic math, reading, and writing. And we can't wait any longer to start thinking about how to get them ready. To be prepared, we will need to be able to solve unique problems. We will have to be creative, critical thinkers, and collaborators. We will have to have an understanding of people who are different than we are and this will mean understanding our own unique identities and strengths and how we can best apply all we are able to do. We must be active citizens in our community who are also working hard to make the world a better place. Ultimately, our students and our communities need a major shift from traditional practice. and to answer beginning work towards meeting this need. We created a new mission for our school. Our mission moving forward is we strive to create global citizens who are empowered to better themselves, better their community, and better our world. In order to ensure we can meet our mission, we have focused our work on a vision built around working to find ways for students to better themselves better the community, and better our world. Tonight we're going to share with you some of the ways that our students are already making these shifts by giving a few examples how Merrimack is working to help us move beyond just improving our test scores into how we can work to improve the world around us. To get started, I'm going to invite some of the students from Mrs. Landgraf's class to share with us some of the unique ways in which they were able to learn about who they are who they are as they work to truly better themselves.

Hello, my name is Gabrielle Chalsky. I'm Zoesia. And my name is Elias Lyon and we are all fifth graders at Parramatta. We started off fifth grade talking about identity. So what is identity? The definition of identity is who you are, the way you think about yourself, the way you are viewed by the world, characteristics that define you. An example of identity is a person's name. At the start of the year, we talked about what this meant for us as fifth graders. We talked about our cultures, hobbies, likes, dislikes, religions, etc. We started off making our where and from poems, which are poems that represent our favorite parts of our identity. We, all fifth grader students, dropped in an artifact that represented the biggest part of our identity. We also held a museum to invite students and parents to showcase our artifacts and learning. Since then, we have addressed identity in many ways, especially through reading. The first rule of punk by Celia C. Perez was read aloud to all fifth grade classes. We made an identity map for the main character, Malou, and looked at how her identity was shaped by grown-ups but also how she viewed herself. Malou was a mix between Mexican-American and punk and couldn't decide who she was. Throughout the book, she finally learned to embrace all parts of her identity. While we read this book, we also discussed what impacts how we view ourselves, such as those around us, values that can be passed on through family, and finally, through the experiences and decisions we make for ourselves. Thank you,

Ms. Landgraf's class. Much of traditional education has focused on only improving people as individuals, but what makes our mission special is that we also want to look for ways in which we can be active in our communities and work to move them forward as well. Up next, we have some students from Mrs. Hannah's breeding class who will share with us how they work to better their community by showing compassion for some of the most vulnerable members of our society, stray animals.

Hello, my name is Giselle Anderson and I'm a fourth grader at Fairbanks. I made a difference in my community by going to the Humane Society and giving the dogs and cats some toys that I made. We donated 200 toys. I enjoyed making toys to help keep the animals from being bored. I gave money to the Humane Society so they could buy food, treats, and medicine for the shelter animals. I really liked giving treats to the dogs. My favorite part was reading books to the shelter dogs. By reading to the dogs, I helped them feel comfortable and less worried. I wanted the dogs to know that I cared, so I gave them love and company. Calming the dogs... Calming the dogs down will help them get adopted by families. People like calm dogs, not wild dogs or dogs that are scared. I really wanted to adopt one of the dogs that I read to, but my parents said I had to wait a little bit. If I make a difference, the dogs are happy and I'm happier because I want every dog to have a forever family. Wouldn't it be great if every pet was adopted I help my school community each and every day by sharing my bright and happy smile with everyone. This is me reading to the dog that I wanted to adopt.

This is me and my friend.

This is me and my friend petting a

cat. Good evening. My name is Alex Smith. Helping others can make a big difference. It can start with only one person and grows bigger from there. Everyone needs help sometimes, including animals. My class and I recognized the need and decided to help the shelter animals at the Humane Society. We brought in fleece, socks, yarn and used t-shirts and made lots of dog and cat toys to donate. We had a lot of fun doing this. This service project was important because the toys helped keep the shelter animals busy during the day and hopefully made their lives more pleasant and fun. Shelter animals are often scared and anxious. We knew these toys would help the animals stay calmer which should help them get adopted by a family. I am proud that my classmates and I helped the shelter animals. What I didn't expect is by helping my community, it would change my thinking. I used to think animals at the Humane Society were adopted quickly, but now I know often it takes months or even years to find a family. Now I also understand that there will always be animals or people that need help. I can be the person who will make a difference. Change begins with me and you. I also have some pictures of us making the toys and the toys finished. So this is me and some of my friends making some toys for the animals. And this is me standing next to the 200 toys that we made for the dogs and cats.

Thank you, Mrs. Hayter's class. With the powers of technology, social media, and improvements in so many other things, our world is constantly coming closer together. And because of this, we have to be ready to operate and act as global citizens. In order to do this, we must look for ways that we can not only be active in our local community, but in our global community. Up next, Mr. Baker's class will share how they have been partnering with our high school to better our world.

Oh my goodness, I just learned in our own backyard in the country of Haiti that thousands of kids like me lack the resources for clean water, education, and a future job.

Whoa, Tucker, what's that awful stench? I'm trying to learn about economics here. Injustice for the children

of

Haiti. That is awful, but there's another order coming from Plain High School. What could it be?

OMG IT! TEENAGERS! But what can anyone do

about it? Well, we are learning about saponification, and that's all about chemistry class. Saponification is a chemical processing from a soap. And we're learning about social justice and economics. What if

we join forces? We'll make the soap, and you guys can do it. Better ourselves. Better communities. And better our

world.

It's a dirty job, but someone's going to do it. And you can too. Me like it. Me like it too. Sweet. Greeny Ocean. Or she named Splash. All proceeds go to Hope for Haiti, including clean water, health care clinics, teachers' salaries, and medical costs. So for Hope for

Haiti, coming to a high school near you. Thank you, Mr. Victor's class. As you all know, school takes place from 840 to 340 each day. But what makes our mission special is that artwork to do great things doesn't have to stop there. In fact, I've already been able to carry some of my own entrepreneurial spirit out into the world and already have work to make a difference for other kids like me. My company is Skylicious Naturals for Kids. It's an all-natural hair and body line formulated to assist a diversity of cultures in managing their own natural hair and skin issues. I use my business not only to make money, but to use Skylicious Naturials as a platform to empower all kids to success by letting them know if they can dream it, they can achieve their goals. I recently visited the Genius Slaves Boys and Girls Club where I was honored to speak about empowerment and entrepreneurship. I was also featured on the district's website highlighting my achievements. Please visit www.scottalicious.com to view my products and my community afterwards. To end our time together tonight, I just want to say thank you to the Board of Education and thank you, Dr. Dorey, for all of your support. We still have a lot of work to do, but even steps we have made wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for your support. And as this work continues, we look forward to sharing many of the great things we know that we will go on to do. So on behalf of everyone at Merrimack, thank you and have a great night. I just want to say thank you. And one

more time, if we could just get a big round of applause for everybody. Thank you. Thank you. So I would like, if you could, could the Board of Education take a picture with these awesome Merrimack students? Absolutely. We just do it over here. So please, everybody over here. Maybe here or there.

So we also have one other recognition for this board meeting. It is National School Social Worker Week and I'm going to ask Dr. Robyn Wiens to come up and she is going to do a recognition for our social workers.

So we also have one other recognition for this board meeting. It is National School Social Worker Week and I'm going to ask Dr. Robin Wiens to come up and she is going to do a recognition for our social workers.

Good evening, Board of Education and our constituents here in Clayton. Tonight I have the privilege of recognizing our outstanding social workers, Dr. Sheila Powell Walker and Ms. Katie Burkhardt in honor of National School Social Worker Week. This year's theme from the School Social Work Association of America is Beacon of Hope School Social Workers Lighting the Way. In their roles, school social workers are able to light the way, emphasizing the whole child, collaborating with other professionals, linking students and families with needed services, and advocating for the profession. Dr. Paul Walker and Ms. Burghardt, thank you for being beacons of hope to our students and their families. In my short time with the district, I've seen you connect with our students who have had a variety of needs, and you were able to bring stability and support to them during times of uncertainty. I also appreciate the ways I've seen you support our parents and families when they face unexpected circumstances. Lastly, I want to thank you for the expertise you've shared with the district staff. Your efforts to help us become a more trauma-informed team of educators are truly valued, so thank you for all you do. I also wanted to acknowledge the important contributions of Deb Levin, our SSD social worker. Deb has a unique role in supporting our students across our buildings. I want to thank her also for all the ways that she helps our students thrive. So to celebrate this appreciation week, we have a little something for you that I actually wanted to thank you again for everything you've all done for your day. I really appreciate it.

We want to take a picture with you, too. Thank you. Okay, we are now going to move to public comments. And we have five public comments. Just a reminder that we ask public comments to be three minutes each, or a maximum of three minutes each. And the board's not going to respond. However, you will, to the extent you raise an issue, we'll get a response from the administration. So the first person is Aretha Whitaker.

Let's go. I wanted to thank you all tonight. Thank you to the board. Thank you to Dr. Gordy for allowing me to address you tonight. I am a parent with two daughters, one in the high school and one in middle school. As I think about this school year, and you guys are going to be discussing equity conversation tonight, I wanted to pause and really thank you all for all your efforts in allowing our daughters to continue to grow here emotionally, socially, and most importantly, academically in the district. As a family, we look forward to our daughters graduating from the School District of Clayton where they can feel included, My husband and I know they will be challenged beyond our expectations. Again, I just wanted to give a big thanks and appreciation for all your hard work and efforts. Thank

you. Thank you, Aretha. So next is CeCe Tompkins. Uh-oh. That's a drop the mic moment.

