October 28, 2020 — Meeting Transcript

All right, we should be good.

Okay, welcome everybody. Adequate notice has been given and as always, we're gonna start with the pledge to that famous flag in Sean's background there.

I pledge allegiance. 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.

Okay, all right. So as always, we're gonna start with recognizing our own and it's Red Ribbon Week. So it's the All In Clayton Coalition. And I'm gonna hand it over to Sean.

Thank you, Joe. Good evening, everyone. And I'm actually gonna hand it over Robyn Wiens who is our Superintendent of Student Services. And she's gonna talk a little bit about that and introduce a few people that we wanna recognize.

Thank you, Joe. Good evening, everyone. And I'm actually gonna hand it over Robin Wiens who is our Superintendent of Student Services. And she's gonna talk a little bit about that and introduce a few people that we wanna recognize.

Thanks, Sean. So good evening, everybody. I wanted to recognize All in Clayton Coalition this evening at our board meeting because this week is Red Ribbon Week. And in just a moment, a few special guests are going to tell you a little bit more about what Red Ribbon Week is. But just a little bit of background information. The All in Clayton coalition was founded by several parents, including Bruce Butler and Beth Deutsch several years ago. And in February of 2020, the All in Clayton Coalition was able to hire a full-time project coordinator. And in February, we welcomed Kim Schironi as our project coordinator. And she started with us earlier in the year. In about three weeks after she started, we went into emergency school closure. So I just wanted to take a moment to recognize Kim for the incredible amount of creativity she has shown with the organization to pivot so quickly and to take the coalition's action plan and bring it to life under completely different circumstances than when it was written. And we have been able to work with her to bring the coalition into such an incredible place from where it was just a year ago. And so I'm going to hand it over to Kim and her special student representative who's with her this evening to tell you more about Red Ribbon Week.

Great. Thank you so much, Dr. Wiens. And yeah, it's definitely been a very eventful year, you know, as I think it's been for all of us. And I just feel so grateful to have landed in the position that I'm in. It was a great place to land, you know, a few weeks before a pandemic broke out and the support of you and the school district has just been phenomenal. We couldn't do the work that we do without the support. of the school district. So thank you all so much for having us here tonight. Again, my name is Kim Chironi with the All in Clayton Coalition. And I just want to take a quick moment to share with you all a little bit more like Dr. Ween said about Red Ribbon Week. So this is a week that October 23rd through the 31st, and it's the same set of dates every year. And this week is really about promoting safe, healthy, drug-free living amongst youth. And it's also a week where communities and schools can raise awareness around substance use and can really ratchet up their substance use prevention. Prevention is a year-long effort. It doesn't just happen during Red Ribbon Week, but Red Ribbon Week is a great way to bring schools together and to have a unified effort when it comes to substance use prevention. So just a little bit of history about Red Ribbon Week. This week started with a man named Kiki Camarena and Kiki was his nickname. His real name was Enrique Camarena and Enrique was an intelligence officer for the DEA back in the 1980s and he got assigned on a mission in Mexico and his job was basically to get more intelligence on drug traffickers who were bringing in large amounts of drugs into the United States. And he was there for a few years. He was on his way to lunch to meet his wife and he was kidnapped and tortured and eventually murdered by the drug traffickers who he was there to actually stop. So it had a very tragic ending. to his life, but his friends, his family wanted to continue his legacy of really wanting people to be safe, to stay drug free. And so they did that by wearing red ribbons. That very small gesture has really turned into a national movement over the last few decades. And it's something that schools and communities participate in all over the country. So it's really cool to see, especially on social media, all of the different things that people are doing. So just a few things that All In is doing this year to celebrate Red Ribbon Week. Again, you know, as Dr. Wien said, it's definitely been challenging to try to do the in-person activities that we had planned on when we were doing our action plan last year. Little did we know that this is how the year would look. But we have been able to participate in several different events. The first is the DEA National Drug Take Back event that was actually this past Saturday. It was outside of the center of Clayton and the Clayton Police Department was gracious enough to allow us to have a presence there And we had several volunteers, all social distancing, wearing masks, but we were able to pass out information on the coalition and about a hundred of these things. So these are called deterra bags. They're at home drug disposal bags. So if somebody isn't able to take their prescription meds to a drug take back box or I'm sorry, a drop box or a drug take back event, they can use one of these bags to safely deactivate and dispose of their medication at home. And this is really important right now more than ever because so many kids are still at home, family members are still at home. And so we just want to make sure that people are disposing of their medication when they're done using it. Another really exciting activity that we're able to present to parents is a film called Don't Wait. This film was produced by our partners at Addiction is Real and it's a wonderful resource for parents of really kids of all ages. And this film is about an hour and it discusses the importance of parents having conversations with their kids. And it's not just a one-time conversation, but it's early and often conversations about drugs because that can actually significantly reduce kids' risks of using drugs in the future. So we were able to give free access to parents at YDOWN and CHS to that film through the month of November. And we've gotten really good feedback and we're thinking about opening up to elementary school parents as well, because again, we know the younger prevention can start, the better off our kids will be. the more we can reduce their risk. And then last but not least, we've been able to do some things at the middle school and high school and elementary school this year. And I think one of the things that the coalition is most proud of within this past year is being able to recruit seven new student reps which is a big thing for the coalition in the past. We've only had one or two every year. And I have with me tonight, one of those student reps. Her name is Kira Hoisington and she is a seventh grader at Wydown. And Wydown Middle School, our student reps have been amazing over this last month. I came to them about a month ago and said, okay, you guys, Red Ribbon Week is coming up, but you're still probably gonna be in virtual learning. Do you wanna do anything? And they were like, yes, we still want to do this. We still want to plan activities. And that was really exciting for the coalition. So I'm going to have Kira just explain a little bit about some of the activities that the student reps implemented at Y-Down Middle School.

Hi, guys. My name's Kira Hoisington. I'm in seventh grade. Sorry, I look kind of weird. Came right from soccer. It was a bit of a rush, but yeah. What we did is we made different video clips and put them all together in a main video telling people about Red Ribbon Week. And then we made these challenges throughout the week that basically you, there's different challenges for every day. Like Monday was wear red and Tuesday was being drug free as no sweat. I know that's very corny, but we like wear sweatpants and sweatshirts and stuff. And so on and so forth. And we have people take pictures and email them to Ms. Sharoni. And every time that they take a picture and email it to her, their name gets put in a raffle once to... go into a big raffle that we will pick four top people. Then we will pick two top people and then one winner. And the winner will get a $20 gift card to either Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon, and the runner-up will get a $10 gift card to those places too. So our other student reps that help with this are Rafael Rodriguez, Sydney Holloway, Camille Matlock, and Gabriel Talsky. So we had a lot of fun doing this. We put together a really fun iMovie. So yeah, that's really it. Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much, Kira. And Kira, she's not going to tell you all this, but she spent a lot of time putting the video together. She did all of that. And this was really a student-led effort, which for us as a coalition, that's what we want to see is youth really leading the way. So we look forward to expanding our efforts next year when we're hopefully able to do more in-person events. But that's really it in a nutshell. So I appreciate you all I'm taking the time to hear a little bit about our Red Ribbon Week activities. Thank you so much.

Thank you both. That was, that was great. We appreciate it. So we are Sean going to move on to your superintendent report.

