October 9, 2024 — Meeting Transcript

OK, good evening. Adequate notice has been given. I would like everyone to stand up and join me in saying the pledge.

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.

Thank you. And Chris, if you could read the motion to approve the agenda, please.

I move that we approve the agenda as posted. Second.

Okay, all those in favor?

Aye.

Okay, motion passes. And is Dr. Kaczewski here? Oh, there he is. Okay, Dr. Kacziewski is going to present our Recognizing Our Own.

It is my pleasure this evening for recognizing our own, to recognize Tashaun Young, Director of Athletics and Activities, and Steve Hudson, Clayton High School Athletic Director. And I think most of us know how wonderful they are to the entire school community, but I just wanted to give them a special shout-out because they both work tirelessly to really – impact school culture and the student experience at Clayton High School in a positive way. And the reason I wanted to do it today was we just came out of homecoming week, and there's so much work that goes on behind the scenes. And when you look at just the homecoming piece, Tashaun probably works 80 or 90 hours in the course of that week. She's responsible for all of the events that go on that week, everything from the powder puff games to brawley ball to the dance and the parade and the bonfire and the spirit games. And she works tirelessly to make these events awesome for kids. And, you know, we had a fantastic – We had a fantastic dance with over 600 kids participating, which is pretty amazing when you consider we have about 800 in the high school and we had over 600 kids actually at the dance. In the week leading up to the homecoming events on Saturday, we had spirit days that Tashaun organized. And then both Steve and Tashaun reached out to former students former athletes, former CHS Greyhounds, as we recognized the 2004 state championship football team, which was an amazing event and made me feel really, really old because I was an assistant principal when those guys were here. And but it was so great to see them. And they were so complimentary of both Steve and Tashaun and the whole community for recognizing them. And, you know, we've seen and while it's hard to measure just an overall impact general increase in school spirit i would say over the past four or five years and that's really been a concerted effort of steve and and to sean and so i just wanted to publicly recognize them for all that uh that they do i do also this year we we had a junior cheer squad and we did our elementary school pep rally uh pep rallies which were very uh We're very well attended and very spirited. I know that there's a bit of controversy between Merrimack and Glenridge as to who is the most spirited elementary school. Mr. Fisher and Dr. Rimes have very different opinions on that, but we're all winners actually in the spirit game. But I just wanted to formally recognize both Steve and Tashawn because they're an indispensable part of the CHS administrative team, and they help make CHS the great place that it is.

Thank you.

And they can't be here tonight because they're both supervising things right now.

Well, please pass along our congratulations from the board. It is well-deserved being just an outsider and watching the whole week all the way through the weekend. I agree with everything you said. I think it just gets better and better every year. And anecdotally from the kids, I heard it was the best homecoming dance ever. So I think that's worth mentioning as well. And you touched on this, but I think what's also so great is the way Steve and Tashaun have involved the whole community, the whole school community, elementary schools on up, and all the festivities, which I think is just great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. We are now at agenda item number three, public comment. And we have quite a few, so we'll be patient. I'm just going to call up in the order they were handed to me. I just want, oh, before we start, I'd also like to just remind everyone, if you haven't ever given a public comment before or haven't been here to see this, we do not directly respond to each of your public comments. We'll follow up with an email probably tomorrow, but I just want everyone who's speaking to realize that we're not trying to be rude or cold. It's just a procedural thing that we do with public comments. And I'd like to first call up Tim Schomburg. Am I reading that right? Yeah. Thank you.

Hello, good evening. Tim Schomburg, father of four in the Clayton District. That's right, four. Two in the high school, Lillian Lincoln, who's here with me tonight, senior and sophomore. Edie is in eighth grade, and Ruby is in fourth grade. Coming really just to state my opinion on the school-wide cell phone ban. I thought when I first heard about it that that couldn't be what I thought it was, and I looked into it, found out that it was. And my simple thought is this. I would challenge the data behind it and then also look at can the infrastructure even support something like that? Not just the infrastructure of the school, but the society of which we live. When you look at how people communicate today, it's not just kids. High schoolers especially use their phone to communicate with their peer group, their coworkers, if you think of it that way, as fellow students. And imagine if you weren't able to use your cell phone throughout your daily life, they operate in a lot more similar way to you and I every day than perhaps someone in kindergarten. The delta from a kindergartner to a senior in high school is pretty broad. And I just want to challenge everyone to really think through the process and not just the impact to the kids, but what's the motive behind it? And can we even pull off something like that? And does it actually put our kids at a disadvantage as they step into the real world, heading out of high school into college? That's all I have.

Thank you. Next, I'd like to call Jenna Schamberg.

Hi, I'm Jenna Schomburg and I have the same kids so I won't repeat all of that. I just wanted to say that I share a lot of the same goals that have been expressed by some of my friends in the community who are for a total ban of cell phones within the community. And I think it's really important for us to start with that, that we share similar concerns. I'm very concerned when I get bombarded by articles about the decline of mental health about the prevalence of suicidal ideation, about the levels of depression. These are real concerns and we should all be mindful of those. And as the adults in the room, we should be at the front to try to address them. However, I think it's really important when we're addressing them that we do so in ways that the data supports. And while there's a lot of talk about data, there's not a lot of agreement among researchers that the data that is demonstrated and that's shown when we're talking about bands actually has a causal effect. And our kids are taught throughout the district to not only look at data and know where to find it, but also how to confront it, how to question it, and how to ask questions about where there is a difference between correlative and causative data. And there is not support in research for the causation of mental health decline by either social media or by cell phone usages. In fact, there's a lot of discussion around whether or not kids who are struggling with those things, or let's be honest, any human being, who is struggling with those things, use that material differently. And so there is a correlation. We can see how there is difference. But that is very different than saying that one is causing the other. That a kid who has great connection with peers and with adults all of a sudden goes on Instagram and it's out the window. That isn't informed by the data. And if we're making a policy change, we should have ample data that demonstrates not just correlation but causation. And that's the standard that we set when kids are writing papers in their classrooms. So surely, as the adults in the room, we should be applying that. And the other thing is much simpler than that. And that is that I have heard intermixed, as though they are the same, the term cell phone and social media usage. And these are extremely different. And I am concerned that how the petition was presented may have been signed by people who believed that what they were agreeing to and affirming is that social media usage is something that should be treated very carefully, particularly as we look at the difference between my nine-year-old and my 17-year-old. How they use, how they interact with, and how they benefit from, not just aren't harmed by, but benefit from connection with peers via social media is extremely important and must be nuanced. It would be insane if I gave my nine-year old a bedtime based on recommendations for a 17-year- old. And it would also be a huge problem in our district if we, with the same goals, started approaching solutions without a regard for data. Thank you.

Thank you, Jenna. Lily Schomburg. I'm sorry, they were handed to me in the stack in this order. I don't mean to call out your whole family.

Okay, I'm Lily Schomburg. I'm a senior at Clayton High School. I think that a district-wide cell phone ban is inconsistent with other expectations and systems that are particularly in the high school. Me and a lot of my fellow students are taking college-level classes that have college-level content and college-level amounts of work. And the reasoning for that is that we're being prepared for college, our lives, and our careers. But cell phone use is not regulated like with people's jobs or in college, and I don't think we're being prepared that. We live in a world right now where you are able to be contacted no matter where you are. And if we are not taught how to deal with that and how to regulate ourselves, I'm concerned for where that puts us. Another thing, phones are valuable in class. I know today I'm in choir, and we had a choir come from a college, and they sang for us, and we sang for them too. And at the end, they were talking about their college and about their music program, passed around a QR code for us all to scan so we could fill out a form and get more information, and none of us had our phones, so we could not do that. Thank you.

Thank you, Lily. Okay, I can't read your... I know it's Schaumburg. I can't read her first name, though. Okay, Lincoln Schaumburg, please. Sorry about that.

Hello, I'm Lincoln Schomburg, and I am a sophomore at the high school. So discussing the full-on ban throughout the district is like giving an expectation to a 16-year-old the same expectation to a 16 year old as a 30 year old. And that is as big of a difference as it is in kindergarten to a senior in high school, which is a large amount of like. our lives at the high school. On another note, I am in Model UN, and I know that people in Speech and Debate and Model UN both use certain websites and apps to communicate with each other rather than iMessages or WhatsApp. The issue with these are is that they are not compatible with LineWise, which is the program that blocks certain things on our Chromebooks. And that is a very large issue, because a lot of the resources teachers are using are blocked. And it can take weeks and weeks for a teacher's note to be accepted by the school. Along with that, there was an electricity outage today in the newer part of the building I happen to be in French, which is in that part of the building. And our whole plan that my teacher had was on our Chromebooks. So the fact that there was no Wi-Fi was a large issue. So we decided to go outside. And we would not have been able to get any work done if she did not let us use our phones for reference. So she let us take a photo of something and then we built off of that and did our work from there. So that was like, she really didn't know what to do. And I think she thought of a very smart way of handling that. So along with the messaging apps and websites that are being used in clubs or extracurricular activities or even just part of class or connecting with somebody if you have a project with them, they can't be used at the school unless there are specific locations, like the library or the musical wing or the... or just outside the building in general. Even if you want to connect with something, I don't know if a meeting is canceled unless I get a notification, which I won't be able to get on my Chromebook. And I won't be to get it on my phone because my phone is not connected to any Wi-Fi or internet. So I can't reach out. I can't hear from them. So I don't know is there is a meeting canceled or postponed or changed. Thank you.