Thank you. Let's get pretty close, okay. Hi, my name is Cece Tompkins. I want to start by thanking you for your time and your service on the board. I am an alum of Clayton High School and I also work for the Children's Education Alliance of Missouri. I want to thank you for being such a forward-thinking district with serious concern for all of your students and a dedication to diversity. I'm happy to see that racial equity is on the agenda for tonight's meeting. I saw in your SWOT analysis that your top thread is decreasing diversity within the district. That's what brings me here tonight to advocate for the continuance of both of your transfer programs. I know I've told my story here before, but as a quick refresher, when I came to Clayton High School in 1991, I came from a private all-girls school. I honestly didn't know how sheltered I had been until I started here at Clayton. When I talk about my experience at Clayton, I say that the academics were on par with the level of education I was receiving in private schools. But what I learned at Clayton prepared me for life in the real world where not everyone looked like me. This cannot be taught in a book. It's one of the driving reasons I work for SEEN, seeing the benefits of the VIC program firsthand and creating a fundamental belief that all children, no matter where they live, should be able to access a quality education even if they choose to find that outside of their neighborhood. Last year, I worked with families in several districts to extend the phase out of the statutory program and I'm proud to be able to say that my alma mater is the only district that found a way to extend their agreement with Normandy. This was an historic moment that showed me what can be accomplished when a community, a school board, and superintendents all come together to rally behind an issue to do what we know is best for the children involved. Now that you have found a way to keep your Normandy transfer students in Clayton Schools, I am hopeful that you will continue to be proactive in continuing this program in a timely and fair manner. This program has been life-changing for the families that I work with, and knowing that their students can continue on in your schools would provide them with peace of mind and confidence that their children have a clear path to success. Continuing your great work And ensuring diversity through these transfer programs is also vital to the success of your residential students, who I hope will learn as much about the diversity of the real world as I did when I was a student at Clayton. Thank you for listening.

Thank you, Cece. Okay, next is Susan Buse.

um i don't know if it's working or not but anyway i'm susan buse and as you know i was on this board not this building but the other building when the board crafted and adopted the racial equity initiative and i was very pleased to see and encouraged to see it on tonight's agenda especially given your timing i have gone on with wearing different hats now and the city has formed its own equity commission, and its first meeting is Monday night. So again, seeing this on your agenda now gave me a lot of hope. As the city adopted its commission and figured out what direction it was going and hired outside consultants, The consulting report was fairly thick, but in there was a handful of four or five recommendations. The second recommendation in there was to piggyback or tie into the community conversations that were being done by the school districts in Clayton. At that point in time, that report came out last spring, at that point in time we had put together a conversation after the stop-click verdict to address tensions within our community and that was held at CRC. After that, Dr. Doherty arranged for us to get screening rights to the Blue Streets presentation. And we had the presentation of the movie and discussions on that. In the spring, we had the founder of WeStory speak at CAPTN. She's a member of the community, and she actually is now on the city commission for equity, and she spoke at CAPTN, and then last January and February, we had our three nights of Brown for Supportive Education Community Forum. And each of those events, to different degrees, drew from across our community. Not only did we have district families, at some of them we had members from our surrounding university communities, as well as our city police officers, elected officials, including our mayor and our now mayor as well. So it was exciting to see this, and as the commission comes on Monday, I know that you all have I asked John Daugherty, Dr. Daugherty to be the liaison from the school district and there's a lot of promise in us working together in doing this and continuing this good work and thank you.

Thank you Susan. Suzanne Whitman is next.

So the district has produced a report on educational equity and then a summary that refers to the report. And from the content of both of them, I worry that the district administrators seem to be confused about what equity means. So educational equity means outcomes that are undifferentiated by class. And since we specifically refer to African American students, it's clear that we're talking, at least in part, about outcomes that are not different by race. But the report is clouded by things that have nothing to do with equity. So putting on an event or hiring a speaker is not racial equity. Administering a trusted adult survey is not racial equity Focusing on empathy and kindness is a nice thing, but it's not racial equity. And renaming a diversity committee is definitely not equity. It's not participating in a diversity recruitment fair or restructuring diversity recruitment that's your goal. It's hiring qualified people of color. But this report doesn't tell us what percentage of the current teaching staff are white, what percentage are people of color, and it doesn't tell us now that you've restructured what your roadmap is for getting more diverse hires. So we don't know where we're going, and we don't know how we're gonna get there. Becoming familiar with authors, working on your mission statement, doing project-based learning, these are all really worthwhile things, but they're not racial equity. Social-emotional learning also is not the same thing as racial equity. Now, expecting the results of a panorama survey should be equivalent by race is an anti-racist assumption, but we need clear specific data to show what the survey's outcomes are by race. Just having a tool is not an outcome. Now one other point relating to equal outcomes by race is that you have to say the word white. Comparing African American results to the total population of students, which includes African American students, is misleading. It portrays the data as better than it is. If we're going to be able to tell whether we have equivalent outcomes by race, we have to have good data for both sides of the equation. Our goal is not what you put as a strength, increasing the number of black students in the gifted program. That is not our goal. Our goal is to have equity, equivalent percentages. So if say 10% of the total white population is in the gifted program, then 10% of the African American population or Asian or Latinx should be identified as gifted. Increasing the number of African American students from 3% to 6% of the gifted program sounds good, but I have no idea and this report doesn't show how close that is to educational equity. This report does not interrupt the status quo in this district, which produces outcomes that are differentiated by race. Instead, it buries our current status under a confluence of unrelated, misleading, and missing data. Sean, I can't think of the word. Astounded, appalled, dismayed that you would accept a report of this poor quality from your staff. That ensures that neither the school board nor the public knows what's really going on. I'm almost done. And school board members, if you are willing to just accept a report and summary that don't give you the data that you need to make good decisions, that don't tell you where we are now or where we're going, then what are you doing here?

Thank you. Thank you. Okay, the next speaker is, it's Janelle Lamarck. I can help

you out.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's

okay, it's a tough one. It's Janelle Lamark.

Thank you, sorry.

Sure, no problem. Hi. Okay, I'm going to read. hi my name is Janelle Lamarck and I'm the parent of a high school student and elementary student in the Clayton School District we've been here since 2011 and love this district and our community and I thank y'all for your work in it I'm here tonight to share my comments on the educational equity mid-year update dated December 2019 It looks like there has been some very positive personal work being done on the part of staff. I too have spent many years educating myself on racial injustices in this country and in my own implicit thinking. I am happy to hear that staff are doing book clubs and that kind of thing. For white people, this personal work is a lifelong journey. For educators, this personal work becomes critical to their jobs and I thank you for your support of them in that effort. That said... This report fails to adequately report on racial equity in any specific or meaningful way. First, it reports on actions without listing very many outcomes. For example, what was the result of attendance at Harris-Snow Career Fair earlier this fall? It in fact lists very few data points and none are consistently or systematically reported across all six of our schools. In fact, actions by schools are not even clearly reported. So for example, what consistent data points about student achievement can we look for each year? What goals do we have for hiring more African American teachers and how are we doing? Perhaps most alarming, it lists actions unrelated to racial equity. This dilution of equity to something broader, away from a focus on race, is a surefire way to ignore and fail to address problems of racial equity. So what does administering the Trusted Adult Survey have to do with racial equity? What does the parenting speaker on happiness have to do with racial equity? What does the provisioning of essentials in a school-based food pantry have to really do with racial equity?" I could go on. And as valuable and important as these explorations and these services are, their relevance to addressing educational equity by race seemed pretty indirect to me. I would rather honest, clear reporting than this kind of filler. It seems like a filler. So is there another different report perhaps that we can look for for this sort of honest and systematic tracking that an assessment of racial equity deserves. If not, if this is the report that is supposed to provide us with these critical insights, I must ask for the sake of all of our children, majority and minority, that you please do better.

Thank you. Okay, that concludes our public comments. Thank you, everybody. We're moving on to Superintendent Communication.

So good evening, everyone. Over the last few weeks, we've been working to maximize learning before we get to spring break. And so what I've seen in the classrooms has been very substantive in terms of learning. But I also know that when you walk into a building, sometimes you can feel that need for a break. And so you can also feel that as well. But when I've been in schools, I feel like there's been a high level engagement. Tonight's presentation gave us a little bit of a segment of what's happened in our high school today. Having fourth grade students work with our high school students as part of a chemistry and entrepreneur social justice project was just incredible. And some of our board members were able to see that firsthand this morning as well. I also appreciate how the schools are thinking differently, such as the high school being able to be creative on testing days. That's allowed seniors to do a day of service and then also our freshmen having opportunity to do college visits. The other topic that has permeated through our work over the last few weeks has been the coronavirus. And so we have been dedicating much time to developing and enacting plans to keep our schools and surfaces clean within all of our buildings. That includes technology. We have a plan to make sure that every piece of technology gets touched as well. We have also been thoughtful about new systems for increasing cleaning efforts beyond the great job our maintenance workers do. We're also thinking about ways that we're monitoring families who have traveled and how we educate our students for good habits of staying healthy. The other thing we're trying to do is to be proactive in case there would ever need to be a closure of schools for a short or long term basis. And we're asking ourselves the question, how can we maintain some continuity of learning for our students if that would happen? So our administrators, coordinators and technology team have been working to develop plans in case there was a pandemic. This requires creativity, thoughtful planning, and strong communication. Do we know what that looks like now? No. But we are in talks about what that could possibly be. We plan to send some more updates to our community. We sent out a few communications already and have a section on our website for that communication. And we plan to send some additional communication to our community But I know for the Board of Education, for the community, this is something that you're seeing in the media, you're seeing each and every day. And so we just want the board and the community to know that we're working to be proactive and sometimes reactive to the situation. Tonight we have an information item and the board is going to be presented an enrollment report. And this is an opportunity for you to get to see the status of our enrollment. It also encompasses a great deal of data that is disaggregated for you. And after looking through the report, we probably have to take a different, we probably have take a close look at this report again to make sure that Sometimes the data is overwhelming in terms of what we're providing you, but we're going to work at ways to best communicate that data to you. But we also think it's important so you know where we're going in terms of our projections. And those projections help us look at potential staffing and building issues. So for the first part of tonight, we have an information item where Mary Jo is going to come up and give some highlights of that report. And then we do have our study item tonight around equity, and we are going to have a discussion with the board around that. And then I am going to turn it over to the student representative, Adam, to see if he has anything that he'd like to share before we get started.

