February 7, 2024 — Meeting Transcript

Good evening, everybody. We're going to go ahead and get started. It's Wednesday, February 21st. And if we could stand for the Pledge of Allegiance first.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic

for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay. So before we get started with our regular meeting today, I just want to acknowledge that it is with a heavy heart that I address our Clayton community this evening. And as many of you know, we experienced an unimaginable loss earlier this week. Jackson Spader, known to us as Jack, to us a kindergartner. And Merrimack was one of the four children who passed away in the house fire in Ferguson early Monday morning. And I want to extend my deepest sympathies and condolences to the family and friends and everyone affected by this loss. Our thoughts are with them during this time of great sadness. And Please know that our school community stands ready to offer support and comfort in any way that we can to all of our students affected. So I would ask that you please join me in keeping Jack and the additional lives lost in this tragedy in the Merrimack community and your thoughts and prayers in the days and months ahead. So with that I would like Gary would you read the? Motion to adopt the agenda please

move that the Board of Education adopt the agenda for tonight's meeting is posted

It's been moved and seconded all in favor. All right motion passes and Robin

Thank you, Luke. Well, good evening, everybody. It's a privilege to be able to stand up here tonight to host the Recognizing Our Own section of this evening's board meeting agenda. For our first recognition, we would like to celebrate Chris Chisholm. So Chris, if you wouldn't mind coming on up and standing right here. And I'd like to invite Chris's principal, Dr. Jamie Jordan, also to support in this celebration. So Chris has led the Y down web program and web is an acronym for where everyone belongs. And he's been leading that program at Y down for the past six years. And this is a transition program, which is led by 40 outstanding eighth graders and helps our incoming sixth graders feel welcome and safe at Y down middle school. So recently Chris has been selected to be a national trainer and for the web program. And so this means that he gets to travel throughout the country and share his expertise with other web sponsors. So he does all of this while still being our fearless sixth grade camp director, and not to mention teaching sixth grade science, eighth grade science in our Da Vinci classes. So Chris Chisholm is always willing to do whatever is needed, and he works tirelessly for all of our students. And he's a perfect example of what makes Y-Down so And also, side note, if you have ever stood next to Chris Chisholm and you're feeling like your personal battery is maybe 75%, you just spend five minutes with him and you will walk away with your personal battery charged at 100% because his energy and his love for our students is truly infectious. So congratulations, Chris, on this awesome recognition. We are so excited that you're part of the Clayton team. Thank you. All right. For our next recognition, we are celebrating Love the Bus Month and February is Love the Bus Month. Love the Bus Month means it's a month where we raise awareness and appreciation for safe transport of students to and from school and school activities. And we're continuing our celebration of Love the Bus Month tonight because we are recognizing the special school district school bus drivers and our teaching aid for all their efforts to go above and beyond in order to transport our Clayton students to school and home and to all the various district activities and all the different campuses where our students participate. So I'm about to announce all of the names of our SSD drivers, and when I call your name, if you would kindly come up, we have a certificate for you. We'd love to take your photo, and you can actually stay up here because then we'll take a group photo as well. So in no particular order, I'd like to invite Jerry Bean, who is our AMPM South County Tech driver. Thank you, Jerry. All right. Then we'd also like to recognize Yolanda Brown, who's our midday Fairmont Schnucks route. We'd also like to recognise Lee Didrikson, who's our CBVI Fairmont Schnucks and midday tech to school driver. Thank you, Lee. We'd like to recognize Rhonda Raymond, who's our midday school to tech driver. We'd also like to recognize Michael Seekman, who's also known as Mr. Mike, who does our AM PM route. I'm not sure if Mr. Mike was able to join us, but we'd also like to recognize our bus aid who rides along with Mr. Mike, Tammy Moore. So our SSD drivers go through a lot of training to be able to do their jobs well. They participate in monthly and annual training, including nonviolent crisis intervention, as well as a lot of other things to keep all of our students and loved ones safe when they're going back and forth between all the different campuses and job sites and programs. So thank you so much for everything you do to contribute to our community. And don't go anywhere, because we'd like to take a group photo.

So we are on to public comment at this time. Let's see. So if I can, is Cordell Whitlock here? Hi, Cordell. Come on up.

So do I need to get a social security number or blood type? So I'm Cordell Whitlock. I live at 7612 Maryland. I have two daughters. I have Channing in ninth grade, a special needs student at the high school, and I have Jordan who is in fifth grade at Merrimack. And when Tawny and I enrolled Channing in Merrimack back in 2014, we made it clear to the teachers and administrators that it was a partnership. It was a partnership between what we called the school team and the home team, the home team being Channing's therapists. And the success of that partnership was predicated upon decent communication. So when I look at the partnership between Clayton and SSD, what I envisioned was a meshing of talent and expertise between the two districts for the betterment not only of Channing and Jordan but all students in the district. And when Tawny and I met with Nisha and the then SSD superintendent in June in person, it was quite obvious that the left hand had no idea what the right hand was doing. So subsequent to that, we had a parental town hall meeting, and then we got Thurma involved, and I believe Thurma got some parental engagement. She got our feedback. She forwarded her report to you all. which I hope you've reviewed. And what I'd like to see is substantive changes with how this agreement works, how this partnership works. And I want to be clear that this parental engagement is in no way a scathing indictment of SSD, the teachers and the therapists. Over the years, countless men and women have done an outstanding job trying to educate Channing, looking out for her welfare. And it's difficult, it's hard. Tawny and I get that, we understand that. But on the flip side of that, we don't grow as individuals and we certainly don't grow as organizations just focusing on the positive. The way we grow is to acknowledge our mistakes and to fill in the gaps. And in your role as board members, And my role as a parent, for an example, let's take the senior class at Clayton High School. If there are 100 students, if 99 of them are flourishing, they're doing well. They're going to the colleges of their choice, Spelman, Howard, Harvard, Mizzou, whatever it may be. If you have one child, one child that is floundering, that has slipped through the cracks, our success in part is going to be based on how we lift that child up so they can achieve their best. And I just ask that this board look at what parents are saying. And let me assure you, we are not parents that drop our kids off at 8.15 and pick them up at 3.30 and expect miracles. That ain't us. What we do expect is an environment of collaboration, of respect, where these kids can be the best possible students they can be. I appreciate your service as a board, and I appreciate your time.

Thank you. Okay, I am going to apologize in advance if I don't pronounce this name right, but I'm having trouble reading it. Nassam Yala? Hi, how are you? Naga, I'm

terrible in writing.

I'm so sorry.

So I just want to introduce myself. I have a son who's currently a classmate of the parents here who's just started high school. And I just want to start by saying I'm so grateful and grateful for this conversation. I'm grateful for the hard work that has led us to this moment. And I'm thankful for the parents who've been tireless advocates for their kids I'm thankful for people like Cameron Poole and Dr. Wiens, Dr. Patel, and you guys as board members for having our backs. And I do want to echo what Cordell said, that this is not an indictment of special school district. We are so grateful for the men and women who have worked tirelessly with our kids day in, day out. But I do think that there is a need for systemic change. I think a lot of us acknowledge that change is likely slow to come, and this is the start of a dialogue and hopefully continued reforms on this front. But I think a big part of the issue is the nature of the agreement. You know, and I started to learn more about how SSD came about, and I think decades ago it was a really progressive, you know, system meant to serve lots of children across the county. And now I think it is failing the children of Clayton and other well-resourced districts. And I think we're not the first to question this. It sounds like there have been other districts that have questioned this. I learned a lot about the Kirkwood District, who also drew a lot of the conclusions many of us parents had come to, is why couldn't the district deliver these services to our children directly? We would do away with bureaucracy, we'd probably have more accountability and certainly more transparency in how services were provided to our kids. I've learned, just like the Kirkwood parents did, that we're legally sort of bound with this arrangement to the point where even things like the sort of cursory agreeing every year to work with SSD is sort of just a formality. It's sort of baked into the law. So here we are. I heard a lot of testimony from the former superintendent of SSD that this is the only way and this is the best way to deliver services, and it simply isn't true. There's only a handful of districts in the entire nation that subscribe to this model. In most districts, the services are delivered directly by the school district, by folks with special education backgrounds in the best districts, advanced degrees, who are charged with actually rendering the services. I come from a medical background. And oftentimes, when we look at how people, patients fall through the cracks, we know it's not because of individual bad actors. No one goes to work wanting to cause harm. But it's usually because a series of holes, that Swiss cheese sort of model has come into effect. And the system has allowed people to sort of fall through those cracks. And that's what I think is sort of . After a lot of discussion and kind of learning what other districts have done to sort of remedy this, I do agree with the conclusion that's been drawn that we need to have someone within the Clayton district sort of supervise or subsume SSD under that, kind of using SSD as a service provider. And that designated person within the school district of Clayton can hopefully address deficiencies, be the point of contact for parents, be the advocate for our children, and I think that would hopefully create more accountability in the long term. I think that's a full-time job. I don't think it can be a job that can be accomplished by someone who already has existing responsibilities because SSD renders services at every level, elementary, middle, and high school. We imagine that this person would come to all the IEP meetings, would, you know, recognized efficiencies and that the district could potentially supplement. We've talked about the fact that there isn't, there's one OT for the entire school district of Clayton. That's simply, you know, and that's what SSD provides. Could Clayton step in and provide another occupational therapist to address the needs of our kiddos? And then work with teachers across the district to implement measures that would benefit not just SSD kids but perhaps all kids. Things like a sensory route, for example. in the elementary school. So again, I want to thank you all for all the hard work that's been done. And again, I hope this is a start of continued conversation and dialogue and continued reform.

Thank you so much. Michelle Abenader.

Hello, everybody. Michelle and my husband, who I just said, please come be here because I get shaky. Okay. Thank you all in this room who are helping with the 10% of student population that are receiving services from special school district. I hope you all recognize the important responsibility you have for the continuation of the wave of change that you can take credit for beginning here in Clayton. And I can assure you, the 20 other St. Louis County school districts who receive SSD benefits will notice. How do I know this? I am Michelle Abinader, Vice President of the Board of the Down Syndrome Association of Greater St. Louis. I'm an educator, I'm a wife, mother of three teen boys, and a daughter, Cecilia, also known as Cricket, who is our sixth grader here at Y-Down, violinist, swimmer, active Girl Scout, on and on and on and manifest as many gifts as she possibly can with her Down syndrome diagnosis. And I can assure you that the 12 years that I have been in what I call the sorority I did not choose, that of being a mother with a child of different abilities, has taught me about miracles, pure truth, and resilience. Unfortunately, I have also seen oppression, denial, and marginalization of these people that cannot speak up for themselves. And I am blessed to be active in this community of St. Louis with families in all 22 districts of St. Louis County that receive SSD benefits. I am also in conversation with families of districts that do not receive SSD benefits, aka St. Charles, et cetera, and also the rural districts that do their best with everything that they have, which is never enough. So I pay attention. I ask a lot of questions. I talk to the people that I know can move the things, and that's how I know this. So I spoke to you all in September of 2023, and since then, I've seen Cricket blossom. Her schedule is basically divided into the two categories, and first category is the Clayton teacher classes with her typical peers, and the second category is teachers with her SSD peers. There's been a shortage with SSD. The employee of SSD, Tess, who quit abruptly last October with no explanation, left us without a case coordinator. I requested she be replaced by Randon Recker, a brand-new teacher here in Clayton, and he's been doing great, but the bouncing around of SSD employees has been more than a challenge for me as a parent. And I come with experience. So for me... to have challenges i can only imagine what it's like for the other 9.8 percent of students in clayton that have services so what i really encourage administration and board of clayton school district do is number one check with ssd employees and get their input on why things are I don't know what word to use here, inconsistent. There's one teacher that has worked for 19 years for SSD all at Wydown, Liz Charlton. She's amazing. I would recommend you talk to her. Cricket's paraprofessional, who I don't really like the word paraprofessional because the Greek root word para means to walk beside and the Latin root means to protect against, which is sometimes how I feel feel we need to be acting for our children is to protect them from the people who are supposed to be serving them. And again, I refer to the SSD people. And there are some people who just need to be looked at closer. And I know that we can do more investigating as Clayton representatives over the services that you're receiving. Because we've changed the light bulbs. You might get services for maintenance. Who checks on those people that are working on the things? So, and I did ask all of the SSD teachers that I am friends with to come to this meeting tonight and maybe speak up. And are there any of you here tonight? Any hands up for SSD employee? Yeah. They didn't feel safe. Thank you.

Okay. And Tani Whitlock.

So I would like to thank Dr. Patel, the School District of Clayton Board of Education, Dr. Am I pronouncing this right? Thank you. For getting us to this point and your continued engagement. The facilitation update that you all received reflects much of what we've had no success in the past with escalating and addressing. I would like to specifically commend Dr. Deloach because while the School District of Clayton and special school district administrators were unable to adequately communicate the concerns gathered in two community engagement forums and all feedback provided prior to then, one individual, Dr. Deloache, was able to do so. It's that dedication that makes a difference. That noticeable difference is another example of why I believe the proposal of revising the School District of Clayton assistant superintendent of student services administrator job description falls woefully short of a solution. It, by the way, in no way represents what I heard parents recommend and I believe it will largely jeopardize our ability to bring many of the positive proposals to fruition. I want to put on the record a recommendation deleted from the facility report draft and ask the board to consider implementing. It reads as follows. Number one, redesign the School District of Clayton administrative structure to designate a district lead for special education who reports to the school district of Clayton superintendent and is responsible for integrating the needs of students with disabilities into School District of Claytoon general education systems. For example, curriculum, instruction, assessment, co-curricular, extracurricular, human resources facilities. And in parens it reads goal one, semi-colon objectives A, B, and G. Leadership expectations include works directly with parents, School District of Clayton, and special school district staff to identify needs, expectations, outcomes, and a guiding vision specific to the School District of Claytton community and to create, implement action plans that align with the School District of Claten strategic plan. Meets regularly with School District of Clayten and SSD administrators. Teacher leads to anticipate resolved student or parental needs. monitor special education improvement initiatives, maintain current information on students, staff, caseloads, professional development needs. Ensures special education teachers, related service providers, effective practice specialists and SSD administrators participate as appropriate in school and district committees, task force, professional development activities that support the School District of Clayton and its responsibility for educating students with disabilities. And in parens, it reads goal two, semicolon objectives A and B. Represents, I apologize, School District of Clayton at special education, SSD and SDC in parens, events such as start of school, special education orientation meetings, transition and orientation events, special education and other SSD sponsored student recognitions. Without this designated school district of Clayton lead, we will continue to get changes classified as noteworthy that merely check the box and are inadequately implemented. Sixth grade transition mentioning of SSD on a PowerPoint slide but failing to introduce them as done with the SSD. School District of Clayton teachers, producing parent feedback surveys that don't really address the quality of education and instruction. Assessment data presented in various ways which continue to make progress indecipherable and unactionable. Facilitation report is correct. We want School District of Claydon to assume responsibility and leadership. I thank you for acknowledging that.