Thank you, Lincoln. Noah Ben-Shahar.

Hi, excuse me. Hi, my name is Noah Ben-Shahahar and I'm a senior from Clayton High School. Phones are tools for us. We use them every day. We use them beyond social media. I use it every A-day in my band class as my tuner for the day because we don't get individual tuners for every single person, and my instrument particularly, it needs to be tuned very well every time. We use them in class, for example, band, like I just said. But we also, in Latin a lot, we play Blukits and Quizlets, and it's just a fun way to learn a language or learn any sort of vocab or really anything. They're very useful websites, and I don't know, you've probably heard of them. But they're very fun, and I... I think putting a total ban on phones kind of undermines a teacher's authority in the class. I mean, not really, but each teacher has their own phone policy that works for them, and that is how it has been since I've been at Clayton. Mr. Verby before there was even talk of a phone ban he had us all put it in a sleeve before we walked into class but like now in my physics class where there's only five of us we can like he lets us use our phones as learning tools as a quick just calculator if we don't want to take our calculator out of our bag also a quick fact check I think in every single one of my classes I've ever taken ever a teacher has asked to be fact checked or to check something that Because they're teaching, they can't check themselves. They don't have direct access to it. But we do. We can just pull out our phone, look it up, be like, oh, here's the answer, and then we put it back away. If there is an issue in the classroom with a student being on their phone, especially at the high school level, that is the high schooler's fault. That is not the entire high school's fault. It is the individual high schooler's And they're not using it as a learning tool. They're using it as a distraction. That is not the majority of the Clayton population, not at all. I don't. I know none of them do. We don't use our phones in class unless it's for constructive purposes. It is a tool, and you are taking a very – you would be taking a very useful tool away from us that I think just genuinely benefits the classroom, and it just makes it a much more fun-filled and – easier place to learn.

Thank you, Noah. Lavanya Mani.

There's been a lot of conversation today about data, so I wanted to bring up some of my own. Forbes reported last year that in an office, the average person checks their smartphone 150 times a day. They also reported that on average, someone only works three minutes at a time before getting distracted, and it takes an average of 23 minutes to get back to that original task. And if I can move this down. And at that same time, no one is talking about banning phones in the workplace because the fact is phones are integral to our way of living. I would not expect any of you to go about your daily life without having access to a smartphone. And that means we can't expect kids when they become adults, we can't expect that they're not going to have to deal with those distractions with that 150 checking of their phones a day. The fact is that when they leave Clayton High School, they're going to be dealing with those distractions at full blast. And every year at Clayton that we spend shielding kids from that exposure to begin with is a year we don't spend teaching them how to handle those distractions. It's a year where we're not giving them those skills and more importantly, giving them an opportunity to fail. If kids are distracted at high school or even in middle school, if they have those distractions and they do badly on a test, they have support systems at school that can help them get back on track. Those support systems are much weaker when you get into college, especially at a large college, and they're basically non-existent when you go into the workplace. At that point, you're on your own. So what we have to ask ourselves is are we willing to leave kids on their own with nothing but their own intuition? Or do we want to spend these valuable years that we have with them eight hours a day where we can instill these values and these practices in them? Do we want to spend those years making sure that when they do go into the world they go into the world having those skills that they need so that they're not part of that statistic. They're not part of those 150 instances a day. Thank you.

Thank you, Lavanya. Anais, did I pronounce that right? Okay, good.

Hi, my name is Anais Oje and I'm a senior at Clayton High School. I would like to start by saying that as we reach the end of the first quarter, I have not had a teacher ask a student to put away their phone yet so in my mind this new policy is working and i've seen a tremendous change from last year with how few students are actually on their phone and getting distracted multiple times throughout a class i know that social media can be a big distraction and there's no denying that but phones are used for so much more i'm currently in the middle of my senior season of golf for the high school and bring several different freshmen to practice which is off campus like 20 minutes away different people every week, every day of the week, and need to coordinate their rides and make sure that they can arrive safely before and during the end of the school day. And this would not be possible without being able to communicate directly with them. I know that having to navigate these logistics is the case for many of our student athletes at the high school. Lastly, I will be in college in less than a year and be an independent adult, but I feel as though under this proposal that I'm being treated like I am in elementary school where I should have the same amount of autonomy. Thank you.

Thank you. Charlie Myers.

Hello, everyone. First of all, I just want to say thank you for letting us all speak about our opinions on this matter. And I also just want to preface by saying that I have an immense amount of respect for every single person on this board coming for a position. I know Lavinia and I know, like coming from a standpoint of being editors on the globe, that there's a lot of effort and knowledge that goes into policymaking and ensuring that the high school and the school district has effective policies that help benefit students in the long run. So thank you all for that immense amount of respect, just to preface. Additionally, about a year ago this time, I had the pleasure of working on a cover story for The Globe called Do We Trust Students? It's about exactly what it sounds like. Open campus, phone policies, 75 minute lunches, everything under that umbrella. And what I noticed, my biggest takeaway from writing that cover story was, yes, the high school does trust students. Talking with Dr. Kaczewski about how adamant he is about defending this open campus policy for as long as he remains in the school district is something really admirable to be able to see, right? Yeah, to be able to say, thank you, Dr. Kacziewski. that the high school does absolutely care about upholding these values that I feel like I have witnessed for the entirety that I've known about the Clayton School District. As well with that, my dad has been teaching at Clayton for about 30 years now, and it's the reason I go to Clayton High School, why he teaches here, and from what I've been able to comprehend being his kid and hearing about his teaching experiences is that Clayton is most known, above everything else, for being able to prepare their students well for college. So much so that many students that end up graduating and going to their freshman year of university end up saying that it actually can be easier than their time at Clayton High School because we prepared them so well. And I believe we're taking two steps back here. Whenever I have been talking with my dad about this perception of Clayton High School, this idea of preparing their students well for college has been backed up by these facts that we prepare them for internships, jobs, and college in general. And that goes with being able to say that we know that at internships, summer internships or internships throughout the year, through jobs and through college, we're not gonna be having these calculator holders that hold our phones during class. And I just think it's honestly a big disservice to our student population to be able to claim that we are preparing them well for the real world when in reality, we're kind of depriving them of this exactly like how many people have articulated it, sovereignty and freedom and autonomy to be able to fail, to be able to make mistakes and recognize that their actions have consequences and impacts on their learning and success in high school. And I just think it's a really important thing to consider, you know, how are we going to uphold the fundamental values that Clayton High School has been known for as long as I can remember about upholding freedom and autonomy and sovereignty for their students? Thank you.

Thank you, Charlie. Susie OJ.

Hi, I'm Susie Ogier, and I'm glad my daughter was here to speak for herself. And I also have a recent graduate of Clayton High School in 2022, and so I'll start with that. And it's a one-day-old fresh anecdote. And he was home for his fall break. He went back yesterday, just a few days, home from Purdue. And we were watching the nightly news as we do as a family. And my daughter saw, as they prepare for the hurricane, a pediatric trauma emergency doctor that she had recognized from social media. And she's like, oh my gosh, I can't believe it. She's amazing. So it's not only... horrible content that they're you know it's really about parenting about i'm not saying i i don't know what she follows everything but it's not all that and then it led to a conversation she asked her brother oh have you seen this or that and he's like no i deleted tiktok over a year ago And I was like, I didn't know it, but I was like, really? And he was like, yeah, it's such a time suck. I just had to delete it. And so it was like, so when you guys are all speculating that what are they going to do in college? I was like amazed that I just found out yesterday. Wow. He made that amazing decision as a 19 year old boy to delete TikTok because it took too much of his time. So I just want to share like, OK, you guys are being prepared to make good decisions for yourself. But the reason that I came here tonight was I feel like often when there are controversial issues, there's an organized group of parents that were spreading the petition. And I felt like the headline was phone free classroom, which I also support a hundred percent, but it wasn't, you know, made clear within the fine print that they really meant locking it up from, from, you know, seven or sorry, eight o'clock, depending on when students arrive at school, if they have a zero hour until the end of the day. And I know my daughter is not alone of, how busy these kids are and all the activities they do. There's probably eight days out of the school year that my daughter comes home from school. She is a three-season athlete and has a lot of other things. So there's so much. Like, at the end of the day, it's amazing what these kids are doing. I'm, like, high-fiving her, like, okay, you pulled this off again, all that you can do in a day. And I think parents of younger students don't realize all the responsibilities and the things that they have going on in their lives and how they can even – manage it is is miracle and so they you know just being able to quickly check the phone or say oh the weather's changed now how are we going to rearrange the rides and things like that it's just a peace of mind for them I feel like not being able to check it would be so anxiety inducing like they know things are happening and they can't do anything about it and for no good reason actually so I feel like the logistics of it support having the phone. So I just want to congratulate the administration at the high school that they have effectively administered the policy this year, that it has made a real difference. And I feel like that was misrepresented from the group as well, that nothing's changed. But I feel like there has been tremendous change this year. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, that concludes the public comments this evening. So I will turn it over to Dr. Patel for her superintendent report.

