August 29, 2019 — Meeting Transcript

you So long.

Sorry. Okay, welcome everybody. I want to call the meeting to order and say that adequate notice has been given so we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance and I am gonna ask Adam to lead us. All right, thank you. So this is the exciting start of our new school year, kind of our first meeting and what's really cool is we get to welcome officially Adam Jaffe who's our new student representative on the board and so what we're gonna do is actually swear Adam in to start. So we're gonna actually go over there Adam and swear you in. I'm just gonna say a couple things real quick and hand it over to you, okay. So before we get to recognizing our own, and we have lots of students to recognize this evening, I just wanna say a couple things. So we're very excited that we are starting to video our meetings. So this meeting will be videoed and all of our meetings will be videoed, which is exciting. So the public will be able to see the meetings, that's number one. Number two, we will always start our meetings this year with kind of recognition of students, which we should, right? I mean it is all about students so that's exciting. Number three, we will start to move our meetings around a little bit. So not all of our, and we'll publish the schedule, but not all of our meetings will be in this building. We'll have some of our meetings in school buildings. So that's exciting too, because we certainly want to be out in the school buildings. And then just maybe it's obvious, we're sitting a little bit differently because this is just kind of how it works for the camera. So if you wonder why we're a little bit of a different, it was more difficult to video. And then finally what I wanna say, we did talk about our norms. Our norms is how we treat one another. So I'm gonna just read those at the beginning of this meeting and then I'll hand it over to Sean. And we're working on obviously our norms, how we work together both at the meeting and outside the meeting, but just in terms of how we treat one another. Five norms to remind us as we go through the meeting. Demonstrate respect for one another, our mutual learning, and individual contributions. Number two, actively participate, contribute, and take risks. Number three, demonstrate collegial relationships with one another. Having collegial dialogue and discussion allows for the group to push one another's thinking in a respectful manner. Number four, meeting with purposeful, organized, and include adequate time for processing and debate. And then finally, listen with the intent to understand, share the airspace. So having said that, I'll turn it over to Sean.

Okay. Thank you, Joe. So we are gonna be recognizing some students tonight. And we have revamped some of the things that we've done with our new teacher induction and also the professional development that we did at the beginning of the year. And we went and made sure that students were part of that. And so I'm gonna have Milena Garganigo come up, and she's gonna talk a little bit about the why behind some of the work that they did with the new teacher induction, and then recognize some students that are here tonight that really helped make this a very special occasion for our new teachers. You can sit in either one.

Good evening. This year with Robyn Wiens and Tony Arnold coming on board, we had a lot of conversation about different ways to consider our new teacher induction first of all and then professional development within the district. And so Adam actually was part of our first meeting that we had where we were talking about what we wanted to accomplish with new teacher induction and what we decided pretty early on was that because students are the reason we exist as an organization, that we should have students introduce the new teachers to the district. And so we started with just sort of this simple thinking about having two students start the first day and welcome the new teachers. and just kick some things off, just talking about their experience within the district. And then pretty quickly got to a point where we needed to start every day of new teacher induction with student presence. So it reminded us and kind of grounded us in our work. So there's two students here, Sarah Centeno and Shrey Vedantham. So if you guys wanna come up first, These two students, Sarah started, she introduced on the first day, welcomed all the new teachers and then Shrey was a part of welcoming the group but then had to leave early. But what I thought was really awesome about him was he actually videoed an introduction for us that then that was actually what helped us to think about we should have students at the beginning of every day. So we used his video on the second day. So it wasn't even something that we asked for, like he did it on his own but it was amazing and so it helped us ground our work. And then when we moved into thinking about our professional learning for our entire district, so on district opening day, we wanted to repeat that piece of having students as a part of that work And so we did, our focus on that first day really was around mental wellness. So both mental wellness of our students as well as mental wellness of our teachers. And so if Liza Anzalotti can come up. Liza was one of the students, and then we had a recent graduate, Alex Good, who both ran breakout sessions for us. So Liza ran yoga sessions for us for both breakout sessions, and they were packed. People were sort of fighting to get in there. And then Alex ran a session about mental wellness for children and for students. So we just wanted to recognize these children, and then we Helping us throughout new teacher induction, we have a pretty typical piece where we bring in a group of children to serve as almost like a round table and answer questions for the new teachers and give advice. So they also came with us. But thank you all for your help.

Good evening. This year with Robin Wiens and Tony Arnold coming on board, we had a lot of conversation about different ways to consider our new teacher induction first of all and then professional development within the district. And so Adam actually was part of our first meeting that we had where we were talking about what we wanted to accomplish with new teacher induction and what we decided pretty early on was that because students are the reason we exist as an organization, that we should have students introduce the new teachers to the district. And so we started with just sort of this simple thinking about having two students start the first day and welcome the new teachers. and just kick some things off, just talking about their experience within the district. And then pretty quickly got to a point where we needed to start every day of new teacher induction with student presence. So it reminded us and kind of grounded us in our work. So there's two students here, Sarah Centeno and Shrey Vedantham. So if you guys wanna come up first, These two students, Sarah started, she introduced on the first day, welcomed all the new teachers and then Shrey was a part of welcoming the group but then had to leave early. But what I thought was really awesome about him was he actually videoed an introduction for us that then that was actually what helped us to think about we should have students at the beginning of every day. So we used his video on the second day. So it wasn't even something that we asked for, like he did it on his own but it was amazing and so it helped us ground our work. And then when we moved into thinking about our professional learning for our entire district, so on district opening day, we wanted to repeat that piece of having students as a part of that work And so we did, our focus on that first day really was around mental wellness. So both mental wellness of our students as well as mental wellness of our teachers. And so if Liza Anzalotti can come up. Liza was one of the students, and then we had a recent graduate, Alex Good, who both ran breakout sessions for us. So Liza ran yoga sessions for us for both breakout sessions, and they were packed. People were sort of fighting to get in there. And then Alex ran a session about mental wellness for children and for students. So we just wanted to recognize these children, and then we Helping us throughout new teacher induction, we have a pretty typical piece where we bring in a group of children to serve as almost like a round table and answer questions for the new teachers and give advice. So they also came with us. But thank you all for your help.

You guys can go over there and get a picture. I do wanna say something about Sarah. Sarah actually led an inclusion activity for our teachers as well, which I thought was great with another student for our new teacher, so I wanted to mention that.