Okay. All right. Well, good evening, everyone. It's good to see all of you. And so tonight as part of my superintendent report, I'm going to give another update around our return to learn plan. And I'm also just going to give a brief update about our strategic plan because I want to make sure that the board is in the know about some of the work that we've been doing around that. And so to get us started. I wanna just take a few moments to say thank you. And I think that one of the things that I always encourage people to do is practice gratitude. So I wanna say thank you to the Board of Education for your support over the last seven months. I wanna say thank to the teachers who have been working so incredibly hard in the classrooms and have pivoted so many different times throughout this year. I wanna say, thank you to the parents because I know that they've had to make some major adjustments And then ultimately to our students who have had to make the ultimate adjustment in their learning. And then I also have to say thank you to our central office team, because I know that we would not be where we are if I didn't have our strong central office team and our strong building administrators to make this happen. So I want to just put that out there. I know that this situation is not easy for anyone. And we've had to make some difficult decisions and we've had to take next steps, even when it was difficult. And I know that this situations emotionally draining and I know that it's emotionally charged and it's a situation that's new to everyone. And so I wanna just, I just wanna put it out there that I'm a firm believer in that collective, when you have collective advocacy, when a group comes together and feeling very capable of doing something, you can get through it. And I, and it's not in this situation. There's nothing that's perfect. And there's not going to be any decisions that I'm going to make that everyone's going to be 100% supportive of. And I know that students and parents and teachers and board members even administrators will maybe not agree with every decision. But I feel like we always have to come together and move forward collectively so that way we can do what's best for our students. That's what we're going to do. So as part of our We learn, learn, return to learn plan. I want to just kind of give you a brief update of our current reality. So on October 12 we started welcoming our family center students back in and added, we still are continuing to add classes. So we started with a few classes and have gradually added some more and that's been working well. All of our K-5 students are back in school, those students who are in responsive learning. And so I was very fortunate that over the last three days I've been going to all of the elementary schools and just visiting, seeing how things are working, seeing how our risk mitigation measures are in place. I had opportunities to talk to a few of our educators. Today I spoke with the teacher who, you know, every time I always check in and say, how are things going? And the first thing people usually say, it's different. It's different, and it is different. And we're not kidding ourselves in that it's going to be exactly the way it was. But what I thought this was really interesting is this teacher was saying, you know, the kids adjust so well. And she said, I also have to take time to say, you know what? I thought this was going to work this way, but I have to make adjustments the way my classroom looks based off what's happening. So really appreciate that flexibility. We announced our plan for returning our secondary schools to school on November 9th, and we're gonna continue to monitor the data to make an informed decision around that. And we're gonna confirm that decision on November 2nd. One of the things I think is also important as we return back to school is that we need to monitor our data and keeping track of the data, not only the data that's in our community, but the data that's within the district. And so we do have this dashboard that we put out there and we update it accordingly. And you can see that we continue to have cases within our community. And then you can see that there are quarantines that happen. And the reality is that quarantine is part of all of this. And it's not necessarily a bad thing, it's something that's part of this process. And so it's keeping people safe. We had to quarantine two classes This over the last couple weeks. And that's why you see a spike in that what we've been able to do is pivot those classes into remote learning and we've had some individual cases of students quarantining so We are working with the ever changing guidance of St. Louis County Health and And I will say that we've tried to make sure that we've been consistent, but we've also have to go by what the guidance is by St. Louis County Health and these quarantines aren't something that we say, this is what we're doing. We get that guidance from St. Louis Public Health. I also wanna just emphasize is that since we've had those quarantines, we haven't found out that there was a transmission that happened within our schools. And so those things, Those situations where we've had presumptive cases or cases of COVID, they're not being transmitted within our schools, which is also good to know because we've put a lot of risk mitigation measures in place. And that's a good sign that these transmissions that we do have in our community are not happening within our schools after we do the contact tracing. As I shared with you last week, I think it was last week, we are continuing to monitor different data points. And those data points, we're not gonna just use one to make these decisions. We're gonna look at positivity rate within the community and we're also gonna look at cases per 100,000 for school age groups. And so last week I talked to you about how at the day that I made the announcement about secondary students, we did see an increase in the positivity rate and And we are using those CDC guidelines as kind of like our determination of where we fall on that. And so what I shared with you last week is that we really want to stay in that range where we're in the lowest risk. And anything under 20 is a lowest risk when we're talking about school age, 100,000 school age by group, by school age group. And what we've seen, and this area right here, I don't know if you can see my cursor, when we're looking at our 15 to 19 year olds, we're continuing to see an increase there, and it's right at that 20. So we're at that cusp right now, and that's in between that lowest and moderate risk. And so, but we also have that coupled with our positivity rate, which is falling near that is in that highest risk. So the other thing that's really important to remember about this is that the CDC says that you lower the risk when you have the right risk mitigation tools in place. And so they say that if you use the consistent and correct use of mask, social distancing to the largest extent, hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette, cleaning and disinfection and contact tracing in collaboration with the local health department that helps mitigate the risk. And so I'm gonna continue to monitor that and I am gonna have to make a decision based off of this data and also based off the risk mitigation measures we've put in place. And so I will have that decision by November 2nd and let people know. I'm glad to see that we're kind of still falling within the lowest risk for our middle school age students, and I find it to be encouraging. And so I will let the board know what my decision is and make sure that you know before we send that out to the public. I think the other thing that's important to remember is that There are lots of news stories out there, and we're seeing lots of things in media right now. And we are aware of that, and we know that our public sees that. And so we have to continue to think about how are we educating our parents about those things that are keeping our kids safe within the schools. So that's why we're producing videos, putting information out there so everyone feels informed. And then the other thing too, is when we're looking at that school age group, the 15 and 19 year olds, we think it's important to note that when we look at disaggregate that a little bit more, we tried to see if we can get some additional information about where are they falling? Cause that range falls between 15 and 19. And so Chris, can you talk a little bit about this slide that you produced for us so we can have a better understanding of this?

Yeah, absolutely. through a partnership with Mercy Health Systems and actually the St. Louis Metro Area COVID Task Force, school districts back at the beginning of October were given access to a few specific data points that they can actually disaggregate by the boundaries of their district. And one of the things that we can look at is total number of cases that we've seen Mark Benthien, ECA- within that and just to understand how that's tracked back to our district is that's based on the paperwork that's filled out. Mark Benthien , ECA- The you know that that is the zip code associated with the positive test. Mark Benthie, ECA- Is is how that was explained to me so we don't have these we don't have data that takes us back to a specific address, but we do have it by zip code, and we know that we have. both WashU and Fontbonne University have student housing within our zip code. So we've been trying to look at this data and really understand what it means, because if you look at those first four student age groups, zero to four, five to nine, and 10 to 14, those numbers look a heck of a lot different than that 15 to 19 year old age band. So while we haven't been able to narrow down, kind of geocode those specific positive cases, the people in charge of this dashboard at Mercy have been super helpful. They were able to break that 63 positive tests out by specific age groups. So you can kind of see that the majority of those, 42 of those actually by my count here are in the 18 to 19 year old range. Based on where we are in the school year, we can reasonably assume that there's very few of those 18 year olds that are probably seniors in high school right now that have already turned 18. So this tells us that a lot of those 18 and 19-year-old cases are more than likely associated with positive tests at Wash U and Fontbonne. The challenge with any of this data is that there's a lag in it. I mean, you know, the data that we're getting today, even though it's dated October 28th is really from, you know, October 20th, October 21st. Part of that is just due to the confirmation process they go through with making sure that all those numbers and those totals are correct and nothing is double counted or anything like that. So one of the things that you can take away from that, though, is you can see since we've been able to look at this, you can see that there's not – reasonably small numbers of increases in positive cases in those school-aged age groups as we look at this.

Thank you, Chris. I also wanted to inform the board that we did give the families an opportunity to switch either into responsive learning or learning at home. And we did have some students that the increase, we did have an increase in the number of families that wanted to do learning at home at the secondary level. And so out of our Clayton High School and Wydown Middle School, there's about 23% of the students that are gonna do learning at home. Then there's about 20% at Wydown that they're gonna do learning at homes. So I wanted you to have those stats as well. The other thing is that last time we met, the board asked if we could put some additional guidance out there for families because people don't know what it means when we have to quarantine or what is my situation? What is my family's situation? And so we took that feedback from the board and decided that we wanted to try to come up something from our communications department that would give some additional information, but not set information because we can't say this is exactly what will happen because every situation is unique. So if you go to our website now, you can see these proposed questions and then this is for self and scenario two is for family. And so I wanted you to see, we appreciated the feedback from the board and we did follow up with that and put that information out onto our website. So I'm gonna stop right there before I just move into a brief overview of the strategic plan and see if you had any questions.

John, I just have a quick question.

Yes.

So I'm wondering if families are able to, so you're gonna make your decision on the second But then some families, I think, might want to make their decisions kind of based on what your decision is going to be. So I'm wondering if there will be an opportunity after you make your decision for families to then maybe modify what their decision is. Does that make sense?

Yeah, so my decision on November 2nd would be probably whether or not I would have a the middle school and high school start on november 9th right and then we already gave them a window of time um if we did have families that said after i make the decision if they reached out to us we will try to accommodate that but we've tried to give them a window of uh to switch um but we'll take that into consideration um yeah and so yeah it's just there's

so many variables that change day to day so i just want to make sure that we're flexible

okay

I have a question. Will teachers like students have the opportunity to choose if they want to stay at home?

So teachers will be expected to come in. We did have opportunities for teachers if it was necessary for teachers to stay home due to specific reasons, could be medical reasons. We did give teachers those opportunities to do that as well. And they had a window of time to sign up for that as well, see whether or not they qualify for that.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Other questions for Sean.

PB, Harmon

Zuckerberg, Go ahead.

PB, HarmonZuckerberg, So I may have just missed this or misunderstood when when Chris was talking about it, but the PB, Harmon Zuckleberg, I don't know if we can go back to the slide that had the district specific numbers. PB, Harmonzuckerberg, But it sounded like that was driven by zip code information. Is that right,

this one.

right so if if cases in the district is that is that information that we're getting um based on if it's a zip code that is part of our district

correct so the the the dashboard that that we have access to through mercy allows you to filter the st louis region by the boundaries of the your school district so that when we are kind of turning on the clayton filter if you will It shows us positive cases that have been tracked within the geographic boundary of our school district.

Okay. So it's not zip codes that happen to be partially in our district, but the actual district boundaries.

Correct.

Okay. Yeah.

And we're not just using our district data. We're using St. Louis County data as well because we have families and teachers that live throughout St. Louis. But this was just the specific data that was attached to Clayton.

Okay. Yeah, that was actually going to be my next question. Yeah. So thank you for clarifying that.

Other questions?

