April 21, 2021 — Meeting Transcript

Now.

Okay.

And we are live.

All right, good. All right. Good evening, everybody. We are going to go ahead and start the meeting for tonight. Adequate notice has been given. And as we always do, we are going to start by saying the Pledge of Allegiance to Sean's flag in his office. 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.

All right, great. It's good to see everybody. I hope everyone's having a good week. And I apologize for the dogs barking, but I can't mute myself, so. Um, Sean, I think we're going to start with, um, recognizing our own.

Yes. Thanks, Amy. So, uh, just as a reminder, we incorporate recognizing our own as part of the board meetings is an opportunity to celebrate the great things that are happening within the district, celebrate our students, celebrate our staff, celebrate our community members. And tonight we are going to take some time to celebrate. the production staff, and some student representatives from the Widown Theater Company. And I just want to say that a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to see our... Well, let me start like this. You know, in the middle of a pandemic, one of the things that people might think is that we're going to have to maybe cancel our performances or we won't be able to have anything in terms of the theater. What our staff has done is thought about how can we pivot and be creative about what we can do so students have the opportunity to perform, to be part of a production crew, to be able to be creative. We saw that at the high school when our students did some amazing performance in Shaw Park. And then a couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity on a Sunday afternoon at my own home, I was able to see the Whitehound Theater Company put on the performance of Moana Jr. And it like blew me out of the water and thought it was important for us to bring the production staff and a few student representatives to recognize them because it was an opportunity to think differently and to reach a different type of different audience. And so what I wanna do is recognize first the production staff, which is basically our staff, teachers who collaboratively work across different disciplines to support the theater program. And so we have Brian Engelmeyer, I don't know if he's on there, where is he? He's waving. And then we have, he's the director and then we had Nick Irvin, who is the music director. We have Carla Miller, who is the costume director. And then we had Ed Kastner, who is technical director And so I didn't know if any of you just wanted to have anything you wanted to share with the board in terms of just some things that you had to do in terms of pivoting in this experience.

Thank you, Dr. Daugherty and the School District of Clayton and the community of Clayton for having us here this evening. And team, if you want to say anything, please do as well. So this was, as for everything, it was certainly an interesting year. And we went through many conversations throughout the fall. How are we still going to make theater happen? And how are we going to have a theatrical opportunity for our students and so um as things change and through many conversations uh the publishers we work with provided us an opportunity of an online streaming service the same one that clayton high school utilized and so uh many of you know we normally do a play in the fall and then we do a musical in the spring and so this year we have are doing everything here currently this semester and we are currently set to film our production of our play next week actually so we have our season going. So we currently have students rehearsing every day, working in the tech crew and the costume crew to make that happen. So I'll let the other team members, if they would like to say anything. And then also our student representatives here, we have a student from each of the three areas for our musical. We have Lucy Puerto. She worked on the technical crew. We have Lily Schomburg. She was an actor. And then we have Olivia Mutis who was with our costume crew for Moana.

I guess I would ask the students, what did it mean for you to be a part of this theater production?

Well, for me, it meant being part of this family and working hard and combining our skills and efforts to create this beautiful thing called theater and be able to share it with others.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate that, Olivia. Lucy or Lily, do you have anything to add?

Yeah, for me, it was a lot of just like having fun and having a new experience with a bunch of new people that I didn't really know. And it was nice to meet so many new people and be able to do all these things.

Yeah, for me it's a really nice way to express yourself and to meet new people. So it was just really enjoyable.

One of the things that I have heard from other students is saying that being part of the theater program is an opportunity to start making connections with other people and really finding your niche within the school. And so I really appreciate that our staff creates that for our students in providing them an experience that they'll remember beyond their years at Wydown. So anybody else from the staff want to share anything before we bring this recognition to a close? So on behalf of the Board of Education and the administration, we would really like to say thank you to the YI Down Theater Company for all that you do to make wonderful experiences for our students, opportunities for them to be creative, to express themselves, to build, to learn about technology, so much of an integration of skills. And in our students who are part of the program, we want to say thank you for taking risk and thinking about ways that you can be expressive and make connections with other peers. So we are glad to have you here tonight and want to say thank you.

Yep.

Very much.

Thank you guys to the staff and to the kids, to Lily, Lucy, and Olivia. Thank you for taking time out of your nights to be here with us tonight. We really appreciate it. And I know we've got a first class extraordinary theater program at Clayton, so we're super proud of it. And again, thank you guys for being here tonight.

Thank you.

So you guys are welcome to stay and hear the rest of the meeting or you are welcome to jump off. I'll leave that decision up to you. And then Sean, I think we'll move on to the superintendent communications.

Okay.

So tonight I want to just talk about a few different things as part of my update, I want to talk about ways that we've been able to be responsive to the needs of our communities. And I want to talk a little bit about our vaccines update give you a follow up about our people expenditure talk to you a little bit about Clayton education foundation. some things that we're doing collectively with superintendents across the region in terms of learning, and then give you a couple updates about strategic plan and then what's happening tonight as part of our meeting. So I want to start by just looking at the data. And I share this data with you each time, and I think it's important. And we have had another transition of having more students together in our building starting in the fourth quarter. And we have continued to implement the right risk mitigation measures, and we are seeing that those are working. And so we are still seeing a very, very, very low rate in terms of transmission, little to none within our schools. This makes us feel really confident about our plans for having in-person learning for the beginning of next school year. And it also makes us feel more comfortable about having our board meetings in person. And so we're gonna be starting in May to have in-person board meetings with the board and the administrators, not yet with the whole public, but it is a step in the right direction. So just wanted to share that data with you again. When I think about being responsive over the last couple of days, many of us have heard a lot around the verdict of Derek Chauvin. And so it was really important to us as a school district that we have a very strong curriculum, but we also know sometimes that, you know, outside in current events, they influence the conversations that we have, but they also influence how students are feeling. And so we, as a district, I just feel like it's really important to note that knowing that we would have students who, not knowing what the verdict was going to be, that we might have some students that might be feeling uneasy. It might ignite some pain that many people felt when George Floyd died. We needed to be responsive in terms of having our administrators putting out resources for our staff, making sure we're providing safe spaces for students and staff to be able to go to if needed. And then just making sure we're checking in. And so I just am really proud of our district. No matter what, we always are trying to be as responsive as possible and making sure that we're being there and continuing to be there for our students. I also wanted to provide an update around our vaccines. And so today was a very important day for us because this was the day that we had staff receiving their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine for COVID-19. And we had a clinic that happened at the end of March. This is the second clinic. And we really were able to capitalize on the second clinic because we then started the vaccination of students. So we had students that were getting vaccinated today who were who are eligible. So those who are 16 and above, and they were able to get the Pfizer, the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, we turned Stuber Gymnasium into a clinic. And so went over there today and seemed like things were just running like clockwork. We were also able to reach out and to open the vaccinations open for school district of University City students to be able to come over and get vaccinated as well today. So this has felt very great about the organization. And now we're starting to have some initial conversations about if the eligibility became open for students who are 12 to 15, what does that look like for us? And so I appreciate as a district, we're working to be proactive, to think about ways that we can support our students and staff by providing this type of service to them. Also wanted just to give you a follow up is that part of our conversation last week when we were talking about the salary schedule, there was some questions that got brought up as part of the per pupil expenditure. And I think that's a really important question. And so in May, we're bringing the budget forward for an initial review. And then we're also going to be bringing it forward for final approval in June. And as part of that, we're going to do a little bit more in-depth conversation and overview about what that means with the per pupil expenditure and what that actually looks like and what it entails. And so I wanted just to do as a follow-up from that conversation last week and let you know that we are going to incorporate that into some of our work in May and end up being part of our approval for the budget in June. I also wanted to share with you that we are so fortunate to have the Clayton Education Foundation who supports innovation within our school district and thinking about ways that they can provide funding for our innovative projects that we can't build into our budget. And so on April 9th, we had the opportunity to go around to our school district and give our teachers who wrote grants through the Education Foundation and who were selected for funding. And so I think we gave over $40,000 worth of grants on that day. And they were all connected to our strategic plan So we had students that, classrooms are gonna be getting some materials that are gonna be connected to our work around equity. We had a classroom that's gonna start doing podcasting with the students as an opportunity for students to discuss the content that they're learning in their social studies class. We're getting a new literacy garden being put in place within our schools. This is just, it's amazing that we have the support within the district and the foundation is just been a catalyst for us to try new things. And we really truly appreciate their support. I wanted to update the board too is that I have been participating as well as Dr. Nisha Patel in a nine week study around equity with the superintendents around the region. And we've been focusing on the book called Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity. And we have been able to have some really great conversations across the region around what equity means what does dignity mean within the schools and making sure that students have a true sense of belonging. And so I've been very, it's been very exciting to be part of this work because we believe that that collective learning could also result in collective impact. And so I think it's really great to say that in St. Louis County and even beyond St. Louis County, we have superintendents coming together to make sure that they're prioritizing their own learning around equity inclusion within the schools. Tonight, we're gonna have an opportunity to start our update around our strategic plan. And so our strategic plan has many facets to it. And tonight, we're gonna be focusing on that first goal, which is a place for everyone, which is really centered around a sense of belonging and making sure students feel like they are part of something bigger than just themselves. And the series is going to go for the next three board meetings. And we're gonna cover one goal at a time And I really wanna say thank you to our staff who's been putting these comprehensive reports together. And tonight is not gonna be about every single detail that you saw in that report that we provided you, but it is to give you like the broad strokes so that way you have an idea and our public has an idea about what we are doing and how is it having impact? And then how is the data that we're collecting informing us how we're moving forward in the future? The other presentation that we will get have tonight is around with our special school district staff. And so we have a few representatives from special school district are gonna give an overview about some of the work that special is doing to change their leadership model, but also thinking about some of the initiatives that they're working on that are aligned with what we're doing as a school district. So we'll hear from them and then finally, I'm continuing to meet with Dr. Patel and met with her today, got to see her today. She was in the district and this has been such a priority for me in terms of being able to support Dr. Patel's and her transition to being the new superintendent. And so I will just share that we're gonna continue to provide updates to the board, but I feel so confident about Dr. Patel and her leadership and feel so excited about what's next for the district in my interactions with her. And I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to Caitlin who is gonna provide an update from the student perspective.