Okay, thank you very much.

Okay, Dr. Patel. Thank you everyone and thank you for the public comments as well. Tonight we will be hearing the presentation and recommendations from Dr. Deloge that will be presented to the board with a motion request for adopting a resolution to acknowledge all the recommendations. So we will continue, and I've said this from day one, we will continue to stay committed to this work and ensuring the success of every single child in this district. With that, I do want to move into the superintendent update. I always like to start off with some celebrations in terms of our students. And this slide, I'm going to focus on actually our athletics, winter athletics sports teams right now. I had the pleasure... of watching the boys basketball game last night, which was very exciting to the last second. We did win that, and that brings us to a 10-game winning streak, which we have not done since the year 2000. So since 2000, we have not had 10-game winning streak. We've clenched the conference championships, and we have a record of 17-8, and our last home basketball game is this Friday. So I hope you guys can attend to that. Same success with the girls' basketball team. They've clenched conference champs, and they're undefeated in their conference play with one last game left. with a 16-7 record. And then, if you all remember on Friday, we had a little bit of snow. And during that snow, we had our swim team actually participating in state, and they came in second place. They just lost to Cape Central by 1.5 points. So an amazing, amazing season. They went 11-0 for the entire season, and they're conference champs. And they made it back safely on the bus, which I do want to take a moment to thank our bus driver, Carl, who came, brought the team back safe and sound and was very calm from what I hear and very confident in the driving. So we came back safe. Oh, and dive, swim and dive. Yes, yes. Yes, thank you. I always say swim, but swim and dive. Absolutely. And then I want to thank all of our SROs who are so dedicated to our district. Every single day they'd come to work, they build relationships with our staff and our students. They take care of us not only social-emotionally, but our safety and security. And so we have Herman, Jack, and our most recent SRO, Ryan Riley, who splits amongst the elementary schools. And so we celebrated them just last week, I believe, but they're trusted adults for all of our students. And again, they build solid relationships with them. So we're very thankful for them. Friday also during the snow, which is the second time this has happened to us on our professional learning day, we had to cut the day short. So the morning was when we had all of our staff participate in content PD, so math, social studies, ELA. So it was all related to that, and they had over 30 different content sessions that were run by all of our coordinators. And I think we just need to take a moment and really thank all of our coordiners that put all the work behind these days. It's incredible. In addition to not only our certified staff, our classified staff also participated in professional learning. So they had book studies. They could have CPR sessions. I know Heike, for example, went to the nutrition and meal planning professional learning. So a lot of opportunities for our staff to continue to learn and grow just like we expect our students to do that, our adults do that, and model that. So I want to thank all of the coordinators and our advisors Department and Office of Teaching and Learning. So thank you for all the work you put behind that. Upcoming on March 26th, the PTO Council is going to be hosting the candidate forum at Clayton High School from 7 to 8.30. Anyone is invited to participate. They will have it moderated where audience members can ask questions to the candidates. And then after this, they are going to hold an informal meet and greet for any of the board candidates in the Upper Commons at the high school. So I hope you can attend that event. And then finally, we continue to work on our long-range facilities plan. We had the deadline today to submit qualifications for our architecture firm. As you can notice, these are the six firms that send in their proposals. So our next steps are going to be John Brazile and the team will review all the information, We'll interview these firms, and then at the March board meeting, we'll come with a contract agreement for one of the firms. Part of that will include the timeline of next steps and community engagement and appropriate intervals for that. So I wanted to update you on that. And then as you know, our two presentations for tonight, the first one we're going to start off with Dr. Wiens and Dr. Deloge giving us an update on all the work that we've done up until now and the recommendations. for us. And then after that, we were going to have a legislative update with Dr. Hockman, who's going to come here and give the board an opportunity to talk about that. So thank you for being here, everyone. And we will have Dr. Deloach and Dr. Wiens come up. Oh, Mohini. I'm going to hand it off to you next.

Hi, everybody. So everyone's enjoying coming back from the long weekend and having a four day week. And so since it's warm outside, I've even heard some teachers are taking their classes outside, which is really cool and definitely a great use of the campus. And so I have a couple updates. The first one is that the Wellness Center opened yesterday, and while I haven't gotten a chance to visit it, what I have heard is a lot of really positive discourse. Mrs. M came to all of our math classes throughout the grades and talked to everybody about what the Wellness Center has to offer, you know, what it's going to be like, and how it would really work for individual students. And as we talked about last meeting, it really emphasized the point is that the wellness center is definitely there when you need it in specific situations, but it's also there to provide structural support for students. And I think during math class, I've heard a lot of people really engaged in asking questions, which is a great step for people really becoming comfortable with the wellness center and what it has to offer. So I'm really excited. I think we're going to hear a lot more updates over the next couple months. And then also, Science Olympiad got second at regionals in both Wydown and Clayton High School. And so both of them are going to state in the next couple months. And it's a really solid program. They start in sixth and seventh grade. And basically, they do a lot of... application of in-school learning in these activities and you can really see it continue not and have that transition from Y down to Clayton. And especially for Clayton High School, it's like a relatively new program. It's only been around for about five years and comparatively the last year they went from getting fourth place in districts to second so it's really impressive to see. And for a lot of the academic clubs like DECA and Speech and Debate, they've been doing really well recently. And so I think because students are able to use their in-class learning in these academic clubs, it's really showing how, you know, Clayton is also advocating for both sides for students. And then finally, at the most recent SPSA meeting, we had a lot of interesting discussions. I don't know if we've mentioned this yet, but students are really interested in seeing like a repainting of the Clayton Center parking lot. Apparently like the lines are really faded and so yeah. Yeah, also we had a really interesting discussion where some of the, so SPSA has freshman, sophomore, juniors, and seniors, so across all grades. And some of the seniors are actually advocating for graduation cords. where basically for the activities and the sports you do, you get cords at graduation. And they really felt like because their time at CHS is coming to end, they wanted more ways to display their accomplishments. And a key aspect of that discussion we have is how do you implement something like that without it being exclusionary? But honestly, everyone felt because people tend to participate so much in the Clayton community, that wouldn't necessarily be an aspect of it. But, you know, the SPSA felt like that would be really cool. And even if it's not possible, I think, you know, Clayton School District really promotes this idea of how we can continue to support and celebrate our students. And so we would really be excited to see more of that.

Very good. Thank you so much, Mohini. All right. Now, Robin, we are ready for our 60.

All right. Good evening, everybody. Again, my name is Robyn Wiens. I'm the assistant superintendent of student services. And tonight, Dr. Thurma Deloche will be sharing her key findings from her special education facilitation report. Also want to welcome Dr. Macklin, superintendent of special school district, also to our presentation this evening. So just a little bit of background. As you have already heard at previous board meetings, we have been working through parent concerns related to special education and the delivery of services and the communication and collaboration and systemic relationship between the School District of Clayton and Special School District of St. Louis County. And in response to those parent concerns, We hosted several special education community engagement forums back in August, and we also came to the board table in September and in October to speak with you about the special school district partnership agreement where we had synthesized a lot of the information gathered from those parent concerns and those community engagement forums. That led us to the hiring of an outside facilitator, Dr. Therma Deloach, who's a retired administrator from several local school districts who has expertise in special education and support services. And so at this point I will hand it over to her to tell you a little bit more about her process and her findings.

All right. Good evening, everybody. Again, my name is Robin Wiens. I'm the assistant superintendent of student services. And tonight, Dr. Thurma Deloche will be sharing her key findings from her special education facilitation report. Also want to welcome Dr. Macklin, superintendent of special school district, also to our presentation this evening. So just a little bit of background. As you have already heard at previous board meetings, we have been working through parent concerns related to special education and the delivery of services and the communication and collaboration and systemic relationship between the School District of Clayton and Special School District of St. Louis County. And in response to those parent concerns, We hosted several special education community engagement forums back in August, and we also came to the board table in September and in October to speak with you about the special school district partnership agreement where we had synthesized a lot of the information gathered from those parent concerns and those community engagement forums. That led us to the hiring of an outside facilitator, Dr. Therma Deloach, who's a retired administrator from several local school districts who has expertise in special education and support services. And so at this point I will hand it over to her to tell you a little bit more about her process and her findings.