Yeah, just one more for me. Do we have data that indicates what an originating source is on some of our major, like taking down a whole classroom? Do we have an idea how much of the league sports is playing on it? Just speaking as somebody who's just getting a kid out of quarantine from league sports and we don't even play. So I'm kind of curious. You know, and kind of the basis of my thing is, you know, there's a lot of focus from a community perspective of get the kids back to school. But if the community isn't making the right decisions that help get kids back into school, all the planning that you and your team do becomes moot, right? So I get nervous that, you know, it's all for naught if we end up just kind of turning into a giant hotspot no matter what. So if it's something that we're tracking, it may be a good data point for the league organizers to be aware of what the impact that, you know those games are having. And if there's no impact, that's good too. It's just a data point that would be interesting to understand.

So Heather Christman, who is the head of our nurses, who is incredible by the way with the job that she is doing. I should have thanked her at the beginning because she is running ragged. But yeah, she is doing all the contact tracing. And so we do have data in terms of looking at the sources. I'd have to look and see what that data looks like. But again, when we have had cases, we're noticing that the transmissions are not happening within the school environments. And so it is happening usually outside of the school. So I'd have to look at the data to see where it is coming from in terms of its sports league or family or something like that.

Yeah, I can clarify a little bit. So David, we have a spreadsheet tracking every positive case and every quarantine that we're aware of throughout the district. And then that ties back to what the positive cases, another pretty elaborate contact tracing document that are, that's completed by, you know, our staff that has been trained as contact tracers. So what I can't say without getting too specific is all the positive cases that we've had, and Sean, pardon me, Sean said this earlier as well, are either tied to family transmission. So there's been somebody in the household that has, you know, and generally it's been a parent that has become positive and then brought that into their household. And that's how specifically the two classrooms that we have, have been impacted. We are tracking as many cases as we can of students who are not currently enrolled or not currently attending in-person class. And we are aware that with some of those, there are a few cases that are related to league sports. But I don't know that it's enough at this point to call it a trend, but it's a, to your point, it's a data point of interest.

So I appreciate it, Chris and Sean. And by the way, I will say, as a family that had to go through a quarantine decision, I think your team's handled it remarkably well. So I know we're building the ship a little bit while we're floating on it. But I think the communication that we've had from all levels of the administration, from teachers to nurses to principals has been pretty stellar. I know you're busy, but thank you for that and please share that with your teams.

Thank you, David. I appreciate it.

I have a couple of questions.

Go ahead, Stacey.

The numbers that we have of Clayton students that currently, like the current cases are kids in quarantine. Do those come from the health department or are you expecting families to self-report those? And I think you were just talking about this, but do those include like our middle school and high school kids that maybe don't feel like they need to report it now because they're not physically at school yet?

So the data on the dashboard does not include, it does include students who are in sports right now. Isn't that right, Chris? But not students that

are... Yeah, that is correct. So the data that we're representing on the dashboard is students and staff who are in our buildings right now. That said, each of our school nurses are actively tracking other cases that they are made aware of. So in other words, so let's say, for example, you have a sophomore at the high school that has COVID but is not in school, not involved in any school-related activities that that might impact. We are still tracking those and keeping aware of those. But I mean, because of HIPAA requirements, we do not get name-specific information reported back to us from the county health department.

Are you depending on people to self-report, I guess is what I'm asking?

By and large, yes. And I think that up to this point, especially with all of our staff and all of our students that are in schools, our parents and families have been really excellent partners with us in helping manage that aspect of that and keeping either their principal or their school nurse or their teacher kind of in the loop as to what's going on And we do have actually an extra layer that we've set up even within PowerSchool for tracking absences so that when there is a student that's out sick, there's an additional layer of follow-up from that school nurse to track down why that student is out to make sure that if that's somebody that we need to be paying attention to and monitoring moving forward, we capture that individual and keep an eye on them.

Thanks. I have one more question and I think you probably talked about this a while ago, but since we are talking about now getting middle school and high school back, could one of you talk a little bit about the mitigating measures we're using in those buildings? Obviously all of the middle school and high-school students will be masked, but what kind of PPE are you providing teachers with? Are they having plexiglass on their desks like the elementary is? I'm just curious what we're doing there. And like I said, I know we've talked about it a lot, but it's been a while.

So there are several different ways that you can look at risk mitigation. One is purchasing a PPE and equipment, our facial coverings. We have face coverings for everyone, which includes teachers and students and staff. We did provide, we are providing teachers with the face guards too, if they want those in addition. The other thing is that the way that we structured the schedule is also another risk mitigation measure. So we have half days so that way we have fewer students in the building who are going to be in the building at one time, which we then can provide social distancing. The other thing is that we're looking at pathways. So if you go through our buildings, you'll see that there is state of the right, only use this stairwell. We have videos that we put out for health promotion. We have orientations that are giving students information about what they need to do. The other thing is that we are looking at our cleaning procedures. And so cleaning, we've shifted more custodians to the day shift. So that way we have more people in the buildings during the day to help with cleaning. We're also making sure that our students are involved with the cleaning. So when a class is moving to a different class, the teacher squirting down the desk. And then when students are coming in, they're wiping off the desk before they sit down. And then the other thing too is that we're looking at ways to just monitoring the hallways, making sure that our transitions are, students are staying on one side of the hallway as they're moving forward throughout the building. And we do have plastic dividers that are available similar to what we've done for the elementary. Not everyone's required to use those all the time, and so it depends upon the situation. And so we have tried to, and also the filtration system that we put in all of our schools. So we've tried to look at it in a lot of different ways in terms of educating, purchasing equipment, looking at structures, looking at systems, and feeling pretty good about the way we've been able to do that in our buildings.

Thank you. I have one last question. What will online learning look like now that some students are in school and some students are still learning from home?

So we want to try to make sure that we're maintaining consistency for our students. So at the secondary level, we've had some students who have been in mixed classes. So some of them have been learning at home classes and responsive learning. And so we have bought kits for our secondary levels that allow our teachers to live stream from the classrooms. Excuse me about the sneeze, I apologize. And so it's, we, the students are going to stay with, try to keep our students in the same sections as much as possible. And our teachers are going to be live streaming from the classrooms. And so again, that's another pivot for our teachers. And, you know, we've gone from Zoom and then now we're gonna be doing live stream which is still going to be using Zoom but the classes are going to be in Zoom. be live streamed from the classrooms.

Kim or Jason, any questions?

No, I don't have any questions. Thanks.

Thank you. And Sean, I don't I have any questions so you can, I think they're already answered. My questions were answered so you can continue with your . Okay.

So I just wanted to briefly just, and this is going to be very quick because I know we want to look at monitor time, but I wanted to just let the board know that we are continuing to The work that we're doing right now on the strategic plan is not about mainly the content, it's around finessing the words. The work we are starting and we're really excited about the work that we're do. I have shared this plan with the board, got feedback from you. I've met with teacher groups, met with students. And so our central office administrator has also worked with the subcommittee who's worked on this and so I just wanted to let people know that in November at our next board meeting we're going to be bringing this back for an approval. And I just wanted to share just some of the things, again, the goals that we have brought forth are really going to be aspirational goals that will also have objectives that are measurable. And we're going to have a dashboard that's aligned to them. But one of the things that our subcommittee said is that they wanted us to make sure that our strategic plan was something that was going to be easy for us to remember. So they said, what's going to be the tagline for our strategic plan. So goal one is around making sure that everyone feels like they have a sense of belonging, they're valued. So it's a place for everyone. And that's the tagline. And then goal two is around the educational part in terms of providing equitable personalized experiences. So it's to grow as learners. And then goal three is around that personal growth and the social, emotional, and physical well-being. And so our tagline is in head and heart. So if you look at putting all those together, if anyone asks about our strategic plan, Clayton is a place for everyone to grow as learners and head and heart. And that'll be a quick way for us to remember what we're doing. And then I just wanted to kind of give you an overview that when we present this back to the board, it's gonna be looking very different than what it looked like previously and that it is our communications team had put it together and has made it look very professional and it's going to be a great outward facing document for our community and also a tool for all of our decision-making. So I just wanted to make sure that the board knew where we were with that. We're continuing to work on that and we'll have that for the November meeting. The only other thing I wanted to share was that we're continuing to work with our work around equity and becoming an anti-bias, anti-racist culture. Cameron Poole has been working to build capacity of all of us and has been building capacity with our building leaders and our teachers. He's also working, we just had recently finished the board conversations and now looking at next steps for that and what that's gonna look like. He led some professional development for our classified staff in terms of the work that he has been doing with other teachers in terms of humanizing. We also have the data that is collected from our equity audit and Cameron's going to be working with our building principals and bringing that data back to them saying, so this is our data. What is this telling us? And then what action does it mean that we have to do in connecting that to their school improvement plans? And then I also think that we're even looking at how we're revamping our current structure for professional development and looking at how we're looking at equity being beyond a book study, but something about really looking at the dignity of our students and taking action. So I just wanted to give that quick equity update. And then I was gonna shift to Caitlin to see if she had an update as the student board representative.