Hello, good evening everyone. So actually when I was touching base with the District Advisory Council to see what I should include in this update, we realized that there weren't too many school-related events that were happening out of the ordinary and we realized that that's probably actually a good thing because that shows that students are having a sense of normalcy and consistency in their schedules. So on that note, there's been quite a few school events happening now that would happen in a regular school year. Track meets and spring sports in general are happening and they are allowing for some spectators. So I would encourage community members to come out and support Clayton High School and Clayton School District athletes. Misha's speech and debate state starts tomorrow and that's going to go through the weekend. um band is recording three songs for festival and the student run musical so on the side of theater we just heard from y down for clayton high school their srm is streaming in the next three weeks and they're going to be performing the musical be more chill and also something pretty cool that's happening is that orchestra is planning to have a concert in the quad As for some core class subjects, some teachers are hosting English conferences in person and all of these different events and normal events that would happen in a school year that are happening now have led to students saying that they feel a lot more motivated and excited to go to school. So specific to my position, we also released applications for sophomores to be the student representative next year and those applications are due Friday. So I'm excited to introduce who's going to be in my place next year and that will be happening pretty soon. Thank you.

Thank you.

Caitlin, does anybody have any questions for Caitlin or Dr. Doherty? regarding

the updates. Okay, great. John, how many kids, do we know how many kids we got vaccinated today?

I don't know the total number. I know that there was, I thought 170 students that were signed up, I thought. And then I'm not sure exactly how many from University City.

Great. Very good, thank you. So I think we are then moving on to 5.01 which is policy KK,

the first reading.

So for that we have Robin and so Robin's gonna just give a brief overview and then see if you had any questions.

Good evening, everyone. Tonight is the first reading for Policy KK related to visitors to district property and events. And the major changes to this new release of this policy is related to student visitation, more specifically if parents want to access children during the school day related to a custody dispute or some other type of parenting plan resolution that they are working through. It also more clearly outlines expectations around classroom observations, service providers and then prohibited items on campus to better acknowledge the changes in possession laws related to medical marijuana. So the additional changes that MSBA is recommending related to student visitation, the outside service providers and the classroom observations Those changes are not required by law, but are changes that they are recommending based on the support that they provide to school districts. The current version that I'm presenting this evening has also been shared with our district council as well as some of our parents in the community for feedback.

Excellent, so I am going to just go around and by the way that people appear on my screen and see if anybody has any questions on this policy. David?

No, thank you.

Jason? You gotta unmute yourself.

Yeah, I just have a question. In the beginning of reading this policy, it just kind of talks about the general purpose of just a parent coming to school. Am I correct about that, Robin?

Yes, it's about accessing their student during the school day.

So just in general. And then, so it just kind of starts off with that information and then kind of goes into about, you know, in the superintendent having access the autonomy to tell the parent no or whomever no that we don't want you to it can be disruptive right so just as it starts off and how it reads it goes into that and starts to talk about it being something being disrupted, and then the superintendent having the autonomy to make that decision. Is there like a standard operating procedure that's there to make that decision? Or is it just based on the gut feeling? Is it just based on discretion?

I will say in general terms, the disruption to the environment would be a violation. Anything, any behaviors that would be a violation or disruption to or early school operation. So perhaps a parent has on more than one occasion become belligerent on campus and has used profanity towards students or staff. That would sometimes be grounds for prohibiting a parent from accessing their student on district property. Other times if people appear to be under the influence and also acting belligerently and would be in violation or be disrupted to orderly school operations, that might be another scenario where they would be prohibited from campus. So we're really looking at how is that behavior impacting or not impacting the school's ability to educate the children in the building.

Gotcha. Yeah, I think I understood that, but I was just trying to make sure that it wasn't just like You know, if a parent comes and someone just feels like that could be disruptive and they just make a decision not to, you know, to prevent that parent from seeing their child for whatever reason. Could be dicey is what I'm trying to say, because it's just kind of based on discretion, kind of a gut feeling. So so minus all the things that the kind of extreme things you just kind of mentioned. is what I was talking about. It just kind of starts off and it starts reading into, all right, then the superintendent has the ability to tell the parent knows what I'm trying to say. Does that make sense what I'm saying? I feel like I'm talking to-

Yes, I guess as a clarifying question, do you have a suggested change to the language in response to that?

Yeah, yeah. Only if someone else sees it the way I'm seeing it. I guess what I'm asking for, am I reading it incorrectly? Does anyone kind of see that it could go the way I'm reading it? And if there is, is there a discussion behind it from anyone on the

board? Jason, are you saying that you feel like it's not, you would like to see more specificity around it? Are you maybe talking about the first sentence where it says the district understands that parents, guardians sometimes need to briefly communicate with a student during the school day? That sentence?

Yeah, and it just starts, it just kind of goes into, you know, you welcome it, you welcome the parents wanting to see their kids, but then it just talks about, you know, immediately just starts talking about the superintendent or whomever principle has a discretion to say, we don't, you know, we think it could be a disruption. This is before it gets to all the things that you explained, Robin, that are like, you know, someone being belligerent, someone being intoxicated, those things. I'm saying that gut feeling could be dicey

I think I understand what you're saying, Jason, that it's so subjective that you don't want parents to be judged before anything happens, right?

Right. Exactly. Exactly. So A, does anyone see what I'm talking about?

Yes.

Okay.

I see what

you have to say. And Robin, what can we do to make that language much more clear and tight?

Can I ask another couple of questions that might feed into that? Because I'm still trying to get my head around it too, which I'm sorry, Amy, for jumping out of order. But one thing that I was going to ask is that the sort of explanation references the fact that MSBA revised this policy in response to, I think if I'm reading this right, our district's concerns about parents or guardians requesting access by service providers to kids while they're at school, which is a little bit different than the normal, I mean, I think the normal circumstance when we see policy revisions from MSBA, which provides us this service that updates makes changes when there's updates to different statutes or whatever. So it sounds like this is more responding to a particular issue that we as a district were having. And I want to make sure that that's, that's right. You know, before I kind of, you know, get into some of this uncertainty that I, that I do understand, I think so. So

Gary, the changes in yellow are the ones that MSBA suggested The last sentence of the classroom observations, which is the same or very similar to the last sentence in the service provider section was a sentence that I worked with our legal counsel on to add in order to better account for district expectations around outside service providers that may need to work with students during the school day but are not employed by the school district. And then the rest of the changes, the changes in yellow are MSBA's response to districts statewide, not just to the school district of Clayton as it relates to visitors.

Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. So this is not just something that they're recommending as a change for us, but it's- Right.

Exactly. Statewide. Again, the parts that are in the beige paint color, that last sentence of those two sections I referenced, that is- piece that we added for Clayton.

Okay, thank you for that. And with that context, which I'm sorry if that was more obvious than I was realizing, but I do see some of the other concerns about where there's some potential discretion or ambiguity, but like I was trying to get the overall picture, so...

Okay, great. So Jason and Gary, I hear what you're saying. Let me get, I'm just going to keep going around and then we'll come back to your concerns and figure out how we're going to address it. Kim, do you have anything? Unmute yourself.

Sorry about that. Yeah, I just wanted to ask about the... kind of the zero tolerance policy with respect to medical marijuana. I mean, I think that the American Academy of Pediatrics actually, you know, is pretty clear on where they stand on this. And although in general, they are against medical marijuana for children, they do support it for children with life limiting or severely debilitating conditions, including some forms of epilepsy and things like chemotherapy induced nausea and vomiting. And so I don't know if we want to maybe amend that language to account for, you know, students that could be facing medical challenges with which that is a potential option if their doctors recommend it.

Got it. Thank you. I will reach back out to our district council about adjusting that language for the medical piece to bring it into alignment. The other policies it's, naming is escaping me right now, but it was one that we talked about just a few months ago. Okay. Thank you. Back to Jason's feedback about that one paragraph about the superintendent discretion, you know, rereading it in its context. I think I'm wondering if maybe striking kind of like the first half of that list and just bringing it directly to the kind of just flip-flopping the sentence a little bit, but talking more specifically about if there is a custody or visitation issue going on with the family that then we would exercise some discretion around prohibiting the parent or the adult from visiting as opposed to going through that whole list.

Because I

feel like maybe that will help it put it in better context because you're right later in the policy, we're talking about more disruptive behavior And now that I'm rereading this section, it's really speaking more toward families who are going through a very complex time. And unfortunately in those times, the school setting often can be stuck in the middle of really complex communications with the different caregivers. And so maybe if I kind of just reorder some of the parts of that paragraph, it will kind of get to that clarity. So it doesn't feel so subjective.

Yeah, I think that makes sense. I think that because it just kind of conflates the two things and you want to make sure it's separated. So yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely.

Great job. I

don't have anything else to add. I think good points so far.

Caitlin. And no other

questions for me. Stacy. Thanks. Robin, in that small paragraph that's titled service providers. So it says, you know, unless they're working with students in conjunction with the district student health services program. I assume, you know, special school district staff falls into that. Well, we

have an agreement with special school districts. So that

is where they are. Or pursuant to an agreement with the district. Okay. So they're included that way. Yes. Okay. And let me see. So the

reference to the district student health services program, at times we work with outside organizations to do vision and hearing screenings. And then even today, you know, like we worked with others around the vaccination clinic

where

people are accessing their student during the school day, but aren't necessarily employees of the district, but are associated with health services.

Okay. Um, and also as Robin mentioned, she had, um, reviewed this policy with some other groups prior to this, which I was a part of, we looked at a couple pieces of this in a PAC ed steering committee meeting. And so I just wanted to pass on in my little Robin broke us up into sub, you know, little subgroups and in my group, um, there was some discussion about using the word disruptive that is it's so strong instead of maybe just saying like interference or interferes with instruction. I just wanted to share that as feedback from, you know, prior discussion I'd had about this poly particularly under the classroom observation section, because that's, you know, the only piece you had us look at there, Robin, but, but disruptive I don't know if you see a difference, but I just wanted to pass that on because that was something we discussed in another

group. Thank you, Stacy. And then Gary, are you done? Or do you have more?

No, I appreciate the clarification and just the thoughtful input from everyone. And yeah, this is great. Appreciate a lot. And I, yeah.

Okay, great. So then just to summarize, I think Robin, we're going to try and clarify the ambiguities in that third paragraph down by swapping the sentences around and trying to make it a little less subjective. And then also you're going to look into that medical marijuana section.

Yes. And then reword disruptions for classroom observations and service providers.

Okay, great. Very good. Okay. Well, if there's nothing else, then I think we are going to move on to Our first information item, which is a presentation from the special school district. Sean, are we going to, uh, I'm just waiting for them to

hook

it

up. All right. So as I mentioned earlier, we are going to get an update from some, uh, from some of the members of our special school district staff that are going to provide you an update about what's happening within, um, our partner district and, um, and how it aligns with some of the work that we're doing in our district. And so we're very fortunate to have Melissa Logan here who is currently our area coordinator. And then we also have D'Andrea Player, who is our current director. And so I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to them and they are going to give us an update. So what do you need for the update? Do you need to have, are you able to share your screen or not?