Okay, excellent. We're moving on to, I don't think we have any public comment, right? Do we have, nobody signed up for public comment? Okay, so we don't have any public comments, so we're gonna move on to superintendent communications. Sean. Okay.

So first of all, Happy New Year to everyone and wanna welcome you to the 19-20 school year. I wanted to do something a little different. I'm gonna do a little bit of a presentation that would allow us to kind of give us kind of the state of where we are right now as we start this 2019-2020 school year. A lot of great things happening and wanna just kind of give an overview from the superintendent's perspective. I think what Melaina said in the, let's see, Of course, the technologies. Sorry. Pull this out. Yeah. I apologize for that. Of course, as soon as I sit down it stops working but we're gonna move forward. So what Milena said was we really try to make what we do always come back to our students and they are our ultimate why. And I think that that's really important that when we're making decisions we have to understand that we're making them for our students and their learning. And so one of the remarks and my remarks at the opening day with the staff is that we will always come back to the why and I said that Our Board of Education also sets the tone for that because you're constantly holding us accountable to that why and we appreciate that. We want you to continue doing that for us. The other thing too is that this is our first meeting of the year, but this isn't the first meeting for our Board of Education. I think it's important for the public to know is that the board had a retreat already this summer and is working on their collaboration and their collegial relationships in terms of running the district. And so we, I just wanna say thank you to the board because we know that this is a time commitment. Our summers are a little different than the school year and hopefully you enjoyed some of those Wednesday evenings during the summer but we're back in gear and I wanna say thank you first and foremost for all of your time and energy that you give to the board. Day 11, we have 2,615 students. And when we look at our mission and vision of our district, we are responsible for 2,615 students, each and every one of them. Each of them walks through our doors and our responsibility is to make sure that they are reaching their potential and making sure that we're actualizing that vision in everything that we do. And I said this to you before is that we are a district that's really great. We do great things in this district, but we can never be complacent in what we do in this district and never say that we're already doing great things. We have to always say, what are we doing to become even better? And that growth mindset, that continuous improvement is gonna constantly focus, that it's gonna constantly make us better for our students. And we are evolving. So when I look at this year and thinking about where we are right now with the 2019-2020 school year, we still focus on academic achievement. That's our big focus. Besides, our ultimate priority is the safety and security of our students, but our students are coming into our schools to learn. And as we look at this school year, we have continued to show that our students are, they do really well. We just recently got the niche rating of number one in the state of Missouri and number 14 in the nation. We continue to have high graduation rate for our students, and we still have a high average ACT for our students. We continue to make equity and excellence a part of the conversation in what we do, and makes it a through line in all that we do with everything that we do with curriculum, learning spaces, instruction. And I think it's really important to say is that sometimes when we think about equity, sometimes people think it's about lowering expectations so students can be successful. And that is actually opposite of that. It's making sure that we're raising expectations, making sure we're giving students every opportunity to reach their potential and making sure that we are doing what's right in the classrooms to make that happen. So that means that sometimes we have to change the behaviors of the adults and looking at culturally responsive teaching which is good teaching for all students. And so we don't want to ever give the impression that we're lowering expectations for our students. The other thing is social-emotional learning. We are making sure that we are developing the whole child. We have academic achievement, but we also wanna make sure we're taking care of the social-emotional well-being of our students. This year, we're introducing our Panorama Survey, which is gonna give us some really good concrete data that's gonna allow us to decide what are some things that we need to do to improve. We have been looking at other school districts and seeing what they're doing to embed social-emotional learning into the curriculum. It's not something that we want to just teach in isolation. We don't wanna say, today we're gonna teach you about perseverance or today we're gonna to teach you about grit. It's about how do we embed that into our curriculum and making sure that it is just something that is part of the regular conversation. mental wellness, thinking about how we are making sure that students are taking care of not only their social emotional needs but also their mental wellness and that is definitely something that is really important. We have heard that students feel really stressed and we have been thinking about ways to make sure that we are providing the right type of stress for our students. We talk about where we want our students to fall, we don't want them necessarily to always fall in their comfort zone. We want them to fall in that zone that is gonna be a little bit more like risk in their learning so that way they're not just feeling totally comfortable all the time but we absolutely don't want them to be in the danger zone and we're trying to have students recognize that and having teachers recognize that as well. I also want to mention that we have excellence in all areas within our district and in our arts programs and in our classrooms, but we also want to make sure we have excellence in our athletics. And thinking about some changes that we need to do to make sure that we're having excellence in our athletics, looking at our facilities, we have some new leadership in our athletic program. And he's really thinking about different ways to create a spirit that starts not only when the kids come to high school, but when students are in elementary school and get them to be supporting what's happening in our district. And so I think it's important to mention that. And the last thing I just think is that we always are thinking about ways to have students give real world application with their learning. So an example of that would be some things that we're doing around the entrepreneurial program at the high school and we've been building that and this year We've truly expanded that to a different level. And now we have, we're partnering with three other districts, so four districts all together, and we have a site that's off district where those groups, that group of students are coming together for two periods a day and are doing real world work and applying their learning in that context. And so we're thinking outside of the walls of the school. Last year in the spring, we were able to pass Proposition E with the support of our community. And that has been a great, it's kind of a historical event for us as a district. It's part of our story now. And I will say that as the superintendent, it just doesn't stop with the passing of the Prop E. We still have to make sure we're focusing on the fiscal health of our district. That means that we have to continue looking at where we're putting our resources, are we aligning our resources to our goals? Are we making sure that we're prioritizing in the right way? Are we asking ourselves what do we need to stop in terms of where we need to stop spending and examining that. So if you look at the historical perspective on that, We have done a really great, we've done really well in terms of our fiduciary responsibility and we need to continue to do that and make sure that we extend this as long as possible. I do want to point out that our fund balance at the end of 18-19 was around 24% and the projected fund balance for 19-20 would be around 31%. And thinking that, I wanted to share this with you is because we were getting to the point where we were going below that threshold of 18% where we don't want to fall below. And if we didn't go out for property, we would have fell below that balance in 19-20. Having the proposition and thinking about long-range planning, we're now able to move forward with some capital improvement projects in terms of learning spaces and then just some of our facilities. So obviously you've seen some of the things we've done with Adzick Field, and it is starting, and the Center of Clayton. I do want to point out with the Center of Clayton that our Board of Education has been very conscientious about making sure that our students continue to get increased time as part of the Center of Claytoon. And then we've also been able to make sure that we have dedicated space for a workroom for our students, not only for classes that we're offering but also for our athletic programs. And so we're continuing to provide again for the whole child. The other thing, too, is you're gonna hear later from Mary Jo that we are looking at our long-range plan for capital improvements. And one of those is safety and security, as we mentioned, is one of the greatest priorities. And we are in the process of looking at ways to make sure that all of our buildings are safe and secure. And if there's anything that we need to change, we will be bringing that forward. So that's another priority. This past school year, we did some work around developing a profile of the Clayton graduate. And when we developed the profile and got input from the community, we wanted to make sure that we were, you know, when we looked at this is that, again, overall our goal is academic excellence for our students. But we also want to make sure our students have the right attributes to just be happy people. We want them to be self-actualized and being able to demonstrate a belief in themselves and to be resilient and be happy and just good people. We wanted to make sure our students were intellectually curious and able to take their learning to a new context, being problem solvers. We want students to be culturally competent, being able to embrace diversity around them, understanding and valuing differences in others and also looking for commonalities. Being empathetic, just a kind and respectful person. a creative thinker, someone who has the opportunity to look at complex problems in varied ways, not just in math and reading but also in the arts. and also someone who's gonna be a good communicator by being able to collaborate with others and being able to value others' opinions so that way they can be problem solvers together. So we developed that profile and continue to work at that, look at that profile of the Clayton graduate so that way it serves as a basis for our strategic plan which is gonna be launched on October 5th. And I'm mentioning that to the board today is because we have been working with finding a consultant who is gonna help us with that launch and help us actualize what are the next steps for our strategic plan. And last year, some of the work that we wanted to do with the strategic plan got postponed because of some of the energy that we put towards Proposition E, but we are ready to go in developing our new strategic plan and look forward to what that brings for us as a district. I do wanna point out that when we're thinking about strategic planning, I'm gonna encourage us to think differently about the traditional way that maybe we have done strategic planning and maybe not saying where we wanna be in the next three to five years. We wanna constantly think about our vision and thinking about the possibilities, but we also wanna say that we wanna also be responsive. And I think that sometimes when we have a strategic plan, especially the way things are changing in education, we need to make sure that it's gonna be flexible and is able to change periodically while we're implementing it. So we're gonna be focusing on setting goals and having experimentation in that. We're gonna make sure that we have real-time dashboards that report progress and metrics of the Board of Education during this process. We're also gonna think about having this evergreen model, which is kind of what I said, reimagining that traditional strategic plan, and coming back yearly and saying, what do we need to reset? Not because we said we started the strategic plan and said we're gonna stick with it for five years. We might have to say, you know what? After a year, we may have to readjust this. And then ultimately, we wanna focus on student growth. The other thing is your superintendent. I took out feedback from you last year and have developed goals that I'm gonna be presenting to you at the next board meeting and then eventually coming back to you for approval at either one of our retreats or another board meeting. But I just wanted to kind of give you the overall general areas where I'm focusing is gonna be around leadership effectiveness and capacity. The next goal's gonna be around strategic plan development and implementation, because that will be a big focus for us this year. And then the fiscal health of the district, because again, as I said earlier, is that we can't just rely on passing Proposition E. We have to continue thinking about what structures systems we need to put in place to make sure we're extending that as long as possible. And what are some things that we need to do to make sure our resources are aligned with our goals? And then the other thing is that when you look at these goals later on, is that you'll find that equity is a through line in all of that. And so you'll see that it's and we can talk about that again at the next meeting, but that is going to be a through line in each of these goals. So again, we're coming back, we always are coming back to our ultimate why which is our students and so tonight we are starting with our why of having a student at the board table. And so what I wanna do is just also part of my superintendent communications just to check in with Adam and see you've spent the last 11 days during your junior year here so is there anything that you wanna report to the board before we start our board meeting?