So I need a little coaching on the mic. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Wiens for that introduction and a little bit of background. And really I think I want to start by thanking the school districts that invited me to participate in this engagement and the parents, some of whom were here tonight to share Again, their comments and their perceptions and observations. I really appreciate that opportunity and have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to get to hear their stories and to work with them on trying to figure out what are the best ways to move forward. So thank you for that. I want to start by actually just talking a little bit about the partnership agreement and the action steps. I did have the opportunity when I was first beginning this work to really research that, to read it, and I just want to comment that I was very impressed. I know that one of the reasons why I'm here Why we wanted to do the facilitation was because there were a number of things that parents were concerned had not been addressed through the action steps. But in going through it, there were a lot of really solid recommendations and changes that were identified. And I know that that work has already begun. I was particularly impressed by the timelines that were established as well as the fact that there was data being collected. So I just want to make sure that people recognize and remember that that work was done and it is already beginning. I think that in terms of the facilitation that I've done and the ongoing parent engagement work, it really has been next steps. So the existing action steps are there. That work is continuing. And what I'm doing is really trying to just continue to move it forward to fill in those gaps. And so looking at the slide, really what I defined my role as being was really to move beyond the partnership agreement and the 26 action steps that were identified and work on really understanding the stories of the families in terms of their experience with special ed here in Clayton. What's working? What's not working? What do we need to be paying attention to? So that was my focus, was really understanding their perceptions and trying to figure out just exactly what those perceptions, what they stood for and how we could move forward in terms of addressing those. Okay, so I need to move this forward. What do I hit? Okay. Okay. There we go. All right, thank you. I've got my assistant here moving us through. Okay, so let me just talk very quickly about just the process that I used. Going into this, Dr. Patel asked me to just really spend my time trying to clarify specifically what the parental concerns were. She was very aware that there were some things that had not kind of gotten through. And so my focus was really that, not a deep dive into everything that is special education here within Clayton, but really coming to understand what the parental concerns were. And once I had that, then to be able to try to formulate some recommendations that would address those concerns as best as we could. The process that I used is identified there at the bottom of the slide, kind of in the white print. Really, the focus was to listen to the stories. We had three community engagement forums that parents participated in. the first one in October, another one in November, and the last one in January. Not a large number of parents participated in the forums. I know that I think in the summer forums there were probably maybe 20 or so parents that participated. I didn't have that many. But I believe that all of them who attended and who participated had very significant stories to share They were very forthcoming, very open in sharing their experience with me, and I appreciate that. I appreciate that many of them are here tonight to reiterate those stories and to actually probably do a much better job in explaining them than I'm capable of doing. So thank you, all of you, for being here. The other piece in terms of the parents that I wanted to point out, because I think people have said there weren't a lot of parents that participated. And that's true. But the parents who did participate were parents who have children that spend a significant amount of their school day and their time special education settings and so those particular students and those parents have a kind of a unique perspective on how things work if your child has got very mild disabilities and has supports that are maybe not taking them out of the regular environment very much things pretty much you have a Clayton experience you you're in on everything that's going on if you're removed from that in order to get special education services for fifty percent or more of your school day it's a very different experience i'm not making a judgment i'm just wanting to make sure people understand it looks different it feels different and from a parental perspective they know that it's different for their child So the forums were a major part of my kind of fact finding. I also followed up with individual interviews. There were five parents that agreed to spend a significant amount of time, most of the interviews went on for about an hour, talking about specific things that they had experienced. I also interviewed three special school district administrators, seven Clayton school district administrators, and three special district teachers, trying again to get broader perspective and to kind of validate the kinds of things that parents were telling me if I was able to do that. In addition, a number of the parents sent me an abundance of email exchanges. And I took the time to read through those, to try to get some sense as to what was going on with communication. Because as some of the parents have expressed, communication and relationships are a big part of things that they want to improve. And based on all of that work, and also going through the Clayton website, the special school district website, looking for information trying to in my own way experience what it's like to be a parent trying to use those tools for information came up with my own thoughts in terms of what seems to be the major issues that needed to be need to be addressed i wrote those up in a summary draft it's pretty lengthy i think all of you have had an opportunity to to see it about 10 pages identifying my key findings as well as my recommendations, and essentially took those drafts back to the parents, took the drafts to administrators in Clayton, administrators in Special District, asking for feedback. My concern was I wanted to be accurate. I didn't want to be misrepresenting the things that parents were concerned about. So what you have is the final result of that. Oop, turned the wrong page. Okay, next one. Go ahead. So before actually getting into the report, I wanted to really provide a few things that are kind of context or big ideas, takeaways from everything that I learned. And the parents have spoken about this already and I just want to reiterate. The parents that I worked with really do have competence in their teachers, their special education teachers, the therapists, the related service providers, the paraprofessionals, the general education teachers that they work with in Clayton. They have a tremendous amount of respect and appreciation for the work that they do, and they understand that the job is a hard job. They also have a tremendous amount I guess, what's the word I'm looking for? They acknowledge, they recognize that the School District of Clayton has got tremendous capability. They see that in all of the things that they experience with their other children, with the children with disabilities, with just reports and things that are happening within the schools. And so what they're asking for, more than anything, is that for the children who have more significant challenges, for them to have a school district experience in Clayton that is like what every other student has. And trying to figure out what that looks like when you spend a good portion of your day in special education is not easy. And that's really the challenge that is before us. I also wanted to comment that in talking with special education staff, that they feel very supported not only by Special School District Administration but also by Clayton School District Administration. And I think that's important. They like working here. They're happy here. And that's not always the case in every school district that I've ever worked with. They want to be here and that's a good thing. I also wanted to emphasize that in looking at what is required for special education, that the Clayton School District and Special School District together are meeting all of the requirements. You can't look at anything that's happening and say, well, they're not paying attention to what they're supposed to be doing. They are. DESE does a very deep analysis of special education in all districts in the state of Missouri. Clayton went through that with special school district just last spring, and the results of that showed that they're 100% in compliance with what is required. And so what that tells me, even though I didn't do a deep dive into programming, is that things are really working pretty well here. There are problems that need to be addressed, but it's not The problems are not ones that cannot be addressed. I have confidence in that, and I think the programming and the services actually are meeting the needs of most of the children in a very appropriate way. I also wanted to indicate that in all of my interactions with the administrators in the Clayton School District and in the Special School District, that there is indeed sincerity, a sincere desire to address these concerns. I think there has been some concern on the part of parents that maybe there isn't that sincerity But I feel very strongly in all of my interactions that people want to pay attention. They want to respond. They want to address the issues as best they are able to. Boiling everything down, I think that the essential issues really has to do more than anything with the dual nature of special education and partner districts here in St. Louis County. It's something that we all deal with. All of the 22 districts have had to learn how to do it. And some do it better than others. I think at this point in time, what the parents are asking for is they want Clayton to do it really, really well, better than anyone else. And they believe Clayton has the capability to do that in partnership with special school district. I also wanted to just make a comment about the Clayton School District, School District of Clayton strategic plan. That was one of the documents that I looked at early on and was, first of all, was very impressed with the quality and the vision that the school district has for itself and for its students and for its families. And in looking at that and reading it and then looking also at the things that parents were identifying for me in terms of what their concerns were The strategic plan provides a tremendous foundation and framework for the work that still needs to be done around special education. And so that to me is really important because as a district administrator, I never wanted to be bringing new things in all the time. Are there existing structures that we can use that will help us address what needs to be addressed? And the truth of the matter is that you have that. And so as you read the report, Tani Whitlock mentioned this. I've identified for each one of my recommendations where that recommendation fits in your strategic plan. And so again, look at what you've already got and make those adjustments, make those changes based on a structure that really does allow that and will do it very, very well. So the three areas of concern, just very quickly. have to do with the responsibility taken by the school district of Clayton, taking responsibility, having greater accountability and assuming greater leadership in terms of special education here within the district. So many of the recommendations that I made really address that, not so much special school district. Special school district has its structure It has its responsibilities. It's got its requirements to work on. But what happens on the other end of that is really what parents are asking the Clayton School District to pay attention to and to work with. The next primary area of concern or theme had to do with relationships and communication with parents, accepting parental involvement, parental input. And there's some pretty significant issues that need to be addressed there, both within special school district as well as in the school district of Clayton. And so that would be, in my mind, the second big area of attention that we need to work on. And then the third one had to do with programming and outcomes for students with disabilities. There are some specific things that need to be addressed within that, but again, most of that has to do with how we integrate that within the Clayton system, not so much with just the basic services that are provided through special district. Again, let me comment, you can go ahead and move it forward, that my job was to identify and to report out parental concerns These are parent perceptions and so it's important to recognize that perception does not always mean reality. There are other things that parents don't know that happen within school districts, and so I just think that it's important to keep in mind this is what parents believe, what they see, what they perceive through their experience, and what the recommendations represent are ways to move forward to a vision for the future that is more in line with their expectations for their school district and for their children as they go through the school district. So this first area was looking at school district of Clayton responsibility, accountability and leadership. And I will say that that is the number one concern that parents shared with me over and over again. What they're asking for, what they want is to actually be able to see, hear and feel the administrative teams within Clayton. leaning in, stepping up, being engaged in the special education process, not turning to say it's special district's responsibility to figure that out. The reality is special district can't figure it out without having very strong engagement and participation on the part of the Clayton school districts and the schools. Special ed cannot be separate. It works within general education. It's not something that's on the side of general education. So that's really what the expectation is, and how do we do that as a school district? Well, one of the recommendations started with the Board of Education and having an affirmation, a reiteration of your support, that this is your expectation, that as a school we are responsible, we are accountable, we do want to lead with our partner special district in making sure that special education in Clayton is everything that it can be. And then the real part of making that happen is what happens administratively. The Clayton District administrators and their ability to really learn about special education, to know what is involved, what's required, what maybe is not required but might still be something that would be helpful and appropriate It's it's not something you just kind of know you have to just Educate yourself and figure it out learn from other people go to conferences go to presentations develop yourself in order to be able to do those things so integration coordination collaboration advocacy and responsiveness Those are the things that administrators really need to be able to they need to show that say use those terms and behave in ways that indicate that this is what we do and we define our role with these kinds of things. I will say that, and the parents spoke to this much better than I can, and that is ideally, in an ideal world, if there was a way to just integrate special education entirely into the school district of Clayton, that would be what they want. How to do that under our current system is not easy to figure out. We know that there are limitations by state statute. So what can be done to get as close to that vision as possible? And one of the things that they've talked about is, is it possible to somehow or other identify or hire a person specific to the school district of Clayton who works within the Clayton system to create that integration of special education. Tani went through the laundry list of things ways that that can happen. It's it's a big responsibility but without somebody owning that and really being accountable to Clayton for that it's going to be very difficult for that change to occur. Okay, the next area had to do with parental relationships, communication, parental involvement. And I think the bottom line there is that parents really reported what I would consider a very significant breakdown in relationships. There's not a lot of trust right now. There's not enough confidence that they're being heard. Parents shared stories in which information was perhaps not even accurate that was shared with them, and then when they found out that it wasn't, it's like, well, what's happening here? Why are we not having honest conversations about things that can or cannot be done? Parents often don't feel heard Often they feel like when they've tried to come forward with with concerns that their concerns are dismissed Sometimes the body language sometimes the vocal tone particularly from administration some administrators not all administrators They felt like it was that they were being dismissed that the tone was really almost hostile to a certain extent and as a result of that Many parents don't feel safe They don't feel safe coming forward, and that was one of the reasons why they really felt like they needed somebody from outside Clayton, outside of Special School District to listen and to report their concerns. So what do you do about it? I think the biggest thing is really awareness, administrative awareness and feedback. In a perfect world, it would be great if parents would say, ouch, that hurt when you said that, or I didn't understand that, or I don't think you paid attention. But parents don't feel safe doing that. That's not going to happen. And so administrators need to know that, and they need to take responsibility for it to ask the questions themselves. to say, I don't think we're understanding, or can you restate that, or let's make sure that we've addressed your concern. It's an attitude. It's a behavior. And learning to make those changes is really pretty significant in moving forward in terms of improving communication and relationships. I do want to mention the Special Education Parent Advisory Council. I think that that is a very powerful tool tool for improving a lot of the communication issues and relationship issues. I've made some specific recommendations to Dr. Wiens in terms of how to perhaps redesign that to make it more effective, and I know she's already started some of that work. So I'm excited that that may be a really positive change that can bring a lot more of this forward as we go through. And then finally, programming and outcomes for students with disabilities. I would say that this is probably the area that's the easiest to address, and I will say that based on my conversations with parents and with administrators looking at things on the website, there's already a lot that's going on. I think there's many good things happening here within the school district of Clayton and in terms of special education and the integration of special ed into things that are already happening here within Clayton. The critical factor is going to be to continue that and to continue to build on the good work that's already started. In my experience, when general education and special education work together, when they embrace each other, it's amazing what the outcomes can be. Because we learn from each other, we get better from working with each other. And I think you definitely have the capability of doing that here within Clayton. There's definitely an interest, a willingness, a desire to engage in a more effective way. The specific things that I've indicated there, there's a lot of things, a lot of recommendations that are in the report. I'm not going to take the time now to go through those. But I do want to make a comment about the profile of a Clayton graduate. In my review of information, I had the opportunity to go on to the Clayton website under gifted programming. And in the gifted programming, they had a document that I've never seen before anywhere. And I was so impressed with it. And basically what they've done is they've taken the profile of a Clayton graduate, all of the different qualities and characteristics that you are working to develop in your students, and they looked at their programming in terms of what do we do in the gifted department to try to develop these qualities in the children that we serve. And what went through my mind is we need that for all kids, but we definitely need it for children with disabilities because they're on that same path. And what was very clear to me in talking to the parents is that's the path that they want their children on. That's why they're here in the Clayton School District. And so figuring out what special education looks like, what we do at each stage of the game in order to create an experience, an opportunity for children with disabilities to become their own version of whatever that profile of a Clayton graduate is moving forward. Thank you for your attention. I'm sorry I went on longer than I intended to, but I get started and it's hard for me to shut up sometimes, so I apologize for that. Robin, I think you have a few things more to share.

Thank you, Dr. Deloach. So to summarize the three key areas that Dr. Deloache highlighted for us are the School District of Clayton's responsibility, accountability and leadership, special school district and School District of Claytons relationships, communication and parent involvement, and then programming and outcomes for students with disabilities. So I'm gonna let the board know that We have created two writing committees to dig through more deeply all of these recommendations and to develop action steps. We have one committee that Dr. Poole and I are leading that are covering those first two key areas, and then Dr. Milena Garganigo is spearheading this group that's doing the programming outcomes for students with disabilities. These writing committees consist of Clayton building administrators, central office administrators from both SSD and School District of Clayton, and then also representatives from our teaching and learning curriculum coordinator committee. So we are working through some of those recommendations to identify our own action steps that fall into these key areas. Some of them have already been set off into motion, and we are looking forward to our continued work as writing committees to bring all of this to life at all the different levels of our school systems. And at this point in time, I open it up for questions.

Thank you, Dr. Deloach. So to summarize the three key areas that Dr. Deloache highlighted for us are the School District of Clayton's responsibility, accountability and leadership, special school district and School District of Claytons relationships, communication and parent involvement, and then programming and outcomes for students with disabilities. So I'm gonna let the board know that We have created two writing committees to dig through more deeply all of these recommendations and to develop action steps. We have one committee that Dr. Poole and I are leading that are covering those first two key areas, and then Dr. Garganego is spearheading this group that's doing the programming outcomes for students with disabilities. These writing committees consist of Clayton building administrators, central office administrators from both SSD and School District of Clayton, and then also representatives from our teaching and learning curriculum coordinator committee. So we are working through some of those recommendations to identify our own action steps that fall into these key areas. Some of them have already been set off into motion, and we are looking forward to our continued work as writing committees to bring all of this to life at all the different levels of our school systems. And at this point in time, I open it up for questions.

uh... wants to start anyone questions i just want to thank you all

being here Dr. LaRoche, I'm extremely grateful to you for the sake of our families and for our students. Dr. Deans, I'm so glad that you were able to facilitate her involvement. I think we have learned more in the past year about this particular topic than we have in years, I can't say how many, but I just feel that the learning in this area has been significant and I appreciate so much what you both have done to make sure that we do get that learning that we need and so that we can make the growth and the changes that we need. Your understanding of the needs of students with disabilities combined with your administrative experience is so unique and critical, and so I feel really good that we chose someone with your unique credentials. And I'm just grateful for that, and I feel like I want to say to the families that I really want to point out that I think we got sort of the best of the best in terms of someone who could come in and really be objective, due to your experience. And so we appreciate that as a board and certainly I know the families appreciate that. So I wanted to start with saying that. The second comment I wanted to make Oh, I do really, really appreciate your idea about making sure that our students with disabilities are aligned and the goals that we have for them are aligned with our strategic plan and our profile of a graduate. I too am so glad to be part of a district that has a strategic plan of that nature. And so I do love the idea of more of our work being guided by that. I also very much appreciate the idea of outcomes and data related to how our students are doing being very important, just like they are for all students. But I really appreciate what you said, Dr. LaRoche, about the fact that the students who get 50% or more of their services in not a gen ed class that is a very unique set of students. And for them, understanding where their child is on a monthly basis even, it couldn't be more critical. And so I just, I really, I'm glad the district in general is looking more about outcomes in terms of programming and et cetera, but let's be really intentional and make it a priority that we look at how to measure outcomes and how to collect data for these students. It's gonna be unique and different from the typical student, and that's okay. Like you said, I think as a district, we're gonna be able to, with time and with writing and with listening, be able to develop something that will be what these particular students need. So my last thing I'll say is that I really appreciate the parents being here tonight and saying what you did and sharing what your experience is as a parent. It is the only way, really, for us to be able to learn and to grow, and I feel very confident, and I want to give you the confidence that our district is going to make significant changes, has already started to make changes, but as we know and as you commented, Naga, it does take time But I really, I want you to understand and know that as a board, I can say that we are committed to making sure that changes happen And now that we have this very clear vision of what those changes need to look like in terms of these three areas, I do feel confident that the district will make some wonderful progress in this area. And we're going to look to you for feedback on that as we should. I don't actually have any questions.

Do you have questions?