Great. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for being here as well, as well as the public comments. So really quickly, I have just an update to give. The first one is actually Dr. Kaczewski referenced it, so I just also wanted to reiterate the great work that the high school had in regards to homecoming. It was a wonderful success, huge community support and it's just a great way to get everyone together. And of course you can see in the bottom right the true winners of the elementary challenge was Glen Ridge Elementary. So congratulations Glen Ridge for that. Yes, that is true. But again, just a great event. Yeah, that's true. Great event, but I do want to thank everyone for being a part of it and coming together for this, and it just keeps getting better year after year. A couple of other things in terms of October celebrations. We have, first of all, our National Custodial Appreciation Workers Recognition Day that we just had recently, so we wanted to thank publicly all of our plant workers who are truly our unsung heroes, I say. They make sure our spaces are clean, ready to learn. And a lot of times we maybe don't recognize it as much, but they make sure that all of our needs are met. So I just wanted to publicly acknowledge all of their hard work here. And then National Coaches Day was recently as well. And they always, our coaches are phenomenal. They not only teach our kids life skills, but they're mentors to them as well. And I really appreciate all of our coaches in our district. And then finally, National Principals Month. To all of our principals, congratulations. The ones that are here, too, look at that. You got to spend the evening with us. So thank you for being here. Appreciate it. Your vision and leadership truly does make the difference, and I know that each of you that are sitting in the audience and that are not here as well are always kid-centered and making decisions for them. So I really want to thank you for that. Switching gears, our Long Range Facilities Master Plan is... continuing, all the work is continuing with that. We just have finished our second round of subcommittee meetings at each of the buildings and all of the buildings prioritized some of the work that they would like to see at that. And then we have our district steering committee meeting next week. And as we head into November, begin all of our community forums at all of the buildings, and we'll be promoting that and hoping to see a great turnout at all of the different buildings. In addition, in November, we also have our district-wide community forum where we invite, again, everyone to attend that. and really wanna share all of the work that's happening in the district, and for anyone watching or anyone hearing about that to really come in and learn about what the work is that we're doing and also give us input on where we want our district in terms of facilities to go for the next 10 to 15 years. So that is, that work continues and we're very happy about that. And then finally next our presentation tonight obviously will be on the personal electronic devices and our administrative team will be talking about that soon. And now I will hand it over to Lucia.

Thank you very much. Okay so for my student update today I'd like to start talking a little bit about sixth grade camp. I know that I missed last meeting because I was in sixth grade camp that week. And I had, I was in Hawkshaven, go Hawkshaven. It was amazing. And I would just like to first speak about Wydown because that was sort of my first official quarter meeting with some of the Wydown kids. And I have to say that their cheer and their spirit and everything is incredible. And it reminded me of when I went to sixth grade camp and it was great. And I asked them about their transition from elementary school to middle school. and how that worked, and if they were worried, if they had concerns about things, about looking like further years in middle school or when they transitioned to high school. And they told me that it was an amazing transition. One of my kiddos literally went, oh, it was perfect. And so it was really fun because I asked them. I was a little bit of a surprise to me. I said, really? Were you scared about the new big school not being able to find your classes? And they said that the teachers were always there for them. From the transition of schoolwork, they said that it was really good, it was really progressive, and that they felt that it was preparing them for a good future. They really liked how all of the teachers would stand outside of the classroom and then direct them if they didn't know in which direction they were going. Or there was always someone, they said, at the corner waiting to help and that they really appreciated that and that they really looked forward to their Y-Down years. And so that was something I was very happy to hear, that they were very happy of all of the great resources that Y-Down had provided them transitioning as a fifth grader to a sixth grader. I'm looking forward to talking to the seventh and eighth graders next quarter when I meet with them. But it was a really great transition. And while talking a little bit more about actual sixth grade camp, I'd like to say that it is an incredible environment to have been in for a week. And I could see all of the kiddos coming up with these leadership skills. From the beginning towards the end, you can see really the transition and the growth in leadership and initiative and teamwork. And I think that it's something that is really great to have as a sixth grader, because it is something that teaches you these essential values and these essential like teamwork skills for your seventh, eighth, ninth, and then for the rest of your life. So it's a really great interactive, like week long thing that really, like, sets it in your soul you remember that cheer like your group your family and it's amazing because everyone is just so united and it's a great way to for the kiddos to be able to like meet and learn um what's it called to meet new people like from captain like captain people captain kiddos to learn to meet glenridge kiddos and then merrimack kiddos and then all of them to be able to make those friendships that they may not have had before, and sometimes to even strengthen them if you have your best friends in the cabin. And so it's a really special experience. Switching gears a little bit to homecoming in the high school, I'd like to first-handedly say that it was amazing. We had a great time, and it was a great opportunity to always hang out with friends and then have a little bit of that transition from a work week to a little bit more of a fun dedicated week of spirit. And that's something I'd really like to emphasize on, the Clayton spirit. I always think of it in my mind as that spirit week that we do with the dressing up and everything really propels us all the way until the spirit week that we have the week before finals. It charges you up. And then when you're starting to get low, there's another spirit week. And then it lifts you up. And so I love these spirit weeks. And I know that a lot of other students like them too. And so it's a wonderful week. I know that we've talked already a lot about cell phones today, so I'll make sure not to touch up on that too much, but I would just like to emphasize on the key details that really students believe, as you've heard today, that they can truly be assets in our day-to-day life. And we know in our hearts that Clayton does an amazing job at preparing us for our future, and we would really like to see that implemented with cell phones as well, to be able to use them as tools and to help learn how we can eliminate them as distractions and then really channel them as our learning tools to then be able to go into college. And I believe that, oh, no, one last thing. So this is a little more of a personal thing, but I was speaking with my friends at a lunch table and it was something I thought really important that I should share with you. It was about the cell phones and one of them said, it's really more of an underclassmen problem. And now that I was like, oh my goodness, no, that doesn't sound too good. Like I can't, I can't present that to the board. And then we began talking about it a little bit more and it became really that you, that it happened to all of us. We were underclassmen as well. And we, when we transitioned from middle school to high school, we saw that all of this freedom, like our lunch increased exponentially. Our, we became introduced into free periods and, um, We had access to all of these resources, and then we had a bunch of this freedom. And so when we were handed that freedom, we said, oh my goodness, yes. And then we grabbed our phone, and we really used it. And we saw, like underclassmen, I know that my friends told me that they saw that it was a disadvantage. It was a distraction to them. And so they said, us as underclassmen, we made the problem, but then we learned from it. And so by committing those... that little mistake in the beginning we were able to see how it maybe impacted a grade that we had in an assignment when we were distracted with our phone or on an exam and then we were really able to grow from it and then now as upperclassmen be able to put our phone away and say I know that this is a distraction for myself and for my learning and so to really be able to begin using it as that tool so sometimes I like remember very clearly this poster that was in the Glenridge Art Room, and it says, it's okay to make mistakes, just don't make the same mistake twice. And that's something I always remember when I'm looking at the mistakes I make. And I say, okay, I made a mistake, that's okay, but I won't make it again, and I see that it It's what really happens with cell phones. With cell phones and people, they notice, oh, this is harming, this was a mistake, but I'm going to learn from it, and I'm going to grow from it. And I really believe that all the students have been growing. And that's my student update. Thank you.

Thank you, Lucia. Thanks for sharing that. OK, we are on agenda item 6.1, personal electronic devices presentation for Dr. Milena Garganigo. And team. And team. And Dr. Jordan, Dr. Murdock, Dr. Kaczewski.

Thank you, Lucia. Thanks for sharing that. OK, we are on agenda item 6.1, personal electronic devices presentation for Dr. Garganego. And team. And team. And Dr. Jordan, Dr. Murdock, Dr. Kaczewski.

So as they're making their way up here, I will go ahead and get this started. Before we do get started, I wanted to take the opportunity to really just set the stage for the presentation that we're about to hear. So first, I do want to take a moment and thank the team that is sitting in front of us and who's put in a lot of work and effort into bringing this presentation together, as well as some individuals in the audience who are not at the table but have also contributed, including our other principals at the elementary level, as well as Dr. Poole, Jeff Polz, and Luke as well. So thank you to them for putting all of this together. So a little bit of history on this. How did we get here? So I just wanted to give, again, a little bit of context to the presentation. Before, I would say like earlier this year, around May, we had a group of parents who came and spoke to us about this idea of making sure that our district is a district that puts their phones away, bell to bell. The group then evolved and called themselves the Clayton Parents for Phone-Free Schools. They developed a petition, which received over 900 signatures. They put out a survey, and it might have been a comment card, where they gathered input from individuals as well. And then later in July, they also met with us. And it was about seven individuals from all levels, elementary, middle, and high. And we had a conversation about their thoughts on it. Then in June, the board requested administrators to really do a deep dive on cell phones and really research this, which included sending out a survey to our community members, our parents, our students, our staff, and getting their voices in the room. Included looking at different research that's out there, including looking to see what our neighboring districts are doing and trying to determine what their practices were. and then ultimately sharing it with the board. So that brings us here tonight. I do want to say also that for the purposes of this presentation, when we say we've titled it Personal Electronic Devices, meaning It is personal electronic devices, not district issued Chromebooks. So personal meaning students are bringing it in that was not issued by the district. So when we say cell phones, hence personal electronic devices. And so with that, we're gonna go ahead and get started and then we'll go through some of the slides and then open it up later for discussion and questions.