Okay, so hello everyone. Hi. So some things I wanted to talk about today going off of that idea of mental wellness and that through line that we've seen through some of the work that you've been doing Dr. Doherty and going back to that and seeing how that's been implemented in the high school. One thing that we've started is greyhound time. So last year we had four minute passing periods and this year now they're five but in between second and third period there's an additional 10 minutes. So in total it's 15 minutes so that Kids, if they want to, they can go use the bathroom. They can get a drink of water or talk to a teacher. Really just a time for a little break in the day. Something else that we're going to be starting during the year is called Clayton Conversations, or C squared, where we'll have time to meet with the same group of students throughout the whole year. And they will be able to talk about issues that the students want to talk about. So the students will choose the issues with two faculty facilitators. And so they will be talking about whether it's current events or something pertaining to the high school. The students will get to kind of choose the direction of where that group wants to go. And then the last thing, I just had a meeting with Dr. This goes a little bit away from the mental wellness, but just talking about the district advisory council. So I just wanted to give you an update with that, which is we will be sending out the application and announcing it to the student body on Friday the 28th. And then we'll be collecting them before around September 13th, which will give us a week to do interviews. And then we should have everyone picked and ready to go before the third board meeting. Thank

you.

And so tonight I'm going to ask Mary Jo to come up, and she also has Tim Wanesh and Jim Burnell here as well. And we're presenting an informational update around some of the capital improvements since it was such a huge component of our Proposition E.

And just as Mary Jo and team come up, I just want to remind everybody we have items for information, items for discussion, and items for action. This is really a heads-up. This is an item for information. This isn't a time to grill Mary Jo and crew with questions. This is really her heads-up. There will be other times when we can kind of ask questions. So thank you. Mary Jo.