Your report was thorough, I thought. And I just, you know, I was just pursuing the discourse, the conversation, thinking about what was said tonight. One of the through lines is lack of communication. You mentioned it. Tony, you all mentioned it as well. And it seems like we have an answer for that. It seems like we do. So that was the biggest thing that really stuck out to me. Communication, which I think from there is the etymology of our breakdown. Otherwise, I don't really have much in terms of questions at the moment. Thank you very much.

I also want to thank you for your thorough, I don't want to say investigation, but your thorough reporting and I guess investigating on these issues. I really do appreciate it. And when I read the report prior to tonight, what did strike me, and Chris mentioned this too, was bringing in our strategic plan because our strategic plan does start by setting a place for everyone and our goals do call out all learners. And so I do think it is important to call that out, that the goals we've set in the strategic plan, we have committed through the strategic plan that they are for all learners. And I think connecting that our special education students to our strategic plan is really an important priority to have. So I appreciate the connection there. The only question I had was more just curiosity sake. You gave the numbers of parents that came to the forums and then numbers of parents that you interviewed. I guess I'm just trying, and you did mention this, how the numbers of parents were a sample size of all. Were the parents you interviewed the same like parents that came to forum or did you try to reach others to get more I

gave parents the opportunity. I said, if you would like to speak with me individually, and these were parents that said I would like to. I just want to make

sure we're hearing all the voices that wanted to be heard. That's why I was asking.

Okay, thank you. Okay, I just have a couple questions. One of them is kind of building off of what Stacey said, and I was just curious throughout your report when you said parents like parents expect or parents shared, was that like five parents or was that 75 parents? Or somewhere in between?

Well, no. The parents that participated in the work that I did was a very small group. Okay. So the numbers were, I think, seven in the first meeting, six, and then seven in the next one. I mean, pretty much the same parents showing up with one or two new voices coming in and one or two not able to come. So probably in terms of different parents, we probably are talking about around 10. that actually had either participated in one or more of the forums or participated in an interview. So not a large group, but all of them had significant stories, an abundance of stories. They were not... They have been living with this and dealing with it for a long time. It wasn't just once or twice that they felt a little bit unhappy. They had significant stories to share.

Okay.

And then on those

committees, are there parents on those committees that we formed, those two committees that we formed to address the writing committees?

There are no parents on the committees at this time because we're still going through the process of identifying all of the different action steps and within certain action steps there are going to be opportunities for parents to be involved.

Okay. Thank you.

Thanks, Amy. So as usual, I will make a comment followed by question. So I think just sort of echoing some of what has been said, I'm kind of really thinking a lot about the time and the effort and the involvement of a lot of different events and a lot of different people. in this process. We've spent a lot of time here talking about this this year. I really appreciate your role. It's clear that we were served very well by having you involved and all of the parents and all of the teachers and all the staff that have put in a lot of time on this and rightly so. I'm so glad that we've done that and that we've spent this time focusing on this and thinking about this. It's not It's not easy to think about that one kid that was mentioned out of 100 that's not making it, if that's what it is, or that's not having the experience that we want them to have. But we do need to focus on things that we can do better. And it's not always easy, but I think that's been really good for us to do. So thank you for your help with that. I'm curious, so getting to my question, I'm curious about this concept that was brought up tonight and that you talked about of another position, another Clayton School District position and how that would, I don't know what the title for that would be or what it would be, how it would be structured within the administration. but I don't know if you can talk more. We do have a situation where we have this partnership, legally we have this partnership. The agreement that we talk about and all that, that doesn't really address the fact that we have this partnership by law with Special School District. That is how services are delivered. That is how we meet the legal requirements that we have So can you talk about the context of that, of adding a position that would be a Clayton School District employee and within that structure but would do, how would that work with the way services are actually delivered and working with the people who deliver those services? Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. It's hard. There isn't a roadmap that's going to say exactly this is the way to do it. Though I will say, I've been at this a long time, and I've seen a lot of things in St. Louis County and a lot of things that school districts have done. A while ago, there were districts that actually hired teachers Their director, the special education director, was jointly hired by the school district and by special school district. Special school district paid part of their salary, and the school district paid the other part. And in essence, that person reported to both districts. So it was a shared position. That's one model. Another model is for the school district itself to say we want to have special education expertise as part of our leadership team. And so we're going to bring someone in who is going to make sure that from a school district perspective, we are doing everything that we need to be doing to make sure that children with disabilities are getting the services that they require and maybe even more than what they require because that's the way that we do things in this district. I would say that that was my experience when I was working for the Kirkwood School District. I was paid, well, no, that was not my experience. I was paid 100% by Kirkwood, but I was the person in Kirkwood who had that responsibility. And so I developed my relationships with all of the leadership within special school district. We worked hand-in-hand on everything. And that was the way that we managed to move it forward. So that would be the third way to do it, is to have someone who is within the Clayton School District and someone who is within this special school district who essentially are parallel people. So they work together. They're a united team. The Clayton person does the internal work within the school district to make sure that special education is well supported and integrated. And the person from special school district has that responsibility to make sure that we are providing high quality special education services that meet every letter of the law. Kirkwood was fortunate in that I was a special education administrator when they hired me. I already had that background and experience. My doctorate is in special education. I've been at this a long, long time. There aren't many people like me. And I know we've had that conversation. They don't exist anymore. You know, I'm like one and only maybe at this point. But people can be developed. People can learn. People can be trained. And so that would be another way of doing it. So there's not The parents would love it if Clayton could just hire a person. That person would be the director and essentially would be the person that special district worked with to bring services in as a service provider. That would be one way to do it. What I don't know is legally what the implications of that would be. That's something that would have to be really researched from a legal perspective. but there's nothing that would prevent Clayton from having their own expert within their leadership team that is monitoring and ensuring that we are doing things the right way, the best way, and working in collaboration with the special district team to ensure that both districts are meeting their responsibilities.

Okay, so I think, thank you for that. I think I have a couple of follow-up questions if you don't mind. If that position was created, would it necessitate a change in the SSD staffing and leadership in terms of how many employees were assigned to Clayton or would that not necessarily do that? Right? Right.

I was going to say, from my perspective, no. I mean, special district has its own responsibilities to make sure that it's doing things that are compliant with state and federal law and providing high-quality services. So they make those judgments not based on what Clayton has in place. This would actually be an enhancement to the overall team.

That's what I was thinking, but I just wanted to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding that. So then I guess the other follow-up question that I would have, and I realize there's not one answer to this or one kind of maybe easy way to know this, but is whether or not that's the right approach a function of the way services are delivered within a district or is it a function of the workload and the volume and the number children that are being served? Do you get to a point where you need that in-district person because of the size of the district? Does that make sense? I think what I'm essentially asking, is it a volume or is it a structure?

No. I don't think it's really about volume. It may be that the person who would come in to do that would have this level of expertise and experience, but that Depending upon the size of the district that may be it may require a full-time commitment or it may be there may be other Responsibilities that could be part of it for instance when I was my work in Kirkwood I didn't have quite the degree of responsibility that I think the parents are asking for here and in terms of just attending every IEP meeting and attending every diagnostic staffing. I went to the ones that were most relevant or most concerning, and I made sure that I was monitoring that everything was going the way that I thought that it needed to go. So no, I don't think that it is a matter of how many students you have in the district. It's a matter of having the expertise in the district. So that no matter what it is that needs to be done, you've got somebody that you can rely on to make sure we're doing things the right way. But also, it's the concept of integration. It's understanding everything that's going on in the school district all the time so that you know when special education needs to be part of the conversation and bringing it forward. And that's what's very difficult for a special district to do when they're not there at that table all the time.

Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you for helping us understand that.

All right. Well, it seems a little rote at this point, but I just want to thank you for your work. But I also want to thank, you know, our district's participation in that work, and it seems like that was welcomed work by you and, you know, special school district participation as well. I was a special ed teacher for a couple years myself, and I just, you know, it's really important work, right? You can really change the you know, the outcome of a kid's life. And that's really meaningful. That's a really meaningful thing. So I do appreciate all the work that's gone into this across the board. I guess as a board member, I really just have one, just one question. Like, I heard you say that there's no, you don't see any roadblocks, Dr. Delogia, in terms of implementing the plan that was agreed to, drawn up in the fall, or perhaps some of these action steps that you're recommending moving forward. Did I hear that right?

Any roadblocks? I thought I

heard you use the term roadblocks. I don't see any roadblocks in terms of implementing this work. Do you see any roadblock in terms of implementing his work?

I think the roadblock, if there is a roadblock, it's ensuring that everybody takes it seriously and changes their behavior. I think it's about the individual person embracing the concept and leaning into it and saying, I get it. This is who I need to be in this role, whether I am a general education teacher, whether I'm a principal, whether I'm an assistant superintendent. You have to have it on your radar. You can't just say, oh, special's got that. That's special's job. And parents have heard that. Parents reported that that's happened. It happened in Kirkwood. I mean, when I was there, there were people that had that attitude. And it took time for us to show through changes in behavior and change of outcome for kids and for families that it can make a difference. So it's not a quick fix.

No, I don't think cultural change is a quick fix. I guess what I sort of am asking is, I mean, it sort of seems like there are resources available to implement this plan. There's no one saying, I don't want to implement the plan, you know, so we can, you know, it seems like we just need to move forward on this, right, and come back next fall when we have our annual report out and see how we're doing against it, right?

I would agree with that. Okay. Yeah, I don't see any roadblocks. All

right, that's it.

I want to thank you all, so I want to thank Dr. Loloche for her work. I truly want to thank the parents who came here tonight because I truly understand that the 272 students who receive services, every single one of them matter, and that the parents' voice are their lived experiences. I thank you as a Board of Education just because you guys have been hands-on and informative in this piece, and I think that's vital just as we are in the stage of accountability. And so I can truly say as a superintendent that we are not there, but there's some things that we need to do to be able to get there. We're going to take those recommendations and make the next steps.

Okay, thank you. Can I ask one follow-up question? I'm wondering if either... If we have done any research into school districts, I'm not saying that we don't do this well, because I think that there's a lot of good here. And I think that we're doing a lot of great work. And I recognize all of the work that admin, especially over the past year, has put into improvements and SSD as well. I'm wondering, have we looked at other school districts that do this really well, maybe on the West Coast or looked in kind of to see if they're doing anything that is different than maybe what we're doing here that is working really well or different?

So it's a little bit complex in the sense of there are so few places that have the district overlay. Well, that's right. I will say just in the last several months have done a lot of work myself in going to other places school partner districts, learning from them to see what their challenges and successes are, doing site visits as well as attending national conferences related to special education and serving students with disabilities. And it was interesting to be in those spaces and even where districts were all embedded and there was not a dual system that some of the cultural fragmentation in terms of who's at the table making certain decisions and where communication breakdowns are happening were also happening in places where special ed services were embedded. Obviously, the accountability is a lot different in terms of structural, but I think at the end of the day, the commitment was very similar to ours of there are definitely areas that we want to improve on and that we want to learn more about so that way we can do better and service our families and their students better. I do want to bring your attention to an opportunity for the board to actually take action on some of the recommendations that Dr. Deloach presented. Yes, okay.

has everybody had a chance to review the resolution okay so we're ready okay so go Gary go ahead and read it please

sec

Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, so motion passes.

that it is a public document. It is on the board docs. This particular agenda, this particular resolution that we just voted on has been made public and has been there for at least two days. So if you would like to read it, please do. It is available to anyone.

Okay. Thank you. Are we gonna take a break? Sure. All right, you guys wanna get started?

Okay.

Okay, we're gonna go back live. Pam, take a seat. It's not public, we're not live yet. Are we live? Oh, okay, sorry. I didn't realize we were live. Okay. So we are moving on to our legislative update. Hi there.