Yeah, thanks, Dr. Doherty. So the first thing I wanted to talk about was just that we're transitioning again from winter sports into spring sports, and so we had our basketball district games, which were a ton of fun and a great time, and now we're getting started with spring sports, and we're really excited about that. Something else that... So an amazing event. We had our dance marathon, our second ever dance marathon at the high school where we raised over $29,000. Our goal was $20,000. Last year we raised $18,000 and so it's really going well. And so that one year increase of around $10,000 is really unbelievable. So we're going to continue with that, and we're getting excited for next year. And we've been fundraising. We'll start fundraising pretty soon. I mean, it really kicks back up pretty quickly. And then the last thing I want to tell you about is that there is a new Greyhound app. And so I'm going to tell you what it's called because I think you should all get it because it's pretty neat. It tells you about all the events that are going on within the district. It's called CHS Greyhound. So if you look it up on your phone, CHS Greyhounds. Kristen's already got it. She knows what's up. So it's a great way. It tracks points. If you go to an event, you can check in. And while you're using the app, it's only... there's a big we know that the data only goes to the district and so if you're worried about that but uh so it's a great way to get students involved and there'll be surprises involved but yeah thank

you thank you so um we're going to then move into our information items which are enrollment projections so i think that's mary jo right

So the purpose of this report is to provide a detailed history of rejections by school, grade, and enrollment. And as Sean mentioned, it is a very lengthy report because it is by school and by grade. But once you start going through it, it's very repetitive. And it's all in cell formulas, so it's very easy to create. But I'm happy to look at ways to modify it if possible. Yeah. The methodology of the report is based on live birth records, so it's where we start. And those records are provided by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. We take the live birth records and then historical data, and we analyze that historical data through the cohort survival ratio method, which is a statistical method. So as I mentioned, the report is all about formulas. We look at it over a three, five, and ten year increments for our resident enrollment, board grant, and VTS students. We analyze these populations with this methodology because there's a large enough population of students to do that. A couple years ago we switched, we used to only do a ten year history, and because of the bubble that our demographer told us we were in, we decided to look at different ranges, three year ratios, ten year, or three year, five year, and ten year ratios. So right now we've been working off of our five year because it had enough fluctuations in it to make it seem more normal. However, we are on the tail end of a bubble and so we're still projecting a little higher than actual right now. Then the rest of the categories, because personal tax credit and statutory tuition student populations are much smaller, we just use standard grade regression. So we just kind of run the students through the school and assume that they will stay. When looking at placement for non-resident students, most of its consideration is given under policy. So our district class size policy, IHB, defines what our class sizes are. And then we also have an established district procedure for placement of board grants, statutory tuition, VCS, and tuition students. And that's in policy JECA. And priority is always given to siblings of students in order to stay in the school where they're still siblings. When you look at the projection highlights, this is a summary. Overall, all of our categories of resident or board grant which is also considered resident are increasing, which is what our demographer told us we would continue to do. And the personal tuition, we are anticipating to include three. They are siblings, so that's why we were looking at them and there were spaces available. Our tax credit, we do have a student graduating. And then our statutory tuition, we also have a student graduating and we'll look at revising the MOU in order to keep those students in. And then our VTS students, we have students graduating and then seven students being accepted, which puts us down to 187 students. Our challenges, we have experienced large class sizes at the middle school over the past three years that everyone is pretty much aware of. Our highest is like 251 students I think right now in eighth grade. We see that trend moving back to normal so once those students graduate this year, we're getting into the more normal 200 to 250 student ranges and we see that staying until about 2023. And so we currently have a third grade class that's very large, and that class will be moving back into the middle school, and we'll kind of be at another level. We have a few years of that running back through again. So we're watching as progression through the grades will hit middle school to make sure that we're not adding too many non-resident students in the elementary school that will make that middle school too overcrowded. So monitoring of those cohorts, bibles at specific buildings and grade levels. And then also our challenge is to maintain diversity within our schools as our resident population grows. So recommendations are to continue to monitor those shifts in enrollment, monitoring current and potential developments. In the fall I gave a report of enrollment in those developments and we're not seeing their transient students. We see about an average of 30% of the enrollment Residents in those buildings stay within three years. Most of them are, that's a transient year. And then we're averaging around 55 students out of all the higher races. So we've really not seen a lot of growth in enrollment in those developments. But we'll continue to monitor them and report to the board in fall. We'll look at projected class size growth and cohort survival, as I previously mentioned, making sure that they go through the whole system without getting too large. And then available classroom space in the buildings to accommodate our resident enrollment and accepting and placing students.

Thank you. Any questions? Comments? Then thank you. We appreciate it. I was just

giving other people a chance. This is an information item. It's an

information item. That's right. So I

need to put it in the form of a question.

Clarifying question.

Thank you very much. I actually didn't find it to be too much of a question. Whatever that says about me. What's that? The summary is great.

Yeah, summary

is great. So I have a question. I mean, about, okay, the first one as a question is do we have a sense of when we are going to renew the MOU so that, as was brought up earlier, so that our students, it looks to me like we have six students that are continuing from that, that were okay, that would have transitioned out last year and six new students that would have to transition out next year. Or last year was the last one. Okay, so that's 12 students. So I guess when we think about how this is for families. How soon are we going to make sure that we do that and have an answer to that? And have we considered also, I know last year we were talking about year-to-year, have we considered that we might be able to do it for longer?

Yeah, so we're definitely, when we've talked, we've contacted all families and we're saying that we're doing everything possible to keep students in our school. And I would say that probably in April, we would do a renewal of the MOU and it may look different. And so there may be some different things that are attached to it and we'll work that out. But our ultimate goal is to have educational continuity for those students.

And just for the purposes of that. And

so?

So the projections show the students continuing, but the financial projections only do revenue based on the existing employees and funding. So there would be no funding attached to them on the

employees. Right. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, that makes sense. And then I guess my other question is do we, do you have thoughts about you know, the recognition of the declining diversity, racial diversity, African American racial diversity in our district. Do you have thoughts about, I know a couple years ago, the board talked about having a diversity group work on the various ways in which we could possibly increase racial diversity through, housing, through continuation of VIC, through making our environment even more well, you know, feeling very welcoming for people, African American families and students. Do we have any plans about how or what we're going to do? Or you think is that on the radar to... work on so

at the vip the vip board has continued to have that conversation about what's possibly next and so right now we're currently in the last part of this the last extension um but there is a group of superintendents and a group of community members are coming together to think about what are some other possible ways if it can't be the mechanism The other thing too is that we've been trying to think about different ways to have collaboration and diversity within just partnerships that we have. So for example, Catalyst program that we have, we have students coming from U City that we're partnering with that gives students a portion of their day that they're interacting with one another. We also are trying to extend partnerships to other schools. So right now, CAPTIN is fostering a partnership between Dewey School and CAPTIN. And so we're looking at developing those relationships where we can have different opportunities for students to be interacting with one another. So I think that one of the things that I'm excited about is being part of the commission for the city, because I do think it's important for the city, you know, the district can control, you know, it only has so much control in terms of how we get students in here, but like I would love to be part of the conversation about how do we increase diversity within our city where it's insular and not just always feeling like we have to pull students from different areas. So I think that that is more of a systemic change versus a solution versus just different mechanisms. I mean, we're definitely going to continue those conversations, but I'm glad to be part of that conversation as well.

Have you considered, as we work on that, we have just an amazing community that really cares about this. We saw it with the Brown v. Board of Education. We had 100 and some people show up most of those nights. Have you considered ways to harness that energy and interest? Because you really want that, especially if we're going to do it within the city or if we're going figure out some creative ideas that we might be underutilizing community members for those efforts.

We can think about that.

Other questions? Gary? So I have just a question about the kind of process of how you do this. I know a couple years ago we had the demographer come and I have a I think rough understanding of what demographers do to get some information. I'm just curious, when you describe the methodology, who is actually doing this work and this calculation every year? Where does that come from? I mean, are you just sitting with a spreadsheet and doing it? That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure if there was something more to it than that. These are formulas that you just run with, repopulate the data every year. That's what I though about it.

Yeah, and the executive summary explains the actual

formula. Right, right. I don't understand that stuff, but you say explains, I say maybe. As a layman,

you can get rid of

the statistical formula.

Any other questions? Stacy?

I just had a quick comment about, like, I noticed through this, and you mentioned it too, that bubble of students like this current eighth grade class that's maybe bigger than we've seen in a really long time. And you mentioned that it's going to pass and the classes at White Island get back to normal, but that eighth grade class still has to go four years through our high school. So I just... Of course I know we're going to do this, but I just wanted to mention that I hope we're being mindful of staffing and our class size guidelines as that large class moves through the high school or the third grade class if that stays large. And pay attention to if we're allowing board grade teachers, students, or tuition students, and being careful about that because I do know the community cares really deeply about class sizes. And so that class does worry me.

So one of the things that we do is we have a meeting with the high school and we do an analysis of all the requests that the students have for classes. And so at that meeting, we look at the enrollment projections and then we also look at whether or not we need to hire different additional staff. And sometimes it's a matter of shifting staff like we may. And so we really do take that into consideration as part of those conversations, looking at what are the requests, making sure that we have appropriate class sizes. And then if we need to ask for additional staffing, we will bring it to the table. We've done that before. That's happened a lot at Glendridge with the bubble that we've seen, and we've been pretty straightforward about bringing that to the table for a request for additional staffing because we feel that's important as well.

Other questions? I know that Lily brought this up, but something the District Advisory Council brought up this morning was the idea of equitable housing at Clayton. And I was wondering, I don't know, I know that we have partnerships with the city of Clayton, but is there any way that, I mean, whether it's lobbying or in some way, do we have any way to contact them to work on equitable housing specifically? I don't know if that's possible or what, but that was something that they brought up that I don't know.

I, you know, as part of that commission we can definitely bring that up but I'm sure that's part of the conversation. Students can go to the . Yeah, and it's open to everyone.