I do have a PowerPoint and I believe I am able to share my screen. Okay. Let's see here. Are you all able to see my screen, the PowerPoint? Yes. So good evening board president Rubin, board of education, Dr. Doherty and the school district of Clayton community. I'm D'Andrea Player. I am the director of special education for Clayton. And along with me is Melissa Logan, our area coordinator for Clayton. We thank you for this opportunity. to share with you this evening an overview of special education across St. Louis County, how SSD has focused on inequities, special education data and trends specific to the School District of Clayton, partner district initiatives, budget goals, and how we plan to continue to strengthen our partnerships.

I wanted to share with you our 14 categories of special education as defined by IDEA. You will see all 14 listed and the young child with the developmental delay number 14 is kind of that umbrella disability area for students at the early childhood age. And then once they get to school age in kindergarten, we would look for a school age disability under one of the 13 categories listed. Through the special education process, students go through at the school team level interventions through their school. A lot of times that goes through the care teams and through student support groups. where they identify interventions for students and they take the data on the interventions that they are working with the student on. And then if they need to do a referral because the student is not making progress, then they go through the referral process And then that could lead to an identification and eligibility for a school-age disability area where the student could have an IEP. And then we would implement that IEP, and every three years, a reevaluation would occur unless we need to look at it yearly or every two, depending on programming purposes. We have outlined a few of our service delivery models. The first area is kind of our least restrictive one, and that's class within a class or also known as a co-taught classroom, CT classes that happen at the middle school and the high school level. At the elementary, we do some pushing into the general education setting with the special education teacher and the general education teacher. We also have services where students are coming into the resource room for their goals to work on the services through that setting. And then some students receive majority of their education in the self-contained classroom for their core classes. We also offer a variety of related services to students such as language therapy, music therapy, occupational therapy, And all those take place at the schools. We also have supplementary aids and services for students. So that's where we may consult with the gen ed teacher or the special education team on some services and aids to support the student. Next, we're going to go into our focus of equity and special education that special school district has been working on.

So we start with our equity core value where every student regardless of learning ability or socioeconomic status deserves access to the services they need to succeed. SSD conducted an internal study and as a result of the study SSD developed a framework to support all districts across the county. Some of the areas considered in developing the framework were caseloads and service minutes, identification, least restrictive environments, and proficiency rates. Another result of the study was how we understand inequities in schools for marginalized, underserved, and underrepresented groups. Some findings from the study are that there is a large variance in mobility rates across the county, from 8.6% in Rockwood to 43.5% in Normandy. Poverty rates vary greatly across the county from 9% free and reduced lunch to 100% free and reduced launch. There are less than 5% of families living in poverty in eight of the partner districts, Clayton being one of those. Elsewhere in the county, Eight partner districts have over 25% of families living in poverty and are 100% free and reduced lunch. Those districts are listed here. And Bayless and Rittner school districts have the largest proportion of English language learners for a district, whereas Kirkwood, Riverview Gardens, Webster Groves, and Jennings all have less than 1% of their population meeting that criteria. What you see here is a distressed communities index map. Leading national and local news publications rely on the DCI to contextualize uneven economic conditions across the county. Nonprofit organizations and state and local governments utilize the DCI to target services and programs supporting those distressed communities. The index combines seven distinct and complimentary socioeconomic indicators into a single score that depicts how economic wellbeing in a community compares to its peers. And so you'll see here that Clayton has a score of 37, which falls in the tier of comfortable. As a result of the information obtained in the study, the district implemented a zero-based budgeting process to not only look at what everyone needs, but also what additional needs are that require a focused approach. Again, the district has developed a framework that supports all partner districts to ensure that staffing amongst other resources and supports are adequate to meet the needs of our students. Some schools and programs will receive additional supports to address social-emotional learning, literacy, and numeracy. And these would be programs or schools that have been identified by DESE as disproportionate or targeted. And then lastly, few schools in addition to Tier 1 and Tier 2 supports will receive tier three supports to address high rates of identification of students with disabilities, poor proficiency rates, high mobility and trauma incidences with specific focus on marginalized groups of students. So how will this happen? The districts have created a system, have put a system in place to ensure support is adequate and appropriate In order to ensure accountability at the building level, the roles listed here will ensure access to curriculum and materials. This team will also ensure implementation of tiered interventions and supports for everyone. The team will also participate in the special education process and IEP and evaluation meetings. And the team will also ensure the implementation of the IEP as well as provision of faith. and support the collection of data and sharing of data for our students. Our building leaders, the building principal as well as the area coordinator will work together collaboratively, will continue to work together collaboratively to evaluate staff, ensure space allocation for students and families, and they'll continue to work together to collaborate on professional development needs. In order to ensure accountability at the district level, the administrative teams will ensure the same mentioned supports. However, in addition to those mentioned supports, they will also support any technology needs the staff and families may have as well as support any transportation needs for our students. To date, the following have been methods used to strengthen and guide our focus in delivering those quality services as well as improving student achievement. So our superintendents, as Dr. Doherty mentioned, have regular ongoing meetings. Again, Melissa Logan, myself, and Dr. Wings meet weekly to focus on initiatives, goals, and collaborations, strengthening relationships, as well as participating on any leadership team meetings. Our teaching and learning curriculum instruction departments collaboratively work on professional development and instructional resource supports. Again, we support staff and students with any technology needs that are needed. And then lastly, we have parent resources that are provided by our parent and education diversity awareness department They provide supports through consultation, professional development, leadership support, problem solving, et cetera, along with our family and engagement department. So next, Melissa will share data specific to Clayton.

So here are the last four years, the demographics of students with IEPs in the districts broken down by male, female and African American students over the last four years. We also have our enrollment for the last four years Clayton's overall enrollment and then students with IEPs in the district and incident rate, and we're remaining between 10 and 11% of students that have IEPs in a district. We also have shown our transfers in and out of students coming into the district and leaving the district and or no longer needing special education services. Here is a chart that shows the primary area of special education eligibility for students. And our highest area is other health impairment with 81 students currently. And then we have also, we have students with speech at 43. Autism is at 40. Learning disabilities at 61. Emotional disturbances at 19. And YCDD, the young child with developmental delay is at seven. We have our staffing over the last five years and it's remained pretty constant over time. A few changes have happened with enrollment, but other ways we've remained steady with our staff. We also are showing in years 2019 and 19, the proficient and advanced for all students in the district. And then those with IEPs, obviously in 2020, we don't have that data since the map was not taken to school closure. We also are showing as we have mentioned before in the presentation, we have looked at the strategic plan with a place for everyone to grow as learners and head and heart and comparing how we are also working on those goals within the district too. Within our budget goals, we are using collaborative teaching, tiered interventions. We're also using charting the life course, student-led IEPs for self-improvement and advocacy. And then adopt and implement with fidelity. Again, we're looking at charting the life course that we've been implementing at the middle school and high school level. And next year we will be doing it K through 12 with the students working on student led IEPs and social worker supports.

In addition to those mentioned initiatives, we will continue to focus on individualized learning experiences and numeracy and literacy. which will be supported through the proposed budget for next school year. So to conclude, we will continue to plan together our programming and key initiatives. We will continue to plan and update you all regularly, the board on initiatives and key topics. And we will continue to collaborate to increase those opportunities for our students to participate and general education core academic courses. We thank you for this opportunity to share this information with you all, and are there any questions that you may have for us? Okay.

Thank you, Melissa and D'Andrea. Are you, okay, so I guess I'm just going to go around again by How I see you guys on my screen,

your screen.

Yeah. Can you stop sharing your screen? Thank you. Excellent. Okay. So Joe, do you have any questions?

Um, no questions just, uh, appreciate it, Melissa and Deandra. That's a, I think very helpful for the board to understand better what SSD does. So thanks for the presentation.

Gary.

I don't think I have any specific questions either. I'll just add that I appreciate the update to this and I've only been one year as just an alternate representative to the special school district oversight board, but I feel like I learned a lot in that time and I just would encourage everyone to dig into more of what the special school district does and how um it ties in with all of the services that we are providing here to our students and appreciate all of you and the work that you do and all of your colleagues as well

excellent okay

stacy thanks um yeah thank you for that presentation it was great and i just want you both and all of you to know how much We value our partnership with you and appreciate all you do for our kids. So thank you so much, and thank you for all the work you put into that presentation. It did occur to me when you were presenting, though, I just did have one question. When you were talking about the staffing, Who determines the staffing needs? Is that the two of you and then you have to get approval, obviously, through your budget and special school district or do you collaborate with Clayton School District staff to determine what works best or what the staffing needs are?

So we absolutely collaborate with the School District of Clayton, again, through those collaborative meetings with the superintendents to superintendents, with myself, Melissa Logan, as well as Dr. Wings, as well as the building leadership. So we meet in a variety of ways to ensure that the supports that we provide in terms of staffing is adequate to meet the needs of our students. So we do go out and do observations and have those collaborative conversations to ensure that we have the right staffing to support the needs in the districts.

Thank you. Thank you for that.

Sure. Thanks, Stacy. Caitlin? No questions. Thank you so much for all of your work and for the thorough presentation.

Kimberly?

I don't think I'm intelligent enough in this area to ask any meaningful questions. So I just want to thank you guys for the work that you're doing. I guess one question I would have is if I could think of any, it would be, you know, how often do we compare the services and the outcomes of the students within our special school district against other special school districts that, you know, we think are doing an outstanding job as I'm sure you guys are. I mean, what other metrics do we use kind of for internal improvement?

Sure. So again, we do look at our comparative data across St. Louis County for one, because again, special school district supports the 22 school districts across the county. So we look at that comparative data. SSD also utilizes data from our neighboring school districts that we do not provide those services to. as well as other closely similar districts in other states. And so collectively, we use a wide variety of data sources to ensure that we are providing the best services that we can to our students to meet those unique needs.

That's great. And when we benchmark ourselves against that, especially with some of the out-of-state Information, I assume we feel pretty good about where we land in that benchmarking process?

We do. And again, special school district has a data and assessment department who collects all of that data and provides those findings to our school districts as well as our communities. So that information is shared, I believe, annually to our communities regarding how we compare to other districts. That's great.

Thank you. Jason?

Yeah, I have a question. So just looking at the numbers for Clayton. So I noticed that it's 271 total students who have IEPs, correct? And of that 271, there's... 69 of those folks, I guess, are black, correct?

Correct.

So of the total population of African-American students in Clayton, that number is roughly, what is that, like 300 students, Sean?

It's 25%. 25%, right? 25%

of the IEPs are African-American.

Exactly. Okay.

And then, so then, so that to me obviously stands out. Does that stand out to you as well, DeAndrea?

Yes. And

Alyssa?

Yes, which is why we included that data on that chart in terms of demographics.

So that is interesting. And that can be, you know, numerous reasons why it's so high because that's kind of high, correct? for such a small amount of people, percentage of students?

So there are data sources that the State Department, DESE, utilizes to determine what we will identify as disproportionate. And so this could be, I wouldn't say necessarily high, but trending towards a higher percentage of our African-American students in Clayton having IEPs compared to non-African-American students. But if you were to compare to other districts where the population is majority African-American students, you may find that their percentages could be comparable in some districts.