So I don't have a formal presentation. I did provide a summary to the board, and if anyone wants a summary of what I, but I wasn't really gonna go through much detail. I was just gonna update the board on the potential capital improvement projects And I just wanna give credit to Tim Wanisch, our Director of Facilities, and Jim Brunell, who's his Assistant Director, who do an amazing job maintaining our facilities that enhance the learning environment for our students. Always like Shawn said, going back to that why of our students, and I will say Tim always is putting that first whenever you have a discussion with him. So fortunately, as Sean mentioned, the successful passing of Proposition E has allowed the district to move forward in many ways. So as he mentioned in his report, the additional revenue generated by Proposition E will be used to maintain and strengthen the district's fiscal stability by eliminating the gap between revenues and expenses and rebuilding our reserves. as he showed with that fund balance percentages. So in addition to that, though, we're wanting to address facility and maintenance needs that cannot be funded within the current five-year capital plan. So that capital plan, or as we call it, the CIP funds, or capital improvement plan, addresses general building maintenance needs as well as educational needs, and it is constantly, as they will tell you, changing. Something we might have given you last week is going to change because if something breaks, we just shift funds around in order to reprioritize. So as the needs of the district changes or the needs of our district students change, that plan changes as well. So as a result, some projects get deferred sometime over a period of years or sometimes never even get prioritized on the list. That doesn't mean that they will not provide necessary improvements and enhancements to our facilities. It just merely means that there are limited funds and we just have to prioritize what projects can be completed within those funding limits. So funds from the sale of the Maryland building, though, provide a unique opportunity that they can be reinvested into these deferred projects and into our district So as I mentioned, that list of deferred projects, I wasn't gonna go through them in detail, but they include facility safety and maintenance needs, as well as enhancements to various district spaces to improve functionality and flexibility of use. So as I mentioned they're not always prioritized because we can obviously function and operate without it, but we would function and operate better if we did have it. And so when the funding's available, we do like to bring those up for discussion. So the district administration does recommend that the funds generated from the sale of the Maryland School be reinvested into these, what we do consider necessary improvements and enhancements to our facilities. And so we're currently right now in the process of determining actual costs for some of these projects. A few of them do require architectural services, so we would like to issue RFQs for architectural services. I did ask in the spring for an RFQ for architectural services for the safety and security Two of the projects on the list, one's very minimal amount of cost to get a conceptual design for, the other one we actually got for kind of free. We included that, that was for the library. We don't have a costing on that so we would have to pay for that piece. So we know what, got an idea of what it might look like but we don't have an idea of what is would cost us. So that's what we would like to do is move forward with getting some estimates and conceptual designs for some of the projects. And then once we get that, and we have an idea of how we can prioritize the remaining funds from the sale of the Maryland building, then we would bring that forward with a formalized plan to spend those funds. Because if you recall, those funds do have to be released by the board in order to be spent. So we can't spend them without your approval. So that is the plan.

Thank you, Mary Jo. So any clarifying questions on this? I mean, again, this is more general information, just more as FYI. It's not at all meant to be fully baked. Does anybody have any clarifying questions? We're finalized, yeah. I do.

Jason, go. Thank you for this. Question for you, though. Has anyone thought about school libraries and how we're using them and how how effective they are in our daily lives. I know, and the reason why I'm asking that question is because I'm thinking about the delta, right? We've evolved a lot over the years of how we used to use libraries. I mean, you watch Barnes and Nobles, they've gone on a bit, well, right? Some of these big bookstores have gone out of business, so this tangibility aspect of books is kind of like dissipating. My question to you, is there a plan in which we can now better utilize that space. It could still be a library, maybe make it smaller or maybe make it more, I don't know, just something that might be more beneficial for students.

And I'm going to defer partially to Sean, and that might even be a question from later. Because there's a lot of guidelines from the state on what we're required to have in our libraries. But I know, Sean, that's part of the reason why the high school library is on the list.

Yeah. So I would agree with you, Jason, is that we have to look at how we utilize that space. And Mary Jo's right. We do have guidelines from DESE in terms of amount of books. I don't remember what that is. Our spaces have to be used differently sometimes than they are currently being used. So when we're thinking about library spaces, we wanna make sure that there's areas for collaboration, students having opportunities to know work in mobile spaces where it's not necessarily something everything is just you know static where it is thinking about the technology that's available to the students and i think that what we've done with some of our libraries has done some really amazing renovations i think with the the library that at the high school what we've tried to do is try to fit in new technologies and to make it fit for our students but in a really dated type of space. And so we're now starting to ask questions and we've engaged stakeholders such as librarians, the students, the parents, the teachers about what do we need for this space? and in also making sure we fit those guidelines. So some of those renderings that you saw, what we did was we presented that information to the people who were willing to do that for us, and that's where those conceptual drawings came from. But I would agree with you is that we have to have those spaces evolve. And I also think we have to, I think personally we have to think about when students are able to use those spaces, and does it necessarily just have to be during the school day?

Other questions or clarifying questions? Yeah, Lily.

I think I have maybe four clarifying questions and one more general question. So one question I have is on the building security and safety, will we be getting kind of a preview of some of the details of that before at some point I've expressed will we be getting that I guess that's the question because I do have some concerns about there's a lot being promoted to for safety that they're finding is unnecessary additional expenses and I just would like to be able to see what it is that we're thinking of doing I mean I think things about the access into the school seem to make a difference and then some things on threat assessment and other stuff but I would be curious about that before we have to approve it and looks like we might be doing it on the same night are we going to be that would just

be approving the architect so we have asked for each architect to pre we've required them to walk through every building and give us just some ideas in their presentation when we interviewed them and then we also have asked that once we select the architect that they will come and do board presentations so yes it would be and anything that they would present would go through board approval just like any

other and we'll be able to ask questions about kind of what the evidence of that making a difference.

Excellent. So when you said, you just said they're finding that certain things are not necessary. Who's they?

Well, that's some of what I have read I'm trying to think if it was the FBI report. I don't know, some of the reports that I have read recently on violence. Okay, I just didn't know if you meant like

this.

Oh, no, no. I mean like they're saying things about doing things with windows isn't really making a difference. But you don't

mean Clayton is saying that. You mean that your independent research is saying that.

I don't know what Clayton, I don't know if we're questioning some of those things. I think what she

might be saying is that when they present their list of items, if we would have a time to go through it and vet it and see whether, my assumption is it would be prioritized. So what we feel is of value to Clayton and what's prioritized within Clayton's values. I think you were asking me like where.

Yeah,

I just didn't know when you were asking your question, because you had said they're finding that some of these things might be unnecessary costs or not really things that are worthwhile costs. So when you said the word they're finding, I didn't know who was...