Any other questions? Thank you Mary Jo. Okay, we are moving on to our first study item. We have six study items tonight. And the first one is educational equity. And so I think that's by Melina and Robin. And Sean.

oh I forgot

So while they set up the presentation, I'm going to do a quick introduction. And I want to say thank you to Melaina and Robin for being part of this. Clayton is an excellent school district, and we work to educate, inspire, and empower all of our students. We expect excellence, and now we're working towards more of a transformational approach with our new strategic plan, focusing on personalized learning. We have high expectations for our students and our educators. What contributes to our excellence is our willingness to examine where we need to grow. And part of that is just having a growth mindset. So in 2016, our district, in collaboration with the administration and the board, saw that we had to grow in the area of achievement for African American students. And I don't know if Susan's still here, but I want to say thank you to her because she was integral to that work. After looking at the long history of disparities in our data and previous initiatives, we needed to do something different. Since then, we have remained relentlessly committed to this work. The board initiative had three guiding statements that gave direction to the work. The first one was no decline in subgroup performance or district overall performance. This was also rising, the other kind of state was rising subgroup performance and overall district performance. And it also talking about proportionality in all of our areas. So if we have 10% of our African-American students that we want to make sure that we have a proportionate in our gifted program, our AP and honors classes. And so that was part of the initiative. And then the last one is increased knowledge and effective practices that extend beyond the initiative. So what we're actually doing about it, what's happening in our classroom. This also led to different dimensions that we developed. And those dimensions became our guideposts. focusing on school culture, data, parent partnerships, community engagement, HR personnel, research and best practices. And we have been looking at action steps that have been aligned to those dimensions. So I want to just take a moment to emphasize that sometimes when we talk about equity, people think that it's, and we talk about equity and removing barriers that limits excessive students, that we're lowering expectations. And it's exactly opposite. We're actually raising expectations for all. Zaretta Hammond, who is an expert on culture responsive teaching, says that our teachers should be warm demanders. meaning that they should know explicitly our students and build rapport. She says that relationships are key and a sense of belonging, making sure that the students trust the teacher, making sure the teacher shows personal regard for the students and earns the right to demand engagement and effort, and is very competent in terms of the technical side of instruction. holding high expectations, offering emotional support, and providing encouraging productive struggle. So when we talk about equity, it's not about lowering the expectations for others so we minimize the gap. It's about raising expectations for all. And so we all need to become warm demanders. The difference in the initiative that we did in 2016 versus a lot of the other initiatives the district did previously was that it was not completely focused on the students. it was this is that there was a paradigm shift is that we had to start focusing on the adults in our district and making sure that we were putting the right training and professional learning in place and expectations for the adults so that way we can ensure that all students have access to opportunities supports and tools they need to be successful no matter what in the executive summary i referred to a continuum of educational equity And I think this continuum is very telling. I will say that we are far from status quo. It's thinking that we have no need for change. And I will say that, we have been in the land of just building awareness. You can't just stay in the land of building awareness. It has to be action and what we're doing to change systems, to remove barriers, and to make sure that everyone's equipped with the right teaching strategies and pedagogy that's going to help students be successful. But I can assure you that we're moving to that systemic transformation. So tonight I asked Robin and Milena to be part of this conversation because a lot of their work is pertaining to the initiative. We're gonna talk about what is the reality of our data? We do still have work to do, and we also need to question about whether or not we are using the right data. We are making systemic changes and looking at processes that are limiting our students, such as our gifted program identification process. And we are looking at a sense of belonging because we do know that when students feel like they belong, they're going to feel like they have the ability to take risk, and we feel that relationships are key to student success. And then we're also talking about how our practices are changing in the classroom. So I'm going to turn it over to Milena, and she's going to talk a little bit about the data. And then what we're going to do tonight is to frame the conversation around a SWOT analysis. We provided a SWOT analysis to you, and we're going to give the board an opportunity to do that SWOT analysis at the table as a way to organize our thoughts and thinking tonight.

The original board initiative asked us to hold ourselves and our work to a measure of no decline in subgroup performance, and African American students being the subgroup that was named in the initiative. And then no decline in our overall district performance. Due to the changes in testing and standards in the state over the past several years since the initiative was rolled out by the board and the district, the two years of state data that we're able to make comparisons are with the 2018 and the 2019 data. While this is only one sample of data within the district, it's the sample that the state uses. When we look at these data, there's evidence of places to grow and evidence of growth. On the English language arts assessment district wide, our total population, Asian students, Hispanic students, multiracial students and white students scores fall within the state range on target. Our super subgroup which is comprised of African American students, brain reduced lunch students, IEP students, EL, Hispanic, and specifically our African American students are within the approaching range. These two groups are also the two groups that have shown the largest gains between 2018 and 2019. We see a similar picture for math collectively with those same groups being within the target range and our super subgroup in 2018 being in the approaching range and our African-American students also being in the approaching rate. In 2019, the super subgroup moved into the on track range and our African American students in the super subgroup again in math are the groups that have shown the most growth between 2018 and 2019.

So when I assumed the role in student services, one of my first action steps was to examine the gifted program. More specifically, the demographic representation in the program and the identification process. In my analysis, I found that the 2019 racial representation did not mirror the district's demographics. In particular, the representation of African American students in the program was below the representation in the greater district and below DESE's recommended equity index. For that reason, I worked with the district's gifted coordinator to revisit the identification process and the programmatic outcomes and bring them into alignment. Both the identification process and program now focus on creativity, problem solving, and critical thinking, and our identification process has transitioned to localized norms instead of national norms. So our initial results of the new process are moving in the right direction. We were able to double the percentage of African American students in the program from 2019 to 2020, And we're going to continue to refine and monitor our local norms closely over the next several years to ensure that we're continuing to make sustained progress in this area. Our hope is to meet or exceed the equity index goal for African American students, which would be at least 12% representation by the end of 2022. We're also going to be monitoring data for our students who qualify for for free and reduced lunch, and for students who receive services for disabilities. Also, some new data that we have started collecting has been through our social emotional learning surveys from Panorama Education And that data has been helpful in deepening our understanding of how our students feel when they're in our buildings. Our September data collection, which we're using as a baseline, showed that our students are experiencing the teaching and learning environment differently, particularly in the area of sense of belonging. Students' responses vary between elementary and secondary levels, and we've been able to use this data to inform our decision-making at both the building and district level. So we are administering the survey again this month, and so we will be able to compare the results over time, and we hope to gain some insight on the effectiveness of our initiatives this year and identify opportunities for continued improvement so that all of our students are thriving while they're at school.

When we think about increasing the knowledge and practices of our teachers, I want to highlight some of the work in our professional learning that has had an impact for us. So we've created a systematic way throughout a teacher's career within the district, devoting professional learning time to this work. Our initial focus with a lot of that work centered on the area of building awareness. This work has included conversations and book studies around topics such as oppression, bias, microaggressions. As we continue to work around building awareness, we've begun to examine the need to change classroom practices and in turn give feedback around these classroom practices. Based on the work of Zaretta Hammond, who Sean initially talked about, we've begun to focus our work on culturally responsive teaching. Using Zaretta's language, culturally responsive teaching is different from multicultural education that celebrates diversity, and it's different from social justice education that's about building a lens for students to be able to look at the world and see where things aren't fair or where injustice isn't just. Culturally responsive teaching is about building the learning capacity of individual students. Hammond argues that these three approaches overlap in practice but cannot be entertained. Learning partnerships. Hammond describes a culturally responsive teacher as a form commander, one who puts energy and effort into building relationships with all children and holding all children to high expectations. Community of learners and learning environment, students often come to us, especially at a young age, as dependent learners. In our development of community and our development of learning partnerships, we need to create an environment where students move from dependence to independence. The way to get to this independence can be found within the pedagogical structures we practice to allow all students to grapple with content, to make sense of it for themselves, and ultimately to carry the cognitive load and to accelerate their own learning.

So we provided a SWOT analysis in our executive summary. And what we wanted to do tonight was to frame the board's discussion around that SWOT analysis. As we were looking through potential strengths, one of the things I would encourage the board to think about is some of the documents that have come to you this year in terms of curriculum documents. And you can see that equity is becoming an aspect of all of the documents that we're bringing forth. And so that's where it becomes part of the systemic part of this work. Our weaknesses is that we're still not seeing the increase in the percentage of African-American students scoring in proficient and advanced levels. And so that's something that we still need to continue to look at and figure out what we need to do. In terms of opportunities, I think our new strategic plan is an opportunity for us to have different learning approaches. And I also think that some of the work that we are doing around the recruitment of African American and people of color has actually, we are actually seeing the results of that in our hiring. And then it was mentioned tonight around our threats, the decrease of diversity within the district. We know that it's important for our students to have a diverse learning environment. And there are so many things that we can control, but there are things that are out of our control sometimes too. And so we're looking at that as a potential threat down the road. So tonight, I'm going to turn it over to the board. And actually, can you go to the next steps? Tonight, we're going to hear your SWOT analysis in terms of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or threats that we need to be thinking about. But in long term, I want us to be thinking about how we are making equity an intentional part of our strategic plan. And I think that that's really important. think it might be important for us to revisit the initiative after we do this work and get some of the input from the board it might be great to get some additional see if we need to revise and change anything with that and then make sure that we have a develop a common understanding about what we mean around equity so I'm going to turn it over to the board And we're going to try to, Melaina's going to try to keep track of information, but we just want to kind of hear your input so that way we can be informed in terms of how we move forward. Does that sound good?

No, absolutely. I think that's great. So I think just given that we have a SWAT, maybe what I would ask people to do is try to frame your comments in either a strength, a weakness, an opportunity, or a threat, right? I mean, we don't have to start with one and then you can... speak to them all or some of them but I think it would be important yes please go

ahead my clarifying question is that there was some mention by community members that this was a final report that was some kind of and I just want to be clear I wasn't here at the meeting when it was decided to put this on the agenda and I just want be clear that my understanding and I guess I'm asking for confirmation this is not a final report this was at the request of to have a conversation about equity as an ongoing conversation this was not a final report so i just want to make sure there's no misunderstandings from our community that this is something that you were presenting in the

final report it was a combination though of it was on the agenda in december and taken off and we also then right after that got an update Right. And then when I asked to have it put back on the agenda, my hope was that we were going to talk about the update and talk about whatever else without you guys having to prepare

a

lot

of things. And I'd like to speak to that too then to clarify that also. When we set an agenda for the whole year, I just want the community to understand that the agenda is not set in stone. So those things can be moving parts and that it's the superintendent and the president of the board that makes the determination So every time that they're having a meeting, they are deciding whether or not something's going to be... It's used as a placeholder, but every time they're meeting, they're deciding, are we prepared to have the conversation? What other things have come up? What do we need to be doing? So it's a placeholder, it wasn't taken off of the agenda. It was actually never on the agenda. It Because a formal agenda has to be formally public, and it was not formally publicized. So that's just a clarification that I think is unfair for people to think that we actually took something off and we're intending to talk about it when we

weren't.