The flip side of this though is that it's like 1% of the population of total students minus the black students, 0.9%. My question is, You know, biases cut both ways is how I looked at this. It's always been the thought and historically that African-American students have been placed in all IEPs and special school additional lower classes has always been an issue. But then there's also an issue of, economics playing a part where like parents who have the discretionary income, who don't look the part of someone who would be on this stigma about having an IEP or something like that, having to fight their way to get one. And I'm just noticing that less than 1% of our total population of students who are not of color or minus the African-American students have IEPs. So I guess one, are we having problems listening to parents who know that their kid needs additional support and teachers or educators in this case? use their biases and say, well, they come from you. I don't think that your child really needs that. I know it's happened personally to us. So I just want to know, is that common? Mine's anecdotal, but is that commonplace, especially based on these numbers?

I don't know that I could say that's commonplace. I can share with you how we are specifically addressing some of the discrepancies in the numbers in the school district of Clayton. Myself again, along with Dr. Poole, Dr. Wings and Ms. Logan, we meet very regularly to discuss again this data and some of these trends and those processes that are in the district to continue to support the needs of all of our students. So we know what our data indicates. And so we're ensuring that those processes not only support our students with disabilities, but also support our students who are African-American because we recognize that we have more students being identified in their particular category.

As African-Americans? Correct. But you also see that there's less way, I mean, you know, just so many less students that are not black, that have not been identified.

And again- Less

than 1% pretty low, considering.

Correct, but that's, so I don't know that I can respond to that particular question because we focus specifically on the entire group, the entire population of students who come through that care team process the referral process that Melissa mentioned to ensure that that process is operated with fidelity. And then we go through their process to determine if a student meets the Missouri eligibility criteria for one of those identified disabilities. So if the question is ensuring that our process is conducted with fidelity, that's something that we continue to work on to ensure that However, when students are referred, I can't speak to why some families refer and why some families do not. I hope I'm answering your question, if that's the question.

Not really. I see what you're saying, but not really. Melissa, what do you think? Am I being clear on what I'm asking?

So I do have a question on your part. Yeah, what you want. Because I mean, all students go can go through the process for different reasons. And so like Andrea mentioned, they all don't meet, you know, even if they have an outside eval that says there's some learning disabilities, it doesn't mean they automatically meet, you know eligibility with the state and or we may not find an educational impact either. that the students are making progress in the classroom and they're on grade level for reading and math. And so we look at all those areas too when they're going through the referral process.

So then why is it so high for African-Americans? And why are we so sure about them, but less sure about this 1%, less than 1% of students who have not been identified. I'm thinking it should be a little bit more than 1% of such a large population of students. We're 100% comfortable that we're identifying 69 African-Americans of 300, but way less than 1% of the rest of the population, minus the African-Americans. I mean, I just see that something wrong with the wrong there.

So Jason, can I ask, let me, can I, can I make sure I understand what your question is?

So

what I'm hearing you saying is that you're concerned that there might be non African-American kids that are falling through the cracks or that might not be getting the services, um, through SSD that they may need, um, based on those numbers that you're seeing? Is that what you're looking to make sure? Yeah,

I'm just making sure. We're 100% sure that those African-American kids, they need the services. But I mean, we got less than 1% of the other students minus the Black students that are getting services. But there may be more. And I'm saying sometimes there's these biases because I live in Clayton and I have a little bit of money and my wife's a professor and I'm just talking SH, but I'm just saying like, I have this pedigree, right? These pedigrees. And you're like, well, I don't think you really need it. Your son's fine. He's all right. And they're just really good at hiding things. I'm just saying, could that be an issue? Are we letting these kids slide who actually also need it as well? Who need the support as well?

Yeah.

I feel like I'm just, I'm talking and there's no dialogue and I don't want to always be the person just saying these things, but I'm just looking for a dialogue. I feel like I've not making any sense.

Well, Jason, I think you bring Jason. I think you bring up an important point and maybe, uh, Melissa and DeAndrea, it would be helpful if you back up and clarify, you know, what is the identification process for SSD and how does, um, How does a child, I mean, is it the teacher that reaches out to SSD? Is it the parent that reaches out to SSD? And if you can maybe talk a little bit about the identification process, maybe we would better understand how you guys are going about capturing kids that would benefit from your services.

Sure. Melissa, you want to go back? to that slide that you referenced regarding the referral process?

Yes. So yeah, so within the referral process for students, we look at a variety of areas that students can be referred for special education. So they could come through schools either have care teams or student support teams that they bring students in to have areas that they have concerns about an area. And then the team will put through strategies, as I mentioned, and interventions It could be meeting with the reading specialist or with the math specialist and program for the students. And if they're not seeing progress within six to eight weeks, then they will bring that student back to the care team. And a lot of times the parents are part of the student support teams too. So they're hearing things that are going on and the concerns. And then through that process, they would reach out either the teacher or the parent to the counselor in the building that would start kind of that referral packet to then go with our school psych to see if they have enough information to say that we do have concerns and we suspect a potential disability. And through that, they would get consent from the family to say we can move on with the identification of testing in different areas, such as the IQ could be looked at, academic achievement areas. We may be doing observations. We may be during speech samples. Just depends on the areas of concerns that the team has brought forth. We also may be looking at fine motor or overall motor abilities for PT2. Got it.

Okay. Yeah. So Jason, that makes sense. I think it's more a conversation that we probably would need to be having with our internal, with internal staff at Clayton as it is based on what Melissa is saying. It seems like that it's our people that might be doing the bulk of identifying kids that would benefit for the services that SSD provides. So it might be a converse, you know, it might be a conversation that you know, we would need to understand, I think better from, from Sean.

Yeah, I guess what I would add is that when I'm, I think the number's more like, if I'm thinking of it correctly, I think the numbers more like 10% of our population versus 1%. And so, and I think what I hear Jason saying and Jason push back with like, there's two things, like why is there an over-representation of our African American students? And then two, who else are we missing? Like, is there students that were missing due to biases that we might be having place. And I think that that is a conversation that We're having not only just within our district, but the actual region is doing. I just was in a meeting last week with superintendents with Dr. Keenan around over representation. It's not about Um, it's about the number of students that are being referred, but also the process that's going, that's going, the biases that could be in the process that are leading to students be identified. I mean, Clayton doesn't identify the students special school district does. So there's biases that could be there, but there's also biases in terms of us recommending certain students. So I think that that's that. So it is more of like, I think 10% of our, you know, who else are we missing the other And I think that what we need to do is keep examining that. And I think that's part of the conversations that you're having with our team. And it's not only, and it's a systems approach. Like our, they call it different things, care teams or student study teams should be monitoring the interventions to see whether or not they're responding to those interventions. If they're not responding to the interventions, you change it. If they don't, then you refer. So I think that those are some things that we have to make sure that we're looking at the data to make these decisions, but also being cognizant of biases that people inexplicably might have about certain students. And I think it can go in different ways. It could be a biases around race, but it could be biases about like, well, they may, they have the resources to get those services, you know, so support. So it's just, those are things that I think Jason's trying to say. And I don't know if that articulates Jason

No, no, Sean, I think you're spot on. I mean, I think you did a better job than I did. Amy, thank you for helping me out. I mean, you all did an excellent job of making me sound much more clear. That's exactly what I'm saying. I mean, both demographics are suffering, if you think about it. One is overly diagnosed, one is underdiagnosed. We're missing something in the process. And this leads into, I don't want to go into our next conversation piece, our next thing we'll talk about which is equity. But this leads into equity just the importance of how we identify children who need support. It's also a socioeconomic issue here. That goes into play as well. I mean, like I said before, you have a pedigree of education. You come from some middle class, upper middle class. I don't think you need that. I think you'll be fine. Just, you know, work with them at home. He or she or they at home. So that's all I'm saying. Jason,

I think...

Go ahead. I

was just going to say, yeah, I mean, I think you bring up a great point that biases, they can cut both ways and that we need to keep it on our radar and... and make sure that we're capturing everybody that, um, could benefit from the SSD services. So I definitely appreciate you bringing that up.

Yep. No problem. Thanks guys. Appreciate it.

David, you got anything?

No, I don't. Thank you for your time tonight.

Stacey, did you have something else? Nope. Okay. All right. Then, um, Ladies, Melissa and D'Andrea, thank you so much for being here tonight. We appreciate the report. We appreciate your collaboration with Clayton. And especially appreciate that you guys have an eye on equity too. and that you're taking into consideration our strategic plan and our school district's goals as you create your plans. I know every school district has different goals, and SSD works with all sorts of school districts. So we appreciate that and look forward to our partnership. Thank you all. So we are gonna move on to informational item 6.02, which is the update for our strategic plan tonight. We're talking about goal one of goal three.

Okay. Thank you whoever's driving . So tonight we're going to have given up, as Amy said, we're going to be giving an update around our strategic plan. And what we thought about this is that we thought it would be best to divide it up for each goal and do this series so that way we can make sure that we are having enough time for each of the goals. So you can go ahead and progress through. So basically the overview is that we're gonna be giving that. And I would just wanna reiterate in that when we approach the strategic plan, we really wanted to think about it differently and think about how we're looking at what attributes we want our students to possess to be successful beyond their years. Thinking about that we are an excellent district in terms of our performance but thinking about how can we be transformational in our approach. And when I say that, I want to make sure people understand that we're not meaning that because we're focusing on different types of attributes, it doesn't mean we're compromising our excellence and academic achievement and making sure we have the highest quality teachers. That is going to be something that's a given in everything that we do. That's what we're in the business of doing. But we also want to create something that's really learner centered, something that's aspirational, innovative equity focus that is going to help us think differently about our approaches. We can take some risk in terms of ways we want to approach that and we have approached it with the end in mind, our profile the graduate. Meaning that we want to have our students to be able to possess these skills that we know that are critical for them to be successful beyond their years here. So our current goals are around, we use that catchphrase, a place for everyone to grow as learners and head and heart. And tonight we're gonna be focusing on goal one. We will ensure all learners regardless of their identity feel safe and valued. And that book that I was talking to you about earlier Is really a talking about there's research that shows the importance of students feeling like they belong and feeling like they feel like this. They are in a safe space where they have the efficacy to succeed and to take risk. So tonight we're going to use some of the data that we collected from panorama talk to you a little bit about You know where we've been with goal one where we are now with some of the data that we're collecting, and then what progress we're making or what areas that we need to continue to focus on, and then what's next. So I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Robin.