Yeah, I can pull it out. I think it's some of the reports from... I think it's FBI and then some of the things that they've been looking at. No, I don't need it. I just didn't

know where the information was coming from.

Yeah. Cool. Thank you. The learning space in the buildings, the enhancements, is that in all of our school buildings that were?

Yes. That is more some of the, like here's a good example, say the common areas at Wydown. We took out the computer labs because we've gone to more one-on-one initiatives and mobile cards, and so how can we change learning spaces that sometimes might be used in a common area or maybe a certain classroom area. We've made changes to different classrooms in the high school for different learning needs instead of just your standard desks and chairs. So it's kind of more general because it's gonna be evolving as our curriculum evolves and as we move forward with our strategic plan. and perhaps there might be something in strategic plan that might show that this type of learning configuration would work well for that goal. So it is kind of generic, and then as we move forward, we would see what would fit our goals. In each of the six buildings.

Okay, great, and... What do we mean by signage, the Family Center, our district branding standard?

I don't know if anyone's noticed a sign at the Family Center or gay. It's just this kind of basic wooden painted board. And so it is, the Family Center kind of operates a little bit as a business. Yeah, it's over 30 years old.

When they're bringing more people, will you pay more money for this?

Well, the goal is to at least have people see it and be able to identify the building, so... I will say, I send at least once a week. There's someone out here, they do not have any idea. They've driven by it and they can't find it. Looking for gay field or something. So it is kind of tucked away if you don't know what you're looking for.

And then my last general, more general, I guess it is, I need to word it as a question. When I see things that kind of outline this amount of money that we're going to be spending on whatever it is, it brings to mind for me the question that we talked about before approving the tax levy, and that is that we're going be looking at our overall expenditures. And I appreciate, Sean, that you mentioned it tonight in your introduction. So I am interested in kind of getting an update how we, not necessarily now, but I would like to know that we're continuing to do that promise and how it's looking for what we're going to be talking about over the year and who's going to be involved and all that kind of stuff. Thank you.

Anybody else have any clarifying questions? Thank you very much. Mary Jo?

Were you looking for a response to that? No. Were you?

Thank you.

I think it's important to notice that when you're seeing the expenditures that are on these sheets that we're showing, is that that was done with a study that Tim was charged in doing in terms of looking at the needs, the five year needs in each of our buildings. And I feel very confident that Tim's gonna bring forth items that we know we need to do. What I hear you saying, Lily, is that you're wondering about like what system and structure we're gonna be putting in place to examine the overall structures of our expenditures within the district and similar to what we've done with our long-term financial planning. And Mary Jo and I have talked about what that possibly would look like. We don't think it would necessarily look, again, like the long-term financial planning. It might be more in depth in terms of what we wanna do in terms of examining certain aspects of the district and determining what our priorities are. But our goals, I think, what we need to do is when we develop our strategic plan and think about what type of advisories we want to have connected to that, We feel like what we want to do is make sure that that's connected and not just a one-off. Yesterday, Mary Jo and I met... virtually with another district in Kentucky, and we're looking at their structures for how they examine expenditures and how they call it investment spending. And it's about how we really truly determine how our investments are really ended up paying off in terms of dividends for students. and making sure that those priorities are set and that there's community involvement part of that. So yes, we have ideas about what we want that to look like but we don't have it solid yet and we'll be asking board for input about that.

Yeah, I think that's what Lily and I were talking offline about a little bit, which was the spending that we do, will it yield a return on our investment with the children? That's why I was asking about the sign. It may sound a little funny, but I'm saying is that sign going to yield any return for our kids? Is it going to make us any more money for the district? Those are the things I'm asking about. So I'm glad you brought that up. That's a great point. We discussed that earlier, though. Mm-hmm. Awesome.

And with the sign, I mean, that is what it was asked for is because people can't see the building and they do have a service that they provide that we are everything in that building is a fee-based service. But just regards to that school district, they actually won an award through our Association of School Business Officials. It's called the Pinnacle Award for their method of analyzing investments and having champions that bring those investments forward and how they prioritize them. So that was why we reached out to them.

Okay, thank you. So next is actually a study item at 6.01 and it's really three policies around the board. And this really is for any discussion. We can certainly take them one by one or do you want to speak

to them? Do you mind if we, so what I thought about doing with this Going back to our policy worksheet, and I want to kind of set the frame for this is that ultimately this is one of the major responsibilities of our Board of Education is that we have to make sure that we have oversight over the policies and making sure that if there's potential revisions I think some of the policies that have come to the table are going to be more procedural. Some of them are more of like how do we want to change in terms of impact within our schools? Some of these policies that are being brought forth are just changes that have been recommended by MSBA around things associated with school board elections, assigning job responsibilities to the treasurer and the secretary. And then the other thing was the... Sorry, I'm losing my... and one was around the school board ballot issues in terms of timing for that. And so what I wanted to do is give you just a few moments first to review, and I thought what we would do is look at BBB first, which is about school board elections, And so when I was looking through this again, there isn't anything that I felt like was really anything that stood out in terms that I would recommend. I feel very comfortable with the changes that MSBA made. but I wanted to check in with you in thinking about those questions. We have, is there simple language? Is there anything that we need to, does it seem too repetitive? Is it current? Looking at that equity lens, are any individuals or communities that are disproportionately affected by this? Any questions or suggestions? And so what I thought we would do is just go through BBB first, see if you had any suggestions or ideas, and then move to the next one if possible.

Sure.

You're ready. Anybody have

any questions or comments on BBB?

Well, are any of these changes in here significant? Because I don't know it BBB prior to this moment outside of what I see here. But is there anything that's different? So it's what it is. I thought some of the rules for getting in the, if I wanted to run, I thought I had to file by a certain time. But it's like you can almost jump in a week before is what it says, right? Well, it seems like so the

policy that is written here. This is the one that's the current policy but just the the Strikeouts and the highlights are the additions So the timing hasn't changed on this the only thing that is changed on this and Barbara. I think that is The withdrawing of the

letter And so but jumping in at the last minute, like a week before was like the 10th week or whatever. You still have

to go within the deadline. There's a deadline that you have to

meet. Yeah.

Right.

So does the district have a different guidelines, set of guidelines?

No, we use these.

OK,

right. OK. If you're going to come in later as part of the last minute, your name will be further down on the ballot.