Yes, so I'll start off with a couple of first quarter wrap-up thoughts. So the quarter ended last Friday and a common theme that was noticed throughout the quarter by students is that many teachers are now providing the opportunity for revisions of assignments and tests and also being more flexible about deadlines. And this is very appreciated by the students that I've heard from during this stressful time and it also contributes to an environment of learning and growing from mistakes. Students are also liking when teachers are giving a small break during the period and also the shorter school day with a block schedule. In addition, I'll be moving on to student opinions on back to school. So there are a range of opinions from nervousness to cautious optimism. While some students are excited to have a more normal school experience and an in-person learning in a classroom setting, There are a lot of students who show concern about the safety of going back to school. A couple of these concerns include going back to school while cases are rising and while flu season is coming, and also how the learning experience of those who choose to learn at home will be affected in this online environment. And some events that are coming up are that on November 6, the orchestra, the theater department and the choir are having a production in Shaw Park called Poe in the Park, where small groups will be led through Shaw Park and experience performances that are inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. Thank you.

Thanks, Caitlin. And thanks, Sean. So we're going to move on to our study items. And we have four study items, all of which Robin has the pleasure of talking about. So the first one is the first reading of policy JFG, which is searches of students. So Robin, your show.

Thank you, Joe. Yeah, so policy JFG, this is just a revision to policy. It is not required by law, but it does provide more specific language related to student searches. And it takes out some of the previous language around student interviews because that's covered in the next policy that I will be talking about with you. But it does also include some new language related to testing students for drugs and alcohol. as well as the use of drug detection dogs. So just a little bit of background information, you know, it, the way the new policy or the revisions in this policy really don't change all that much to what we are already doing. You know, the administrators in our buildings are the primary people when we conduct a student search and our You know, law enforcement has very minimal involvement with our searches. In fact, they're usually not involved at all unless the contraband that is found is something that is illegal and needs to be turned in. So the way this updated policy is written, you know, really isn't too much of a departure from current practice.

Great. Thank you, Robin. So I'm just going to go around the horn here. David, any questions?

No, I do have a couple, but I have a feeling that they're going to be cleared. So I'm going to defer to some of our other folks.

Okay. Stacey, any questions?

Yeah, just a quick one. In The very first paragraph, that last sentence says that the superintendent or designee is directed to provide staff with appropriate training. Is that all staff? Does everyone get trained in this? Or who does that mean?

Yeah, it would be, well, most teachers are not involved in searches. It's handled by administrators. But yes, we'll be reviewing with administrators the processes and procedures on how to conduct a proper search, but also providing teachers with the correct information on who to share that information with if they feel like there is information that would lead to reasonable suspicion that a search might be warranted. Okay.

And my next question is, when it talks about the student vehicles parked on district property, is the Center of Clayton considered district property? Because kids park in those lots.

Yeah, I would say that. Yes, I mean, I think

we own half.

I mean, since we own half of it. Legally, it's our land. We actually own the land. So I don't know if that matters.

I don't know. If it does either. That's why I was asking.

I think it's a good question though.

Okay. And then I'm sure this is obvious, but when it talks about searching student property, I assume that also means like backs, backpacks, purses. I mean, anything, right? Okay. Thanks. That's all.

Thanks, Stacey. Amy, any questions?

Just a few. So Robin, in the first paragraph, the sentence that's Starts with all searches. Sorry, I didn't redline this, but I just wanted to say all searchers will be conducted equitably professionally and in accordance with law. So pop in that word equitably in front of professionally. Got it. And then the term reasonable suspicion, you start talking about it under searches of student property. I wanted to tie it to like the way that Missouri law kind of tracks what the case law uses is this term called totality of the circumstances. So I wanted to pop that term in the policy. So the policy is kind of tracking the language that Missouri law uses.

And where would you like that dropped in?

So it's under searches of property in the third line. It starts with reasonable suspicion. Must be based on the totality of the circumstances, including, I guess, facts known to the admin, credible information, blah, blah, blah. Okay. I think that was it. Thank you. Thanks.

Thanks Amy. Kim, any questions? Okay. Thank you. Jason, any questions?

Not really. Just in this item, the word reasonable suspicion, I wasn't sure if I understood what that really meant. It's so broad. I

didn't understand

what it means, reasonable suspicion. What does that mean exactly? What's a reasonable suspicion?

Oh, do you want me to? Yeah, Amy, you can go ahead. I can, and then I'll just type in if there's anything additional.

So under Missouri law, it's pretty broad under Missouri law, and that's why I wanted them to, so Missouri law says, I think it's like this case, I'm going back to law school, Gary, but it's like us versus Cortez or something. Is that right? The total, the totality of the circumstances and, but it's vague. And so it's meant to reasonable suspicion can mean a lot of different things. There isn't just one definition of what reasonable suspicion is. So like it can mean like, I mean, unfortunately, I totally hear what you're saying, but there isn't just one definition. It's the totality of the circumstances and that's what constant, so which would mean the, you know, every situation is different. So based on the totality of circumstances, does the person conducting this search have, you know, reasonable suspicion, grounds for reasonable suspicion to be conducting the search? Does that make sense?

Yeah, no, I mean, from a legal standpoint, I get why it's vague because it gives a lot of latitude to the person making their decision. Right. Which to me also can be a way to, you know, since it's not a uniform applicable thought process on how we're going to deal with the issue or the person, it could be subjective and then that's when it starts getting kind of weird on who you're going to and how someone might dress, how someone might look. You're right. It's

a little subjective. It is. It is. I think in general terms...

I'm sorry, one more thing. One more thing. Just reading this in general, these four different... Well, really, probably just three of them. Three different items. it was kind of hard to read because what's happening now in our world, like what's legal now and what's happening in our community on what people are doing when it comes to business now. And what might be considered an illegal drug maybe two years ago is now considered a way to earn revenue, a legal way to earn revenue. So it's just interesting this whole thing about being searched and you know, embarrassing this child. Somebody might want to take a little further, but go ahead. Go ahead, Robin. You were going to say what?

I would say in general terms in the school setting when reasonable suspicion comes into play would be the use of multiple data points. So the policy currently references credible information and oftentimes where the rubber meets the road that might be student reports of, you know, seeing some type of prohibited items such as drug paraphernalia, cross-reference with the student in question, perhaps smelling like they were using some type of substance. In addition to just in general visual inspection, maybe showing signs that they might be under the influence of things. So we I would say when we're thinking about reasonable suspicion, we're trying to look at multiple data points as opposed to just one. Of course, if the suspicion is related to any safety threat, those are ones that obviously are going to be taken in a much different light because we need to ensure that we're maintaining a safe and orderly school environment.

Got it. Thank you. Caitlin, any questions? No questions. Okay, thanks. Gary, any questions?

So I will say I don't remember the cases as well as Amy, I think, does. But when I was reading through this set of policies and the suggested changes, one, I was kind of having like not particularly pleasant flashbacks to first year law school, trying to remember some of the standards and how complicated and how difficult to understand where the lines are on some of these things like search and seizure and things like that. So, I mean, my first instinct was I understand that MSBA is suggesting these policies and that they're vetting those and providing the service that they provide, which is to update our policies. And I feel like you guys always think I want to call the law firm, but I do think it's just my opinion. I don't pretend to think that everybody would necessarily share it, but I would like to have our counsel weigh in on this before we made changes to things like this because I think the law – Not only can I not remember it 20 years ago, but I'm sure it's changed and there's been case law that has affected it. So that would be my first suggestion is that we would have our specific council review it. If, you know, we all agreed to do that. I know that expends resources and that's important too. So that's the first question. The second thing that I would just offer is that we, that doesn't get us off the hook in terms of making some of these hard decisions just because it's legal or it's appropriately done. justified under the law to have policies like this. I think in our community we do have to make decisions based on what our community expects and wants, and that may not be the same as every other community in Missouri that MSBA may be suggesting this for. So I think we're eventually going to have to make some hard decisions about some of these things as well. Those are my kind of parallel Slightly uncomfortable feelings about this is that we, one, needed to get more specific or I would be more comfortable if we had more specific legal advice pertaining to our situation and also that we should consider this in the context of our own specific community and what they expect us to do in terms of articulating these kinds of standards. So that's my input and I'll leave it at that.

Thank you, Gary. And I don't, I think my anything that I would have said has already been addressed. So I'm going to move us on to 5.02, which is the first reading of policy JFGA, which is new and it's the interviews with or removal of students.

Okay. So policy JFGA interviews with or removal This is a new policy for the district to consider related to law enforcement interviewing students on campus. Adoption of this new policy is not required by law and it outlines clear procedures for when law enforcement can access students. Some of the background information, some of you may have already read this on the cover page from MSBA's suggested policy was that Basically, with another school district, the school district actually did not follow their own policy related to law enforcement's access to a student and essentially allowed law enforcement to interview a student without a principal present or without an administrator present with the student nor with parental consent. And so the student... in court was basically considered to be seized by law enforcement without the proper protocols in place. And so this new policy, JFGA, is a policy that kind of outlines some guardrails, if you will, for how law enforcement can engage with students on campus as it relates to investigations and interviews related to criminal activity. Again, it's not a policy that's required by law but does provide clear guidance around how school districts would permit access to students by law enforcement.