Thank you, Dr. Doherty. Good evening, everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you this evening and to be the teammate who helps kick off our update on goal one for the strategic plan. So for my section related to social emotional learning, I'm going to be focusing primarily on four objectives that are part of goal one. And the four objectives I'm going to be talking about are school is a safe place for all learners to thrive regardless of their identity or ability. The district is a learning community where our learners feel connected to others. Clayton students have a strong sense of self-efficacy and that every student has someone within the school they consider a trusted adult or who they can go to when needed. So the data I'm going to be talking about this evening to support those four objectives is going to focus on supportive relationships, school climate, sense of belonging, and self-efficacity. Before I really get into the data that we collected this past spring, I wanted to quickly give everyone just a little bit of history of the use of the panorama education surveys in the school district of Clayton. So back in spring of 2019, we administered the wellbeing and school environment surveys to grades three through five as a pilot. And at that time we had a 72% response rate. Moving into that following school year in fall of 2019, we brought the surveys to scale and administered it from grades three through 12 and had a 95% response rate across that age group. And then in spring 2020, we gave it again for grades three through 12. We had a 46% response rate. And I also wanted to highlight that in spring 2020, We were in the middle of our administration window when we had to close the schools related to the COVID-19 closure. And then most recently we gave it in spring of 2021, again, grades three through 12 where we had a 69% response rate. Before I start sharing more specific numbers, I wanted to quickly also explain that Panorama aggregates the data to generate an overall percentage of students who responded favorably on each topic. So with every question that is asked related to a topic, students are given between five and seven choices, some of which are more positive than some of the other choices, and they're constantly calculating what percentage of students gave a favorable response to each question, and each topic has anywhere between three to seven questions related to it. So we're going to go ahead and jump into the data by starting off talking about supportive relationships. And supportive relationships was a topic that we added this school year because of the approval of our district strategic plan. So this is the first set of data we have related to this topic. And the questions really focused on the different types of relationships students have with adults and their friends, both in school and out of school. So in our initial collection, a majority of our students reported very favorable responses. At the secondary level, more than 84% of students had favorable responses. And at the elementary level, it was 89%. And both of those positive response rates or excuse me, favorable response rates put us in the 90th percentile for both sets of age groups. And so I thought one piece of data that stood out to me was for the mode of instruction. So in this school year, we were also able to disaggregate the data based on students' mode of learning. So basically our learn at home students and our responsive learning students as of the end of February. And at the elementary school level, our learn-at-home students actually responded very similarly to our responsive learning students, as it related to supportive relationships. We saw a little bit of a difference in grades six through 12 where There was a 4% difference between learn at home students who responded favorable compared to responsive learning students. And there was some variance as well at the secondary level when disaggregated by race. Digging a little bit deeper into the supportive relationships with adults, which is also connected to some of our objectives to goal one. More than 75% of students in grades three through 12 reported having a teacher or other adult from school they could count on to help them no matter what. And then 85% of our students reported having a friend at school who they could count on, to help them. So at the secondary level, they ask a very specific question for that age group that the elementary school students do not get asked which is how connected do you feel to the adults at your school? And overall, 38% of our secondary students who participated in the survey responded favorably to that question. And the Learn at Home students and our responsive learning students had very similar results. We did see some differences across special education. For example, more than 50% of our students who are identified for special ed services responded favorably compared to 36% of students who do not receive special ed services. And then we also noticed a difference in the responses at the secondary level to that question as it related to gender. Moving on, we're going to talk a little bit about school climate. School climate questions address perceptions of the overall social and learning climate of the school setting. And in spring 2021, 73% of elementary school students had favorable responses regarding school climate, which put us in about the 70th percentile nationally within Panorama's data set. This is an increase from 2019 when 64% of our elementary school students shared favorable responses. And that was in the 40th percentile. In addition, Anna Waller- At the secondary level about 66% of our students have favorable responses related to school climate in 2021 and that fell in the 50th percentile and that was a slight increase from fall 2019 we're only 61%. of our secondary students had favorable responses, which put us in the 40th percentile. So at both elementary and secondary level, as it relates to school climate, our percentages are improving and increasing based on national percentile. Again, we did notice a difference across our mode of instruction. At the secondary level, we noticed that a lower percentage of our Learn at Home students responded favorably about school climate when compared to their responsive learning counterparts. And slightly in contrast, at the elementary school level, a higher percentage, a difference of 5% of learn-at-home students responded favorably about school climate compared to their responsive-learning counterparts. We also saw a little bit of a variance when students were disaggregated by race at the secondary level when compared to all respondents. So the next topic that we measured was sense of belonging. And the sense of belonging questions explore how much students feel they are valued members of the school community, which obviously is a huge part of goal one in our strategic plan. And at the elementary school level, nearly 75% of students responded favorably to questions about sense of belonging this past spring. And that percentage put us in the 90th percentile nationally and is an increase from the 80th percentile from spring 2019. And at the secondary level, our sense of belonging percentages have remained steady at 50% since spring 2019, and this puts us in the 40th percentile nationally. Again, we did see variance across mode of instruction with sense of belonging, a slightly lower percentage of learning at home students responded very favorably compared to their responsive learning counterparts. And also I wanted to highlight that in an earlier report related to our panorama data and sense of belonging, we had seen in a previous data set a difference in how our Asian elementary school students were experiencing the teaching and learning environment. And in this last data collection, all the student groups had similar percentages of favorable responses. So that difference that we had observed earlier was not observed in this age group when disaggregated by race in this most recent data collection. So again, to summarize for sense of belonging, Our percentage favorable of responses, excuse me, at the elementary level is at 74%, which puts us in the 90th percentile nationally. And at the secondary level, our 50% favorable rate put us at the 40th national percentile nationally. Perhaps one of the most volatile data sets that came out of the spring 2021 set is related to self-efficacy. And the self-efficace questions address how much students believe they can succeed in achieving academic outcomes. And I'm not going to go through each one, one by one because folks who are watching at home plus board members are able to access the details through the report that's posted online, but we did see a much wider and distinct variance across the different student subgroups. We saw differences in free and reduced lunch. We saw differences and mode of instruction in special education and gender. and race related to self-efficacy. And I think the main takeaway is that while our percent favorable at the elementary level was 65% and places us in the 80th percentile, and at the secondary level, we have a 59% favorable rating, and that places us in the 60th national percentile Those results are not even across our student subgroups. They vary depending on a student's identity and some of the other characteristics about them. So I think in terms of next steps, one thing we need to think about is taking a closer look at that self-efficacy data and really using that to help us develop our SEL K-12 curriculum development. which is part of goal three, which we'll be talking about in a few weeks. I think another easy next step is we really need to adjust and tweak a few of our routines to address the response rates at the secondary level. More specifically, I'd like to see that response rate at the secondary level to increase and be more consistent. I also think there's reasons for us to be more intentional about reviewing the data with specialty groups for some cross-disciplinary learning and for team goal setting. Some examples would include working with D'Andrea and Melissa and the rest of the SSD team to dig more deeply into the SSD data and using some of the data from our panorama collection to inform their plans. And then also even taking a closer look at our gifted students in our gifted program. Some of you may have noticed that they had very high rates of self-efficacy as it related to students who are not currently identified as gifted. And I have some wonderings about what are some things that all of our teams can learn from some of the changes we've made in that program. And then lastly, I think it's important that we ensure that our social emotional learning data is prominent in our school improvement plans. I feel like we have enough data now over time to really start having it be a fixture and an important piece to all of our goal setting and planning at the building level and system level in order to keep moving forward. I also think it's important to note that this data is very new. We just closed the window a few weeks ago, and so there's a lot more analysis that needs to happen. And you'll see some of that analysis in future strategic plan updates. So on that note, I'd like to go ahead and introduce Cameron Poole, our Director of Equity Inclusion, to talk a little bit more about professional learning as it relates to Goal 1.

Thank you, Dr. Williams and good evening everyone. So I kind of wanted to give the background kind of on the foundations of our professional learning and kind of the common vocabulary that we're developing around the district, as well as referencing our ABR presuppositions, which has kind of guided our work and kind of the foundations of what we want to do in order to build a district equity curriculum. So everything that we do from a vocab standpoint hinges on kind of the five vocab terms that I have on the screen. You know, our goal is to humanize each kid's experience. I think, you know, a lot of our issues that happen in regard to equity happens, you know, because we fail to either, you know, have empathy for certain groups of students, fail to acknowledge their perspective. And empathy and perspective are kind of the number one components needed in order to humanize a kid's experience. And once we're able to humanize that experience, we're able to expand our moral community. And that moral community is a community of people that we have in order that we naturally humanize and we see the perspective and the humanity within those people. So within our moral community, we're able naturally do the good work that we want to do. And then a reference that we come to use as soul work is when a kid realizes that they're not being humanized and that their perspective It's not being acknowledged within our educational community, and they're not a part of our moral community. So kind of a sentence or a statement that kind of encompasses everything that we want to do is stating that it's important to understand it recognize all perspectives so that I am able to build empathy for my students. This will enable me to avoid the soul murder of my students, thus humanizing their experience and expanding my moral community. So that's kind of the goal of what we want to accomplish. And then also, you know, hedging our learning on our A-bar presuppositions and using our A-bar as a reflective tool first to use to gauge, you know, the level of effectiveness that we feel we have within the educational environment in regard to creating an equitable environment for all students. So some of the professional learning that we've been doing, you know, around the goal, and specifically the goal in the strategic plan, the district's commitment to becoming an equitable, anti-bias, anti-racist learning community is reflected in the actions of our students, teachers, administrators, and the board. So, you know, one of the big things that I do that, you know, that is actually, you know, in my opinion, I feel is very effective with, you know, working with a lot of our staff and teachers around the district is I have a lot of individual meetings and consultations. And I kind of went back and looked at my calendar just to see how many individual meetings and consultions pop up a week. And I would say approximately six on some weeks less and some weeks a lot more. It just kind of depends on what exactly is going on. And pretty much what those individual meetings and consultations consist of are, you know, individual faculty member, building administrator, a parent, or even district coordinators and administrators. So reach out with, you know, just different problems, issues that they're grappling with. They may need a thinking partner on some of those things, or they may need someone to intervene and help them kind of work step by step through different issues of equity that pop up. I think a good strength of our district that I'm noticing is that a lot of our teachers and a lot of our staff are very self-reflective on their practices. And I'm glad I've been able to insert myself as a staple of helping them do that. So those individual meetings and consultations happen fairly often. And I think to be, you know, to get to the point to where they're very effective, you know, when we're really building the great, you know, cohesive working relationship and working toward equity for each student. Um, going on that kind of from a more broad standpoint with our professional development and learning. By the end of the semester, there will be at least 10 plus learning opportunities that have been offered, whether it be from a building level, a small group or POC level, as well as district wide professional development as well. So we've, you know, been able to offer a plethora of events and opportunities in order to, you know, engage our faculty and staff with professional learning. Some of the highlighted opportunities that we've done, you know, that we've mentioned and all taken part of are our 14-Day Racial Equity Challenge, which was very successful in helping push the thinking and the thought process, you know, with our faculty and staff and doing that as a team from an accountability standpoint. from our kick-up survey ratings in terms of, you know, our staff being able to take learning away from the professional opportunity and grow as a result of the professional opportunity. Our 14-day racial equity challenge was at 99% approval rating, you know, for those who participated in the survey. I know for a fact that there's still cohorts and groups that are still engaging in learning to this day, you know, even though the challenge ended a couple of months ago. Also, Another professional development opportunity that we had that came up in March was taking ownership of equity, which was part two. There's been a large cohort of teachers that have been working through the taking ownership of equity series. Our year three teachers, a group of our career implementation teachers and our career review teachers as well. Our next professional learning opportunity within that round takes place actually next week. And for part two, we had a 94% approval rating from that as well. And then those upcoming opportunities actually is taking ownership of equity part three, which will be the last part of that series, as I just mentioned. And then our big full district learning opportunity that we have are humanizing the profiles of our Clinton community. And this is a series that we wanna let to continue each semester at some point. So we had the opportunity to interview and have conversations conversations with multiple different stakeholders and groups within the district. Part of the goal of this opportunity is for us to humanize the experience of individuals within our Clayton community. I was able to sit down and have a conversation with a group of Black parents to talk about their experiences within the district. We were actually also able to have a panel with parents of students with IEPs and disabilities, a coalition and conglomerate of our Asian students within the school district, as well as our LGBTQ plus students having a panel as well, as well as looking at our Latino teacher population, which we have a fairly decent sized minority of Latino teachers in the district as well. So the big thing with that is to have those conversations and with the help of our production crew, we were able to videotape those and chop them up to be used for professional development So each staff member will have an opportunity to kind of choose three out of those five categories to kind of attend those and listen and watch those conversations that were recorded. And there's an engagement opportunity with different staff and faculty around the district for them to take part, to kind of discuss what they've learned and how they were able to humanize a certain identity for the first time and how that's going to push and influence their practices. And then last but not least, we've had an expansion of our affinity groups. Dr. Williams has done an awesome job of creating an affinity group with our Asian students. One thing that we took note of from our last batch of panorama data is really trying to create that sense of belonging and increasing those numbers with our Asian students and she's been able to do a good job in terms of creating an affinity space for them to share their experiences and letting that build a sense of community within the population at the high school and the middle school. At the high school and middle school levels, our teachers do a good job with our BSU, our Black Student Union. Mr. Sankey and Mrs. Inigo do a great job of that at the high school. I've had the liberty to attend most of those meetings as well. So that's kind of where we're at, creating so many opportunities using myself as a resource for individual meetings and consultations. And we want to continue to expand our affinity groups in order to create a safe space for different identities to be themselves.