I

think we can argue about that because it was on the public document that it was on the agenda. With the caveat at the top that it could be changed.

So rather than argue about that, why don't we start talking about it, right? Because that's what we're here to talk about, right? We have a process at the end of a meeting. We can put something on. We put it on. Let's talk about it, right. So let's start with people's comments. Again, just a reminder. If, Malene, you're capturing, right, kind of in the SWAT. So if we could just frame them, strength, weakness, opportunity, or threat. And that's how you see it, right? Anybody want to? Ms. I'll go ahead and start. Mr. Please, go ahead. Go

ahead. Ms. So I would say that I think that our strength is that we have an amazing buy-in from our administration, from our staff, and from our community to participate in this work, and that it's an ongoing thing that we discuss in all of our at all of our meetings, so it's part of how we look at our policies, how we look at curriculum. And I'm really impressed that from 2016 to where we are today that we do things in a totally different way that's way more purposeful. And I know that's what we had hoped in 2016. Are we there yet? No. And I think Sean said that. But I think it's a strength that we have amazing buy-in and that we're working towards. who we are, which is a world-class district that always is looking at how we can continue to improve.

Others? Other thoughts? Are we just doing

strength? We can start. I can't approach it from a strength, weakness, opportunity, or defense. That's not how I'm going to approach this. I want to approach it like this. More than ever before, black students are being educated by people who are not on their racial or cultural background. So reports, according to the US Department of Education, number four, reports that almost 87% of the United States elementary and secondary teachers are white, while only 8% of those teachers are black. So what that says is, it says, We need to be looking at what our teachers are doing and what we're doing in the classroom. I know we use the word warm demanders, but I don't think that really is a suffice word for what we need to be doing. There's a lot of biases in the classrooms. How we look at our black students, right? or their potential versus what they lack. We always go to what they lack. I mean, when I got on the board, I heard a lot of conversation about kids coming from backgrounds and communities where they were poor, they didn't have the resources, or their parents were home, or they weren't around. And we wanted to have them sign that document that wasn't even raised by a board member. And nobody was that upset about it, which speaks to an idea of what we call the status quo, right? The status quo. What I've been thinking about is what they call the deficit model. We want to make these kids fit a model that doesn't really work for them. And when I see us trying to adjust to get kids into the AP courses, for example, that's like the pretty stuff. I want to see how are we going to focus on teachers seeing these black students as equal and treating them fairly so that they can actually be productive so that the teachers are productive because right now that's not what's happening so going back to like the strengths and the weaknesses right we talk about our math scores and compare it to everybody else in the city and everyone else in the state, like we're the best of the worst. Like that's not, and we're slightly above everybody else. And that's not anything to hang your hat on. If you look at this, look at this data, we are failing as a district. And knowingly, we're not doing the right things. I guess the question is, how are we going to hold our teachers accountable? To make sure our teachers are treating these black students fairly. Our black and brown students fairly. So that they can be productive. I think a year ago, I wrote a little memo about a policy that we had with IGBC. You remember that policy? For some of you all who don't remember it. It was IGBC and KC. So KC is our policy, right? Is that right, Melinda? Is KC our policy? And IGBC is the MSBA policy. So we have a policy for the Clayton and we have a policy that comes down from the state. All right? And I wrote something about it. So it talked about my interpretation of the IGBC policy, which is, compared to the KC policy, that the former policy assumes a low expectation of students who receive Title I funding. The KC policy assumes a higher level of expectation for students As a board member, I encourage us to consider the impact of us being guided by the IGBC policy. And then I went on to talk about, like, specifically, right? So it said... Well, in the policy, the KC policy for example, it talked about like the parents who live in the community have so much to offer and we encourage our parents to be involved in the district and to be involved in everything that's going on. But then the Title I parents and the kids from them that were transfer students, we looked at them as kind of like you all have nothing to offer. And that kind of policy speaks to the idea of this deficit model. We look at our black students as lacking something. Now, if you turn it to a different perspective, if you look at why haven't we hired that many black teachers? Well, it's the same way. If you look at black folks, as not being smart enough. Now you can say that's not true, but the data suggests it. The data suggests that black folks aren't looked at as smart as, and it starts at this young age. This is nothing new. This has been going on for years. And I'm not demonizing us now because this is a systemic issue, right? However, we have to be able to break that cycle. And so my energy is like I want it to stop now, but I'm also trying to say that what are we going to do about, as a team, what are we gonna do to make sure that these kids are on the same level as the white students? And these black students are performing. Because I think we said last meeting, at fourth and fifth grade, we started to see kids who were performing all on the same level in third and fourth grade. You start to see this shift in white students taking off in education academically on these tests. And black students, like, literally, like a slow increase. Or some of them go down or some of them go sideways. Kind of plateau a little bit. It doesn't say that they're not smart enough, but it says something's happening where when it gets to fourth and fifth grade, these kids, something's changing. And that data is very, very interesting. So I'd like to address that. And once again, I'm not beating up on my administration because this is something we all have inherited, right? But what are we gonna do as Kristen said, like the best, the top dog of all dogs of school districts. What are we gonna do differently? How are we gonna make that change? In three years, how can we say that most of our black students are on par? Right? Are on par and we're not having to shift anything around to make sure that these kids are getting into the Excel programs and all of these things. Like, how do we do that?

I just want to make sure, does the administration want to address it before you just add? No, I mean, I guess no. I

mean, I agree with the statements you said. I just, there's, what I would say is that we don't have all the answers yet. I don't, I omit, we don't know all the ways to do that. But I will say that we are taking steps to address I think that when we're talking about the gifted program or the AP and honors, sometimes it's not about shifting numbers or anything. It's about giving opportunity. So the shift in the gifted was about that we used to just only allow students to be recommended by a parent or teacher. And so we changed our screenings and say, this allows us to capture students differently. It's not students are just getting in just because. It's because now we're able to see them because we're looking at different data. And so it's not just shifting numbers to make that happen. It's about making sure that we're removing barriers that are allowing us, that we're causing us not to even look at them. So no, but I don't have all the answers to that. And if I did, we would do it. Go ahead.

So I wanted to say something about when I was looking up, because I wasn't sure how we were going to frame the discussion tonight, I thought it might be the SWOT analysis, and you had it in there, and I did a little bit of reading on SWOT analysis. And one of the suggestions is making sure that you have the customer, you know, the input, the point of view of the customer. So as I mentioned at a prior board meeting that I had talked to several of the students from the Black Student Union and I wrote up notes on what they said. And a lot of what this was 12 students in our black student union, all girls. And I think all but one had been in our school district since kindergarten. or kindergarten or first grade. So these are students that have been around and they were very eager to talk and want the board to know their perspective on this. And so I have it typed up if you guys want your own copy, but I'll just highlight a couple of... comments one is that first of all they think we have great teachers and they've had great teachers since kindergarten and they expressed an appreciation for those white teachers that are really open to correction and feedback around kind of race sensitive sorts of things they said that that Oftentimes they were placed in the wrong class or kind of lower expectations, the wrong class or wrong reading group in elementary or middle school and cited even like in high school. They'd be getting an A or an A-minus in a class and a teacher might suggest to them, you know, take them aside after the class. Do you want an easier book to read or do you want, you know, some supplemental information? Sort of making what they felt like were assumptions about their intelligence. or that they might struggle in the class. They want more opportunities to be in certain classes, and sometimes white students are informed about a class that they haven't heard anything about. This broke my heart. Many of the students related that when doing group projects in classes, they're often left without a partner or not selected for a group, whether it's because of where they live or some other reason. They have ended up doing projects by themselves. Teachers will call students the wrong name, like mix them up with some other African-American student, and they're saying to me, we don't look anything alike, and the teachers think we're sisters or whatever. Then by mid-semester sometimes, or by mid-year sometimes, the teacher still doesn't know their name. and their ideas for improvement are things like more black teachers. Investigate more when there's a disciplinary thing because they've noticed or believe that there's a difference in how black boys are disciplined versus white kids, and that there's a tolerance for certain kinds of behaviors. I call the teacher a first name, which they were saying they would never do, but that's kind of an example of maybe some cultural differences. And that they really want white and black students to be pushed equally. They know countless whites put in classes that they don't belong, like an honors class, whereas they're discouraged from doing overrides to get into classes. And that they... They really like teachers to be able to know how to handle microaggressions as they take place in the class. And I think if I read through these, knowing what we're doing, I know I thought this is what we're working on. You know, a lot of it is like, great, this is what we'RE working on, that, you know, helping teachers to know how to deal with things, working on higher expectations. But I thought it was very interesting kids that have been in our school district for this long had these experiences. And if anybody wants, you know, I'll pass them around. I know they wanted us to. Can

I piggyback on that? Go ahead. In all seriousness, not to discredit at all what you said, but I wonder too, as we're talking about equity, if we also were to talk to a group of like 12 of our Asian students, would they have some of the similar... like you're saying about their names, they have foreign names. Are teachers always getting that? Are they feeling included in groups? So I was also thinking would some of that apply to all of our subgroups, which just means inequity. We should be looking at other subgroups as well. I just started thinking, as you were saying, that might even apply to some of our other groups as well. Which is one of the things, one of my notes that I put as, actually as a threat, that we're not having a lot of these discussions about other subgroups and such stuff. And because we did get those results from the Panorama survey, like I found it very alarming that our Asian students We're so low on that for having a trusted adult or feeling a sense of belonging. When we do so much talk about social, emotional well-being, I think we should be paying a lot of attention to that group of kids and what are we doing to help those Asian students based on that survey to feel a sense of belonging? So I actually wrote that as a threat. that are we paying as much attention to some of our other subgroups? But I did, and also I wrote as an opportunity, like you mentioned, some of the partnerships we're doing with Catalyst and Captain on the Dewey School. I'm sure there are like infinite other opportunities there. I did in this report though list a lot of strengths. Like we do worry about and talk a lot about African American achievement gap, but I did notice, and Elena even pointed it out, that For example, our African-American students showed the most growth in our English and math scores. Did I understand that right? Which I think is a huge strength. Now, they're not on the same level as our white students. I recognize that. But they showed the most growth of any of our subgroups, right? So I thought that was a huge strength that deserves to be recognized. And I also wrote down as a strength that... kind of what Kristen said too, in every presentation we've had since I've been on the board, as it relates to curriculum, every department in our district is talking about equity and using it as a through line in all areas. And I'm very proud of that, that that isn't just, that we don't just have these narrow goals, but it's such a wide net that we're casting in every department at every level and every grade of this district. So I wrote that as a strength also.