Yeah. Thank you. Let me begin by saying that I am extremely hoarse. It's been around for a long time, and after teaching two classes last night, that did not help. So I hope you will bear with me, and my hoarseness kind of comes in and out. um it's a pleasure to be here and if it's okay to say it's an honor to be here and back here so thank you my name is jerry hockman i am a retired teacher principal superintendent worked for our state of new Jeffery Yorg for a couple of years network superintendent in st louis public schools most recently So I bring years and years of paying attention to legislation and issues, usually from the other side of the table, though. So it's been fascinating to be back, particularly in such contentious political times in the state of Missouri with issues. That's not a politics statement. That's just the topics. And being involved any way that I possibly can. So I've taken it on myself, too. pay attention to monitor legislation, to work side by side with a couple of advocacy groups, but I am independent with this. I'm not wearing any hat tonight. So I've been tracking legislation, learning how to track legislation here, and learning a lot about Missouri, some things that I've forgotten, some things that have changed a great deal since I was a superintendent here. So with that, I'd like to begin just with a couple of comments and then I understand I'll do a quick overview of the open enrollment bills that are active right now. Just mention a couple of others, one cluster of bills that are moving rather quickly. quickly right now that you might want to have on your radar. And then I'll just name a couple of topics after that, all of which could have a significant effect on Clayton and on county districts and on the state. So with that let me begin by saying that you're surrounded by expertise and I would say to any group I was talking to I would encourage you to take advantage of that. Business officials know more than folks like I do about business and how school districts run. We know a lot when we're sitting in that chair but the business officials it's their full-time job so when you need to understand what you know the WADA is or some of the other per pupil expenditures and how they're all calculated, those are the folks that I would hand some of this stuff to right now. You have the Missouri School Boards Association, Missouri Association of School Superintendents Administration, Missouri Association of Business Officials, many other associations that live in Jefferson City at this time. they are there daily i was on the phone with one of them on friday from one of the associations uh writing back and forth today with another one from massa they are resources for you and across the state they of course represent the entire state or they have to represent the entire state but they they live and breathe this stuff so i would i would uh speak with them as well along with your expertise here leading your district and and and uh and everybody working on some of the topical issues as they pop up My interest real quick is public education. This is all about time and timing. The session started over a month ago. Over 1,000 bills filed on both sides. Some are repeats. Some are ones that you would expect. A lot of them are duplicates. But there is a trend to see what's happened in the last couple of years. So what I watch, what others watch, what the associations watch are what we might call priority bills or high-impact bills or even high-interest bills. There is process and there's politics, and they intertwine quite a bit, which you'll see with the open enrollment bills, actually. And I add that this is a very unique situation. year in Jefferson City because it is an election year. So let me start with open enrollment, and I'm just going to run through a couple of the key points because I know you've been following it to some degree, have a lot more detail behind this, whatever may be necessary. There are two active bills right now related to open enrollment. One is House Bill 1989. The other is Senate Bill 1051. The timing that I mentioned is that House Bill 1989 has already made its way through the House. It has been voted on by the House, it has been delivered to the Senate, and it's sitting there. The Senate has done nothing with it yet. They have not assigned it to a committee, which would be the next step. There are some interpretations as to why they are doing that in the Senate. Senate Bill 1051, which is very, very similar, just today was moved out of committee that it was in in the Senate and is now going to be placed at some time on the Senate calendar for a floor discussion and vote. But there's no inkling yet when that could happen. because it has just happened. I'm not sure if it's on the formal or informal calendar. The difference being that they can just bring it up anytime they want with 24 hours notice. So it could be in two days, or it could be delayed. Because they have to deal, the Senate, with the House bill, which is now in their lap, and look for the connections, the comparisons, there'll be a lot of discussion. Of course, there is behind the scenes, but there'll have to be a lot more because there are significant differences in a couple of key places and in interests. The bills are very similar. Both bills want to accommodate a student in any public school district to be able to apply to go to another public school district. One difference is the Senate includes charter schools in their explanation of this. The House bill does not. I'll talk more about the details of what those two types of districts are. They're very similar in many other ways, except for the area of some funding caps in some areas. And one significant one pertinent to your previous topic is that the Senate bill is open to all students who are public education students in public schools in the state of Missouri, period. The House bill has some ability to restrict or not accept students with disabilities who are being served in the county, in our case by special school district and you, but across the state. And there's they have their rationale for that because some smaller districts rural districts may not have the services to provide and so that kind of puts them in a quandary if They were to take a student that they truly did not have these services to provide or however, they do that With that, I'll skip all the way down to one part that I have here. And I'm quoting actually from one of the summaries. In important provision sites that districts served by special school districts, of which you're the only one, St. Louis County, must reach an agreement should these be passed with that special school district regarding finance, staffing, and other priorities in participating the program. so however you choose to react to this be vocal about it not be vocal about it do your homework about it in addition to everything you will read please keep the special school district in mind because that conversation is going to have to occur as well So what about the bills? Both versions state that a student in any school district could apply to any other school district in the state that is electing to participate in the open enrollment program. So what does that mean to participate? Every year in October in one bill, December in another, a school district will have to declare, we want to participate. We want to be a receiving district for transfer students. And that would have to be done annually. That means that that participating district has many, many guidelines and stipulations that they have to follow. The receiving school district One that chooses to participate can accept as many students as they want. There is no cap on a receiving school district saying, we only want to take X number of students. And I apologize in some previous communications based on some previous communications that that was not stated correctly. I apologize for that. The other districts that choose not to be a participating school district are still obligated to have a policy, if this all passes, which would be based on a model policy written by DESE at the state level as to what this program is in all of its components, and then they would be saying, but we're not going to participate in the program as a receiving district. However, any student in any district can apply to go to a participating district. There is a cap on that at the beginning. So if school district A says we do not want to participate, But they have students, families who want to apply to go to these participating school districts. Students can apply. But that sending district can hold that to 3% of their current enrollment. So they can't have the floodgates open for lots of kids in the first year. That's 3% in the House version, 5% in the Senate version. Key thing to remember on that is, that's the way it's written now. So should this move through, should they reach some agreement on whatever the final bill would be and what that number is, that would be for now. But as we've seen already this year, there are bills that were passed last year that they are trying to change what they legislated to accommodate other interests. So that's not to say that it's 3% now, but next year or the year after, they won't come back and say, now we want to up it to this amount or up it to that amount. And that feature applies to many other components of this. Let's see, policy. So there are these stipulations. I'm just going to hit some of the topics to have them on your radar. So in this model policy that would be developed in the legislation, it makes statements about who could apply, what the selection process would be, how students would be selected on a first-come, first-served basis. How students would be allowed to participate in future years. For example, siblings of existing students would have a priority. Students in one of the bills based on free and reduced lunch status. And there are many, many stipulations as to who would be prioritized in being accepted by a receiving school district. In both bills, the provision is that parents who are transferring their own student to a new district would have to provide transportation. There are, however, some contingencies on that. One is that if the district that they were attending is a contiguous district, then that parent could take that student to a bus stop there and get a ride to school, is the example they always use. There are other stipulations, and... in one bill sixty million dollars and on the other bill eighty million dollars to be set aside to help accommodate transportation for students with disabilities and students who qualify for free and reduced lunch or other very specific stipulations. So this fund that I'll get to in a moment, one of the reasons it's there is to accommodate transportation. That would include reimbursing parents who transport their own kids if they fall into one of those categories that I mentioned. When a student would apply and go to a district, there's a commitment that they must stay for one year so they can't be hopping districts or hopping schools back and forth during the course of the year. There are regulations on participation in sports that if a student applies to a school that has a selective process, like a magnet school that has selective processes to who enters, they have to qualify to actually get into that school. But there are many, many other specifics like that that you would read the detail. all of this would be implemented by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. They would be charged with the model policy and then developing the application process, the online process, monitoring who's applied, who was accepted, who was not accepted, handling the appeals for those that were not accepted, and imagine how cumbersome that is to do essentially pupil services for the entire state, having worked with the desegregation program here, and that was only with 18 districts in St. Louis public schools, knowing the operation it took just to take care of that. Didn't have the technology that they have now, but that in itself is going to be a project that of keeping track of all of these students and all that it would take. And this would be beginning in 25, 26, should it pass. I mentioned the parent public school choice fund that would be established. The House bill wants to allocate $80 million for that. The Senate wants to allocate $60 million for that. That would serve primarily two purposes. One is to accommodate certain transportation costs for students that qualify that I mentioned, and the other it would provide receiving districts, those that have said we want to participate, to seek reimbursement for some costs for certain special education students. And there's a formula in one based on the average daily attendance rate for that school district, and then three times that amount would be the amount that could be allocated for that for a student that qualifies for there. The other bill does not get that specific. But the idea there is to not keep students from applying because of their special education needs and so there would be a fund to work in reimbursed districts for that the I mentioned the other school district program the There is one term, two terms that are being used a lot that those experts that I've mentioned, they still have not figured it out because I'm not sure it's clear. And that is school districts that have been or are participating in a desegregation program. and school districts that have taken on to voluntarily diversify and have a diversity plan in their school district somewhere in the state. And there are stipulations in there for that to with the attempt to prohibit more segregation in the schools in the state because of an open enrollment program, because that could conceivably happen. That is, as I said, I've talked to several people who do follow this daily and they are not 100 percent clear because the legislators that they speak to are not 100 percent exactly what they mean by that or they know what they mean and want. They don't know how it would be implemented, so they're not clear about it. And there's also a political politics issue of that, sorry, with the ultra-conservative caucus of the Republican Party and the Republican Party as to whether or not they would even want that clause. So there's a lot of politics in that one issue. So that's just one to keep monitoring how that plays out. I actually am going to stop there and wanted to hit some highlights, be glad to answer questions, but certainly you all want to discuss this amongst yourselves.

Yeah. Thank you. Let me begin by saying that I am extremely hoarse. It's been around for a long time, and after teaching two classes last night, that did not help. So I hope you will bear with me, and my hoarseness kind of comes in and out. um it's a pleasure to be here and if it's okay to say it's an honor to be here and back here so thank you my name is jerry hockman i am a retired teacher principal superintendent worked for our state of new york for a couple of years network superintendent in st louis public schools most recently So I bring years and years of paying attention to legislation and issues, usually from the other side of the table, though. So it's been fascinating to be back, particularly in such contentious political times in the state of Missouri with issues. That's not a politics statement. That's just the topics. And being involved any way that I possibly can. So I've taken it on myself, too. pay attention to monitor legislation, to work side by side with a couple of advocacy groups, but I am independent with this. I'm not wearing any hat tonight. So I've been tracking legislation, learning how to track legislation here, and learning a lot about Missouri, some things that I've forgotten, some things that have changed a great deal since I was a superintendent here. So with that, I'd like to begin just with a couple of comments and then I understand I'll do a quick overview of the open enrollment bills that are active right now. Just mention a couple of others, one cluster of bills that are moving rather quickly. quickly right now that you might want to have on your radar. And then I'll just name a couple of topics after that, all of which could have a significant effect on Clayton and on county districts and on the state. So with that let me begin by saying that you're surrounded by expertise and I would say to any group I was talking to I would encourage you to take advantage of that. Business officials know more than folks like I do about business and how school districts run. We know a lot when we're sitting in that chair but the business officials it's their full-time job so when you need to understand what you know the WADA is or some of the other per pupil expenditures and how they're all calculated, those are the folks that I would hand some of this stuff to right now. You have the Missouri School Boards Association, Missouri Association of School Superintendents Administration, Missouri Association of Business Officials, many other associations that live in Jefferson City at this time. they are there daily i was on the phone with one of them on friday from one of the associations uh writing back and forth today with another one from massa they are resources for you and across the state they of course represent the entire state or they have to represent the entire state but they they live and breathe this stuff so i would i would uh speak with them as well along with your expertise here leading your district and and and uh and everybody working on some of the topical issues as they pop up My interest real quick is public education. This is all about time and timing. The session started over a month ago. Over 1,000 bills filed on both sides. Some are repeats. Some are ones that you would expect. A lot of them are duplicates. But there is a trend to see what's happened in the last couple of years. So what I watch, what others watch, what the associations watch are what we might call priority bills or high-impact bills or even high-interest bills. There is process and there's politics, and they intertwine quite a bit, which you'll see with the open enrollment bills, actually. And I add that this is a very unique situation. year in Jefferson City because it is an election year. So let me start with open enrollment, and I'm just going to run through a couple of the key points because I know you've been following it to some degree, have a lot more detail behind this, whatever may be necessary. There are two active bills right now related to open enrollment. One is House Bill 1989. The other is Senate Bill 1051. The timing that I mentioned is that House Bill 1989 has already made its way through the House. It has been voted on by the House, it has been delivered to the Senate, and it's sitting there. The Senate has done nothing with it yet. They have not assigned it to a committee, which would be the next step. There are some interpretations as to why they are doing that in the Senate. Senate Bill 1051, which is very, very similar, just today was moved out of committee that it was in in the Senate and is now going to be placed at some time on the Senate calendar for a floor discussion and vote. But there's no inkling yet when that could happen. because it has just happened. I'm not sure if it's on the formal or informal calendar. The difference being that they can just bring it up anytime they want with 24 hours notice. So it could be in two days, or it could be delayed. Because they have to deal, the Senate, with the House bill, which is now in their lap, and look for the connections, the comparisons, there'll be a lot of discussion. Of course, there is behind the scenes, but there'll have to be a lot more because there are significant differences in a couple of key places and in interests. The bills are very similar. Both bills want to accommodate a student in any public school district to be able to apply to go to another public school district. One difference is the Senate includes charter schools in their explanation of this. The House bill does not. I'll talk more about the details of what those two types of districts are. They're very similar in many other ways, except for the area of some funding caps in some areas. And one significant one pertinent to your previous topic is that the Senate bill is open to all students who are public education students in public schools in the state of Missouri, period. The House bill has some ability to restrict or not accept students with disabilities who are being served in the county, in our case by special school district and you, but across the state. And there's they have their rationale for that because some smaller districts rural districts may not have the services to provide and so that kind of puts them in a quandary if They were to take a student that they truly did not have these services to provide or however, they do that With that, I'll skip all the way down to one part that I have here. And I'm quoting actually from one of the summaries. In important provision sites that districts served by special school districts, of which you're the only one, St. Louis County, must reach an agreement should these be passed with that special school district regarding finance, staffing, and other priorities in participating the program. so however you choose to react to this be vocal about it not be vocal about it do your homework about it in addition to everything you will read please keep the special school district in mind because that conversation is going to have to occur as well So what about the bills? Both versions state that a student in any school district could apply to any other school district in the state that is electing to participate in the open enrollment program. So what does that mean to participate? Every year in October in one bill, December in another, a school district will have to declare, we want to participate. We want to be a receiving district for transfer students. And that would have to be done annually. That means that that participating district has many, many guidelines and stipulations that they have to follow. The receiving school district One that chooses to participate can accept as many students as they want. There is no cap on a receiving school district saying, we only want to take X number of students. And I apologize in some previous communications based on some previous communications that that was not stated correctly. I apologize for that. The other districts that choose not to be a participating school district are still obligated to have a policy, if this all passes, which would be based on a model policy written by DESE at the state level as to what this program is in all of its components, and then they would be saying, but we're not going to participate in the program as a receiving district. However, any student in any district can apply to go to a participating district. There is a cap on that at the beginning. So if school district A says we do not want to participate, But they have students, families who want to apply to go to these participating school districts. Students can apply. But that sending district can hold that to 3% of their current enrollment. So they can't have the floodgates open for lots of kids in the first year. That's 3% in the House version, 5% in the Senate version. Key thing to remember on that is, that's the way it's written now. So should this move through, should they reach some agreement on whatever the final bill would be and what that number is, that would be for now. But as we've seen already this year, there are bills that were passed last year that they are trying to change what they legislated to accommodate other interests. So that's not to say that it's 3% now, but next year or the year after, they won't come back and say, now we want to up it to this amount or up it to that amount. And that feature applies to many other components of this. Let's see, policy. So there are these stipulations. I'm just going to hit some of the topics to have them on your radar. So in this model policy that would be developed in the legislation, it makes statements about who could apply, what the selection process would be, how students would be selected on a first-come, first-served basis. How students would be allowed to participate in future years. For example, siblings of existing students would have a priority. Students in one of the bills based on free and reduced lunch status. And there are many, many stipulations as to who would be prioritized in being accepted by a receiving school district. In both bills, the provision is that parents who are transferring their own student to a new district would have to provide transportation. There are, however, some contingencies on that. One is that if the district that they were attending is a contiguous district, then that parent could take that student to a bus stop there and get a ride to school, is the example they always use. There are other stipulations, and... in one bill sixty million dollars and on the other bill eighty million dollars to be set aside to help accommodate transportation for students with disabilities and students who qualify for free and reduced lunch or other very specific stipulations. So this fund that I'll get to in a moment, one of the reasons it's there is to accommodate transportation. That would include reimbursing parents who transport their own kids if they fall into one of those categories that I mentioned. When a student would apply and go to a district, there's a commitment that they must stay for one year so they can't be hopping districts or hopping schools back and forth during the course of the year. There are regulations on participation in sports that if a student applies to a school that has a selective process, like a magnet school that has selective processes to who enters, they have to qualify to actually get into that school. But there are many, many other specifics like that that you would read the detail. all of this would be implemented by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. They would be charged with the model policy and then developing the application process, the online process, monitoring who's applied, who was accepted, who was not accepted, handling the appeals for those that were not accepted, and imagine how cumbersome that is to do essentially pupil services for the entire state, having worked with the desegregation program here, and that was only with 18 districts in St. Louis public schools, knowing the operation it took just to take care of that. Didn't have the technology that they have now, but that in itself is going to be a project that of keeping track of all of these students and all that it would take. And this would be beginning in 25, 26, should it pass. I mentioned the parent public school choice fund that would be established. The House bill wants to allocate $80 million for that. The Senate wants to allocate $60 million for that. That would serve primarily two purposes. One is to accommodate certain transportation costs for students that qualify that I mentioned, and the other it would provide receiving districts, those that have said we want to participate, to seek reimbursement for some costs for certain special education students. And there's a formula in one based on the average daily attendance rate for that school district, and then three times that amount would be the amount that could be allocated for that for a student that qualifies for there. The other bill does not get that specific. But the idea there is to not keep students from applying because of their special education needs and so there would be a fund to work in reimbursed districts for that the I mentioned the other school district program the There is one term, two terms that are being used a lot that those experts that I've mentioned, they still have not figured it out because I'm not sure it's clear. And that is school districts that have been or are participating in a desegregation program. and school districts that have taken on to voluntarily diversify and have a diversity plan in their school district somewhere in the state. And there are stipulations in there for that to with the attempt to prohibit more segregation in the schools in the state because of an open enrollment program, because that could conceivably happen. That is, as I said, I've talked to several people who do follow this daily and they are not 100 percent clear because the legislators that they speak to are not 100 percent exactly what they mean by that or they know what they mean and want. They don't know how it would be implemented, so they're not clear about it. And there's also a political politics issue of that, sorry, with the ultra-conservative caucus of the Republican Party and the Republican Party as to whether or not they would even want that clause. So there's a lot of politics in that one issue. So that's just one to keep monitoring how that plays out. I actually am going to stop there and wanted to hit some highlights, be glad to answer questions, but certainly you all want to discuss this amongst yourselves.