Thanks, Robin. Gary, any questions?

I think I said it all applies here. So all the same thoughts. So thanks, Robin.

Great,

thanks. Caitlin, any

questions? Thanks. Jason, any questions?

Yeah, not really. I mean, I don't have any questions. This policy is just rough to read. And, you know, getting the police involved in a kid's life who might be, I don't know, man, who could be have depression issues looking for a way out. I don't know. I just think I don't know. I'm just not a fan of this policy. And the good thing is, we don't have to approve it. Right, Robin? We don't have this one. Yeah,

correct. This one is not required by law. Also, one piece of information that might help provide a little bit more context to is that in St. Louis County, when law enforcement needs to interview a minor related to an investigation, they actually have to do it at family court. So a DJO is involved. And so if law enforcement were to show up at Clayton High School, they would not be interviewing them as part of an investigation on campus. They'd be reaching out to the parents and working with us to get parental consent. And that interview would actually take place at family court.

Right. Yeah, I just think this policy could be could determine a young person's life. The school district is supposed to be a place for, well, between the one and 18 is a place to make mistakes. That's what we talk about. It's a place for you to go try, you fail, learn from your mistakes and keep it moving. And I think when you start talking about searches and calling the police to get involved I think it just puts kids in a tough position. It can really derail a person's life or make them have a bad taste about authority, you know, because they're getting involved and they're just like, all I want to do is be understood, you know? So I don't like the policy personally. I don't think we should do anything with it. So that's just my opinion.

Thank you, Jason. Kim, any questions? Nope. Okay. Thanks. Amy, any questions?

No, not really. I'm torn. I guess I'm torn on the policy. You know, I think it's hard because, I mean, on one hand, like I agree with what Jason says that you know, we don't want to unnecessarily involve the police. But then I also think about other situations, you know, if, you know, there's a serious crime like a rape that we're not going to be required to report that, you know, that becomes problematic, I think. I don't know. I don't what to do with it. I'll listen to what other people have to say.

Thank you, Amy. Stacey, any questions?

Yeah. Just for clarity, because in reading this a few times I still wasn't sure, Robin, is this referring to interviews maybe about crimes that could have happened on or off our campuses?

Correct. It has to do with any time law enforcement would need to interview a student as part of an investigation. So that may overlap with investigation that the school district needs to do because it was on campus, but it might also have to do with law enforcement wanting to reach a student because of activity that happened off campus that was brought to their attention.

Got it.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Stacey. David, any questions?

I don't know if it's as much of a question as more of a pontification. I'm kind of torn on it as well, because on one hand, I would like to understand what our exposure is by not having a policy versus having a policy. But at the same token, I'm not comfortable with any policy that allows this to happen without a parent. I just... Yeah, I don't know. I'm not articulating where the dam here, but it's just I can see the value in having this and not having it may be a bigger risk. But we would need to be really careful about what the framework is because I don't want there to be a case to where... an interview happens that should never happen. You know, like there's a comment that says we'll try to contact the parents. Well, that, that, that may not be a high enough standard there. Um, so I think there's, there needs to be some consideration heroes to what we're, what risk we're mitigating. And if that, if that mitigation is worth it, then dig deeper into the framework of, of what, what we drafted, I guess is probably the best thing I could say.

Thanks, David. And, um, I, I don't know that I have anything specifically beyond what folks have said, but I would recommend that, um, given people's feelings about this one and the last one that we, we do need to check in with our attorneys to get some advice. So.

Joe. Yep. Go ahead. Can I just, just maybe add one other thought here? I mean, there seems to be, um, you know, fair amount of, um, I guess, uncertainty about this. And maybe in addition to that, is this an example of a time when it might make sense to do some additional study in either a breakout group or some kind of, you know, sign this as someone to get have additional like conversations about this in light of information we get from the lawyers and like talking to people about it. I mean, we're not voting on a policy that's required by law or has to be changed on any kind of timeframe. I think we can be a bit deliberative about this. I mean, I'm not sure how else to say it, but I feel like we could take our time and think about this and study it a little bit if we wanted to do that, if that was what, you know,

Well, Gary, I think we need to be cognizant about passing the other one because the other one strips the language. We need to make sure that they're in sync and we don't end up with an exposure. But otherwise, I agree. These aren't mandatory, so I don't think we have to hurry into it. Sorry,

the only other thing I would add is if we decide not to adopt either of these policies, but especially if the decision is not to adopt the second policy, a policy that there still needs to be a way to address how to train our school administration and whoever in the school is going to be dealing with when the police if the police would come for an interview because there's the the example that they use in the beginning of the polity actually creates a liability for the school in terms of if a student is improperly removed and then the school becomes kind of liable for the seizure of that student together with law enforcement. So if we don't adopt, regardless of whether we do or do not adopt this policy, there probably needs to be some consideration as to how what our internal protocol would be should law enforcement come to school and decide they want to question a student. So regardless...

Our current practice, too, is that we do contact parents first. And if we can't get a hold of them, obviously waiting until we hear from them or waiting until they can come on site before any of the interviews take place. So that's what our current practice is, is to engage the parents right away. That's good. It's a good practice.

Okay, so let's see what our attorneys say and we'll move from there. We may... Yeah,

Joe, I will just say we'll get some additional information about exposure. And then I think that... And then also looking at what we might... After administration gets some more information, we might have a different recommendation or a different way of looking at this before we bring it back to the board.

Sounds good. So, and these four all have some similarity. So 5.03 is then moving on to first reading of policy JG, which is student discipline. So Robin.

All right. So policy number three tonight, JG student discipline, MSBA has updated this policy to remove references to secluding students as a disciplinary measure, because it is going to be covered in the new policy or new version of of policy JGGA. And so MSBA is recommending the updates to policy JG to avoid the duplication of language. Again, just a little bit of background information. Seclusion would mean separating a student. They would be alone behind a locked door as a disciplinary measure. That is not something that we do. Um, you know, periodically we do have some students who we have crisis plans in place for that might involve, um, you know, putting some other measures in place. If we feel that there's a potential safety issue for self or two others. Um, but seclusion is not really a practice that we apply in the school district.

Thanks Robin. Um, David, any questions?

PB Harmon

Zuckerman, No, no, I don't. PB Harmon Zuckerson, Think Stacey any questions.

Stacie Jenkins, I more of maybe a statement that I was happy that it Stacie Jenkins, Now addresses the equity issues and it's Stacie Jenkins, i'm just wondering if you have any thoughts about how it may be aligns with you know where we're headed with a strategic plan as far as it says that the superintendent will regularly review district discipline data and determine if the policies are being equitably enforced. And I do think it probably aligns well with where we're headed, with how we are gonna be tracking discipline data going forward. But I didn't know if you had any further thoughts on the connection there for us. I

think that your connection is accurate. After talking with our legal counsel about this particular one, you know, they're seeing an increase in litigation related to inequities and disciplinary practices. So I think, you know, again, things we've put into the strategic plan and then this type of language, you know, help us hold ourselves accountable to that work and making sure that we're really being thoughtful and intentional about what we're doing.

Thanks. Thanks, Stacey. Amy, any questions?

No, I just, Stacey covered it. So thank you.

Thank you. Gary, any questions?

I feel like maybe this is a question I should know the answer to, but is the policy that they're saying is we don't need this part anymore because it's in JGGA. Have we passed JGGA?

We have not yet gotten to JGGA.

Okay. I guess I would think maybe we would do these at the same time then if that was the case, right? Or would that make sense? Like if we're taking something out of this one because it's going to be in a new one, it feels like maybe we should be thinking about those together.

Yes, that is an adjustment we can make.

I don't know. I didn't go back through and look at that and see where we were with that, but that just wouldn't make sense to me, I think. That

makes sense. We'll take a look at that. Thanks, Gary. Jason, any questions?

Yeah. Sometimes I wish I had an opportunity to discuss this with you all before we get to the board because Because sometimes when I'm reading this in isolation, it's like, oh man, I don't get this. But like on page four, where it says at the bottom of the page, it says discipline for off-campus misconduct. And it reads, you know, the first line says, student may be disciplined for misconduct that occurs off district grounds and outside a district activity when allowed by law including but not limited to the violent situation. And then a list of situations, but like... So are we comfortable with that as a board? Like if somebody, a kid is Saturday evening chilling, doing this thing, that child, something happens, like are we going to discipline that child for their actions on a Saturday evening with their friends, for example? So

the threshold...

Right.

So the threshold is really, you know, that language and number two, the nexus to the education environment. So if we were to take disciplinary action related to a student's behavior that happens off campus or during off school hours, we would have to have a very substantial significant argument as how it impacted the educational environment during regular school activities. So a practical example of how this plays out is sometimes say a student makes a threat via text message or on social media against another student and they say it's going to happen on Monday when you show up at school, and then families notify us that this has happened, that has now impacted that other student's ability to come to school and feel safe. And so then that becomes an intersection of a student's ability to have access to their school programming. And so that would be considered the nexus. between the event and the choice that the student made and orderly operations of the school environment. So that's just a really basic example. There are a lot of other ones, but what we're looking for is that intersection between the choice that they made and how it impacted the school environment.