Dr. Garganiga. So we started some of our work by looking at literature, and as we read the literature and engaged in conversations, we continued to come back to a broader conversation about social media and its influence on adolescents. Children most often access social media through personal electronic devices, and we're aware of the addictive nature of those devices and specifically social media, including but not limited to the dopamine effect of likes, notifications, etc., Additionally, we recognize that we're part of a team with parents and other caring adults that continues to focus on helping our students to be successful. In early adolescence especially, we know identities and sense of self-worth are forming, that brain development is especially susceptible to social pressures, peer opinions, and peer comparison. And as a part of the team, we accept that we have a responsibility to take an active role in establishing the best environment for our learners. This includes being free of distraction while also encouraging peer face-to-face interactions. As pre-K through 12 educators, we believe that our practices should be developmentally appropriate and be graduated based on age and perceived level of responsibility for children.

Good evening. I'm a little hoarse, so bear with me. At this time, each level will go over past and present practices, and I'm here representing the three elementary schools. At the elementary level, if you notice on the presentation, we pretty much had the same language around cell phones and wearable devices. This could be found in our student and parent handbook. As far as consequences, in the past each building had autonomy on how they would handle violations and how they would document them. This summer we spent time going over our practices and making sure that they were aligned with the same common language across all three elementary buildings. Then we started talking about what happens if a student violates. those practices. And so we aligned our consequences and the violations for cell phones and wearable devices. So first, students receive a reminder and they place it in their backpack. Second, brought to the office and call home. And then any additional violations that stays at home. And I can say all three elementaries, we probably had one incident this year. And the first time it happened, we just called home to remind parents of the policy. In addition to common language of practice and violations, we increased our communication around this practice, which we hadn't done before. So for parents, curriculum night, we brought it up, newsletters, and then just a standalone email. For teachers, over opening week, we explicitly talked about the practice, the violations, and what they should do if a student, so they won't have to go into that power struggle with the student. And then, of course, our babies. We talked to our students about the new practices that we had in place, and the consequences around them.

So who doesn't want to talk about middle school students and cell phones? And looking around this table, I know that many of you have been with us. But yes, in all seriousness, middle school is really critical about what happens with cell phones and social media as we really want to think about the children as they're developing, finding their independence, and figuring out who they are and who their friends are. It's also a time when they're venturing out into the world, probably on their own for the first times or walking home from school for the first times. And so it is also those kind of components. Cell phones have been discussion at YDON since I stepped foot in the building 10 years ago and all different kinds of conversations. I will take you a little bit. Once we went into COVID, we actually allowed started allowing cell phones more prevalent because of their mental wellness issues. If you remember it, I think some of you had children there at that time. We were having lunch in the parking garage, and they were sitting six feet apart, so we allowed them to use their cell phones as a means to communicate with each other. And then as we reentered the building and in different places, we really looked at how the cell phones were being used and what we needed to do. And every year, as we've returned back to a normal school year, we've retreated the cell phones in the classrooms. Last year, and in the school, I'm sorry. Last year, we stopped with the kids being able to use the cell phones when they entered Main Street and during lunch and in the hallways, but they were being able to use by teachers in the classrooms. We used a red and green sign for the teachers to communicate with the students if they were being used or not being used. In the spring of the year, with feedback from teachers and students and also from our parents, we started having more conversation if that was the appropriate use of cell phones at the middle school level for their developmental needs. And actually a parent gave me that book, Anxious Generation, in the springtime, and I started reeducating myself about some of those new data and research that was out there. So as we entered the school year in conversation with my leadership team and with my teachers, we redeveloped and designed our practice so that cell phones weren't allowed even for instructional purposes. So over the summer I reached out to different teachers who were using them more frequently, like the band I think that was mentioned earlier tonight, also some of our art classes and different things like that, to say how can we supplement what you're using the cell phones for with the technology that we have. And so we went full into this this year with basically that cell phones aren't allowed throughout the school day as a real clear method for students who are 11 through 14. So for us, for our cell phones, the policy is they used to have a warning, like go ahead and put your cell phone away. Now when a cell phone is seen, it is taken from the student immediately and taken to the office. On the second consequence, it is a phone call home and an office referral with warning the parent that on the third consequence, the parent would have to or a family member would have to retrieve the cell phone. We always want to give the parent that phone call first so that they're prepared if that happens. So we have 606 students at Widown this current school year with 35 school days. 38 times a phone has been taken this school year. three incidents where a student had their phone taken twice and one incident where one student has had their phone taken three times.

Good evening. While I'm still here, I am going to talk about the high school practices and cell phones. But the, thank you, thank you. So actually one thing I want to point out is actually the conversations around cell phones started at the high school a couple of years ago and kind of in earnest. And so approximately two years ago the faculty and I and the administrative team got together and wanted to craft a statement which you see up on the screen. the 23-24 statement, that was something that we crafted as a building leadership team with the input from all of the various department heads. So honestly last year people were kind of encouraged by this idea of speaking with a common voice around cell phones and one of the things that we did was we wanted to kind of build on that momentum, and we were having building conversations around how we make enforcement and the expectations even more clear. And so we then transitioned the statement from 2023 to 2024 – I'm sorry, the 2023-24 statement to the statement you see up there for 24-25. And the reason I bring it up is that these conversations were taking place well before the petition, so they were not in response to anything. So this was definitely at the forefront of our building conversations. I would say the main difference between the 23-24 and the 24-25 statement is basically a focus on kind of explicit communication around expectations, expansion to include wearables, and then more consistent enforcement and consequences. And so one of the things we did, we communicated with parents via email and newsletters. We also, I personally spoke to all of the classes at class meetings about it. We did all school announcements. And then we had teachers also speaking to their classes individually around this topic. One of the things that was new as part of our practices this year is we made a very overt display of the progression of consequences. And so at the high school, if your electronic device is out during class and in a non-approved teacher activity, the device is confiscated and turned into the grade level administrator's office and can be collected at the end of the day following a conference with the the grade level administrator. A second violation results in the student's device being confiscated but the parent has to come pick up that device and then additional violations, I'm sorry, and then also after the second violation a detention is assigned and then any subsequent violation the student's electronic device is confiscated, turned into the grade level administrator's office and held until a meeting with the parent we, at that time, make a determination about whether the student can continue to bring the device at all. This year, so far, as of today, we've confiscated 20 phones and or earbuds over the course of this year. We have had no repeat offenders yet. I would say that this pace of confiscation, if you think of it in terms of infractions, is greater than in past years. But I would attribute that to much more aggressive and consistent enforcement than an actual change in student behavior like it's not getting worse. In the development of this policy, the feedback from the Building Leadership Council, the department heads expressed a strong desire to maintain teacher autonomy in order to make pedagogical decisions in the classroom. And some specific uses cited by teachers was the ability to record motion in science labs and the use of high-quality cell phone cameras that is superior to many of the devices that we can reasonably provide in our digital photography classes. Also, there was a pervasive feeling that limiting the use of cell phones during instructional time while allowing it during lunch and free periods is consistent with our open campus philosophy as we provide freedom to students while maintaining some level of boundaries. In the case of cell phones, we felt that emphasizing the importance of appropriate time and place was developmentally appropriate.