I have one question. If you could just repeat the last thing you just said.

About the diversity?

Yeah. I just want to make sure I heard it correctly. Right.

Okay. The language has two components. One is about districts in a desegregation program. However, That is confusing because the desegregation program here has wound its way down. Some districts have reached, I don't know if they're still calling it unitary status or not, so every district may be in a different place and the St. Louis Public Schools is in a particular category that I am not able to describe to you because I don't know the technical aspects of under the law where they are in terms of saying we are completed with participating in a desegregation program, we're continuing in a desegregation program, and that this bill covers and how this bill connects to that. So I don't have a clear answer for you, and I can tell you that a lot of folks don't have a clearer answer for that. So that's a question that I would probably start with the attorneys who follow this stuff every day and say help us out with this. So that's one portion. The language says that school districts that have a diversity plan, which I too have been trying to do homework on, and I guess there are some schools around the state that maybe have worked out a way within their district to try to have more diversity across their district because some districts do allow an open enrollment within their districts. There are... Some districts that have, I guess, attempted to have students come in in some way, shape or form to increase the diversity within their district. But again, I've asked that same question and it's not getting a clear answer because nobody's... So

basically though you're saying, because it just sounds, it's just new to me. So it sounds like you're saying... If you participated in the DSA program, then you can't participate in the open enrollment program? Is that what we're saying here?

No. Yeah, no, no. That's not an interpretation I've heard. Okay, gotcha. What I did pick up is the question is, Could a school district say that a student could not apply to another district if it would essentially contribute to the segregation in that district, which was what was occurring back in the 90s. For sure. And I've talked to some folks in the St. Louis public schools who follow this very closely and others, and still how that would be played out remains to be seen. And so that's the best I got for you on that. I'm sorry.

And I can you

know, I'll send you the exact language and maybe some of you can decipher that but obviously So just

To remind you that we, the board, so we've been asked to join other local school districts in opposition to several bills that I think Jerry's probably going to talk to a couple more of these too. Not just the open enrollment but the voucher tax credit bills, expansion of charter schools and also phasing out personal property tax. We, Clayton, have not taken a position on these, so I think that it would be good for us to have conversation on whether we want to join the other school districts that have already taken a position and opposed these particular bills that I'm talking about. which is House Bill 1989, and then there's these Senate Bills 727 and 729, actually, Senate Bill 725, Senate Bill 733, and the expansion of charter schools bills, which has three separate House bills. And I think the school districts are opposing all, collectively opposing all of this. legislation, and that might be a lot to talk about tonight. So I don't know how we want to tackle this, but... Can we ask him first questions on those two? Yes, I just wanted to make sure everybody knew ultimately one of the reasons why we're having this conversation is because the other local school districts have taken the position that they oppose these bills, and so we want to have conversation amongst ourselves where we want to land. But yes, go ahead.

Okay, I just first wanna ask kind of a just big picture question for the benefit of the board and also the public and community that's listening. The two bills you just talked about, could you just tell us what are the pros and cons for the Clayton School District if those bills are passed? So if these bills are passed, how will they affect us?

Okay. I guess.

financially and otherwise.

Okay. And the financial part is also a challenge, and I... Right. I'll try to explain that best I can. Pros and cons. It's... Now, it's difficult. I put that into kind of three answers. One is asking the question in terms of an open enrollment program in general and these two versions particularly. And sometimes a con is that it's just not ready for prime time. And there are vague language in this. As of now, the way it's spoken about is open to a lot of litigation. depending how the special education part would be finalized and whosoever version gets passed, that opens up another issue. So just in general, there's work to be done on both of these. So monitoring that for now, I would say that's a con. So keeping track of that. And then also confidence on the implementation with the state. So that would be the case with any bill. Then I kind of have a second one that... the con that if a district participates accepting students, what does that mean for that district? So on one hand, it means that you want to open your doors to additional students for whatever reasons that may be. A small district may want to grow their enrollment. They may feel like we want to do a service to the community and open our doors open to others. And there are positive reasons that one might want to do that. The con is... put some of them this way. One is the long-term effects of this in the entire state. The rural superintendents, who I speak with a group of them routinely, they're mixed but not very mixed. They see this as the demise of many of their school districts, and they are fearful of consolidation, that they believe that the legislators want to consolidate school districts. There's another way to go about working with adjacent school districts without consolidating them, but that's nowhere in the mix in any conversations. So the concern there is that as students leave those districts, they lose staff, they lose community interest, they lose funding. They eventually have to deal with that. That's not just rural districts. That's small districts, and that's also low-resourced districts. and there are some within the county that would fall under that category. So taking 10 students out of this school, 10 out of that one, you could begin to play out how that works with your neighbors. So that would be a potential con. Another con is anticipating, and this would be one whether you chose to accept students or not, who might choose to leave our district. And There's all kinds of reasons that parents might want to do that. It could be everything from a soccer program to a particular robotics program to who knows why someone might say, I want to leave this district. We know there's going to be a routine number. It was pretty standard year by year. How many students go to parochial schools out of every school district? How many go to private schools? That's kind of settled in over time. This now is a new category of students who might want to leave our school district. So that's just something to anticipate as well. What kind of reaction do you get to that? And that'll come up in the tax credit, the voucher discussions as well. The other is that... What do the next few years look like? And you can't predict that. But there are so many other issues on the plate of the legislators right now and every school district to some degree, ranging from curriculum changes to assessment to teacher salaries, all these bills that you're hearing about that are high needs issues. and trying to get things right in the state where folks feel that they're not particularly in the assessment category and accreditation category. Many of those who stood up on the floor to oppose this in the one house said, why aren't we fixing those things first? Because you're saying that people want to leave their school districts. And perhaps we ought to address some of the reasons that some are saying they want to leave and maybe they wouldn't want to. They're losing their teachers. Maybe we could help them stay. So address those. And I will do want to read one. from actually the tax credit bills. It's written in one of the legislative, their summary and it says, where is it? Let me find the sentence. I'm sorry. I have the sentence right here, I apologize. I will find that. But it essentially states the reasons why this would be necessary for a particular curriculum area. And then the last line is, and for those who want to follow their personal beliefs. Find a school district that aligns with their personal beliefs more. So the legislator's intent is in one particular area. So those are some of the cons. The financial cons are actually difficult to determine, and this is what I checked again with the folks at Massa about. Because if you are accepting students, as I mentioned, you're affecting other school districts. And I hope I say this right. revenue per student would not change. So if 10 new students moved in tomorrow from anywhere, your revenue doesn't increase by the ADA for 10 students. Your WADA is your WADA and how that plays out. So the question that you would want to ask these experts is, is it going to spread us thin if we take ten students, what are the effects there? There are financial real effects that someone else will have to talk about very specifically. And I don't know if you follow the fiscal notes when every bill is filed. The fiscal notes on this legislation are pretty much to be determined, to be determined, they haven't figured, they won't claim that. But there's another aspect of this and I've lived in, worked in two states where there was open enrollment is that class size is one, Staffing is another. And then there's maybe one other component. Now, both bills say that no school district shall be required to increase staff or space to accommodate students applying. They could deny students. They could say, well, you know, We would have to add staff to do this. So somewhere that's where the state steps in and says, OK, well then your cutoff would be here. So if you have your perfect enrollment target for fifth grade, and every fifth grade classroom should be this number to this number, and then you're always wondering, OK, are we going to have to split out another class this year? Well, so you can say we don't want to take students in that particular grade level. So that's predictable for one year. But what about the following years? So that's where once the students are there, they're there. So you can't say, well, gee, I wish we hadn't taken those five students because now we have to split out into three more sections. That's additional staff. or sections of a calculus class. So that's one area that you would need to look at in thinking of should we participate, would we want that to happen?

That was a question I had actually. Sorry if you said this earlier. Once a student's there, they're there. So if the law changes or anything, like they're considered a resident student and they can stay through 12th grade?

The way it is written now, it is. And we've asked the question specifically if a school district says this year they're starting in kindergarten and then the following year say, nope, we're not going to participate anymore. That kindergartner is theirs for the next 12 years. Right.

You also said something about 3%. Right. So if you're not participating in receiving district, you still have to receive a maximum of 3%?

No. Thank you for asking so I can clarify that again. No. Let's say this school district here is not participating. They're not going to take students in. Their students can still apply to go to other school districts. You do not have a say as to whether or not you can say none of our kids can go to other school districts.

Okay, so you're saying Clayton doesn't want to participate, for example, but kids can still apply. Right. And the max they can leave at that point in time is 3%.

In one bill it's 3%, the other it's 5% of your current enrollment. Even if we

don't want to participate. Right. We can't deny.

Right.

So we're

still participating. Right. Participation is one of their formal terms related to the model policy that participating means you're declaring we will take students. So a non-participating district, yes, is still

participating. And the money doesn't leave the district though, right? It doesn't follow the student like the vouchers, right? It

Right. Money following the student is complicated in general, and it is here.

When you used the acronym earlier, I wanted to ask you if you can clarify for the folks that don't know what that acronym might mean.

Well, there are a few of them, and I... Like I said, it's all a formula. So the school district has a per-pupil expenditure, and it is based on a formula which is based on their average daily attendance, which is also weighted based on other aspects of the student and the population. So you'll read that the Clayton School District spends or has X thousands of dollars per student. Another school district has a different amount. If a student leaves the school district, your WADA, your weighted average daily attendance, as I understand it, would not change for the next year. for the next two years, I believe is the way they say it because the formula is based on the previous two years enrollment. So at what point does it then get adjusted for a declining enrollment and so your local revenue goes down? So no, a student that's leaving a school district does not have an impact on their revenue or expenditures, on their revenue in that immediate year. Then it's what happens down the road.

Yeah, I'm sure that makes more sense.

So I'll just say a couple things really quickly. First of all, we're very fortunate to have Dr. Hockman participating in this process of helping us to keep an eye on things that are happening in the legislature. Really appreciate your participation in the legislative advocacy groups that meet once a month and we've I've heard me say this before, but I encourage anyone, not just in this room, but out there in Radioland and everywhere else to get involved in that and participate. That's a great source of information, and your help with that has been great as well. It's

my pleasure.