Great. Thank you, Cameron. Thank you. Cameron and Robin, thank you both for... Sorry, are we...

PB Harmon Zuckerman, And we have just Tony who's has his update really quick as part of our PB Harmon Zuckermann, Staff. PB Sarah Silver PB, Lupita D Montoya, Got

it. I'm sorry. PB Harmon Zuckerson, That's okay.

So in our strategic plan, one of the objectives of goal one is to ensure that the diversity of Clayton's teaching staff reflects the racial diversity of our students. So in the pictograph on this slide, you'll see a representation of teachers and administrators at the start of 2020-21 school year, as well as our student population, and that's broken down by race. This information can be found on the data dashboard that's connected to the strategic plan. And then on the next slide, the district's commitment to this really is the single most important factor in being successful in hiring teachers and administrators of color. However, to be successful with that initiative, it's essential that we're really focused and being intentional with our efforts. So some of the specific strategies that we have implemented throughout the year to address this objective our anti-bias training for interviewing and hiring practices. So in an earlier update, I shared that this back in, I think it was January, February, administrators participate in the training around anti-bias and how that impacts our interviewing and hiring process. And our administrators were really thoughtful, developed new interview questions that aligned to our our ABAR presuppositions, and the questions are now used district-wide in the interviewing process. And that started immediately after that training. Additionally, principals will now review the implicit bias reference sheet that we have with all of their staff members that will be participating at each of the panel interviews. Another strategy is the analysis of our current interviewing and hiring model. So kind of connected to the anti-bias training, it sort of naturally led to this step. So what we wanted to do is really be purposeful and have a deep analysis of our current interviewing and hiring practices so we could determine what might be some of the potential modifications that could help us move forward. And then from that, we created a resource folder for all of our administrators to assist them with streamlining the interview process so we were consistent district-wide. with some of this work. Some of the new resources include the interview protocols that we have for each of the interviews, implicit bias review that I just discussed with all the participants prior to the interview session, and then the A-bar interview question makes that the principals help develop. Another one is our development and implementation of the stay interview process. Retention is another area that we are working on to improve with our staff and administrators of color. This year, we developed and implemented the stay interviews. And they're really helpful because what they do is they provide us with qualitative data and opportunities for us to engage with our employees in a different way that we really haven't done before, that can help us meet retention goals. So it really is a focused one-on-one session where we can get feedback and provide, that can provide us with different ways to better understand why some employees stay, what they enjoy about working in the School District of Clayton, and then also on the flip side, what might cause them to leave. So that allows us to be responsive with that information and to You know, take a deeper look at our systems and design individual plans that might be able to help us with that teacher retention. And then finally, we also create a diversity hiring statement and the diversity hiring statement was really to show the district's commitment to attracting a diverse teaching force and find the best candidates for positions in service of our students. So earlier I mentioned with our state interviews, that was a strategy to help improve our retention. So since 2018-19 school year, we've seen a steady increase in our retention rate for our teachers and administrators of color. So we've moved from 88% retention to 100% retention as of right now with our diverse faculty. We're also monitoring our hiring data, and then we're sharing out the percentage of our diverse hires of faculty over the past four years. So when you look back at the graph here in 2018, our diverse hires made up about 13% of our hires for that school year. And then for 2021-22, our percentage of diverse hires as of right now is 53%. So our hiring process for next year is still happening. And what we'll do is we'll continue to update that data so we can accurately report out the final percentage and equity or strategic plan update in the fall. And then for our next steps, what we're gonna do is we'll conduct another interview and hiring process audit to determine how the adjustments that we made this year are working for us. Additionally, the themes that we uncover with the state interviews will be deeply analyzed. And then what we'll do is we'll determine if there are some systemic changes that we could do as a district that would help us better retain faculty. And then also, as I mentioned on a previous slide, we'll continue to closely monitor our hiring data to ensure that we are continuing to increase the diversity of Clayton's teaching staff so it better reflects the racial diversity of our

students. So that

brings closure to our presentation. I know we just threw a lot of information at you. I know we threw a big report at you, too, and then with lots of information. You know, it's hard not to give some of these details, but we wanted to make sure we gave you and the public an overview and wanted to see if you had any questions related to some of the information that we presented. I also think it's important to show that part of the objectives that we've been looking at is disparity data in our discipline. And I think that right now it's been difficult for us to do that because it's not been a typical type of year. And so we can look at historical trends, but we haven't been able to collect information that for the last two years that would be accurate. So just wanted to mention that as well. So Amy, I'll turn it back over to you.

Thank you. And thank you, Robin, Tony and Cameron for the report. Gary, do you have anything?

So yeah, thank you all for the great report. I have a couple of comments and then one question. First of all, I really, really appreciate two things in this report. One, the pictogram depicting the staff versus the student demographics. I think that's a really clear and transparent way to illustrate some of the things that we've been talking about for a long time. And I love that. that use of information and that way of displaying it. And the same with the chart that shows the percentage of our new hires, I think that's an easy way to focus on something like what we're doing now currently and how it compares to what we've done before. So thank you for that. The question that I have relates to the Panorama data And Robin, I would love if you could explain just sort of the mechanics of the process of how students do or don't take that, participate in that. And we have different percentages at different times. Like I should probably know this, but I literally like I don't know how our kids do or don't get prompted to do it. So I'd love to just have a little bit.

That's a question that Gary, I have much appreciation for that question because in the short time I've been here in the district, I think I've only had one. normal test administration of the panorama survey. It's been under very complicated circumstances all the other times. So I appreciate that question. So at the elementary school level, the entire class basically takes it at the same time as if we were administering a short building-wide test. on a schedule and the classroom teacher will often give it with assistance from either the school counselor or the IC. And then sometimes students in small group settings, if for whatever reason they miss it when the rest of the class takes it, they'll do it. And our Learn at Home students also had scheduled time slots to take it. At the secondary level, it has varied depending on which part of the pandemic we were giving it in. At times we have been able to give it through pack time, other times we've had to maybe start it at the beginning of class and then have students work through it in the last few minutes of a class. At the high school, at times we have run it through classes and other times we've been able to run it through the study hall hours. The scheduling at the secondary level, particularly at high school was pretty tricky in terms of trying to find the time to administer it, which I think may have been a contributing factor to kind of our uneven response rates. However, that certainly was not due to lack of communication as I have the ability to send email reminders out to our secondary students through the portal in order to take it. So again, this is an area of improvement for us, for sure, especially at the secondary level and something that I can work on with the building principals to have a more strategic approach to make sure that our response rate reaches a level of consistency.

Great. Thanks, Gary. for the question and thanks to Robin for the answer. Joe?

So yeah, I have a couple of just comments and a question. So first of all, thank you, Robin. Thank you, Cameron. And thank you, Tony. I think it was, I mean, really a great presentation. I guess the first thing I'd say is I think the staff data in terms of hiring and retention is fantastic. So I mean, there's nothing to say, but it's great improvement. So well done. That's the first thing I'd say. The second thing I would say is I think the professional learning is really good and a great foundation. I hope that we continue to measuring behavior. It feels like we're measuring skills and attitude, but not quite yet the change in behavior as a result of it. So I hope that's the next step. And then I would get to the panorama data. And I love panorama, of course. And I guess what I would say about panorama is I think there's some bright spots, but certainly some concerns. I think at the secondary level, when I think about supportive relationships, I think it's a concern that when we say, how connected do you feel to the adults at your school? And we get 38% of students saying they feel connected and that's 43% male and 34% female. I understand that overall, um, you know, we did pretty well, but I wonder if there's not some more, uh, more opportunity to think about kind of teacher student relationships and some other things because that, you know, one third is roughly one third. That's not, I don't actually, I don't think that's good. Um, I think also with panorama and again, lots of good stuff with panorama, but if you look at supportive relationships, you know, the black students down 5%, the Asian students down 3% school climate, black students down 5% self-efficacy, the black students found 15%. And then on school climate, multiracial students down 10%, obviously. And I understand we need to, um, process and understand that more, but I think it speaks to some things that we really need to consider and think about. So I guess maybe no questions, just all comments. That's it.

Thank you, Joe. I

have a question for Joe. Joe, when you said behavior, was that behavior for, you said you want us to change the behavior. Was that for the teachers, right?