Other thoughts?

Go ahead. The Press Well, thank you for the report. I also will just echo what everybody else has said about some of the strengths. I especially like that we're looking, that we've changed our mindset to be looking more introspectively and looking at the behavior of the adults and what an adult might be doing to perpetuate implicit bias or that it's I like that we've changed that since 2016. As far as the threat, the biggest thing that stood out to me when I read the report were the panorama results and the... That was really disheartening to me that kids not feeling good about themselves and not feeling included. So I wonder what we can do to... I don't prefer to have any answers and I think this is a hard conversation and I am not an expert at the area, so I certainly don't have answers, but I wonder what we can do to improve on those results because it feels like until a kid feels good inside, it's very hard for them to thrive academically. Again, I'm not an expert, but I'm just wondering about that and making sure that we are... celebrating all of our kids, not just the high flyers and not just the merit scholars or whatnot, but making sure that we're acknowledging other groups of children that are also excelling at whether it's academics or sports or or art or a drum or whatever it is, just to make sure that we're celebrating all of our kids.

Yeah, I have a couple of things that I wanted to ask about. One kind of question that may reveal, again, a little bit of lack of sophistication regarding statistics and maybe just basic math. But there was some talk tonight about percentages and proportionate representation in different groups. Would that be... Excel gifted AP classes and different ways of comparing that or counting that or calculating percentages, I think, if I answered that right. And I don't know if that is a... I didn't have that in mind when I read the report, but I don't know that there's anything that we could do to talk about that and clarify what are we talking about with some of these percentages? What would be different ways of comparing it? Is that, are we talking I'm not sure if you know what the different methods would be, but I'm just not sure we have a common understanding of like this is why we're doing it this way or this is why we are not doing it another way. Yeah

and I think that the easiest way to kind of explain it is so if we look at our white population and like for the gifted program, we would look at how many students are actually being identified for what percentage of our white students are being identified for gifted. So then we would compare that to our African-American students. That number should, so the numbers should be very similar in terms of if we have a certain percentage of our white student that are being identified and it should be the same for the percentage of our African-American. The number wouldn't be the same because there's fewer students but that percentage. And, Robin, I don't know if you want to talk a

little bit. Yes, so the optimal situation is that the identification and representation in the gifted program reflects the demographics of the school district. And so DESE refers to an equity index, which refers to, you know, looking at your general population and then basically 20 percent less, that amount would be kind of the minimum threshold. in terms of representation in your school district. Obviously, again, the optimal situation is that the statistics mirror each other, but they strongly recommend that school districts use a lens of using this equity index to kind of measure the representation of their program. And so that's what that column in the far right in the slide deck is representing, is looking at our current demographics and the total population less than 20% within that group. And that's what generates that equity index percentage.

We could always write another report that would explain

that. So is there a way, other than the equity index that we're talking about, is there a different way that we used to do it? Have we changed that? Has that been...

I do not know the historical application in the School District of Equity Index as it applied to the demographics. So when I got here, I immediately dove into the data to see what does the representation look like early in the program? What did the identification process look like in the previous year and how did it possibly contribute to the current representation? And then I went back to... to look at where students, for lack of a better description, were falling out of consideration. I found that grades were a big factor in eliminating students right away so we didn't even have a chance to look at them individually because they didn't meet that criteria. Another criteria that separated students out of the process right away was the achievement data and using national norms around that. And we found that to be problematic because the outcomes of the program are not related to academic acceleration. The outcomes of the program were actually related to creativity and problem solving and critical thinking, so we needed to come up with a better combination of tools that met the DESE guidelines but better aligned to those outcomes.

And I think in the past we've looked at data, but I don't know if we've actually changed anything. And so I think that's where we're looking at using the data to say, okay, we need to do something different.

I want to just jump in here real quick and make a comment and then keep going around. I think on the data, it's really important to know. So I hear you, Jason, that we're not far enough. But it is important that when we look at our subgroup, right, our overall subgroup, that our data, our subgroup overall is higher than any other school district in St. Louis County. on almost everything except there's like one district in math and one district in ELA, right? Overall subgroup. That's important, right? Because we need to understand why, right? So part of it is not just the gap. Why is that, right? Why are we performing at that level? And then when you break it down to the African-American subgroup, and we look, I don't, we didn't see it by all the school districts in St. Louis County. We saw it by our peer districts, you know, so think Ladue or Kirkwood, those kind of districts. We still performed very well compared. And so I think that data is important. And then you look at Captain in this report, right? Captain had a 5% increase, right? In terms of literacy, a 10% increase in terms of math. Why? Right? Part of this is understanding why is that? That's good. We're not far enough, but we're making progress. And, you know, to your point, we inherited something. And so why are we doing so well, relatively speaking, right?

I think that's important to know. So maybe just to pick up on that, I'll get to the SWAT stuff, I promise. One thing that I have found in doing some work on this and part of it, it's talking to people in the schools and digging in a little bit more right now because I'm talking to more different administrators and stuff like that. I think some of that why are certain things working and why are we seeing progress in certain areas, comes out more the more you talk to people and get more and more examples. And maybe I'm just a slow learner. I don't necessarily get all that from this report, I will say. But the more I ask questions and the more I talk to principals or talk to teachers or whatever about what are the things, what are the specifics? I need examples of how this has worked. And I can think of one thing that I've heard one principal explain at least three times. I feel like I missed it the first one and a half times as to why it mattered that that had been changed. So I don't, that's not a criticism of the report necessarily but I don't think it, I don't think you can get all of the things that are working well or not working well from this. So that's just a comment. Is it okay if I do my? Go ahead. So the two things that I thought about in terms of in the threat column and maybe I'm just think like a lawyer so I don't think of restraints and whatever but there are two things that I think I recognize as threats that aren't specifically in place and Jason actually touched on one there is a historic I don't know if I would go so far as policy but some culture yes in Clayton of more tolerance of some of this at status quo than is what it should be I will tell you that the comment about certain families needing to sign a contract was something that I heard long before I was on the board. It was made by someone who is not on this board anymore, but I'll tell you personally it's something that motivated the hell out of me to get involved because I thought it was a horrible thing to say. And it's not, I just want to make that point that that is not something that I think anybody would accept right now on this board. I certainly hope, and if I heard it right now, I would absolutely say something about it. So if that has historically been something that as a community, as a board, whatever else, those kinds of things, if they were tolerated too much, I apologize. And we have to overcome that if that's something that we did, and that historic legacy of that. So that's one thing that's a threat that we have to think about. The other thing that I think, as I've been really thinking about this and talking about it, that's a threat is that most of this... in this report is stuff that's done by the administrators, by the teachers. I don't think we can have too much of a voice at the board level on these issues and when we think about issues of equity and diversity and all of these things, I think there is one of our threats is that there's not enough of a voice at our level on these issues i don't have something that i'm ready to call like a formal proposal or what to do about that or bring a motion but it's something that i've been thinking about and getting a lot of input from different administrators and teachers and other people in the community as to what we can do to increase that that voice on this issue from the the african-american communities in the communities that we're talking about and um you know we can uh i just think that's something we should be thinking about and i'm kind of looking forward to continuing to try to figure that out and bring those ideas. I think that is a threat. Go

ahead.

Yeah. So this is a difficult topic to talk about. because it gets convoluted real quickly. We can say, like Stacey says, what also perplexed me was the Asian students who had issues with fitting in. These things are very complicated to talk about and get convoluted real quick, and then we're off on something different. There's nothing wrong with focusing on the issue of race and anti-blackness and how it's infected our system and how our kids are highly affected by it, black and white. So we talked about identifying gifted children. We mentioned we had to change a few things on how we looked at things, right? Which is a good thing. We had to acclimate a little bit. We had to change some things. And that is deficit perspective. That's a deficit perspective. We're saying we gotta fix some things to make it work for other people to get in. So my question is why are we all of a sudden identifying more black kids? That's rhetorical. But I'm saying, why are we all of a sudden identifying more black kids for the gifted program? So it's like, because we're focused on it, because now we're actually looking for them now, we're actually seeing, oh, crap, it's showing some signs of giftedness. Is that what this is? As opposed to before, like a year before, we weren't looking for those things. We discounted that. Or we're just adding more stuff in there to get them involved? I mean, all I'm saying is we need to be thinking about how we're going to hold our culture to another level that's more accepting and more understanding. And teachers who don't fit in, they can't be a part of the program anymore. That sounds absolutely egregious. Jason's going to fire teachers. that don't see black people as equal. But it's just as egregious to say that these black kids are underperforming. This is a toxic environment for black, so look, black kids who come from families like, say Jason Wilson, whose wife went to Yale, right? Whose wife was a professor and husband went to Wash U, that's me. Right? We are kids still are underperforming. Living in Clayton, still underperforming or slightly above. We might do well on tests. We might have all As. But when it comes to these specific things that we're talking about, these benchmarks, we're not making it for some reason. And we also feel ostracized, and we also feel these certain things that these other kids are feeling. It doesn't matter where you're from, because when you're black no one's really trying to decipher where you're from. You're black. And so all I'm saying is what are we gonna do and how can we focus on it for like five minutes? of focusing on it and not feeling bad about it, and not making me about to be the black guy who always talks about black stuff. Because believe me, if I could come in here and talk about other stuff, I would be doing it. I'm such a smart guy. I have other stuff to talk about besides racial inequities. But this happens to be a big problem when we look at our numbers. So in the nation, right? But I don't care about the rest of the nation right now. I care about us. We aren't performing at the level we need to be performing at. So what are we going to do different? I'm not saying, Sean, you didn't have an answer tonight. I'm saying like, I would like to have one soon on how we're going to make this priority number one. It should be priority number one. We are failing black kids, making them feel bad. And some of you are happy to be here. I'm happy to be here, but you get here, it's a bunch of other stuff. You know, I don't like how I look now. I don't like my hair. I want to talk differently. I want to be like this. I want to fit in. On top of the normal stuff that human beings have to go through, now we got to do a lot of other stuff. We walk out of here with a lot of misunderstandings of who we were going through an all-white environment, a school that's all white, not being told you were great, not being selected for anything that was, you know, that you thought you should be selected for. It's a tough process. So I just want to make sure that I'm framing this accordingly so that we walk away with the right understanding that, you know, next time we come to the table, probably next time, but in a few months or whatever, that we actually have some significant strides and we actually focused on some really key issues, like origin issues. Like origin issues. So that we can start trying to build on our base.