On this particular topic and getting to the issue of what we support or what we don't support, the first time I ever heard these open enrollment bills, it sounded so chaotic and so confusing I thought it was a joke. It's definitely not a joke. They come back every year for however many years now. It's very serious. It's still not, well, it should be taken as serious. I don't really consider it as serious. concept because it's so confusing and so chaotic and so disruptive not that you wanted to hear my opinion about it but there it is um but we do have to take them very serious because there's a lot of political momentum behind them obviously they keep coming back um it was kind of shocking it didn't pass last year actually but um that doesn't mean we know all the answers to these things and then we really fully understand how it affects any district including this one i don't believe that's knowable or known right now As to the issue of whether we can or should support or oppose or whatever, there was a conversation that happened at one of those legislative advocacy discussions where some districts said, hey, we could all band together and say things about this. It's complicated to do that in terms of what the district can actually do advocacy-wise. and what we as individual board members can do. So I think that's challenging to make those decisions or to come to conclusions about that. We have different levels of understanding and experience with these bills and with the different issues, and that's a challenge that we're not gonna solve in one night. I would suggest that talking about it more and knowing what things are being discussed down there is important, but it's pretty hard to come to firm decisions about what we can do about it, I think, tonight. So that's my opinion.

Do we want to discuss it a little

bit tonight?

Well, hold on. Go ahead. Do you want to? I'm curious. Yeah, I mean, I think we need to discuss whether or not we want to join these other school districts and oppose the legislation. There's a few other bills part of that. There are a couple other bills that are part of it. I think, you know, LaDue has asked us to join them. Um, they're leading the effort and they've got, then I think the majority of other school districts have signed on to the, the opposition. We don't have to, um, but we have been asked to do that.

Are we the holdout?

No,

no,

no.

I don't think

was

Webster

on there. No, there's, I think, didn't I? When I texted you, there were like four or five in the region that aren't included as of now. I think Webster... I could look back at my text. And how

have they? We're

not the holdout. And I don't want to do it because of peer pressure from the rest of

us. Have other districts had votes on this? Or is it people from these districts that are saying? Yeah,

it's the

board. The boards, from my understanding, the boards that have joined this movement have had, like, they've adopted and...

A board resolution. Okay.

Yeah. The last time I looked, Webster, Rockwood, Lindbergh and Pattonville had not signed on to this. So those were the ones I noticed. Yeah.

And it was, the bills were, like, I know that this one, Senate Bill 80, or House Bill 89, 1989, was proposed by this Pollitt.

Right.

Pollitt guy. Right. And he's a, I don't know, like, I don't think he's a politician. I don't know if this is partisan, you consider these bills. But it's interesting, like, Ian supported it.

He didn't this year. He voted against it.

No, he voted

just for it. No, you voted in favor

of it. Oh, I

thought he

voted. Yes.

Oh,

okay. I'm sorry.

So it's just like I'm trying to

understand. He voted for it last year.

Go

ahead. All right. Well, I'll speak out here. So as relates to the resolution, it covers four bills. I haven't studied the charter one extensively, so I don't feel that's been a ton of momentum this session. So I'm gonna assume that I'm right with that resolution on three of them, and I'm open to the fourth. I'll open myself up here. I'm open to idea of the concept of open enrollment. As it relates specifically to this bill, I struggle to see what's so destructive So if you take a school district with 1,000 kids and you take 30 of them, that doesn't feel intrusive to me. I don't see how it's destructive to a receiving school district if their board is voluntarily stepping forward to participate, which, as it's written, personal view, which I try to put to the side as much as I can and think about what's best for our kids, what's best for district. But the reality is we are a special school district in many ways, one of which is our geography. I'm for good charter schools. Those seem to be harder and harder to come across these days. And so I sort of look at where we are, the districts that are within a stone's throw from us, and say, basically, is there a benefit, is there a pro to our kids in our district by opening ourselves up to the broader community to allow a small percentage And if that can be done in a way that's fiscally responsible and sensitive to our strategic plan that we talked about earlier, I'm open to it. And so the struggle I have with this resolution is I don't know what it's going to be. You know, we have two vehicles moving through. If I had to sort of guess, my guess is in a slow-moving Senate, you know, This may not even happen again. This year they've been trying, you know, this effort's been going on for 15, 20 years at least that I can remember. But even if it did, I don't know what's in the final bill. So I really have a hard time voting for the resolution for that one bill. Yeah, well, supporting the resolution which would be opposing open enrollment. That's where I'm at.

I hear you, Jason, and I think What's important to think about is are we going to make a decision selfishly, like how is it only affecting our current Clayton kids in our community, or do we want to be more caring, empathetic, and inclusive, and think about how it could benefit what you're saying, neighboring districts and other kids who could receive a better education here.

And how it

affects the region, not just us, for better or for worse, I guess.

It sounds like it could really harm some school districts that are not as well-resourced as we are. So I think to me, it's a bigger question than just what's best for us. It's about what's best for the collective, maybe. Do school districts get to... choose which children, which students they accept or how does that

work? As it currently, there's no language in the bills and I will read them further. She was wonderful. Wonderful. That it would be The word lottery has not been used, but it's whoever applies first. And so that system of first come, first serve, the language is about who can be denied and the reasons that they could be denied admission. And in one, this is going to get complicated. It already is. There's one aspect of the House bill that actually suggests taking that 3% and breaking it into three 1%s. And so that 1% would be for families on free and reduced lunch, and then there's another based on another reason. I'm not gonna dig it out now. That, too, is unclear. Good question. Because the procedures for the application process have not been established. So they'll pass a law and then say to DESE, what are the guidelines? Or what was your

intent?

And that's just in the one version.

But you're right, Amy, it is important to think about how it will negatively impact public schools around the state, even if it doesn't affect us that way. I think that's what we need to think about, really.

It's just one consideration.

Yeah.

I think so. Dr. Hockman, correct me if I'm wrong.

right right that's been expressed as I said similar to you know a couple of other bills this year where they all already want to change what they did last year they continue to tout if I may the number of school districts across a number of states across the country that are open enrollment states if you Look that up. You have to read it carefully because they include Missouri, because some school districts in Missouri have intra-enrollment, so they therefore call us an open enrollment state to help with the numbers. Some states, Minnesota's been at this, I think, for 25 years. Some states have been at this for a very long time. And similar to the way I described, private school enrollments kind of follow a pattern over time. It's kind of predictable. Parochial school enrollments are kind of predictable. Those states that have been at this for a really long time, their participation in open enrollment has kind of hit that mark as well. It's kind predictable. But you also have to look more closely at some of those that get touted and also what's happened in some of the areas. So somebody made the comment the other day that Minnesota's already resegregated. They've been at it forever, and that the major cities have been. That's just a comment. But yes, that's been raised many times, that if this passes this year, okay, this is the first step, and also while they're not addressing the other issues that might keep some of those kids back at their home districts.

And look, if this went much beyond 3%, I would feel differently. There might be things that this year I would say, well, I'm against this bill. You know, I certainly couldn't tell you how I vote for it if it passes. I have no idea what's in it. And so that's, you know, that's my struggle. And I do understand the concern about how this would impact, you know, not as well-resourced school districts. I just... I don't know, 3% just doesn't feel destructive to me. And if we can do something that enhances, that advances our strategic plan, advances our mission, and does it in a way that opens a different educational path to students for whatever reason, you know, then I'm open to hearing about it. That's it.

Can I make one point? The

only

thing

I wanted to mention was the number of students you take is not limited. The sending district can only lose 3%, but some districts can make... But we set those

guidelines, right? We take however many we want?

You set the guidelines. Right. I'm just saying that, but that's not a 3% number. That could be any number. No,

I understand, but okay, so just to... That's what I'm kind of... It's

voluntary, right? Absolutely. Okay. Right. Yeah, yeah, I

just... What does it do to the tuition?

I have asked that question as well, and no one has been able to answer that question. Most schools don't have that. We're few and

far between, I think. Right. But that is a consideration. But it is. We have a lot

that are paying tuition. The other thing is, just going back to what Stacey and me are saying, so I understand you're thinking about the 3%, 30 students, 30 class students, whatever. But I'm also thinking, it comes down to also who is gonna be impacted negatively, as they were saying. And that's what we don't know. That's why I don't understand is who's gonna be impacted negatively. What districts are gonna, there's a lot of students that have been forced to consolidate. The city participates in this also, right? Was it just a county?

It's a state. It's a whole state,

yeah. So the whole entire state, I see there being exodus, you know, those students leaving the city to go to schools out here in the suburbs.

So it's 3% in exodus.

But only 3% didn't

leave. Wait, assuming that they're not participating.

No, students can leave whether you're participating or not, but only a maximum of 3%. Oh, so 3%

regardless.

I think who it would negatively impact are those really tiny rural districts that maybe only have 300 kids max, 300 kids total in their whole district. I think that's what he's referring to, that they'd be forced to consolidate.

So if you

have a district of 300 kids, 3% is nine.

Right. It's still only 3%. And then

when it works really well the first year, they say, look how well this worked. And I think that's the key of what Jason

was getting at, is they're testing the waters and it will eventually, that cap will grow.

It doesn't take much to close that.

Right.

Okay, I have a couple, several things. It's really good to hear all of your perspectives. A couple things keep coming up for me. I don't feel like as a board we know enough at this moment to decide whether we want to join in this effort. And I think one of the reasons why is I don't know what these other districts have done but we considered last year creating a subcommittee, or it was at least talked about. I may have mentioned it. Do we want to be informed enough and possibly active enough by way of joining with other districts to be able to say that yes, we do, and therefore we should have a subcommittee? We should have a board member or two that sit and look at these details that we're hearing right now so that we can then make informed decisions

Okay,

so in that case what I can envision is that that subcommittee could then come to the board it would consist of other people besides board members right and then they could come to the board and say this is what's happening and here's how we feel and here's why we should join or shouldn't join with XYZ other districts. So I think at this point unfortunately we aren't at a where we can say yes or, I don't feel comfortable saying yes or no to this particular joining. I wish I did. So I guess my point being that, you know, I think as a board what we need to think about is how we want to be involved in knowing about informing ourselves about these bills so that then therefore we can or can't be involved in, you know, this process with our neighboring districts and with the whole state. The other thing I will say... It's okay. The

other thing I would say, just because we have shared some of our own personal opinions,

I wouldn't even say this is my personal opinion, although it is. It's also, to me, an opinion of a board member of a public school, which is that, to me, this open enrollment is antithetical to public education just in its own design, meaning I think what – Dr. Hockman said is we're for public education, and therefore we are for every district in this state and in this country having the resources it needs to provide every single student a fair and reasonable education. It's, to me, saying this one's not good but this one is, so therefore, again, it's antithetical to equity. in terms of everyone in this country receiving a fair and reasonable education within their particular home. So again, conceptually, this doesn't feel like the right direction for our state to go in terms of supporting public education.

So the purpose is to have better education.

lot of purposes that you can look at. There's various different... What would be the number one

purpose?

For a district to participate? Yeah, but it's

probably like why are they proposing this? And

I did find that it is first-come, first-served in the Senate building. They actually time-staff applications.

This is what's stated in the summary of one of the bills. They wrote, the sponsor's intent is to implement a public school open enrollment program with a design to improve quality education and increase parental involvement, provide access to programs and classes, and offer opportunity to align parental curriculum options to personal beliefs. That's their stated, and that's just, it's not in the bill. That's just in their summary that they posted. That's what's stated here. Listening to the debate in the House when it was on the floor, a lot of other reasons are stated to be for and against it and what the intent is. I

just want to understand how does this promote those things that they were mentioning that In that description you just read. How does it promote that, Jason? It's going to be my question. I mean, I already started with who... You know, where the origin of this bill came from. Who was the person that designed it? I got that. That was the first thing I did. But now I'm trying to give it... Since it's already in a position where it could be passed, now I'm trying what the impact is gonna be, and why, and how is it really gonna impact these children in a way that they're gonna learn more. I just wanna understand how that's gonna work. And I'm also thinking about like, I don't know, I'm just thinking about like, man, I just feel like people of color are gonna be really in trouble. Even more so than ever before. That's where I stand on that. So, I mean, I just want to hear what you've got to say.

Well, I guess I'll say a couple things. One is, you know, people on the right and the left, including as we said before, our own state representative who most of us around this table supported since he first ran for office. in the state houses as you could probably get, right? I would say part of it goes back to what Chris said. You know, I'm pro public education too. I spent some time of my life teaching in public schools. I taught in St. Louis Public Schools. And I love St. Louis Public School, for the record. So this is not just about SLPS. But there's an inherent underlying assumption that all school districts are the same. we know and we're very proud of and that has been reinforced since the beginning of this year for us people come to clayton in large part for the public schools all right if we are the right school district for a kid four five kids whatever it is that's right for us and can accept that kid in a way that is, again, fiscally responsible for us and advances our strategic plan and our mission, I'm open to it. That's it. I don't know every word of that, which is part of why I have a hard time supporting this resolution opposing that. And like I said before, I sure as heck don't know how I would vote for it as a board member, but I think we do need to be honest with ourselves that Not every school district is at the same place right now. We could have a whole conversation that we would all agree on about how school districts are funded, and it's abysmal how much we're funding our public schools here in this state, but that's not tonight's discussion. The discussion is about where the ball is as it lays today, and that's what I'm trying to focus on here.

if we want to join into this resolution or not. But then the second issue, which, you know, we're touching on it, but then, you know, it doesn't, it's been passed or not. It doesn't matter what we really, you know, ultimately this school board is the one that's voting on it, right? So then I think really the bigger question We can also control whether or not we form a subcommittee that looks that takes a real priority in a focus on this because we know and

that these bills are going to be coming in floods for the next several years.

I shouldn't say, we can go to Jeff City and we can lobby against it. There are ways we

can

contribute to controlling it. I don't mean to suggest that there's nothing we can do. Can we talk about what were the other bills on that?

I don't have my, there was a... I don't have their list, but...