Yeah, for the staff. Because, I mean, you can have the greatest professional development in the world and they can say they like it. They can say they're going to use it. But did they really use it? Does it show up? You know, if you think about professional development, the lowest level is knowledge. Then the next level is attitude. And then the highest level is did the behavior change as a result of it? And so I understand where, you know, a lot of this we're starting. So I'm not trying to throw shade. I just hope the next level is how do we measure a change in behavior as a result of what seems like some awesome professional learning and development.

Appreciate that.

Stacy. Stacy. Thank you. Thanks, all of you. That was very thorough and a great report. I actually had a similar question that I won't ask because it was about the response rate that Gary already asked. Robin, I appreciate you including as a subgroup the mode of instruction because I think during this pandemic that is really telling and some good and some bad results from that. But I think that actually was really helpful to me to see how our learn at home kids are doing as opposed to the kids in person. So thank you for including that. I also agree with Joe. I was going to make a comment about the hiring, Tony. Great job on that. I think just in the last few years, how much we've increased our diverse hires is amazing. So I was really impressed with that. Um, and I was happy to hear in Cameron's report, happy to hear about, um, some of the new affinity groups like that, Robin, you're leading, um, with Asian students and Latin students. And I was happy in particular about the Asian students just because of the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. And it got me thinking, um, are we doing anything, um, are we doing anything to also though educate our non-Asian students about that? You know, I mean, that might be more of a, I don't know if that's a curriculum question, but because it's something that's timely right now. So I don't know, if we've thought about ways to address that with our whole student population. And I do agree that we need affinity groups for those kids to feel that sense of belonging. But I just got me thinking, you know, I know in the past we've brought in out like the ADL and outside sources, but I didn't know if we were thinking about doing anything inside because I think the non-Asian students also need to be you know, educated about the tolerance, um, especially when there's something happening, you know, currently. So, uh, but thank you all of you for, for all your work on this report. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Stacy, Caitlin.

Yeah, thank you everyone for your work on this report. I do have a couple of questions. So I recently talked to the district advisory council about like panorama data and such. So this is kind of relevant to what we've most recently been talking about. One of the questions that came up is how often are we evaluating the language of the questions? Is that something that panorama provides? Is that something staff is taking a look over and checking to make sure that they agree with the way that the questions and the language is being used.

So the questions we've been using, Caitlin, are pre-created through Panorama. And depending on some of the questions, we are able to tweak some of the language. So yes, some of them are editable.

Okay. And if I'm correct, is this anonymous or not anonymous?

The general responses are anonymous. There are certain topics where we can see an individual student's overall rating, but we do not, we're not able to see their actual individual responses. Like I would not be able to see exactly how you answered every single question. but I could see your overall rating.

Yeah. And kind of on that note, something that we were talking about is like wondering if there's, I guess, greater awareness for the student population about like what exactly they're filling this out for and like how important it is. I know like prior to my time on the board, I kind of knew that the panorama data was used for something, but I didn't know like how deeply that the board was dived into it and how deeply that they used it for all of the decisions that they're making in the future so I was one like kind of just a comment like maybe in the future we could look into having teachers like preface students taking the survey and explaining what it is what it's about what its importance is and like having students really take the time and make sure that they're accurately filling out the form so that we can actually have accurate data and not like have students like haphazardly doing it And another question that I had was, have we thought about doing or do we already do some kind of disaggregated data between like intersectional groups, for example, like, can we look at the data and publish the data for like Asian woman or like black transgender students?

So some of the demographics you stated, yes, we can disaggregate it. It would be by building. I can't do all of that exactly by that. I can't exactly get to the intersectionality kind of in the broader sense. I wouldn't be able to look at Asian women, three grades, three through 12. I'd have to look at each building individually to get down to that piece. The feedback around the gender identity has come up and is something that I would like to talk a little bit more about with the vendor. You know, it's a little bit, in some ways, it is hard for us to currently capture a non-binary gender identity status right now with the limitations in the current student information system and then therefore also within Panorama. And I think this is an ongoing conversation about just like all the different platforms we use that have space or not space for that particular identifier. But that is absolutely a piece that has come up in all the preliminary conversations I've had with different groups about the data when they've noticed some of the things related to gender.

So right now, is it just like male or female when you clicked it? Okay. Okay. Yeah. Um, like in the future I would be interested in looking at like the subsections of like, for example, like if Asian women have like a less sense of belonging than Asian men, for example. Um, and then is there like a place where qualitative data can be taken in the survey? Like, are there, is there like a common section or like additional comments, um, or any like questions that students answer with text boxes?

Yes. For some of the topics that are covered, such as positive and challenging feelings, which will be covered in part three of the strategic plan update, there were opportunities for students to provide open response.

Okay. Thank you.

That's all I have. All right.

Great,

Caitlin. Thank you. Great questions. Kim?

So thank you for the presentation. There's a lot of information in there. You know, I guess I want to emphasize some things that we've already heard. You know, we often talk about our, I think, and we're proud of the fact that we have a very good student to teacher ratio. And the fact that we do have such an impressive student to teacher ratio makes that secondary statistic that I think Joe emphasized of only 38% of secondary students feeling a positive connection to adult in the school that much more concerning from my perspective. So I think that there's a lot of opportunity there as far as student-teacher relationship building and some work to be done. So we should maybe unpack that a little bit more. You know, in terms of how the panoramic data is presented to us in this matter, there's a lot text. It might be easier. I don't know if these reports are something that Panorama kind of puts out or that you guys take the time to put together, but seeing something in a graphical representation or form might be helpful just kind of the next time that we see this type of data for digestibility. And then again, I want to emphasize, I think it's a great job in terms of retention of diversity staff and hiring and some of the onboarding that's been done with the early not early for our district, but the equity work that has been equity and equity education work. I think I expressed my personal discomfort with the word soul murder when the board went through its equity training. And I guess I just want to emphasize that again, that I'm not sure that that's an appropriate term to use, especially as we're, I don't know, just especially as we're putting more and more focus in this area. So That term actually comes from, if you research it interestingly enough, from the 1800s, from the 1830s. And it goes back to a German boy who was kept in an underground dungeon with no language or human contact for 15 years. So then it was termed as a psychological term and really related to child abuse and deprivation. And I know that it's evolved since then, but I think you know, as we're all considering where language comes from and the history of language, we should be thoughtful about how we use it in our approach in the school district. So

thank you. Thank you, Kim. Jason?

Yeah, yes, I have lots of questions. No, I'm joking, I have lots questions. So my first question is, Going back to the ratio of teachers, Tony, to students. We're declining in African-American students. Am I correct, Sean? Are we having a reduction in African-American student? Yes, we have seen a pattern in that. So do we then stop hiring teachers of color if we start to reduce the amount of African-American students.

No, Jason, that would not be our intention at all. Right now we're sort of using that as a marker for us to have that as a goal to get to, but certainly that would not be something we would do.

Yeah. I didn't think so. I just want to make sure that was clear to the public. So everyone else knew that. Yeah. We're

sort of looking at that as a, as a, as minimum as a threshold for us to try to work toward.

Gotcha. I appreciate that. Um, also let's see. Um, By the way, you all did an excellent job putting this together, by the way. I know this is hard. I know it's like really the first go around, first year we put, you know, to put this kind of data and work together. So I really do appreciate what you all have done. And I'm taking that into consideration with my questions too. So I guess my question though is, all this sounds great, but how if, you know, so let me ask, the training from the teachers, equity training, like, is this mandatory for every teacher to go through this? Um,

let's say. Yeah. So it varies based off of years in the district right now. Um, so there's different groups of teachers, you know, based off their years in the district in terms of what the professional development looks like. Um, so there's certain cohorts of teachers that are going through certain training this year that next year it'll be a different group. Um, one thing that we're pushing for next year as well is also including, um, you know, what our curriculum looks like for your one teachers, your two teachers, your three teachers as well. Um, on top of what that looks like from a district standpoint, each building, you know, is undergoing their own professional development schedule and what they're doing as well and what they deem important within their building. So there's individual building development going on as well as district-wide development going on based off of years in

addition. So it's kind of a tiered system then, right? Like we're doing a stage gate process. I guess my question then is, If there's a year where we're doing X group right now, does then X group next year when we're doing Y group, is X group still doing some kind of training at all in any way?

Yeah. So in terms of building that. And that's something that we're setting up for next year. So kind of what a, I'll give you kind of what a rough schedule look like if you're a new teacher within the district. So if you're year one, you're year one and you're year two teachers will have professional development based off of just, you know, what our language is with the district, familiarizing themselves with our A-bar presuppositions and really understanding, you know, from a strategy standpoint in terms of equity. The year three will go into more of a case study approach to where they're looking at actual case studies, which are drafted within district experiences and kind of working the problem solve through those issues as they arise and comparing those to their own professional practice within their classroom. as they get into year four and year five, that'll be those goal implementation years to where they will have an equity goal that they start to develop in year one and use that as an action item in terms of improving student performance and experience. So choosing an identity that revolves around that goal. So if I choose perhaps maybe, you know, Black boys in my class weren't as engaged. And I'm going to use that as a goal and kind of create, you know, different methods of professional learning that revolve around that. So that might include, you know, coming up with a communication strategy, you know, that engages the parents and the family, you know, along with the student a lot more and kind of tracking the success of that and how that looks at that student's performance within the classroom. So the big thing that we really want to touch on, especially in those foundational years are, like I said, humanizing each perspective. For example, if we have a teacher who grew up in a very homogeneous environment where they didn't have a lot of experiences with kids of another race, How do they know how people think and how they tick who's in that other race? So we want to create learning opportunities to where they understand who's coming into their classroom and they have the tools in order to, you know, engage students to understand who they are on a personal level. And I think that matches well what we see within our panorama data as well in terms of kind of a disconnect there. And we have, you know, a lot of teachers as we expand our pool and become more diverse, you know, we're all taught more so in a homogeneous way to teach to a middle class white kid. So how can we expand that to where teachers have experiences where they can take the knowledge that they gained from all of the students within their classroom and be able to teach that individual student. So that's why we want to build kind of that verbiage and that strategy in order to engage students, you know, in a way that might be uncomfortable from what we're used to, take that to a case study stage. And then once we get past the case study stage, we now can create an action research goal to really engage and promote our practices and put them in the plain sight. A teacher who starts in the district next year, by the time they're at year five, they're knee-deep into that goal and they're constantly tweaking that and using that to apply that to different students and identities within a classroom. And one thing that I want to throw in there as well, we're trying to accomplish something that probably literally no district in the country has done. And we're building that foundation to be able to do that. And I think that's something that we can do. And it takes building that foundation, you know, that teachers just aren't trained to do. You know, my education as a teacher wasn't rooted on being able to teach kids that look like me. So how can we get out of that mold that we have to do some unwiring to rewire, you know, the way we think and we approach our pedagogy in order to reach each kid? So I think we're building some awesome things with our teachers individually. And I think as time progresses and we're able to get our system in place and really implement the systems change, we can see some big growth down the road.