Gotcha. So what if it doesn't, so this is the problem when I started doing the what ifs. What if it doesn't have anything to do with like the language in which the threat took place has anything to do with it being centered around school. It's just, they got a problem with each other and there can be a violent situation that takes place. So my question is like, are we gonna try to figure out whether it's centered around school? And then maybe then we'll make a decision on how we're going to discipline that person or if it doesn't, then we just leave it alone. Like, I guess what I'm saying, are we monitoring and policing these kids too much is the question. I mean, the whole objective I thought was to give kids latitude to make mistakes, but we're policing them so much. Does this put these kids in a bad position, this particular item?

PB Harmon Zuckerman, And Robin. You can answer this, but I did what I would say is that there are many things that are happening outside of school that don't come back into the school and cause you know disruption. It's really about what when things get to the point where it's causing a disruption where There might be a disruption within a classroom or students making a threat in the hallway or making someone feel uncomfortable. We can't monitor everything that happens outside of the school, but usually if it comes to a point to the school where it's disrupting the learning environment or causing a student not to feel safe, then we have to intervene and find out what we need to do to fix, mitigate the situation. You know, the other thing is that sometimes things happen outside of school And there really isn't a nexus to the school and people, and it's not causing a disruption, but we still have people are saying, this happened, you have to take care of it. And we're, we have to say, we don't, we can't take care of that. That doesn't really have, you know, we always want to make sure we're doing what's best for our students. But what Robin said is absolutely right. When it does have a nexus to school or does something that disrupts the learning environment or disrupts a person feeling like they feel safe about walking in our building or, then we would have to look at what we would need to do. And it doesn't always necessarily mean discipline. It could be mediation. It could be something that we're doing to resolve the problem, but we don't often know everything that happens. And we're not going to look for those kinds of things. Usually it comes to us when something happens.

Yeah, and so I get your point. And that makes a lot of sense. I was thinking of that same kind of example. So I'm glad you brought that up. I was also thinking about the social-emotional side of this process. Like if we're really focused on social-emotional and well-being and wellness and mental health, then this kind of helps mitigate these outside activities that take place with kids, even with drugs, for example. So I'm thinking about these policies and the measures we're putting in place to police these kids, and then the significant damage it can cause because there's somebody who's not necessarily engaged with these policies. They just know that they exist, and they're just following the rules They're just executing according to the policy without really thinking through the process. That could be damaging to the child's growth. When we often talk about social-emotional and trying to understand these children, what they're going through, why these things are happening, what they're feeling, how do we get to the root cause or the crux of something before metastasizing something that could be violent or you know, destructive or self-destructing is what I'm thinking about when I read these policies. So that's why I guess I'm so concerned about the policing nature, like this heavy hand of going in or to go see somebody. Your parents got to be there or like, you know, if it's a nexus and around XYZ, you know, we have the authority to say we're going to come suspend you or discipline you for what's taking place. Does that make sense what I'm saying? Does anyone see what I'm saying on this at all? Excellent,

good. I'll say again, I think it's, I hear what Jason's saying. I think that the nexus thing is key. Like for example, I know there've been situations I don't know if it's happened at Clayton, but I'm thinking of another school district where racist comments were made off school grounds or hate speech. And the school did discipline the kids that engaged in the hate speech, even though it didn't happen on school grounds, because there was that nexus and it impacted the educational environment. So I would want to be... sure to be able to, um, you know, like I, well, I, I do think it's important for flexibility and allowing kids to be able to make mistakes and be kids. I think there's, there's some things that are just non-negotiable kind of that, um, you if it does take place off school ground. So again, I think we kind of run into that situation where, I mean, there's some things I like about it, but you know, it, it does need, you know, and I do think now that I'm looking at the actual language, I do think that it provides some flexibility because it says students may be disciplined for misconduct. So it doesn't say that they shall. So I think that it, that, that, language gives the district some latitude and flexibility to that might be needed. I don't know.

Yeah.

Let me just see if Kim and Caitlin have questions first, and then we'll come back. Kim, do you have any questions?

No, I don't. I mean, I do think that the policy does allow the school district to address things that happen outside of school hours. And there are there are issues that occur outside of school hours that this gives the district the latitude to address them. And I know personally that they have addressed issues outside of school hours and have been brought to their attention. And you know, sometimes it makes a decision to take action and sometimes they don't. So To Amy's point, I think that it's important and to Jason's point too, that whoever is enforcing the policy has an understanding of how it should be enforced. So how they read the letter of the law is as important as whether or not we pass the policy.

Thanks. Caitlin, any questions?

No questions.

Okay. Gary, did you want to say something? Come back?

Yeah, just a couple of quick points. I mean, one, I want to make sure that we understand in that section that we've been talking about that starts on page four, discipline for off campus misconduct. This is a list. It's not that each of these things has to apply before discipline can be, you know, the district can engage in discipline. You know, number one. Number two, we certainly at least in my tenure on the board have had situations where we have utilized I think both number one and number two in that list and have responded to requests to address conduct that happened off campus, but that fell under those three categories. And I think this is correct and I hope that I won't say something that Robin, I put her on the spot and mentioning, but I think several of the other categories here actually track David Ensign, Missouri law where we are in fact required to take action if certain things apply specifically number four. David Ensign, So it both it some of these give us some ability to exercise some discretion and some of that is codifying or putting into policy what I think is actually required under the law. So I think the result of that is it kind of comes across as a big, scary list, but some of it we don't actually have. We have to actually follow. I think that's how I remember this.

Anything else on this one? Okay, so 5.04, the first reading of policy JHCB, which is immunization of students.

Okay, so policy JHCB immunization of students, MSDA's updated policy reflects two legal requirements that were outlined in the revised statutes of Missouri. So one of those legal requirements was that school districts are required to provide information to parents and guardians of students K-12 about influenza and influenza vaccines. That's the first part. And then the second part would be that the school district requires parents and guardians of children in preschools, daycare centers, and nursery schools to show evidence of immunizations or exemptions for immunizations or progress toward getting the immunizations completed. So that would impact our students at the family center. And so this one is a legal change and, you know, updating the policy to reflect those new revised Missouri statutes.

Thanks, Robin. Caitlin, any questions?

Yeah. If a student doesn't have health insurance or the family can't afford a flu vaccine, does the district provide any kind of financial aid? We have not provided

financial aid. However, we do have relationships with community-based resources where we try to connect families to those resources so they can get the vaccinations they need. Not just for flu vaccinations, but really any vaccinations. We also provide information on local providers where families can get discounts for things like school physicals if students are participating in athletics. So that is something on our nursing team's radar and our social workers team's radar as well.

Thank you. Thanks, Caitlin. Kim, any questions? OK, thank you. Jason, any questions? Thank you. Gary, any questions?

No, I don't have anything on this. Thank you.

Thank you. Amy, any questions? NO. Thank you. Stacy, any questions? Okay, thank you. David, any questions?

Just a clarification, Robin, am I right in reading this and that the current policy does not stipulate the exemptions?

I'm sorry, could you repeat that one more time?

Am I reading the change tracking here correctly and that the current does not have the exemptions as an option? I noted like item one, two and three under the preschool daycare and nursery schools are all yellow. So it makes it sound like the only exception that we used to have was immunizations are in progress and now we've added the item for homeless as well as for religious exemption. Is that the change?

Yes, it's more adding clear language related to it. We were already accepting the exemptions. It just makes it clear about why people might be getting the exemptions and then also that it extends now to preschool children.

Thank you. Gotcha. Thank you, David. And I don't have any questions. So thank you, Robin. We appreciate it. No

problem, thank you.

So we're moving on to information items and the first information item was really on was was on the search or superintendent search. And we are just wanna really have the opportunity to introduce McPherson and Jacobson, which is the company that the board has selected as our superintendent search company. And of course we have Judy Sclair Stein and Jeanette Tendai here. just to kind of really put their cameras on and wave and say hi so that folks know who they are. They'll be engaging folks in the community and parents. And so we wanted to make sure that as we move through the process and kind of officially post the position that we had introduced Judy and Jeanette, who will be fixtures of our community at least for a little while. So, and I don't know if you, Judy or Jeanette, if you wanted to say anything really quickly.

Just a pleasure to be a part of the Clayton School District. We're very honored to have this opportunity to lead your search. And we look forward to seeing many of you during our stakeholder meetings, which will be November 17th and 18th and more information to come.

Awesome. Thank you. And, and Jeanette, did you want to say anything or? Great. Well, thank you, Judy and Jeanette. We again are already working with you and appreciate it and look forward to continuing to work with you. So thanks for both of you. Thank you. So we're going to move on to our next information item, which is 6.02, the fall enrollment staffing and class. I

would just echo what Judy has said.