So as a district, or as a building team leadership K-12, we really started thinking about considerations that we took when we were looking at cell phone practices within the district. So we established, we considered options for ranging from yonder pouches to kids keeping cell phones on them or having, using cell phones in the classroom. A lot of the conversation as we met over the summer and thought about things was really about the key stages and the developmental stages. We operate our district in key stages. You hear that often about curriculum and all different choices. So as we revisited this idea, we thought about what are the different key stages and how do those react? There's a lot of conversation at the elementary schools about watches, not so much at the high school or in the middle school because they're more moving into cell phones. We thought about what was the safety components of this, like walking home from school for the first time as a fourth grader, I may wanna track where my child is. If my child's out on a Friday night, I may want to be able to contact them as a middle schooler or what are they doing with them in the high school. We also really thought about the mental wellness. We are very aware of the impact of cell phones, but really also of social media. And those are two separate kinds of things, as were mentioned earlier tonight. But we really do understand. and they're appropriate for 11-year-old, I always talk to my sixth grade parents about group texting and how that really has an impact on their social navigation and what they get brought into. I don't think Dan's having that same conversation with juniors around group texting and parents and information. So those are some things that we really were trying to think about is that progressive ability and how we need to work with our students and understand and recognize who they are as well as the cultures in the building. Elementary is really working with one teacher in one classroom setting, with many more in middle school and then the open campus and the autonomy that was mentioned earlier about the culture in the high school. So action steps that we've taken already at the direction of the superintendent based on the conversations with the board from last spring. We didn't have the opportunity or the leisure to just wait until November 1st to start anything so we obviously started to do things and we started to button up our processes and what we were going to do. So as Trita and Dan have mentioned, we started to align our language. We started an actual document where we started to look at how we're actually working on these in our handbooks, first at the horizontal level with elementary school, and then actually for consequences all the way through middle school and high school to see that those are all stared step up and align the language. This also helps our parents understand and our community understand exactly what's expected of them. and how those will graduate as they move and matriculate through our school. We communicated with teachers and with parents in a much more consistent manner. We mentioned it at our opens houses, we talked to the teachers about it opening day, we had conversations about it with the students as we were moving forward with it. We went through the surveys, we surveyed the parents and the teachers as well as the high school students around their feelings about cell phones and the impact that it has on them. We reviewed our digital citizenship curriculum and how is that impacting the students and what are we doing to actually prepare them for not only cell phones in those distraction periods but also the social media and how that works. And then we also reached out to our colleagues in other school districts and reached out to them. Over the summer, I talked to several middle school principals to see what they were doing. I know Milena reached out to many area schools, private as well as public schools, to see what at a district level they were doing. So those are the action steps that we took. We also are working on, and Dan mentioned this, about finalizing in power schools how we can really track this moving forward to see what is the impact. As we said, there is a little bit of an uptick because we now have a designated code in power schools, how we can pull that out where we didn't necessarily have that before. So buttoning up our logs, our consequences, and so that we can measure the impact moving forward.

Great. As some... As several of my colleagues mentioned before and Dr. Patel mentioned, during the first week, roughly the first week of classes, the district sent out a survey to parents and staff district-wide as well as students at CHS in order to obtain perceptions of electronic device usage and school-based practices at each level. What we have up here on the screen is these are the elementary parent results and basically what we found was the vast majority were very satisfied or very satisfied or very satisfied, or when asked about electronic device expectations at the elementary level with almost 64% being satisfied or very satisfied with approximately 28% having a neutral response to the question. Likewise, at the secondary level, we saw similar responses among parents and with 74% of parents at Y down being satisfied, indicating that they were satisfied or very satisfied with the cell phone expectations at Y down, with just under 13% having a neutral response. At CHS, 60, just over 60% of parents reported being satisfied or very satisfied, with the electronic device expectations, with another 21% having a neutral responds. Among staff respondents, we surveyed staff about their feelings. In the elementary school, staff responses indicated that a little over 72% of staff indicated they were satisfied or very satisfied with expectations, with 20% having a neutral response. At the secondary level, at Wydown, over 90% of staff reported being either satisfied or very satisfied with the current expectations, with 3% having a neutral response. And at CHS, 67.27% of staff reported either being satisfied or very satisfied, with current expectations and 13% reporting a neutral response. Finally, at CHS the students were surveyed and they were asked how satisfied they are with the current cell phone expectations at CHS. Approximately 56% of students reported being satisfied or very satisfied with the current expectations. And what's interesting about this is all other students reported having a neutral reaction to the question. Out of 380 respondents, zero students indicated dissatisfaction with the current expectations.

At this time, we will highlight areas from the things from the comment parts of the survey. So for elementary parents, many parents view cell phones as a significant distraction from students' focus on learning and that in-person interactions and they have no educational benefit at the elementary level. They trust that the school office or teachers can handle all necessary communication, minimizing the need for personal devices. Though some parents express concerns about emergency situations, most feel that school safety protocols are sufficient. Developmentally, parents believe elementary age children lack the maturity to responsibly manage phones. with concerns about their impact on mental health, behavior, and social skills. Overall, parents see minimal need for phones during school hours, emphasizing that students are in a structured, safe environment. However, some parents acknowledge special circumstances like after-school tracking or medical needs with a preference for devices like smartwatches, which should remain off during the school day. Staff themes. Staff responses frequently highlighted that personal devices are major distractions from learning with a strong emphasis on students needing to be fully present in class without the interference of technologies. Opinions were divided on the need for phones during emergency situations. Some see them as crucial for crisis situations like intruders. while others believe that what we have in place at the elementary level, it should all go through the school office. Most staff agree that parent-student communication should be routed through the office and school provided devices like iPads and Chromebooks should be used for educational purposes only. Many comments point out that cell phones are less necessary at the elementary level where students have access to teachers and school resources. Overall, the consensus from staff is that parents should plan communications outside of school hours, trusting the school's structure and environment and communication protocols.

The themes from the middle school survey data are very similar to the elementary data that was collected. Mostly parents were talking about the distraction concerns of cell phones and that there's no needed cell phones during school hours. When used, they reported that they're using the cell phone for after-school logistics and communicating with their child for after-school clubs or communicating what their children are doing after school and getting home. There was a group of parents or a part of the parents in the themes that indicated that there was a safety concern and in need of emergency that they would want to contact their families. There was a smaller subset of parents, again, that felt that students needed to learn to manage how to use a phone at the middle school level, but that was a smaller subset. And again, just like at the elementary, they did say that there were some special circumstances that children would need to have a cell phone on them for different health or other reasons for them. And in regards to the survey data from the teachers, they again noted the distraction concern and that there wasn't necessarily a need. They also talked about that there are alternative methods for communicating with your child that you could call the school office and different things like that to communicate anything that you would need. They also indicated the safety in emergency if there's an emergency situation, but they actually, different from parents, felt that the school would be able to provide the needed and adequate relation for the safety for the children in that situation. And then they also talked about concerns around not all students being able to have a cell phone and what that is the impact for students. And finally, they talked a lot about positive outcomes when students don't have phones, such as playing Uno at lunch or nine square or other kinds of things.

A lot of similar themes came up in the high school data as well, in the parent themes and in the comments. Parents overwhelmingly believe that cell phones should be used sparingly during the school day. Most agree that phones should be limited during instructional time due to their distracting nature, though they do see value in allowing students access for emergencies or logistical coordination, especially for older students with complex schedules. Many parents support the current policies but emphasize the need for students to learn responsible phone use. While there are concerns about phones being a distraction, the overall sentiment leans towards balancing safety, logistical needs, and minimizing classroom disruptions. Among the staff perceptions, based on the data and the comments, staff overwhelmingly feel that cell phones can be a distraction during class time and can hinder student engagement and focus. Overall, staff are supportive of restricting cell phone use during instructional periods, though some acknowledge benefits for specific tasks such as photography or use in labs. Staff are generally satisfied with the current policies, with suggestions to allow phone use only during non-instructional times, such as lunch or free periods. Most concerns were about managing student phone addiction and the overall distraction they may cause rather than specific educational uses in class. Students, and honestly, one of the things I noted about the students was that no one was advocating for unfettered phone use at any time, which is an important note to make. But based on the comments, students overwhelmingly feel that cell phones are essential for safety, communication, and convenience during the school day. Overall, students support having access to their phones during non-instructional times, such as lunch and free periods, but recognize the need for restrictions during class. Concerns raised were more about balancing responsible phone use as opposed to eliminating them altogether and the need for differentiated practices based on age or grade level. One of the questions that honestly I had when looking at the data was, when we gave the survey really early in the year, like the first week of school, I was curious as to whether the faculty were responding to their past experiences from previous years or our current practices actually that we have implemented this year with more aggressive enforcement. So what we did, and I know Jamie did the same thing at the middle school, we have those results up there, is that we, at our September faculty meeting after we'd been in school about a month, we asked faculty for feedback. So we basically asked them about whether they thought the current policy was appropriate, what they thought about the state of cell phone use, and then what support they needed in order to enforce the current policies. And what we found was that 94, almost 95% responded that they felt the current practices were appropriate, and over 93% stated that they felt that cell phone use was down this year compared to last year, though there was a contingent that's included in there that claims that cell phones were never a problem before and they're not a problem now. At Y-Down, they administered the same survey at one of their faculty meetings as well. And then they had similar results with over 98% of faculty responding that their current practices were appropriate and 95% stating that they felt that cell phone use was down compared to last year.

other St. Louis districts and their practices. So we reached out to other area districts through Melaina's counterparts. We sent a survey to districts who are a part of a plus teaching and learning group. If you don't know, Ed Plus is a regional education support network made up of 63 districts that provide services, training, and resources to school districts across the St. Louis area. We sent the request twice due to only receiving a few responses. In addition to that, Cameron Poole reached out to the student services group around the area And at that time, we were able to get just a few more responses. So then, Melaina reached and did some personal invitations out again, which also included private schools around the area. So private schools, there's only one private school part of Ed Plus, so she reached out to other private schools in the area. It proved more difficult than we thought to get information, but we ended up receiving information from 18 districts, public and private. So here are a summary of the results. For elementary schools, nearly all respondents indicated that personal devices should be turned off and stored in backpacks for the entire school day. At the middle school level, some schools maintain the same policy as the elementary schools, while others allow limited phone use during passing periods and lunch. For high schools, many districts leave phone policies to teacher discretion, though about half have adopted more restrictive practices, such as banning phones during instructional time, with some classrooms using phone holders to manage devices.