So I was just thinking about that, Jason, building on that. I hear what you're saying. And I'm also wondering about, like, the idea that the gifted thing is like a distraction.

Right.

I hear that. I was just wondering about, like, when we look at our performance of students on our local assessments and how that looks and what are the achievements that we see in our students on the local assessments? Because I think that a lot of times these maps or these assessments that are biased, you know, innately, right? They're not a good predictor of success in life. They're not a predictor of success, um, in the future. And they certainly do a lot of harm for self-esteem and that kind of thing. So, um, I think that's been our distraction. We're getting distracted by focusing on the things that aren't going to change or make a difference because they're innately biased. So I actually feel like we have done some things that have been transformational in my mind, and yet they're little. They're not big enough, but like at White Island Middle School, the learning strategies. that we're moving kids out of that and we're giving opportunities for ways to shine and celebrate, like being able to be successful in a Da Vinci class or being able to be in the art class or music or whatever instead of feeling like you're canceling that, doing good enough all day long. So I don't know when we're going to get it all right, but I hear what you're saying.

Yeah, so I just wanted to talk a little bit about the student perspective and that's why I'm here. So I wanted to do that. One of the things that the District Advisory Council was talking about was looking at what we're calling equity. And so when we're looking, I mean this report was an equity report. And I think that one of the things, and the District Advisory Council read it and they came back and talked and we talked about it. And one of the things that they mentioned, a lot of them was Why are we calling it an equity report if it's specifically looking at racial equity? Looking at, if we're going to call it equity, that needs to be a broader topic. And so that was something that the students were feeling, that if we're looking at racial equity specifically, we should say we're looking at race equity. And if we're looking a racial equity specifically in our black students, then we should say that. And we should explicitly say that so that the public knows what we're talking about. And so that idea of being honest in what we're looking at and what we're trying to assess I think is really important. And so as we talk about an equity report, well, is it an equity report or is it a racial equity report? I think we need to clear that up and what is the goal of what we're looking at. I think that that's the first thing and it seems to me like we're looking at our African American students in the district and how we can help them the most. And I think that we need to say that and that's what the report should be called. And then moving on to my personal experience along with other district advisory council members and folks who I've talked to is that going through school and a lot of, you know, district advisory council members, some of us were in the gifted program, some of us weren't. Some of us were here in early childhood, some of us we're not, and then some of us are taking lots of AP honors classes and some of us aren't. And there is a difference in your experience at clayton based off of the classes that you take and uh and the gifted program and moving throughout am i taking honors classes am i being pushed into those accelerated courses in middle school and then in high school am i taking honors and ep level classes and There is folks feel, at least anecdotally from everyone that I've talked to, the teachers that are looked at as the teachers that you want to have are usually the honors and AP level teachers. Those are the teachers that are really pushing our students to be the best that they can be. And so when we look at teaching, it's looking at our teachers as well. And those are our honors and AP level of teachers. So as much as it's not the end goal to have to have our African American students in our AP and honors level courses, that is something that changes their educational experience. And I know for me, taking honors and AP classes Daniel Glossinger right now, who is our economics teacher, is doing work around looking at connections between students. And so I've looked at some of the data with him, and as he's working on it, I'm hopeful, and I know that he'll present it to you at some point. But there is a difference when we look at where are our students connected? Are they taking honors and AP classes? Because most likely the students that are taking honors and AP class are only connecting with students who are taking honors and So there's a lack of diversity within there. And then as we look lower into our students, there are three sections. One is the purple dots, green dots, and our blue dots. Blue dots are students who are taking our honors and AP courses. Green dots are more in the middle, students who are taking a mixture of classes. And then our purple classes who are students who are taken classes maybe below their grade level who are catching up. And there is a difference in our racial diversity within those groups. And so as a student, it is really important to see when I look in my AP and honors level classes, I don't see a lot of diversity. And I think that it's an important issue that we need to address. And I think an opportunity for that would be English right now as we look at like when I know history, that's something that we can work on. There's no accelerated English classes in middle school and leading up, so I think in high school it's a great way to encourage our students to take honors AP classes. That was one thing I noted. And then the other thing that I wanted to talk about really quick, I'm sorry I'm going on for a long time, One of the things that I've looked at in cultural leadership is the cycle of socialization and how institutions play a role in how we view ourselves and how we view our society. And so the report talks a lot about how we're going to look at cultural responsive teaching and learning for our teachers. I think we need to do that for our students as well. And I think that we need to look at microaggression for students. We need to teach equity for our students because it makes a difference in recognizing there are Going through a program like Cultural Leadership helped me understand when I walk into a room to see diversity. And that's something that not everyone sees and it's not something that everyone notices. And I think that we have a really unique opportunity with the resources that we have, that we can create an opportunity for students to be able to see those things that are invisible for most people. that we can be leaders in equity, and I think we need to teach our students how to do that. And the cycle of socialization says that to break it, to break the status quo, which is something that we've been talking about, you have to raise the consciousness and interrupt and educate people. And I think that that's something that we can do, and so I'm hoping that we can look at, for students, how can we teach our students about equity and make it better for them? That's it.

That's great. And that overlaps with some of the whole microaggression things when I heard students do. So I'll try to just give some that fit into the categories. I think people touched on strengths, and I think we're pretty good at knowing our strengths. I think opportunities that we have... I think we have lots of opportunities. I mentioned this in the discussion before on enrollment, but we have a lot of community members that really care about this. and that would do work. If we want to look at data or we want to actually do a policy review, which I think would be great. I know we're getting to them. You guys will be getting to them policy by policy. But maybe get some volunteers or a class to work on looking through an equity lens at our policies. And the board, it would ultimately be up to the board to make the changes, but somebody could... earmark those ones that need change and then we have community that are ready to be ready to do action around equity and diversity we have opportunities in our early childhood center to have african-american students we had openings and we haven't gone through and actually made it happen and i hope you all hold administration to that because we can do that if we want to weaknesses and I just I'm not gonna I'm just going to be blunt about this I thought the report you guys have written some excellent reports over the years and I've been on the court and I told you that this report was not one of them the report was Somebody, I wished somebody would have, I think about Katee Waheed, who did some training with us and me at my work. Somebody needed to look at that report through an equity lens and say, this is not about equity. Now, are we calling it, you know, when you say is this racial equity or is it educational equity? The name's changed. We need to figure out, you all need to figure out are we working on racial equity because there is a need and it can't be diluted. If we're gonna work on racial equity It cannot be diluted with other kinds of variants where there's a need for looking at disparities and, you know, people being treated wrong. I mean, it just, it has to be laser focused on racial equity of death, which you should use. and so this report and I'm not going to go through all of that but I marked all over mine and I would love an opportunity to sit and talk with you guys about how does this fund fit under equity or what about putting this data in there because there's lots of ways that it could really be I know we're doing some of the work that wasn't I don't know and some of it just doesn't need to be there so what it's a four page report at least it's honestly reflecting what it is that we're doing and where we're headed so And I think we're missing another weakness, and we're missing some of the data points. Let's, you know, you mentioned that you think we're making improvements in the hiring and the whatever. Get our numbers out there. You know, and maybe you had that planned for the last report. But, you know, have that in there. Have it in there. We need to be looking at our discipline. I mean, I know that's not part of the initiative, but we all saw a report that showed the disparities in discipline, and we know regionally that's an issue, especially for black boys. Let's find out how we're doing with that. And then another weakness, again I'm just going to be blunt, is I've been a part of and gone to every one of the courageous conversations that we've had over the past year. three years and what we did this year which was no longer driven by community or parent group was had the lowest turnout there wasn't feedback asked after those and what I heard and what I experienced was it didn't match where the people that show up were at board members didn't show up at these ones. I mean, it wasn't something that brought in, there wasn't a lot of African American parents showing up. It was, what I saw, it was kind of a nice, nice kind of practicing some conversations and getting closer. I mean, I'm not saying it was bad. I'm just saying it didn't meet where these people that show up for equity things are ready. They're ready to go, and what can we do? And they're ready for action, and they're able to have conversations about who streams. conversations about diversity in our district conversations about ground for support you know I really I think we're missing some opportunities by not I guess maybe it's having parents and community members be part of the planning of it so we really you know what I mean corresponds more with where the community is the threats I see I really worry. I know the panorama data and where we're not meeting certain subgroups' needs is important, and I'm not sure where you all are going to figure out how to do that or where you all are gonna figure out how to address it. I think by having, if you all choose to broaden this to educational equity or equity for all different, I don't know how you're gonna do it, but I'm worried about being diluted. And then I also think one of our threats is over the years, now that we've changed definitions, we've changed data point, I think we have to be aware of when we're moving to a post and we're changing definitions and sort of figure out how to stay focused on what it is that you all are supporting. Thank you.

Anybody have anything else? Ms. Thank you. The Press Thank you

for letting me say bye.

I just have one other, I think, I just want to say one other thing, because I think everybody said most of what I would say. But I do think there's an opportunity in terms of partnerships, specifically. I mean, you even talked about, I think one of Clayton's strengths is to be able to partner and think about from a regional perspective about a number of things. And I think, you know, there's a continued opportunity in lots of ways, including, right, as some of you heard, you know, we talked about early childhood, right? There's an initiative around regional equity in early childhood that could raise $84 million a year for, you know, early childhood, right? That could address not all but some, right? When you think about access and quality, right? And Because part of what gets to impact around equity can be access, quality, and opportunity. It doesn't always work that way, but those are often important ingredients. Thank you all very much. We appreciate it. So I just want to check in with the board. Should we take a couple minute break? Maybe let's take a quick bio break, three, four minute break,

and we'll come back. 7.02, policy GG,

DJFA, federal programs. Federal programs. Mary Jo, is this you?