So anything else on BBB? Okay, we'll move to the next one. So for this next one, I

would like to

tell the board it's BBBB.

Yes, and this one's around school board ballot issues. The only thing that I am gonna ask the board for me to, I'm gonna go and look at the expanding the college community district into the school district boundaries. And that is around the community college and boundaries around that. And our system is already one St. Louis Community College. And so what I'm gonna do is ask whether or not that policy, that part of the policy has to fit in here because it wouldn't really pertain to us. And so that's the only recommendation that I would have in terms of some changes. So I'm just gonna get some more information about whether or not we need to have that actually in there And when we bring it back for approval, I'll let you know what changes are brought to that.

That was my question. I didn't

even

know how that

related to us at all. Right. So some communities have a district for a community college. Some districts have an actual community college district, I

guess. I'm assuming that there's a community college that may not be part of like a consortium like St. Louis Community College. And it

has to be within a...

and their boundaries may change in terms of where their taxes are coming from. I got

it, okay. That confused me too. Okay, thanks.

Any other questions or thoughts on BBBB? Go ahead.

It's just because I couldn't find it easily and I thought it might be helpful. I wanted the explanation for the restriction on use of funds, eliminating that. It says you go back to policy dcb but it might help to i didn't go back to it but if you could could explain that and maybe also included on the writing so what is the reason that's being eliminated

i don't have that answer i can check into that

okay

any other questions on quadruple a OK. We'll highlight it. OK. So move to the next, BCC. Sean, you want to move to the next one? Yes.

So the last one is It talks about the duties of the board secretary and the board treasurer, and the thing about this policy is that there's been some things that needed to be updated in this policy that are kind of archaic. And so if you look through these, an example of having our board secretary be present with two board members to burn the bonds and those kinds of things that needed to be updated and so i just if you if hopefully you had a chance to look through this but i i felt pretty comfortable with um with the changes that they made the other thing too around making sure we have steel cabinets for our metal cabinets we store everything on board dock so i feel very confident that we're up to yeah what

about being bonded Idea it's because I think it said like the The treasurer and the secretary have to be buying like almost like personally bonding like we need to have our own insurance No, that's

So I think of all these policies, I think this is the only one that MSBA is making recommended changes to that don't correspond to changes in statute. They're usually pretty good at... explaining in the introduction that some of those changes we don't really see the reason for. I think I'm pretty confident saying most of those do track the statutory changes, but this one obviously doesn't. So I think it's a little bit more within our discretion whether we make this. I do definitely agree that some of the language needs to be updated. There are also some inconsistencies in our policy while we're looking at this one with some of the other policies. I don't remember what it is. There are a couple of places where we reference officers are appointed and the timing isn't consistent necessarily. So if we're getting more input from them about this, I think we need to ask their opinion about the other one as well. And even though we usually update these kind of cyclically, it probably makes sense to update both those at the same time. So that was the only one. And since this is really based on their recommendation, I think we have a little more latitude whether we do it or not.

Yeah, Kristen.

So on this one also we've had conversation about secretary and treasurer and even having those positions on our school board and I don't know when we might have a conversation about that but obviously the majority of these responsibilities actually fall to Mary Jo and to Barb and so I'm not sure how we can maybe clarify that or make that more or if we want to have a conversation about how we want to continue with our board makeup with that.

And I will say on that, different school boards do it differently, right? Some have elected and some have the appointed folks do it. We go either way. Go ahead, Gary. Does

anyone know just historically if we have any record or just know offhand of whether – like how long Clayton has done that? Have we always had the secretary and treasurer positions been sitting board members as opposed to staff or – Is there any history of that or sometimes if there was a change made that we might want to know why or when? Yeah.

So, kind of along the same lines as Kristen, that paragraph about the delegation Um, I kind of questioned because it said like the board secretary or treasurer basically needs to make sure that the paid employee is doing their job, which in my opinion seems silly and redundant because we're paying them to do the job and not actually happening and is not happening. So that might be something I think we could look at deleting or changing.

What page is that on? It's the

seven, the very bottom of seven.

I think that goes to the whole point of the responsibilities of the treasurer and the secretary that's listed on here really do not fall to our secretary and treasurer on our board. So if it's, so we've talked about this before. This is not the first time this has come up with this board that what we're practicing and then what it says, if they're two different things, can we try to?

Make sure the reality.

Mm-hmm.

And I'm sure, sorry, I'm sure this is the case with most boards who adopted this MSBA policy that it's not actually what's happening. They can't be unaware of that fact.

Any other comments or thoughts on this one?

So would it be helpful if I wrote this as if what the current reality looks like for us and then submit this to MSBA and say can you take a look at this and then We may not be able to bring it back for the very next, but we'll see if we can get that done in a timely manner. But I'll try to make sure that this looks like what the current reality is for our board.

And I think that's within the policy service that we subscribe to, right? It's not just we subscribe to their, we pay them to do policy updates, but I don't think it's just the only thing we get is their recommendations. We get their advice on whatever changes we want to make as well.

I wanted, since we're ending on the policy section and this is the first discussion of policies this year, I was wondering if I could ask some really general questions on policy reviews. and the process that I'm hoping is real easy for you to answer, Sean. And that is, are we, the first question is, whenever MSBA recommends a change, are we, are you then, are you and Joe then bringing it to the board? Or are we, like how are we decide, how are you deciding when to bring it to the board

So what we've done is looked at all, we've had a number of policies that have been sent to us for review. And so what we've looked at, what are the priorities? Is there any timelines or deadlines on any of those? And so we'll definitely bring those first. We thought we would start with things that were associated with the board at our first board meeting. So some of them, some of them we've even tried to connect with what was on an agenda. So if it connected with something that was closely related to an agenda, we brought that revision. But we really look at the timelines and look at where we can actually fit some of these policies in. And then what we also do is some of these policies are associated with different departments at at central office and so our central office staff as you know if it's a human resources tony will have to look through those and make sure that he gets those updated and so we will try to look at agendas that maybe he doesn't have something that's presented and so we tried to be cognizant of that but we really try to look at those timelines and look at making sure that we're spreading those out throughout the year for updates so that way it's not all at one time too because i think that we want to be When we're looking at policies, we want to make sure we're looking at chunks and not just all of them all at the same time.