So I think that that plan is a great plan in theory, definitely. It sounds like the three to five year plan, essentially where we start seeing what Joe talked about, which is behavior change. Would you disagree with that? That is a question. But before you answer that question, the other part of that is I'm thinking about a holistic approach on how we train our educators, right? You know, in one or two years, can we just jump down on it so that we don't get too far away from from the initial teaching about equity, about these things that we're talking about. So we don't get too far away from it so that everyone's on the same page. Because to me, the way I look at equity and what's happening in the world, they're happening simultaneously, right? And so it's causing this constant delta. There's change in how we look at race. There's change how we look at equity. There's change and how we look at gender equality. All these things, there's confluence of things that's happening so fast. And my question is, would it be more advantageous, Cameron, and Tony and Robin, if we just had a holistic approach and just jumped down on it versus this kind of stage gate process over a three to five year process?

You know, that's an awesome question. You know, and in jumping into position, a lot of those approaches have not been effective in terms of long-term change. I think when we're talking about behavior, again, we're talking about engaging humans. And I think one thing that we lose is that we're in the business of people. And just like from a marketing standpoint, if I want to market to a certain demographic and what we're marketing is an educational experience, we want to take the opportunity to know who our consumers are. And, you know, we need to you know, whether that's through focus groups, whether that's looking at data, whether that's understanding the environment in which our students come from, we have to understand who they are. And I think the best way to do that is to engage our students head on. You know, if I'm a teacher and there's a disconnect between me and my Asian students, the best way for me to serve them is to engage them and ask them exactly what they need from me in order to have the best educational experience possible. So I think our big push is to make sure that our teachers are actively engaging our students one-on-one, not concentrating on some book that they've read from some author who doesn't know what Clayton School District is. So I think in terms of that behavior, you have to understand what you have to do. And by understanding what you have to be able to engage and build relationships with the students within your classroom. So I think before that we get to that behavior change, I just want to make sure that our teachers understand what our LGBTQ plus kids go through on a daily basis. What it's like to be an Asian kid in the classroom and have certain stereotypes heaped upon you. what it's like to be a black student and to be looked at in a certain way, whether you come from a different neighborhood or whether you live within the district and get away from all of those different stereotypes and be able to engage me as a human being rather than kind of what you think I represent. So I think we're diving deep down. I wanna say it was, I don't know, Times Magazine did a big article that I read about a year or so ago that kind of a lot of that doubling down way has, you know, maybe some short term, you know, some short term success in some ways, depending on how you look at your stats. But in terms of kind of really building a foundation, you know, we want people to understand people. And I think the best way to do that is to create opportunities to engage and really humanize different people's experiences and their perspectives.

Well, so two things, I'll stop talking here. But one is I was when I say holistic approach, we, whatever the core, the crux of what you're trying to the basis of what you're trying to teach the teachers, right, when it comes to equity A-bar is commitment to the process. You teach that and then from there you continue to build like you talked about, right? This reinforcement, adding new things, different strategies, consistently adding those things throughout the years, but just getting the core fundamentals down is what I was talking about. My other thing is though, is I know we talked about ABAR policy. So this is a two-part question. How's that going?

It's going well. We're at the point to where we have five policies that we were able to pinpoint from policies around the country that kind of encompass what we want to accomplish. We have notes and details on each of those policies. And right now, I'm in the process combining those notes, adding our language and verbiage within the district to it and creating our own. The goal is to have that policy ready for you all to vote on by the

Because I think the second part to that question is, I'm thinking that policy is going to be the adhesive that allows us to have fidelity to what you're doing. Because it doesn't really, there's no sticking point if... there's no repercussions for misbehavior, right? And I'm just going back to what we talked about in the beginning of this board meeting, which was people who are coming to the school, there's policy around that, right? There's policy around coming to the school and having the autonomy to tell some folks that you can't come anymore because of this kind of behavior. There's repercussions. And then there are all the teachers and staff. We know that they're cognizant of the types of behaviors and what it is. And because of that, Everyone kind of responds and operates based on that policy. And I'm thinking that we need to have that same type of policy to really support, you know, what we're working on right now. So that is just my delegate to that. Awesome, man. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot for putting this together, guys. Excellent.

Thank you, Jason. David?

No, I don't have any questions. Thank you guys.

Okay. So I just have a, uh, thank you for the report guys. I have two very, very quick things. Um, I, the first thing is that, um, there's some really great, uh, great strides that we're making and I, that's a lot of really good things to celebrate in the report. The one thing that concerned me the most or that was concerning to me was the score. with respect to black children and the efficacy. So I hope that we can, you know, based on that, like what I take is that they don't feel good about themselves and there might be lacking some critical self-confidence. So I hope we can do a deep dive into that and understand, really understand what's going on and try and move that needle there and help the kids that are not feeling good. Then the second thing is I want to acknowledge, well, this doesn't really have anything to do with this report, except I would like to acknowledge Cameron and he was just awarded the Educator of the Year for 2021 by the St. Louis Association of Secondary Principals. So Cameron, we are so proud of you. We are so grateful that you're with us and leading this work. And we look forward to many more years of success with you.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate

it. You are welcome. Um, and with that, we are on to hold on guys. I think, are we good? I lost my screen, but are we, uh, I think we're probably onto the consent. No, no,

we're on action items.

Okay. I'm sorry. I have to recuse myself from this one.

Yeah.

I'm leaving. Just text me when you're done.

Okay. Okay. Good. So, um, Stacey, will you go ahead? We're on 7.01. Just a motion, please, for the part-time temporary employment.

Yes, 7.01, part-time temporary unemployment. I recommend that the Board of Education approve the part-time temporarily employment as submitted.

Second.

Great. So we have a motion and it's been seconded. Is there any discussion? Okay. Okay, Gary.

We don't need a roll call on

this. I have for some reason the sheet I got headed as a roll call. Okay, never mind. It's okay.

Is everybody in favor? Aye. Great. Any opposed? Great. Motion passes unanimously. And can somebody text Joe to come

back? Thank you.

And then Stacey next, we're going to move on to eight, which is the consensus consent items.

Yeah. I'll wait till Joe gets back. Okay. Okay. Um, 8.01. I moved that the board of education approved the consent agenda.

Second. Great. We've got a motion. It's been seconded any discussion all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. And we are on to section nine, which is public comment. Chris, do we have any comments tonight?

Yes, we have one comment tonight from Marlene Kovach. And she writes... In regards to district equity and inclusion initiatives, I urge the board to consider teaching something other than critical race theory, which is currently occurring in literacy classes and elsewhere. Students are given assignments on the wheel of power privilege and then asked to describe how they are privileged or unprivileged based on immutable demographic characteristics like race, gender, sexual identity, and so on. Vocabulary definitions like race are taken from critical race theory, and they don't resemble any dictionary definition. Source materials almost exclusively feature lead characters who have been opposed to white persons as the theme. Classroom reading of the book Stamped by Ibram Kendi, who presents current and future discrimination to remedy past and present discrimination. When asked if there is space for a white comes from the history books as if my own daughter is not entitled to her personal lived experience as a white person, or as if all white people are monolithic. Critical race theory is founded on dividing people into groups based on immutable characteristics, then like gender, ethnicity and race, then labeling those groups as either oppressed or oppressors. Children at their most impressionable and insecure ages are assured that these characteristics over which they have no control intersect to make up who they are. Differences between individuals and groups are highlighted and exploited. Blame is assigned regardless of responsibility. White children are taught to be ashamed of their skin color and people of color are taught they are powerless and oppressed. How can either group feel positive, healthy or happy with this messaging? This programming is teaching our children to hate each other or at a minimum pit one group against another based on their differences. My white child feels unwelcome at best and discriminated against at worse, which is what I thought the district was trying to overcome. The district is teaching our children to no longer judge others based on the content of their character, but instead on the color of their skin and other demographic characteristics. Thereby embracing the exact reverse of the dream Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so ardently desired and fought for. As an alternate anti-racist program, I am recommending the district consider the theory of enchantment by a young African American entrepreneur whose program focuses on love for self and others and positive relationships among groups. My second concern is the district has embraced one-sided and biased progressive ideology in the classroom. Just as I don't have to identify with a certain religious group to use the public school, I shouldn't have to identify it with a proscribed political ideology to use my public school. I shouldn't have choose between raising my children with conservative values and using my public school. Public schools are funded by the whole of the community and the benefit for all, not just those adhering to a certain political ideology. Based on voting patterns, it is reasonable to expect 20% of the Clayton community does not vote Democrat, and possibly many more than this figure do not support progressive ideology, even if they do identify as Democratic. The district makes accommodations for groups making up far less percentage of the community than this. Example, transgender population is estimated to be less than half a percent. My daughters see and know no one in the district with who they identify as being either conservative or Republican, or simply just people who don't embrace progressive ideology. And make no mistake about it, teachers are all too willing to display, talk about, and in fact teach their ideology as fact, not just one frame of reference or point of view. There is no classroom time devoted to alternative viewpoints. The instruction is exclusively framed through a progressive ideological viewpoint and presented as fact, most notably in literacy classrooms. All literacy source materials are from progressive ideological viewpoint. Not one resource is from a conservative or other author, either black or white, such as Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Jason Riley, Ben Carson, or Heather MacDonald. This is the definition of indoctrination. The lesson plan inoculates a belief system in students' minds, making them adherents of the belief system, thereby crossing the First Amendment line of separation of church and state. I'm hoping the district can return to teach critical thinking rather than one-sided indoctrination and activism. And that's all.

Okay, thank you, Marlene, for the comment. And just as a reminder, We, as a board don't discuss public comments right now, but somebody from the board or from administration will be in touch. And with that, we are on to well, does anybody have any updates or reports from committee meetings that they've been to since our last board meeting?

I just have a quick one. Yesterday, Ames Place had its neighborhood meeting and there was talk from, I believe, a city doing a study on whether at the cutoff to DeMunn from this neighborhood, they would put in a U-turn for cars to be able to turn around. Sean, I encouraged the city planners that are contemplating this and doing the study to reach out to us and directly to you, because I think that we would have some concern about the need for an additional crossing guard there. You know, right now there's a lot of student traffic, both to Y down and to captain from both sides of the demand neighborhoods. Um, so it's only in the early study phase, but, um, it did not really receive a lot of support from our neighborhood, at least from the attendees for the annual meeting. Um, and I think that it would be something for the school district to keep an eye on as that, um, study kind of develops.

Thank you, Kim. Anybody else? Okay. Well, um, Thanks, everybody, for their time tonight. And Stacey, I think we will take a motion to adjourn. I recommend that the Board of Education adjourn.

Second.

Okay. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Great.