Great. Thank you, Jeanette. So I think maybe we have a delay. Sorry. So, all right, we're moving on to 6.02. Mary Jo, you are, you're up.

And Tony,

I think. OK, great. And Tony.

There's Tony. OK, so I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. Can you guys see that? OK. So there are two annual enrollment reports presented to the Board of Education. The fall report, which is presented tonight provides the current reality and the historical data about enrollment staffing and class size within a district. And the second report is in the spring, which provides forecasted enrollment projections. So tonight, when we look at enrollment, the 2021 enrollment is 2,529 students, which is 90 students less than the 1920 enrollment of 2,619. As you can see from the demographic breakdown of reductions in each resident category, the primary reduction is in resident students. And this is due to a larger than normal resident graduating class which was 200 students last year and the average graduating class over the last five years was 169 students. On page 38 and 39 of the enrollment report, I did provide a demographic breakdown of learning at home and responsive learning. In that report, which was dated as of September 30th, which is the date of the official count date, there was 417 students who were learning from home, which represents 16 and a half percent of our total population. So this was different than what Sean reported tonight since we've had... Announced coming back to school, we've allowed people to change. So what he reported tonight was 520 students. The demographic report is not based on that number. It's based on the 417. But based on that official count date, there was 15% resident students who elected to learn from home. VST was 39%. Board grant was 11%. And board grant is students and employees. Statutory tuition students, there was 64% of them elected to learn from home and 7% of our personal tuition students. The ethnicity of that group is 31% black, 11% white, 26% Asian, 12% Hispanic, 26% multiracial. So Tony will go ahead and speak about changes in staffing.

Great, thank you. Good evening, everyone. So this annual report is an opportunity for the board to understand the reality of our enrollment and demographics and how that impacts the staffing overall. And administration uses this data to make decisions with long range planning and staffing. So it's always helpful information for us to review for staffing decisions for each school year. So I'm going to give you a few of the highlights regarding staffing for the 2020-21 school year. So overall, the district increased the number of FTEs by 3.87. This year, due to the unique circumstances of the pandemic, we hired two additional interns at Captain Elementary. Also due to increased enrollment, we increased the orchestra by 0.35 FTE, which is shared across three different buildings. It's at Captain for 0.03, an increase at Glenridge for 0.03 and at Clayton High School for the majority of 0.31 FTE. In Merrimack this year, we maintained our total FTEs. There were no changes there. And then also due to the enrollment in foreign languages at Wydown and at Clayton High School, we reduced French by 0.39 FTE and Chinese by 0.03 FTE. The high school, however, did have an increase in foreign language enrollment. And we increased French at the high school by 0.29 FTE, Latin by 0.02 FTE, and Chinese by 08 FTE. Additionally, at Clayton High School, we increased English by 1.0 due to enrollment and for performing arts or vocal teacher increased by 0.30 FTE, which is moving toward our goal of increasing enrollment numbers in the program overall, which is what we're hoping to do with getting that enrollment up higher and getting someone in full-time eventually. As I mentioned earlier, orchestra was increased at Clayton High School specifically at this building by 0.30 FTE and we also increased social studies by 0.4 FTE. The only decrease at Clayton High school this year was for the learning center and we decreased an intern by 0.33 FTE. It's also important, I think, as part of this report to note that due to the district's partnerships with Truman University and Missouri State, we do have an additional nine interns this year that are helping to support and teach our students. And that's essentially at no cost to the district. This is twice as many interns compared to what we had last year. And it's an incredible value to the district, and we're really fortunate to be part of this partnership. When we talk about class sizes specifically, our targeted class size for kindergarten and first grade is 18 students per class. And for second through fifth, it's 20 students per class. Our overall elementary classroom average this year is 16.9 students. So we're doing great there. And you'll see on, I included on page 14 of our report, the elementary class size data. It's organized in a slightly different manner this year. We had to do that to more accurately represent how to learn at home teachers and how they were allocated serving students in multiple buildings. So you'll note on the page 14 of the report, The learning at home teachers are represented in the sheet with an asterisk, and their FTE in each of the schools is aligned to the percentage based on the number of students they're serving from that building in their own classroom. On pages 15 and 16 of the report, where it shares the number of sections that are over standard, at standard or under standard, the chart reflects the sections on page 14 that are combined into single classrooms. I hope that makes sense. So what we try to do, so it may appear that there are more sections that are coded under on page 14, but once you combine them to accurately reflect the numbers that are actually in that teacher's classroom, is what the chart is reflecting. So the chart is trying to give you more of an accurate picture of what those class sizes actually are. In kindergarten, in grades K through one, there are four classrooms that are over standard, three that are at standard and 10 that are under standard. And most that are over are only over by two or three students with the exception of one learning home classroom where we have created a co-teaching model with another additional certified teacher in there. And that was to accommodate our learning home sections that just continued to grow in the fall. For grades two through five, six of the sections are over standard, one is at standard, and 24 are under the standard. And much of this will continue to evolve throughout the year based on parent selections to remain in either learn-at-home or in the responsive learning phases of the district at the time. When we move over to Y-Down, the Y-Down class size data, the average in core classes is approximately 20 students, which is in line with our five year history of average class sizes there. When we go looking at classes specifically, I'd like to take some time to look at the class sizes that are under 10 students and provide an explanation for that. So at YDAL when we look at classes that are under 10, 57 out of those 63 classes that are under ten were intentional based on the content of the classes. Some examples of that could be band classes that are specialized by instrument, exploratorium classes where we typically aim for 8 to 12 students per class, small group reading classes, math strategies. So all these classes really are designed to be much smaller than our standard. When we go to the high school class size, the average in our core classes is approximately 18.3, which is also in line with their five-year history of average class size. And then also part of that, we look at the high school AP and honors enrollment. And that continues the growth trend that we've noticed over the past several years. For 2020-21, we have 1,451 students enrolled in AP honors. And that's right in line and will continue to increase from the previous years. I think it's down slightly from last year where it was at 1480, but compared to the other years, it's still an increase. So as we continue to move forward with our equity initiative, we are conscientious about the diversity in our AP and honors courses. And we're going to provide additional information regarding the specific racial breakdown and a future equity update to the board. Additionally, in the report on pages 32 through 34, you'll see the number of students enrolled. And then you'll also see how many of those students are considered overrides. And I wanted to get some clarification as to the term overrides. So overrides is the term that's used when a student is enrolled in a course that was not recommended by either the teacher or the department. So when we look at the high school classes that have less than 10 students, There are several reasons why some of the courses are offered with enrollments of fewer than 10 students at Clayton High School, and this can be due to scheduling imbalances, capstone classes, advanced classes, support classes, and sometimes single course offerings. The capstone courses are offered despite enrollments of fewer then 10 students, and that's in order to allow students the opportunity to finish a specific course sequence. We have some classes that have over 25 students at Clayton High School. And some of these classes that have more than 25 students, it's really, it's when it makes most sense from an instructional standpoint. So some examples of courses with more than 25 students of course would be band, orchestra, physical education, yearbook, newspaper, forensics. And then sometimes due to high demand, we did decide to offer, or due to high demand we decided to offer introduction to design and engineering And that has more than 25 students because it's also a co-taught class with two teachers. So overall, we feel that we're in a really good place with our staffing throughout the schools and the district. We understand the importance of having the class sizes to be maintained at levels that are conducive to the most effective use of teaching personnel and the practice of high quality teaching methods. And I think that the instances that we have where there are outliers, we have intentional reasons. Also, we've utilized our human capital to the fullest extent to make the experience the very best it can be for our students.

And the last page of the presentation is just a summary of the enrollment board and the staffing and the ratios. So at this point, if you guys have any questions.

Dave Kuntz, Yes, so this information item but um any I just want to give the board a chance to ask any clarifying questions, so I am going to start or make any comments i'm gonna start with you, David.

Um, so being the new guy on the board, can, uh, the override idea, can you just explain that? Is that, I understand you said it's not recommended, but is that like, if I, I didn't do particularly well in algebra one, but I just really want to be an honors algebra two and I plead a case and I get accepted that is that kind of what the override is?

Yeah, so it would be when the teacher or the department's not recommending the student for the course, but the student is enrolled in it. So maybe the parent is advocating for the student to enroll in that course or they have an interest in it. That's considered an override.

And do we track how those students do in those classes once they elect the override?

Are you asking, do we desegregate the data of how the students that are considered overrides how they're doing? I can look into that and get information for you.

I think it might be useful in terms of some of the equity work that we're doing to see if students maybe that were missed then who'd had parents or advocated for themselves to be in those classes if they were successful.

Yeah, Kim, I think that's a great point.

Yeah, because I would argue in the other direction, if we're not leveraging that data, then why do we collect it? So why do we care if it's an override if we don't do anything with that data after the point? So hopefully we do have the ability to disaggregate it. If we don't, then the logical follow-up question is then what are we doing with the override count?

Thanks. Kim, any questions? Any other questions? Great, thank you. Stacy, any questions?