Great. So I have two follow-up questions. And from that, one is how far behind are we, would you say, on like when they've been sending those? So when did we

get the new policies that were sent? We get them

all at once unless it's some statutory kind of – okay. Okay. So how far behind?

Yeah, we spread them out through the next couple meetings.

And then the second question or the second thought I have is just for I think about sometimes we do things a certain way and if people move on board members are central office staff do you have something written down about how you just I don't know just something that explains that this is how we do it this is how we go about I don't know what that means oh okay yeah I mean just writing something yeah if that's what that is something that so that others know that that's how we're going by things that have timelines, things that, you know, pacing them or checking them with the agenda just so that's not lost, that process.

Yeah, I can do that.

Thank you. I think that was it.

Anybody have anything else? So, okay. So we're going to move to checkout. Sean?

So for the policies, what I'm gonna do for the most recent policy that we were just talking about, I said we're gonna go ahead and I'm gonna try to rewrite this so that way it actually matches the reality of what we're doing within our district. What I'm gonna do is for policy BBBB, We're going to look at the community college and possibly pull that out if it's not needed. And then I will look at writing some type of standard operating procedure to document what the procedure is and how we bring forth certain policies. And then the other thing I think I might add to that is I think what we'll do is we'll add, we'll create some type of list so that way the board has an overall big picture of the number of policies that have been sent to us. So that way you can see the entire list of the policies that are coming up for revision this year. And then if you have any input about where you'd wanna put those, we can definitely change that. And then that's it, so.

Thank you. So we're moving on to action items. I actually have to recuse myself from the first one, which is 7.01.

I am ready.

I move that the Board of Education approve the part-time temporary employment report as submitted.

Second.

Hi.

He's getting Joe.

All right, so 7.02 is the approval of purchases that may exceed 25,000 CH Theater stage lights. So

do we have a motion? 8.02, I move that the Board of Education authorize the solicitation of bids to replace four Vera Lights stage lights at Clayton High School. Second.

Okay, it has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Okay, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Passes unanimously, thank you. Okay, so the next is 7.03, Specialized Printing and Mailing Services. Do we have

a motion? 8.03, I move that the Board of Education approve awarding the specialized printing and mailing services to the designated vendors as indicated and authorize administration to negotiate and enter into a contract for the same.

It has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Passes 7-0, thank you. Okay, the next is consent items. So for our consent agenda. So can we have the

action there? 9.01 I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda.

Okay, it's been moved and second. Any questions? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that also passes unanimously. Okay, we're whipping through here. Yeah, oh yes, thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, we do want to recognize that there were two donations within that consent agenda. Thank you for saying that, Gary. So the first was from the Melman family, and that was for $1,000 to Clayton High School, so thank you to the Melman family. And the second was from Robert DuPont, also $1,000, to Claymo. So I want to both recognize those. Thank you for that. Okay, so we're moving on to the financials. So 9.01, the May 2019 financials. Do we have a motion?

10.01, I move that the Board of Education approve payment of current expenditures and investments for May 2019 as submitted.

Any discussion? Okay, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right, that passes unanimously. Thank you very much. 10.02, June 2019 financials.

Motion? 10.02, I move that the Board of Education approve payment of current expenditures and investments for June 2019 as submitted.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Any discussion? You may.

I just did want to update the board on the taxes from the county that we did get $3 million of our 3.8 we were looking for, so just so you guys know that. So the budget was adjusted so that we wouldn't get it, but then we did receive it, so when we do an update on the financials, we'll reflect all of that in there, so good news. Did they

give us a reason why they? No. So there's no reason? No, silence. And even though they denied, they were like, it's not our fault, we didn't do anything wrong, they never, they never? No.

I was happy to get the one.

Since that was brought up, and that's great news, since that was brought up in a public meeting, I guess you said it here, I don't know, it just somehow seems like maybe that should have been on board, should be on board, I don't now, somehow... It

was noted in the...

Making sure it's...

Oh, I mean it was noted on the report, but... It's publicly... known that this has been resolved is really great. It was in the fluctuations we described it and said that.

It was noted in the report, maybe just not with flashing headlights.

Okay, that's

excellent.

I just was polite in the report, not in the

summary.

Okay, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that also passes unanimously, thank you. So we're moving on actually to board communications. Just before that, what I wanna say is obviously hopefully you saw in the Friday memo some of the board committees, right? The kind of standing board committees that were, so hopefully everybody saw that and we're still working on the other committees but does anybody have any committee reports that they wanna offer? Go ahead, Stacy.

Um, I have, uh, two. So first of all, at the last parks and rec committee meeting, um, we reviewed a renderings from an architect for a park that will be going in land that the city purchased between the new library and the church. There's a tiny house they bought that they're tearing down. It's going to be like what they call a pocket park, which I guess is becoming popular in larger cities across the country. which will be great. And we also looked at renderings for the new ice rink, which will be starting very soon, I believe November. And they announced the grand reopening of DeMunn Park as well, which is also great. And then just last night, Sean and I attended the Clayton Education Foundation meeting, which was great. It's a really great, energetic, passionate group of alumni and community members who are really dedicated to helping this district, which was really cool. And we reviewed the mission of the foundation and the budget and everyone seemed to have, like I said, great enthusiasm and great ideas for how to move forward.

Any other committee updates? Speak to the center. You want to speak to the center, Clayton?

Yeah. So we, Joe and I had a CRSWC meeting and I don't have my notes with me so I'm going to try and go from memory. We are, because of the capital improvement, The, um, the center isn't making as much money as it usually makes basically. Um, and so they, they intend that that will remedy itself within the next few years once the capital, once the project is done. But so for the next few years, um, the numbers are down, um, and they don't expect that they will come up anytime this year. Um, membership. Memberships are also a little bit down, but I think the real reason is the capital improvements and people are putting their memberships on hold. So that was really the main thing. Do we want to talk about the breakfast this morning? Wait, I

have a question.

Sorry. Go ahead. About

the center. Yes. So there's the indoor pool is being renovated, so that's like gone. It's not there anymore. And then the ice rink being renovated. Are they memberships? Are they allowing people to use some other pool? Are they allowing them to use some other ice

rink? Yeah, they are. I believe they have an – arrangement with, is it Richmond Heights?