So part of our process was... Part of our process with this work was really to do a dive into our digital citizenship curriculum K through 12 and to get a better, more comprehensive sort of global sense of the different instances with which we're focusing on digital citizenship with students. What we noticed in doing that deep dive is at the elementary level in particular, We have multiple instances of times throughout the grade span, mainly with Key Stage 2, so grades 3 through 5, having a bigger focus on instances. And it's really a shared responsibility among our educational technologists, our counselors, and our health and PE teachers. thinking through those pieces. As we move to Y down, it's a little bit of a shift towards the health curriculum. And so when you're familiar with our health curriculum, you know that students have health for one quarter each year that they're in the middle school. So we start to see sort of a diminishing instances of focus on digital citizenship. And then at the high school, we don't currently have this as a part of our health curriculum. And when we talk about digital citizenship in that sense, it's really more around researching and understanding reliable sources versus some of the things that we've talked about with the social-emotional components of social media, et cetera. So as... So you'll see in a minute when we start to talk about some of our next steps, this became very clear and obvious to us as a big hole in our work. And so Dan and his team, we've started to have more conversation about what does that look like at the high school and moving forward pretty quickly.

So in conclusion, what does this all really mean? For us, I feel as the superintendent of the school district of Clayton, I feel that the practices that we have in place, especially the new practices we have in place with the clarity alignment of language, the consequences at each level. and the communication around it. I feel that the practices are absolutely appropriate at this time. They work for our students, and with all of the communication we have done with it, I support it wholeheartedly because I do believe that we have the right things in place now. So in that, we are going to continue with the currently outlined expectations at each level. We'll continue to monitor the implementation, support our staff as needed. We recognize through this work, as Dr. Garganigo said, there are some gaps, right? One of that is educating our students around digital citizenship. So that is something that we will look at. and create a timeline, and how do we address those gaps? So we'll be working on that. We also understand that there needs to be a focus on mental wellness, and how do partner with our wellness center, All In Coalition, and continue to provide supports for our students, especially at the high school level moving forward. In addition, we'll continue to provide professional development for our teachers In fact, even this summer there was a book study that we did with Anxious Generation and I think we had over 30 staff members who took part in that. So continuing to educate our staff with this. And then finally making sure that our policies that we have in place truly align with our current practices. So not only the technology usage policy but we also know that there are other policies we need to look at. Couple of them being the audio visual recording and then the student discipline one that we need to cross reference. And I know that Jeff Polz and I are going to be looking at that and bringing some of those to you for a first reading as soon as we can. And just I appreciate and advance your patience with bringing the policies forward because we can do the work, but we also have to turn it into MSBA who then has to redline it and send it back to us. So we are dependent on them as well for timeline of when to bring the policies back. So I just wanted to be clear on that piece. But in conclusion, I believe that we are making the right decisions that we have for our students, which are 100% developmentally appropriate at this time. So with that, we will open it up for questions and comments.

Thank you, Dr. Patel, and thank you, Dr. Milena Garganigo, Dr. Kaczewski, Dr. Jordan, and Dr. Murdoch. And Dr. Patel. Poole and Mr. Polz and Mr. Heidert also for all of your work in this. So I started the school year. The board will remember this. I don't know how many people watch our board meetings but by saying that I was going to cut out the practice of calling on board members to speak so we could have more organic discussion around the board table. However I know that all of the board members have questions and comments on this. So before we just engage in open discussion I actually am going to go back to our old practice of calling on people to speak so that I want everyone to have an opportunity to say what they want to say and ask the questions they want to. That being said, I'd actually like to start with Lucia. If she has any questions or comments for the team about this presentation, next steps, or anything else.

Thank you, Dr. Patel, and thank you, Dr. Garganego, Dr. Kaczewski, Dr. Jordan, and Dr. Murdoch. And Dr. Patel. Poole and Mr. Polz and Mr. Heidert also for all of your work in this. So I started the school year. The board will remember this. I don't know how many people watch our board meetings but by saying that I was going to cut out the practice of calling on board members to speak so we could have more organic discussion around the board table. However I know that all of the board members have questions and comments on this. So before we just engage in open discussion I actually am going to go back to our old practice of calling on people to speak so that I want everyone to have an opportunity to say what they want to say and ask the questions they want to. That being said, I'd actually like to start with Lucia. If she has any questions or comments for the team about this presentation, next steps, or anything else.

I do not. Thank you very much. I want to say that I really appreciate the presentation and completely agree with everything. Thank you.

Certainly, if you have any questions or comments for any of us as we talk later, don't be afraid to jump in. And I appreciate you, Lucy. You shared some of your thoughts about it in your student rep update earlier. Okay. In that case, I'm going to call on Pam to ask any questions or make any comments that she has for the team.

as you all can imagine oh i don't know what to do with all my glasses here um i have a lot to say and a lot to ask i hope you guys have received some of my questions um i do want to start by saying that since i was sworn and i'm kind of speaking to the board as well as to you since i was sworn into this position i have spent countless hours learning and reading knowing that I am new here and have far more to learn than I have to bring to the board table at this point in time. However, in this area of cell phone discussions, I am speaking with you not only as a board member, but as a physician and a mental health expert. The data is irrefutable. Cell phone use during the school day has numerous negative consequences to our students' academic, social, and psychological health. Here, I speak with confidence. So with all of that, that is the background for these questions that I have for you. And I think a lot of them you guys actually answered in today's presentation, so I'm gonna do my best to skip through some of them. Slide three, I like refer to slides here. So I don't know, Luke, thank you. I really, this is where you kind of clarify your thoughts. I really appreciate how you clarify your thoughts, and seemingly these are your guiding principles. I appreciate that you reviewed our current curriculum on digital citizenship and have realized this lapse in the secondary education level. I really appreciate the way that I think it was you, Dr. Garganino, how you just began this entire presentation and kind of jumping to what Jenna Schomburg said in her speech is like these values seem very aligned. And I just I think that's a wonderful place to start. I do want to say that the data from the survey needs to be understood with caution, as it was sent out in the early days of the school year with a new policy. We have no data or idea of what these responses would look like if they were sent out last spring, and then what they will look like if we, for some reason, send them out again this coming spring. A large change, as you all said, was made this school year, and I am incredibly glad for that. So I guess that's it for that point. Slide 11, which was the staff. It says total staff that responded was 210. I just wanted to know what percent that was. Slide 11. Yep. What percent of our staff is that?

Staff?

Staff? okay can we because we surveyed we didn't just survey teachers we surveyed all staff okay do we

know what of the 210 of teachers versus staff because that is a huge number that's a third so I these not the data that you present is interesting and I still have more questions about it but it is only a third of the people that you that matter there whose opinion we were actually seeking but I just want us to hold that with a flag. Slide 12, what do you think are the reasons that 80% of YDOWN staff are satisfied with the new policy, but only 29% of the CHS staff are? Or if we include very satisfied and satisfied, YDOWN is 90% and CHS is 60%. I imagine there's useful information in the differences between YDOWN versus high school.

And granted, I'm speculating here, but I also think it goes to the confusion over whether people were also talking about their experience last year or their experience this year, which is why we did the follow-up survey, at least at the high school. Because when this survey was administered, I think we'd had four or five days with kids, I believe. Whereas when the follow-up survey was administered, we were well into the 90s actually, which was much more aligned with YDOT at that point, but they had lived it a month.

And to your point earlier, as I look back to that other survey, only 38 staff members from White Island responded in that versus like when we did the follow-up survey. We had a much bigger number when it was represented than 95 because it was done actually at a faculty meeting. And to be quite honest, at the beginning of the school year – People who are teachers who are going to take a survey feel very drastically one way or the other way. If they're okay with it, they may not take the time to take the survey. So that's why survey data, to your point, is always really tricky to look at in SF context.

Thank you. That's helpful. So, in this presentation you presented the questions or the answers to the questions of how satisfied are you with the current cell phone expectations at each school. I would also like to see the data on how important do you think it is to have access to cell phones during schools And do you believe having cell phone access at school enhances safety? I think this is, I'm just curious why that was the one question that was presented in all of these slides. And Luke to his amazingness, I may have just made up a word, did send me all of the raw data but I have not had time to look at any of the raw data. But so I guess my question is why did we just get the like how satisfied are you?

Okay, so what was the question? Which question were you looking to see on

there? For the teachers, how important do you think it is to have access to cell phones during school

hours? And you said one of the questions was about safety and security. We actually didn't ask a question about safety and security That was actually a question that was just brought up in themes by the respondents.

I think a question said, do you believe having cell phone access at school enhances safety? That went to.

Yes, I believe the way that worked is when we gave the survey ahead of time to the board that that was a recommendation and so we decided to adhere to that recommendation and pulled that.