Yes, I do actually. First of all, that page 14 you referenced, Tony, the elementary class size data, I realize that numbers don't always tell a whole story because we can have... 25 kids that have no IEPs and no other issues that is easier to handle than a class of 15 that does. However, it struck me that Merrimack has the most full-time teachers and has no in-person classes that are over our class size guidelines. And Captain has the least and they have a lot of yellow boxes. So I'm just wondering if you've Notice that or what you think the correlation is there. I don't know. It just struck me that Captain has a lot of yellow boxes with classes over our standard, but the least amount of full-time teachers. That just didn't seem to add up to me.

Right. And I think, and I would have to go back and look at specific numbers, but I think that maybe... I think initially my thinking around that was that Merrimack might have had the least amount of students that were learned at home, that selected learned at home. And I also know that we were trying to be very specific with how we were organizing the teachers that were selected for learned at home to mostly have students from their own building or to have the majority of students from their own buildings. So we were trying to kind of cohort. So if I'm a teacher at Merrimack and I'm a learned at home, I would have mostly Merrimack students in my class, but maybe some from captain. So we were trying to do that as best as we could to keep it the continuity and consistency going for our students.

Okay. Although most of these seem like they're in person. Well, maybe not. Okay. Sorry. So I had one more concern and it's really about Y down the seventh and eighth grade. And I guess the eighth grade in particular to have five sections of core classes that are over 25 seems really far over our threshold of 20. And I'm just wondering, did we anticipate, I know the last year's eighth grade was a huge grade also, did we anticipate these numbers or did we only, were these a lot of late enrollments or did we just find out on that September date? And I'm I'm asking because I know just now when we started second quarter on Monday, a lot of white on kids had their schedules changed and even their teachers changed. And I'm wondering if, was there any thought to that being a good opportunity to have added a couple sections? I mean, over 25 is not just a couple kids different. That's a lot. That's a big difference in those sections. And that's a lot. So is there any thought to adding sections or had there been previously? I'm just wondering. what your thoughts are about that.

Well, I know at YDM for the core classes, there was two challenge algebra classes that were at 25 this year. So I don't know if they were in at the 25 and over, if they got put in there that way. But I know that with the three levels of math, it can really skew the numbers. of those other classes as well. So for the core classes that were over 25, I know that was one of the exceptions, but as to With the enrollment, if we had last minute enrollments here right before fall, I can't speak to that at this time,

Stacey. What grade were you asking? Was that eighth grade? Eighth grade. Yeah, because that class actually reduced by five students. So I think it's more like what Tony was saying is that it's just how the students elect their classes and where they fall versus like... Because actually the class is smaller than last year's class.

So I guess my question then is... I mean, I just know that our community values small class sizes and to be at 25 or over seems a lot higher than 20 to me. And so at what point do we consider other sections? And are you considering that?

Harmon Zuckerman, At this point we have not considered making the additional sections. And so, but I do think that will be important for us to get a better idea about what that those classes are Harmon Zuckerman , So Tony, we can look into that a little bit more and see what what is the reasoning behind those classes in eighth grade and then Usually what happens is that every spring, we look at the number of students who are requesting classes. And so at that point, YDOWN will then request whether or not we need additional staffing. And then we will consider about what additional staffing we need if we need to shift staffing. So usually we are pretty good about making sure our sections are a pretty good size in terms of class size. not sure if any of these are being co-taught right now. So it could be that there's co-taught classes in there. So we can get some more information about that.

Okay, thanks.

Thanks, Stacey. Amy, any questions? No. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Caitlin, any questions? Great, thanks. Jason, any questions? Thank you, Gary. Any questions.

No, I don't have anything. Thank you.

Great. Thanks. And I don't have any thing either. So thanks Mary Jo and thanks Tony. Appreciate it. Okay, so we are going to move on to our action items. We've got four action items this evening and our first one is 7.01 the second reading and approval of policy IC the academic calendar.

All right. You ready for that? Yes, please. Okay. 7.01. I move that the School District of Clayton Board of Education approve the changes to policy IC as submitted.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any comments or questions? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you. 7.02, the second reading and approval of policy IHB class

size. 7.02. I move that the Board of Education approve policy IHB as submitted.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any comments or questions? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Harmon Zuckerman, Passes unanimously. Thank you. Okay, moving on to some point or three. The second reading and approval policy I K F, which is graduation requirements.

Harmon Zuckerman , 7.03 I move that the board approved policy I K F as submitted.

Second, Harmon Zuckerman It's been moved and seconded any comments or questions. Harmon Zuckermann, All in favor. Harmon Zuckerma, Aye. Aye. Harmon Zuckermeier, Any opposed. Passes unanimously and 7.04, which I need to recuse myself. So I'm going to jump off here and then somebody could tell me when you are done.

Okay. Gary, can I get you to read that motion, please? For I think it was 7.04.

Certainly 7.04, I move that the Board of Education approve the part-time temporary employment report as submitted.

Second. All right, it's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion or questions? Okay, all in favor?

Bye.

Bye. Bye. Motion passes. All right. Somebody text

Joe? I did.

Okay, so we are now moving on to the consent agenda.

Go ahead Gary. 8.01 I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda items 8.02 through 8.05.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any comments or questions? All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you. All right, we are moving on to the financials for August 2020 and September 2020. Do we have a motion?

Sorry, I turned the page too quickly there. 9.01, I move that the Board of Education accept the financials for august 2020 and September 2020 as submitted.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any comments or questions?

Jason? Yeah, no, just Mary Jo, are you there? Hi. I was going to say that, yeah, to me, the numbers didn't look, I really can't tell what's happening because it's Because the expenses are different. So I'm looking at what I'm using. I'm looking at these financial or the expenses. And I really can't tell if they're out of whack because this is kind of a new territory that we're in. Would you agree with that, Mary

Jo? A little bit. A lot of the... items that are showing up as expense that will be the larger impact COVID items really haven't posted yet. So we just paid like for the HVAC upgrades this month, which was about half of it. So half will be this month, half will be next month. The Senator Clayton, we haven't paid that yet. So everything else is only around in the expense category for PPE is about 150,000, which is a minimal amount of our budget. And then the other things are salary fluctuations. And those are kind of hard to see in some of those categories. So I have a larger spreadsheet that I am tracking everything. If you want to, we can do a separate meeting and we can go through some of the categories if you want.

I mean, just so I can just understand what's going

on. What I can try to do is update that every month and give it to you along with the financials. Would that help?

Yeah, that's cool. And then we can just talk maybe like 20 minutes on the phone. Jay, this is what was happening here and there. Because when I look at it now, I can't tell if it's similar last year or what's going on.

Those reports, it's a little too early. You'll start seeing it more in the October and November. Gotcha. All

right,

cool. Thanks. Thank you. Any other comments or questions?

Mary Jo, I just have one. How many more dollars do we have in TIP funds? I noticed that we had some big expenditures for technology that We use tip funds to pay for computers in August. Do we still have money left in tip funds for that type of expenditure? Is it all used up?

So that gets budgeted annually and we do spend the majority of it in the summer. I would have to look and see. In January is when we calculate the carryover because of the middle of the year, we have to carry over the funds. And I don't know if Jeff has a better idea off the top of his head. He does manage that very well. And so I do trust him. I haven't tracked it that well, so closely.

Yeah, I'm here. Yeah, we're still within what I would say our projections would have been. We were able to make use of a lot of technology devices that we already had within the district and just repurpose them. And so at this point from kind of the technology improvement plan budgets, I would say they're minimally impacted. There's some impact, but minimal at this point.

Yeah, and with technology, the majority of it was software expenses, which that's in that $150,000 number I've been mentioning.

Yeah, I just wondered if it was higher maybe this year because we are doing so much remote learning and probably replacing broken devices and whatnot also because of the increased use of tech.

And we have warranties on a lot of the products that helps with that.

Agreed. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Okay, we have a motion on the floor. So all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, passes unanimously. Thank you. So we're moving on to public comment. Sean and Chris, do we have any public comment?

We do not have any public comment this evening.

Okay. All right. Then we are moving on to board communication. Does the board, anybody from the board have anything to report in terms of committees and liaison kind of

stuff? I'll say that I got an email today from the center of Clayton that they were closed down. I think until Friday for August. COVID-related incident in the swimming pool, I think.

Thank you, Amy. Any other board reports or communication? Okay. So we need to move to adjourn and we are going to adjourn actually into executive session.

All right, 12.01, I move that the Board of Education adjourn to executive session, sorry, pursuant to RSMO 610.021, 3 and 13 for discussion related to personnel issues. And we do need to take a roll call vote here.

Second. Great, thank you. Yeah, we call the roll, Kerry.

Amy?

Yep.

Jason? Harmon Zuckerman, Yes. Harmon Zuckerman. Gary. Yes. David. David Ensign, Yes. HarmonZuckerman,

Kim. Yes. Harmon

Zuckserman, Stacy.

Yes.

Joe. Yes.

HarmonZuckserman, It's just as a reminder, there's a wall have to hit another link so HarmonZuckserman , Onward we go. Thank you all.

Thank you.