So actually on the pool what they're doing is they're going to hold Shaw Park open as long as they can. So actually for and they literally what they did is they've created valet parking you might have seen out in front of Shaw Park that was in part so that some of the folks could come over from the center especially the folks doing water aerobics and come over to Shaw Park. So they're going to as long as the season will allow weather will allow they're going to kind of longer hours open for Shaw Park for the pool. In terms of reciprocity, because actually as a swimmer I just asked this question yesterday, they don't have reciprocity right now with the heights because they're hoping that the pool will be done by the end of September or the beginning of October. That's the hope, right? Right now there's not reciprocity with the heights. They have done that in the past.

And what about the ice rink?

I don't know about the ice rinks actually. Do you want to speak to the, actually I want to say one thing else about this center which is and then of course it could mean that in terms of, you know, our high school sports teams, right? That there's some, in terms of swimming, right? We don't have access to the pool. So I just want to notice, note that too and we're working through that so. Do you want to talk about the breakfast and then do you have something?

I do.

Go ahead Amy.

We had breakfast this morning, Joe and Sean and I, and with some of the members from the city. And we had a really great conversation about what each of us is doing with respect to equity how we could possibly collaborate together uh... equity related issues the city is uh... has some plans to uh... have a committee i forgot i forgot what the name of the point that could you remember what they're calling the committee but they're they're gonna have an actual human rights commission and they're really looking at some ways to uh... to increase diversity within Clayton, so that was good. Am I not saying this right? No, no, I wasn't here. And then we in turn told them about what we're doing in the district and our partnership, so it was a great conversation, I thought. Thank you.

Lily.

I was just going to return to something that we brought up earlier and let everybody know that there is a group that's working, that's really focused on school safety, a group of parents, and they're at each of the curriculum nights and talking about gun safety in particular. And I did want to get back because I don't like not being able to name my sources. So I want to tell you, and I'll send this to everybody because it really is a, this is a 2019, it came out after the El Paso shooting, that the National Council for Behavioral Health came out with, it's basically a review of all the research and literature on mass violence in America, causes, impacts, and solutions, but there's a whole section on schools And that's where they go over some of the things that schools have been spending money on that doesn't seem to be effective and where we should be spending money and effort. And it talks about the difference between that this isn't just a mental health issue, though mental health professionals are often the ones that are doing the research that helps us know better who might be a serious threat and who might not be. It's out of that kind of research. But in terms of mental illness, and other things, to think that that's gonna cure the problem is naive. So anyway, there's a whole section and I can't just take the section. It's 96 pages and I can't take that section on schools because it's a PDF and I don't know how to do that. But I will tell you guys the pages to look at and if you care about, or if this is an area that you're also interested in, there's some really good updated information on school safety.

uh... lily would ask you to do is send it to sean and let him put in the friday memo because what we want to do is kind of create that we don't want to send everything to all board just in case somebody response right so we want to yeah not do that so yes a senator sean

you'll be able to get just a second yep

thank you was there any talk at all about these recent shootings last week at the school soldan and parkway north

this came out just right after el paso So no, but I can look if it talks more about different kinds of violence. Because it's really focused on the research related to mass shootings, which is four or more. It's defined as four or more people being shot, not necessarily killed.

Have we talked about it, the board or the administration at all, about what's happening in our city, especially with these schools? Like a parkway, like a sold-out?

Yeah, and so we actually, when that happened last weekend, we had conversations, talked to Dan Kaczewski, talked to our communications department because we feel like it's really, we really want to make sure that people feel safe when they come to our sporting events. And the high school administration is sending something out about the things that we put in place to make sure that we're looking at safety and the procedures that we put in overview of what we're doing but also when things like that happen it's an opportunity for us to say is there anything else that we can be doing differently and so I do feel pretty confident about the way that we have security at our sporting events we're going to have a game this Friday at high school and so Dan's going to send something out so that way people feel confident about sending their kids to the game

Gary

Real quick, Joe. I haven't been to a legislative advocacy meeting yet, but just something that came up a lot around the opening of school, I think because it was – there was some media attention on it, and it's something that I first learned about at a legislative advocacy meeting last year is that the dates for our school opening have to change next year. So I'm sure you guys got – it's probably the thing I've got more questions about on any one topic than anything else that's been on the board. I won't go into all of the background for how those bills moved through the house and what the different interest groups and things were there, but I think it's probably important for us all to know that there's a pretty complicated history of why that happened and what it's going to mean for districts all over the state. But it is, I mean, there's some change this year, which I can't imagine because they've been pushing for it for a long time. is going to happen. So that group does have some research or some resources on what districts are looking at to comply with it and stuff. So if you get as many questions about it as I did, it might be something to...

so one of the things that I want to just mention is that we've been spending a number of hours looking at the calendar and that eventually is going to come back to the board for your review too just because we're trying to think about what we do for instruction and making sure we're not compromising instruction and the other thing too is that that all the districts are looking at that. And so we actually, a group met together at EdPlus, talk about the implications of this and I've actually had other school districts sharing some of the ideas that they're doing and so those ideas are all being kind of synthesized in conversations that we're having and eventually we're gonna be bringing some ideas to the board and thinking about what we need to do to make sure that we're in compliance with that new legislation, but also making sure we're doing what's best for our students. And so, yes, sometimes it's unfortunate. Sometimes decisions are made without looking at the big picture of some of the things that we do, like we're talking about mental wellness and thinking about we prioritize finals before winter break, and it makes it really difficult to do that for our students. So those are conversations that we're having.

Well, just to put in perspective for everybody, right, that means that school could start almost two weeks later than it did. We started August 13th, and they're talking about August 24th is the first possible day, so 11 days. It's significant.

We have the calendar already approved for next year. We have to revise it, right? We sent a

communication out to the community saying that we did not create a calendar for next year because of this legislation. And so we are going to develop it this fall and sending that out. So we have not developed one yet.

Adam, did you have something?

I was just wondering, do you know if it's based off of the number of days that will be going each year or is it off of hours now? based off of hours now. And so it has been days? It has been days in the past. Okay.

Any other committee reports or comments? Can I have a motion to adjourn? Moved that the Board of Education adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you for smiling for the camera today. Also, can I

just say thank you to Chris and Jeff and their teams for making this happen today. And also Justin Seidwell at the high school who helped make this happen for us today. That's

cool, man.