Yeah, sorry. Go

ahead. So the other cluster that I was going to talk about, one of them is Senate Bill 727, which has two components. One is the tax voucher Missouri empowerment scholarship accounts and also would open up charter schools across the state. Well, I'm sorry, into St. Charles County, St. Louis County, and Boone County. And then it changes who would be eligible to apply for an empowerment scholarship or a voucher and also would raise the amount defining what would allow one to apply for one. And so that bill says that if you're, and this I think is significant, that if your household is less than 400% above the defined poverty level, then you could apply. So a household with an average income of $200,000 would be able to apply for a voucher to go to a private school or homeschool. So that's the voucher bill, 727. And then there's a lot more in there. outlandishly long bill. Those are the two on 727. There are four bills that are specifically focused on the tax credit vouchers and the qualified students who could apply. House Bill 2104 and 1738, Senate Bill 1391 and 1392. So those are... Those are the other two in the choice category. And when I said that there are different motives behind this, that one is those who are proponents of choice, period. And they'll argue for open enrollment. They'll open up for tax vouchers. They'll opt for charter schools. And they'll probably go for whichever ones they have the best chance of getting. A quick note on those since you asked about them. As I said, the open enrollment bills, one's waiting to get placed on a committee in the Senate. The other one is sitting in the Senate waiting to be placed on a committee actually too. And the speculation is, but you can never know, is that they might just sit on that for a while. to see what the response is to some of the others. Also, it's politics. If you look something on our bill, then maybe I like something in your bill. So now that enters into the picture. The four bills that I mentioned that include the vouchers and the empowerment scholarships, the House bills have been heard, but they've not been voted on yet. in their committee in the House, so that's where they're waiting to go right now. That could happen as early as tomorrow or whenever they have their next committee meeting. The Senate bills were passed out of the committee that they are in today. So now they're waiting to be placed on the Senate calendar for a floor vote. So those are moving incrementally. And those are

the other ones

Yeah, and two others.

I have no problem if we don't. It doesn't mean that we support the bills, but I have no problem with us taking a position that we don't want to sign a resolution. If you guys aren't comfortable with that, I don't think that necessarily means that we...

For sure. We're going to have a moment, right? This is our first real discussion. Right? Well, it's not

even an action.

No, I don't think there's a conversation because I told her we would, you know, I thought it was something we needed

to

discuss. Totally

that's the right thing to do.

Yeah.

I don't think we should feel

pressure, whatever the word is, like we need to join any kind of effort just because lots of other districts are in our area, especially if this is the extent of the conversation we've had. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, right. I think... exactly what kind of Chris and a lot of us are proposing is we should probably be discussing this a lot more often for sure, maybe a little portion of each meeting, I need to say. Or certainly after every, whenever, after every legislative meeting we have, if there's updates. I just don't want to feel pressured to join this effort because they keep asking us about

it. I think where I want us to be is to know what our appetite is for being more involved or not. Because if bills continue to come up that we do feel strongly about, that we all of a sudden are saying, wow, this will not only impact our district, but we see that it's a really positive going to impact every day. Like you said, all these things that we care about in our values and et cetera, I would like to be able to come to the table and be able to say, oh, the subcommittee said this, we have this knowledge, therefore we do want to raise our hands and be involved. I feel like it's unfortunate that we don't have that right now. Other districts, however they did it, they were able to come to a conclusion as a board. Right now we're just not prepared to do that And I would like to know your all's appetite for in the future really being able to be prepared to make statements one way or the other on particular bills that are this close to being state law.

Well, if you guys are trying to get to a unanimous vote, can we just pare back the one and say we pass this one? I don't

really know if we need to publicly have a stance on anything. Just remain informed.

Well, that's what I'm asking, Stacey. I don't know,

or I don't know.

Yeah, that's what i'm asking. What's the appetite for us actually having a stance on future bills?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really great question that you pose. I don't answer is I guess we have the appetite for that. I don't know if we're going to figure it out tonight. Right,

right, right.

But I think for purposes of tonight, you know, we just need to have a

dialogue. Just have a dialogue. That's

what we should be doing. I think that's why I bring that up. This came out, me saying what is our appetite is part of this dialogue. That's why it came out of this dialogue. So yeah, I think it was very productive.

And it sounds like the five of you People are not necessarily inclined to sign the resolution without being fully informed.

Yeah, I don't think we should do that. But also just having a couple more discussions, more in-depth discussions about this topic,

I think. I don't think it's a productive thing to do regardless, but I mean talking about it. Resolutions and putting logos on things, it's performative. I'm sorry. I don't know what it is. I don't really think it matters. Oh, why is

that? Can you help me understand

that? I just don't think that that is what is going to impact votes or make people more aware of it. I don't even know if I feel like it's appropriate for the district in an official way to take these positions. I see, yeah. I would need to be I wouldn't be ready to even make that

decision. So I think you answered my question. Your appetite is very low.

There's no doubt about it. I've studied not maybe these current versions, but all of these bills in some form multiple years, multiple times. I oppose all of them. If for some unridiculously unlikely reason I ever have to take a vote on them, I will vote against all of them. But I don't think that's the same as what the district or districts should be doing.

Right.

I mean, maybe he didn't support it because he didn't hear from enough people in his district. Yeah. And hearing from the seven of us isn't going to change that. Like, I don't know. But I don't know where these things are impacted. Or maybe

he's willing to give a little bit here. Maybe. I don't know why. To get something over here, right? I don't know the politics.

I think most importantly, I enjoyed very much, so thank you, Dr. Clark, for coming and talking to us about even just the basics of this. I think for our sake and the community's sake, it's so important to stay up to date on these. So I think... nothing else like just this was so great just to hear from you about this and have us think on it i do think we should do this more often because it changes very quickly like you said they could give 24 hours notice and you know then we're back here talking about okay now what do we do about this so yeah i think that's the important thing is i think you know we have a legislative committee chair or whatever or committee member we have them Listen to those reports and everything and discuss it more

often.

And bills that are going to be

really impactful to us, like some of the bills that we saw last year. I mean, I think the question is, do you guys want to, I mean, you know, there's ways to lobby or there's ways to present or to show up in Jefferson City. I

think that makes a

lot. HICA just sent us in, what's the date, HICA? There's an advocacy, MSBA advocacy day, April 9th, Tuesday. Who knows what will have happened by April 9th? I mean, a lot could have happened by then. But regardless, we should all consider going to that, whoever's free that day. I think it would... be a very educational experience to attend that. Whether we're lobbying, whatever is going on that day or not, I think just in mass with school districts and school board members from across the state, I think would be eye-opening for all of us and we would learn a lot from participating in that. That's one example of some action we could do is the NSBA Advocacy Day with school board members from around

the state. You mentioned there were districts in different states that actually do the free choice. And I think you kind of started to mention some of the results, like some of the outcomes of the free choice. What did you learn? Can you share that with us? Are they happy with it or good? Learning more?

My answer would be so general and I don't think it would be fair. That's something we need to do then. And it's not that... I mean, I've got mounds of research And so that's one. And there's also the reasoning behind one chooses in these other states, especially the ones that have been added. Those states, the majority of them started this before the politics were as they are today.

Right.

I don't see why... So, yes, those parents will say, sure, I think it's wonderful. But I don't want to generalize to say whether or not choice in itself is successful.

But did I hear you say correctly, and did you hear, Jason, that he said, am I right, that you said that there has been someone, there's been the phrase that Minnesota has essentially been resegregated? That was,

yeah. That's been said a few times. I haven't had a chance to look that up, and I'm eager to do so. Yeah. I'd be glad to.

Resegregated. Instead of desegregated, they did a lot of the opposite direction. There

are organizations on both sides of the ideology that study this, and of course they're going to tell you, this is really bad for these reasons, and this one's really working for these reasons.

It would be a shame not to acknowledge that you are the father of an inductee to the Hall of Fame. So congratulations. And

he's also in our Hall of Fame, by the way. Oh, you are? I'm sorry.

I didn't even know. It's going to be a

father-son duo. Thank you.

Before I go, just to say the words tax reform so that there are – I'm not going to go through. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it's late and we really appreciate you taking your time to

come out. Hopefully you'll come back. If it's not 10 p.m. next time. I would be more than

happy to, and if you want to send me questions, I can send them. It will help me to the same way because I'll just funnel them to people I didn't. Thank you. But yes, I'd be very happy to. And I'll continue just to send like a quick summary to Dr. Patel because we get those from various associations throughout the weekend of what's coming up next and what's moving at all.

That's great.

Okay.

Thank

you. Thank

you. So, our next item is an action item. So, yes. Dr. Garganiga and Mr. Heider? I'm going to pose that real quick.

but the thinking behind this was, the thinking behind this, was to provide structure and guidance to the calendar committee. And so dividing it into three sections. So the first section really being about things that are non-negotiable as far as the state is concerned or things that as an administrative team we've decided either from things related to contractual agreements or things like that that would influence things. Those to us feel very non-negotiables The middle section of it are the priorities or some of the areas. So if we define the sandbox for the committee, then say here are these things that you could have some agency over determining which priorities make the most sense for you. And then the third section is just about the process that we would be using. So having a calendar committee that's made up of teachers, administrators, parents, students, classified staff, board members, Stacy's gonna, be on that committee, that we would spend time first giving this document to that group, having them determine some of the priorities, and then move forward with some recommendations for a calendar that then would come back to you. So similar to how we do this with budget parameters, we thought this would be a good way to provide some context for the team so there are certain things we don't have to have discussion on and other things that as a committee we could have discussion on and determining the movement forward with the calendar. That's my brief presentation.

All right, good

job. Makes

sense

to

me. I was just gonna say, just because I'm now the board representative on the calendar committee that I appreciate now there is a process so that when it comes to the board table we're not micromanaging and discussing the calendar. We understand there was a process that was followed, there are non-negotiables on this that have to be considered year after year. There are priorities which are things we've heard time and time again from the community, that they would like to see walked in if they can, but by the time now the board gets us to vote, we are now aware of a very structured process by which the calendar is formed. And like Dr. Milena Garganigo said, the committee has various stakeholders involved in lending their opinion to it and tony dr arnold did tell me today that he plans to convene the committee in the next few weeks um like the short term like goal goal would be to have it the calendar finished by the end of this school year but it could be august

me. I was just gonna say, just because I'm now the board representative on the calendar committee that I appreciate now there is a process so that when it comes to the board table we're not micromanaging and discussing the calendar. We understand there was a process that was followed, there are non-negotiables on this that have to be considered year after year. There are priorities which are things we've heard time and time again from the community, that they would like to see walked in if they can, but by the time now the board gets us to vote, we are now aware of a very structured process by which the calendar is formed. And like Dr. Garganego said, the committee has various stakeholders involved in lending their opinion to it and tony dr arnold did tell me today that he plans to convene the committee in the next few weeks um like the short term like goal goal would be to have it the calendar finished by the end of this school year but it could be august

right

and which is which wouldn't be out of line with what we've done in the past so correct

I thought we decided that the board, that we weren't going to vote on the calendar anymore.

We have to by a policy, but it could, I was going to ask this, it could be a consent agenda, correct? And that's what I talked to Dr. Arnold about today is which put in consent agenda. We don't need to be discussing it now that there is a whole process and we trust, we need to all trust the process. and we could just put it in a consent agenda. But there is a policy that we have to approve.

And the main reason for bringing this to you is so we can, again, show you that there is a structured process, and you would then actually formally vote to accept the guiding. So now we kind of define the sandbox, right? This is a sandbox, and we're gonna develop a calendar. This is our thought process. There you go. you know, in the weeds into what date goes where, et cetera. Which we definitely should not be doing.

The one thing I want to be clear on is that the middle section that's priorities still gives some agency to the committee to make some determinations. So when you're voting on these guiding principles, you're not saying these are the priorities that we're holding tight to. You're saying these are some of the priorities that could influence the work that they're doing. We're holding tight to the first box, which is the compliance box.

Those are not negotiable, but the priorities are more like...

Yeah, and that the committee would determine That

and then we will need to vote to approve the counter. But we're not going to vote through that conversation and make everybody go back. Right, correct. Which is why now we have this process. Correct.

Add an extra date if I'm wearing it would be crazy.

Okay, so we should make a motion to approve that.

All right. So I move that the Board of Education approve the 2025-2026 academic calendar guiding principles document as presented.

Second. Moved and seconded. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Gary, consent agenda.

I move that the Board of Education. Oh, I have a question. Oh,

sorry. On consent, I do too. But he can read the motion first. Oh, good. Sorry, Gary.

That's okay. I move that the board of education approve the consent agenda for agenda items 8.02 through 8.09. Somebody second?

Oh, sorry. Okay.

Questions? Go ahead. I have a couple too. I was just going to ask two questions. The tuition agreement, is that an increase? Okay, that was one question. And the next question is the MOU with

education. Is

that

new? No, it's in Columbia. It's basically just one that we do every year. I just knew we had it

with Truman interns. I guess I didn't remember that we had it with Mizzou. Right, education,

yeah.

All right. I guess I'm next. Oh, yeah,

go do that. Do that.

I love it. I'm just joking. The question I have is the tuition, those who are paying tuition, I guess I didn't know that you had to also in addition pay for SSD. So if you're paying tuition and coming to the district, you also have to pay for SSD. ssd requirement uh resources if your kid requires that yeah does that

make sense

yeah so

melissa's shaking her head yes

okay and it's always been like that

you're from outside of st louis county but you do have some property within the county So you're not

already paying taxes in the county that would go to special school

district? You have to have some property here within the county, and then we also do a bill back of services. If you don't live within St. Louis County, you don't get the special

education services. Wow. Okay, so it's not enough just to pay for the tuition because it's clear, but then on top of that, you've got to pay for a couple extra dollars.

One student.

Okay, that's cool. Is that fair? I

mean,

it says consistent with Missouri law. Right, right, right, right. I didn't know that. No,

no,

no, no. I just wanted to make sure we all knew it, put it on our radar. Okay, thank you. That's it. All right. Okay,

two questions. Our MOU, should we change the verbiage there from H-E? Yeah, it said he, she, or I. I never saw a they. So if we could change it to just they as I do whatever.

But we can't report from our students' perspective whether or not they're impacted positively or negatively or neutrally?

Final site. Final site. I'm not sure that would be my

Move that the Board of Education adjourn.