Okay, Mary Jo, can you give a brief update of DJFA? Federal

programs is very simple. Basically, the federal programs, the policies stipulated, it kind of overrides the purchasing policy. The purchasing policy recommends that we utilize reserves and euros, but for federal programs, you can use any national. You can't restrict it by state.

So does anybody have any comments or questions? Any comments

or questions on DJ FA Okay, thank you

We are going to move on to 7.03, which is policy DEA, which is revenue from tax sources. Please.

They're basically revising this policy to put a little more onus on the school district in following the law. So they're asking that if legislation is put through that impacts your major revenue streams, that you follow it and talk to your legislators about it.

Anybody have any questions or comments on policy DEA?

The only thing I would say is that this is when Mary Jo talks about advocacy, and we're talking about legislative advocacy and things that are coming up that we may need to denote some things that we want to advocate for or against.

Okay. Thank you, Mary Jo. So Policy 7.04, which is Policy IKE, Promotion, Acceleration, and Retention. I think it's from Elena, right? Sure. Yes.

So with policy IKE, because of a House bill and a Senate bill, it requires the school board to adopt a policy allowing students be considered both for either subject, so like content acceleration or grade level acceleration. So the way that this policy is written, our recommendation would be to go forward with how it's recommended and then what we are currently in the process, we do currently have a process for acceleration but we're looking at it through a different lens and trying to expand it to really include all content areas. in our thinking with that. So all of that stuff would fall within the procedure versus the policy. So we're comfortable with how the wording of this policy is.

Okay. Any questions or comments on IKE? Okay, thank you. I think maybe the next one is yours too, which is IKF, 7.05 policy, IKF. It's graduation requirements.

Yeah, IK... The change in this one, and I actually had some conversation with the lawyers about this one, because the change in this is about allowing students to fulfill one unit of mathematics, science, or practical arts with a comp sci course. The direction that we have gotten from DESE is actually different than the statute. So the way that DESE writes their direction to us is that the district has control to make the decision as to whether a child can do this. It's actually, in talking to the lawyers, the way that it's written in this policy is correct. So it's that the student is the person who may make the decision. It's not the district's choice to offer that or not offer it. It's that the student may make that decision but then there are other things that the district is required to do in notifying the student of how that might impact them. in applying to colleges if colleges are looking for four years of science, four years of mathematics. If the child chooses to replace one of those credits that we're required to inform them in writing of the fact that it could affect them in that way. So I'm now comfortable with how this one is written. We had a lot of conversation back and forth about what Desi's direction has been to us, and the lawyers are pretty strong in the fact that this is written the way that this statute is written.

So it looks like they

have

to consent in writing,

the parents. Right. So we have to say to them, here's what's going to happen, and then they have to sign off on it. So it's like they actually have a letter for us to use. Any

other comments or questions on IKF? Okay. Then policy IGAEB, which is the sexual health instruction. Doesn't this one

look good? We've spent a lot of time talking about this one. So the new addition to this one, after we went through all of that, is that starting in 2020, 2021, districts are going to be required... every year from sixth grade through 12th grade to provide training to students around sexual abuse, including how to recognize it, how to report an incident, how to obtain assistance and intervention, and then resources for students. So because this is statute, our suggestion is to move forward with how it's written. and I'm currently working with the schools to figure out what that will look like within schools because it really doesn't, some people might think that just fits with health curriculum, but it only really in a child's middle school and high school career fits with the health curriculum twice. So then beyond that, we need to look at both who are the providers that we can look to to help us with this, or what's the professional learning for the teachers, and where are we going to put it in the curriculum when it's not in health. So I don't feel like it should fall to health teachers exclusively, but we're in conversation with the schools right now about what that could possibly look

like. Okay. Any questions or comments about IGAED?

I know we talked about separating students by gender. Are we going to stop doing that next year?

So we stopped doing that. So we don't do it in secondary. We stopped doing it in one building this year, and then the plan is to stop across the board.

Other questions or comments about this one? Thank you, Melania. Appreciate it. So checkout, Sean.

I didn't hear that the board had any changes with the policies. I mean, we have the educational equity checkout. I think that there was a lot that we captured during that. I think what we'll do is we'll capture those notes and Elena took those notes and we'll put those in the Friday memo. Okay. I think it would be better than going through all of them again. Perfect.

Thank you. That's great. Okay, so we're moving on then to action items. So 8.01, Gary? 8.01, move that... Oh, wait a

second, I don't have it. Sorry. Move that the Board of Education approve policy JHC as presented. Second. We

moved and seconded. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes seven zero. Thank you. Okay, we're moving to 8.02.

Any other questions or comments all in favor any opposed

Okay, it passes 7-0.

Thank you. 8.03? 8.03, I move that the Board of Education approve the World Languages and Cultures Self-Study Year 2 as presented. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Passes unanimously, 7-0. Okay. We're actually moving to the consent agenda. 9-21, I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Any questions, comments about the consent agenda? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Passes 7-0 unanimously. Thank you. Okay. We're moving along to the... Sorry, board communications. All right, so does anybody have any board communication? This time? Anybody? Oh,

I'll say something.

Go ahead.

so i just want to

thank

john dr

doherty

for bringing up the coronavirus thing and i didn't know if we needed to put it um as a i know that community members have reached out to me and asked what like what our plan is and i think they want more information than just surface information. So I didn't know if we needed to put that as a study item or what you want, how you want to address that.

So what I might suggest is what we'll do is when the plans progress, we will send communication to the board ongoing so you have that information because board members will come to you. I think I would propose that if we have an update of, like, information that we feel like is important for the board to know, if you feel okay with us adding that just as an information item or, you know... at the last minute almost, if we need to, we will add that. But we will make sure that we keep the Board of Prize aware of what's happening But it might not be a bad idea for the next meeting. We just have like a check-in about it.

Yeah. Yeah, but I will say just you want to walk this line right between like adding to the fever pitch and the worry of everything. But I think we're probably in a stage, just given the number of people that have asked me things about it who were – for the first time. People want to know more, not less. Communication is definitely one of those.

So I wonder to that end if we should put it on the next board meeting as an information item. No, no, that's what I mean. And then what we'll do is...

I'll have a memo, if we could get something in the Friday memo so that way you guys have talking points if someone is saying something to the community that you know how to respond. That's

good. Thank you. Anybody else have anything on communication? Yes, Stacy.

I do. Parks and Rec Commission, we had a meeting on Monday night. And just to give an update on the Center of Clayton, it is 80% done. They are shutting down for 10 days, coinciding with our district's spring break. So that's good. The architects and Patty DeCouris are going back to architectural review work for the third time with the plans for the ice rink. I shouldn't even call it ice rink anymore. Now they're calling it the commons because it's an all-season recreation complex. They're hopeful that ARB will now approve the plans because they've made the changes they requested. But it has pushed it back, so I think they're hoping to open fall of 2021. All those according to schedule.

Anybody else? So just one thing, since we're here at Merrimack, it was great to be invited to the class of Merrimack students at the high school where a lot of those students are here today and especially to be here tonight. I'm just appreciative you included that and getting to see that project. They should have brought more soap. We have some soap. I'm going to split this up and give you each a little piece of soap. But they were making a bunch more, so there will be more available. Four costs. Four costs. Explaining this group that they're supporting in Haiti and what the money that they raised does, how little money it does, an incredible amount. It's like... It

was one of those examples of collaboration, real-world experience, having an impact. It goes to science, to marketing, speaking. And that our young kids are working with our older high school students. It was a real great example of how they did well. And it smelled good. Yeah. And they were making mistakes and learning from them and laughing stuff.

Oh, and one more thing.

Yeah, go ahead.

This weekend, Wiedown Spring Musical. Friday night, Saturday there's two shows of Matilda Tickets are on sale. You can buy them online now. With a credit card. Yes, now it's like real theater. Reserve seating and everything. Anybody

have anything else? Go

ahead. I know that we'll do in April another vote on if you want to continue the student ramp. I was wondering if you'd like me to do a discussion or information item before going into the, I guess it would be a study item. I'm just curious.

We do

need it on the agenda, so

we will need to vote it. Because I know one of the – I can see the positive parts. I think one of the things that I don't know behind the scenes, like – Who's giving you guidance? How's it, you know, how, kind of what adult involvement? Sort of like, what do you need? Not that you guys are adults, but, you know, like, are you needing Dr. Doherty's time for this? I thought, you know, that was one of the things that I wondered about, how that would be, and kind of just the guidance and direction you're getting and how it's going from your perspective.

Yeah, I'd be happy to give an update. Just kind of wondering something. I

was just going to say, if you have an opportunity to drive by Aztec Field, just to see you coming together, it is amazing to see it

now.

And

the dedication for Aztec Field is April 25th. Yes,

April 25th.

Which

is the same weekend as the Hall of Fame. I will say that

we have... You may have heard me say this before, but on Saturday, May the 2nd will be the next board PLC. So we've established a date for that. It will be at University City at Jackson Park Elementary. So we've got established a place and a date. And I think it's exciting that what we'll have is there's kind of these two proposals around early childhood. So we'll have them explain what's going on in the world you know kind of early childhood in this ballot initiative that you've heard me talk about and then move on to kind of the discussions around equity and college career writing and social emotional learning etc that we have so

one time

From 9 to noon. Saturday, May 2nd. And we'll be sending out a save the date very soon. Joe, is there

something in particular related to this?

Is there involvement? I thought I heard something on NPR related to this.

Yeah, so they just happened to have the... So Ready by Five is one of the groups that's thinking about half a cent sales tax that would raise $84 million for early childhood. And U-City agreed to let their facilities be utilized for the campaign kickoff, which was last Saturday. Got it. So I think that's probably...

They just offered

their facility. Yeah, and I think that was smart because it's important to... The idea is that it's for the benefit of... public and kind of private centers. So think, you know, most school districts aren't serving ones and twos, right? Ones and two-year-olds, right? So that's usually not what school districts are doing. Those are private centers more, or what I call private centers, but certainly school districts are doing lots of threes and fours. And in our case, twos too, but most are doing threes and four. Anybody have anything else? Anyone want to move to adjourn? All right. All in favor? Aye. We adjourn. Thank you.