Perfect, thanks. That's a good reason for not including it. Okay. Sorry, everyone. Slides 14 to 20, you guys summarize the themes from each group surveyed. I'm not sure. Maybe I will talk about this later, about the issue of safety was a common theme among all groups surveyed. I do want to speak to what experts say about the use of phones during a school day. I Don't know if I should do that now or if I should wait for our discussion afterward, but I do want to put that into the public sphere Okay, so I have spoken to Missouri School Board Association's something, school safety specialist, and have reviewed national school safety websites about what are the recommendations and what do they say about, is student phone use and access, does that increase student and teacher safety during an emergency? And the answer is no. It clearly puts students and all people in the building at more risk when they have access to phones, and these are the reasons. One, during an unfolding school emergency, students need to be focused on instructions from teachers and safety officers. Student phone use during an emergency diverts student attention away from the necessary guidance, whether that's safety officers or their teachers. Two, when that huge number of students use their phones at the same moment, it can potentially overload the phone line system, leading to disrupted communication needed by our teachers, administrators and safety officials. Three, parental and community flocking to the school with the intention of helping actually can impede the timeliness of safety responses to the school. Four. Students may use the phones to share information thus with each other thus increasing the chances of rumors spreading which can be more dangerous and five phones make noise and During a school emergency oftentimes students need to remain quiet so that an intruder could not find them or their class and noise from a phone couldn't alert an intruder and These five reasons are not reasons that I came up with. These are all reasons that come from our national school safety and security experts. Okay, we can have discussions if people want later. slide 21 and 22 we already kind of talked about this the follow-up i think it's fantastic let's like highlight and celebrate that 93 percent of our high school staff on this follow-up say this was good and 90 something even higher at the why don't say that i think that's great news You answered my question about slide three. And I'd love to hear the digital, you know what? You already answered it. I was gonna ask about the digital citizenship and where you see those lessons going in the high school, but you already said what you're thinking. I don't know if you wanna add more.

Yeah, Dan and I have talked a little bit about places that we think it could be a good fit. And one of the places that we're thinking through is the link,

It's our new Compass program, which is kind of our freshman homeroom advisory program that we started this year. So we're actually – this is our first year of implementing that, and we are currently looking at topics that we're going to – implement over the course of the year. We try to make it fairly timely, actually. So we'll talk about homecoming. We'll talk about finals. You know, we'll talk about those various things. But in our conversation, we were saying that that seems like a natural fit for something we could do, especially with a group of kids that was coming into the high school from Y down in a more restrictive environment so that it might be a good opportunity, actually, to do some programming there.

And then we've had some conversation with Jen McEwen about partnering with the Wellness Center in thinking through what some of that programming could look like school-wide. And as well as on our recommendation slide, one of the things that we talk about is partnering with the Wellness Centre and a program that was brought to Jen by Jessica in thinking about some parenting education components. Like end the story. Yeah, and then looking at the... looking at the child component of that, so our health teachers in November are meeting with half the story to talk through the student-facing side of that programming to see if that's a way, like a resource for us to be able to use within the Compass program and then beyond.

Is that it? I have so much more to say, I'm going to save it for discussion.

You sure?

Yeah.

OK. Well, I was going to zigzag. Leo. So we can all take turns.

Boy, there's lots of things that people have said I just want to agree with. I don't know if I'm going to go through all of them and agree with all of them. Lucia, I'm sort of addressing you, but I'm addressing the other students in the room. Adults don't have this figured out either, is my opinion. I think it's true. And it is true that people are looking at their phones 150 times a day in the office, and I'm not sure that's a good thing. And it's true that adults also are moving towards, I have a regular meeting where phones are not permitted because we want to be focused on the issue. I wanted to acknowledge, you touched on this a little bit, I think educators rightly feel a little jerked around on this issue because technology came into the classroom, not only with COVID, but there was a push just to integrate it and make it part of education. And now there's a push the other way. And it can feel like education is driven by trends rather than, you know, but while acknowledging that, I do think it remains an important conversation. I wanted to... A couple people have said this, but I want to really emphasize it. There's a core issue around instructional time where there is, I think, 100% unanimity. And one of the things that I hear with these things that are peripheral to that is anything that undermines the ability to protect that instructional time is where You know it you're hitting on something that I think everyone agrees needs to be protected and sometimes to protect that core thing You need to push beyond that core push out. And so that's that's something I Put out there I've looked at a lot of schools on this. I know you did, too. And one thing I want to say publicly so people who are listening to this understand it is you look at these schools and it can be hard to figure out what they're actually doing or they can say that they're doing more and then you dig in on it and it's not as clear that their policy is all that different from something that is not branded as forceful. I have one thing I wanted to say about Y-Down. I appreciate what you've done. I think at Y-Down, a thing that's really important is that's the ages where parents are making the decision whether to get the cell phone. And I think it's really important that kind of, I'll call it the culture of the school, not... The social dynamics tip the balance in favor of the phone already, and there's nothing you can do about that. But the culture of the school needs to not go that way so that parents feel like they can make that choice. And I think some of the things with pickup and the what-do-they-call-it codes, those are kind of the things that can make it feel like a kid feels real left out if they don't have it. I now I want to talk touch on a couple things for the high school and I want to I think there's really lots of big theoretical things we can talk about but the things that I see in the high school policy that I want to push you there's two of them and one is the use of the self of the discretionary use the cell phone during instructional time right And and I just want to you know we heard some examples of that from the students but I want to push you on what the value is there that you aren't getting from the school provided devices in your in your view.

Like some of the examples, the two examples that I used, I mean without a doubt like when if they're, I'll give an example. I was in a physics lab observing and they were making videos of the motion of a projectile actually and then plotting it. In terms of doing that with a Chromebook is, I mean it's much more user friendly to do it with a cell phone. Probably the biggest use in terms of like en masse in our building is digital photography. And I've told the story before, but like it's a very popular art class and we used to have the little digital cameras that we provided to everyone. But the technology within the smartphones so quickly outpaced anything that we could reasonably afford for 80 kids. They started incorporating the cell phone into the course. Now, we do have a few kids that don't have a cell phone, in which case we actually – the only thing that compares is a digital SLR, which we do have a field of those, which we use with kids that don't a cell phone so that they aren't left out in that way, but we don't have 80 digital SLRs. But those are a couple of examples.

And so you anticipated one of my questions, which was there's an equity issue where the kid doesn't have a phone. And there's also a little of that issue that I was talking about at Y-Down where there's a cultural pressure. But in those, and particularly I get the motion capture one, some of the examples that were brought up before, the calculator, maybe it's slightly more convenient to have a phone out as your calculator. We all have them on our devices. The fact check. Again, we can do all that on the devices. And so when I hear that exception and then I hear the way it's being used, I worry that the exception starts to swallow the rule. That if the exception is given out for something as little I want to do arithmetic on my phone, that exception is so broad that some of the same challenges that we've had in the past reemerge. So that's one piece. The other piece of it is, and this is the one where, and we've Set the table here. Other schools are at least reportedly not having cell phones out in their buildings at all. And if you want to do some of the things that communication logistics things I suppose you step out on the steps right. And I understand that's challenging or it's an enforcement challenge it's an additional burden but schools are doing it in our area or at least again. their writings say they are. So I want to just hear you think through that and why that isn't, you think, the right option for CHS.

No, I think that's a fair question. And I touched on that a little bit earlier when I really do believe in the open campus concept. And I believe that that whole idea, that philosophy behind open campus being that we provide freedoms for our students actually, but with guardrails actually and kind of training wheels and practice before they move beyond us to whatever they're going to do. after they graduate from high school. And I think that this whole idea of that cell phones aren't going away, but there's a time and a place. And I think one of the things that I was encouraged by in our conversations with students is that even they recognize that there's a time in a place. That's why I mentioned the comment that I have yet to have a student come up to say, I should be able to have my cell phone out and do whatever I want to in a classroom. I haven't heard anybody say that, actually. But what I think is important is that giving kids opportunities to manage themselves, actually, and I guess practice in an environment which I would call relatively low stakes is kind of crucial to our mission and kind of central to our open campus philosophy.

I have to say... where this goes, so to speak. People who have been most forceful with me on the cell phone ban are college professors. So the college, the idea that the college, you know, it needs to be available for college. The people who are teaching the colleges are like, no, it doesn't need to be available for colleges. I don't know. Two more things I wanted to share. Go ahead. Can we go to the slide with the two comparative high school The old and the new

for the high school

for the high school. Yes So there's some language that's in the 2024 2025 it's oh It's the sentence beginning as a reminder. It's Way down close to the bottom as a reminder Students should only access the internet through district provided networks during the school day That seems pretty hard to maintain with the policy as written. I understand it's an aspiration. It seems pretty hard to have that be the reality with cell phones out in the hallways and used in the classroom. So react to that a little for me. It seems almost...

It's unenforceable.

Right, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

It's unenforceable with the phone access.

Well, I mean, and then honestly that would also apply to like a personal laptop too, actually, which...

That they get on 5G? They get on cellular? No,

they can get on... As a guest, guest Wi-Fi. But that's district provided networks.

What proportion of students at the high school are using their own personal laptops?

I don't know what a pretty significant, I don't know the exact number, but a pretty significant percentage.

But they're still using district provided networks. The cell phone is the only way you can hot spot it or whatever, but it breaks that sentence.

So we pull that off of the policy that we had in place, which we are, which is why we need to

review it. Well, so that's one way to solve it, but I'm challenging you a little

bit.

Yes. That you've got an aspiration in there that is... Which is why

the policy needs to be reviewed. Correct. This is not a policy, this is a practice.

Sure. One thing on the survey. I... I appreciate that the survey results improved. The policy didn't change that much, so I don't know what drove that change.

What I would say is, though, enforcement changed dramatically is what I would say. Maybe

that's what I should end with. Talk about, because the writing didn't change all that much, talk about why you think it's changed more on the ground.

Well, we made a very deliberate effort in that regard. So like I mentioned before, two years ago when we started talking about this, we said let's get some common language around expectations, actually. And so we worked with the faculty to come up with the 23-24 statement. Honestly, and then we asked folks to pay particular attention to it. At that point, though, there weren't consistent instructions really for teachers. While that was the practice, we didn't tell folks, first offense, the phone goes to the grade level principal's office. So teachers had their expectations and they had told students to put their cell phones away, but you had a lot of teachers that were like, okay, I'll give you 45 chances. Like, yes, I know that it's a daily thing, but it's like... And so one of the pieces of feedback we got after last year from faculty was it would be great if we had consistent consequences and consistent expectations that we could say to kids, and that we would promote to kids and families, and say this is what's going to happen when you have your phone out in class. And so that's when we crafted the language that we implemented in 2425. And I agree with you. Fundamentally, the practices aren't a whole lot different, but I would say the expectations and the consequences are a lot more clear and We worked with faculty in our back-to-school meetings actually about how the importance of making sure that we're speaking with a common voice and that only by speaking with a common is this going to be effective. And then as a result, I mean, I think, and as a result of that, you see where we've ended up here in just the first quarter of school. I think people are feeling really good about it.

I think that's the most important part of your of the high school's changes have to be that because the language is not that different. Okay, that's what I've got.

Thanks, Leo. Okay, Jason.

Great, thanks. Well, first of all, I just want to say I appreciate the seriousness in which you guys, which the entire team has sort of taken this over the past Three to five months, you know, I've said it before I said in last spring and I'll say it again I'm just really impressed with the school leadership that we have across the district from from the central office on down and and so thank you guys for all the work that you put into this and the the Broad-based approach you took to looking at a variety of different sources to figure out what to do about this here my I mean, it's very similar to Leo's, frankly. In the spring, I don't know if I said it in the public meeting, but I certainly said it publicly that my concern was that we didn't have a culture that supported you know, phone-free schools or phone-free class time, however you want to define it, and that we had a culture issue, not necessarily a policy and rule issue. And I so appreciate that we've clearly taken a huge step in the other direction on that, you know, as you guys just talked about. I do have – I guess I share Leo's concern that – if you start to allow for some flexibility for teacher discretion during classroom time, that that can hurt all the progress that we're making in terms of building the right culture around this topic. So a great example is one of the students And whoever uses her device to tune to A440 in, I don't know if it was band or orchestra, but the point is the same. I'm just making this up. The band teacher...

That was Noah. Yeah, I thought it was one of the four that

were sitting up there. It doesn't matter. My point's still the same point. So, you know, the band teacher might say, sure, take out your phone and use that to tune your instrument. The orchestra teacher might say, don't take out your phone, right? And now you have – you're applying the rule, you know, you're applying the expectation differently in those classes. No, the

orchestra teacher does say use your phone. My daughter was in.

it's but that's a real example you have two teachers who have it you know and so I just you know I guess I don't the one thing I would just sort of say is I do share Leo's concern that you know to allowing the teacher some flexibility may not have may have some unintended consequences so I would just ask us to think about that I think the the other part I was that is you know if there are if we aren't adequately supplying the right technology in each of our classrooms, I as a board member would like to hear that. Right? The one thing that, you know, we pass policy and we pass the budget. That's two out of the three things we do. Right? And so, you know, if there's something that we need to think about from a budget perspective, from a CapEx perspective because it's going to help us move to where we all collectively have this shared vision of going, that's something I'd like to hear about. And I guess the only other question that I have and you guys can think about this, you know, maybe we can talk about it next time because I know we're going to bring up policies and stuff next time. I would sort of like to know how do we know that whatever policy changes we make or don't make are working, right? I suspect this isn't the last time that we'll have this conversation, you know, whether it's next year or three years from now or whenever it is. And it would be nice at least for me to know, and I kind of ask the same question with like every topic is like, How are we measuring success on this? Right. And I think I'm totally, I'll go back to how I started. I trust our school leadership, right? I trust our district leadership on this. Um, I would like to know as a policy maker for the district, Do we need to tweak something a few years from now because we learned something that we didn't know, which is a totally fair outcome, right? And so I guess at some point I'd like some guidance on that. But other than that, again, I just really appreciate all the work that went into this tonight and each of you guys' comments, so thank you.

Thanks, Jason.

Chris? Okay, my colleagues have asked so many great things that I agree with, and thank you all for being so kind. hopeful in this process, and then also thank you to all of you for being here and all of the great work that you've put in. It's very clear that you have, so I really appreciate it from each of you. I have sort of some scattered notes here because I've been taking notes about this for the last week, so I'm kind of all over the place, so I'll do my best. I'll start with the slide, and you can bring it up if you want to, doesn't matter, the one that has our thoughts supported by literature. I'll say this. On the one that says we agree that phone and social media are addictive, that one strikes me as a tough sell for if you agree it's addictive, that we also allow it in the school, at any time in the school, even during passing period. That's hard for me. Anything that's addictive that we know of, that we know – you know, creates mental health, you know, potential mental health issues, et cetera, and or that we know, you know, alcohol, smoking. We don't say you can use them in the hall but not in the classroom. Some may think that that's a big leap. But I think as we know more and more about the way not just social media but actual device use and screen time affects our brain, we might be thinking, oh, man, I wish we would have made sure to take those phones away a long time ago because, again, They are impacting. We don't have the data yet. So it seems really, the fact that we know just the data that we know at PAM, that PAM is very clear on, that it is addictive, it feels to me like that's enough to make us realize, yeah, long term, this is probably not a great idea to let our kids have it, just like it wasn't great to let our kids You see what I'm saying? I just feel like we know enough that it's probably a bigger problem than we realize because these phones are new. And we don't have enough data yet on how it's affecting adults, much less the developing brain of a student. All of our students are far from having a fully developed brain. And if it's as hard as it is for us to not look at our phone, it's much, much more difficult for them. So that I just want to point out about the addictive quality there and the fact that it feels like we're doing two different things. We're saying we acknowledge it's addictive, but we're also saying you can use it while you're here.

Can I respond to that one? Please do. So when we're saying that, I think we're also saying like when I was making the statement about we feel like we're in partnership with parents. Yeah. the phones are addictive regardless of whether they're at school or whether they're at home. For sure. And so I think what we're trying to say with that statement is, it's like I think a lot of people have acknowledged the sense that phones are like sort of a part of a way of life now for almost everybody. Like all of us have them. And so we're looking at this as an opportunity. So like the hashtag half the story kind of thing. is an opportunity for us to look at how do we help support this idea of, like, this is part of a lifestyle. Parents have made a decision to give their children the phone. So how do we support that sense of, like, helping them to self-regulate with those tools? And how can we be in partnership with parents so it's not just about... the six and a half hours that the children are at school, but really the 24 hours that the children have access to the phones that the parents have made that decision to give to their children.

I got you. I so appreciate the fact that it's very clear that you want to partner with the parents, that education is such a goal for our entire community, including our parents, but also to our students, like you said, with the health classes including it so that part of all this feels so spot-on you know the other let me go a couple more things on this slide okay we agree I don't know where that is we agree that energy should be put into minimizing distractions to increase engagement I would want to hear your thoughts on Do we not agree that that should also be happening during passing period? Meaning, if we agree that we should increase engagement as much as possible during the instructional time, why don't we also agree that that should be happening during passing or lunch? At the high school only, because we're not even talking to you guys. I'm saying that to Dan.

Yeah, no, and I think it goes back to what I said earlier about the idea of open campus and managing one's free time too. I mean, I think that learning those self-regulation skills are really, really important and having opportunities to do that in a low stakes environment I think is really, really important. I also think too that there's a perception that that sometimes doesn't match reality. And I think that, and Lucia, honestly, that you would probably know better than I, but when I walk the halls and when I'm in the commons, I think that there's sometimes this perception that kids are zombies on their phone and nobody's talking to each other and they're sitting around the table. And that's just not the reality from my experience. And I can say even just today, I was walking through the commons and I just kind of – I was thinking about this and I stopped. And there were probably 200 kids counting the quad – in the quad or in the commons. And I made a mental note of how many kids were at a table with other kids actually looking at a phone and saying, And honestly, I could count it on one hand, actually. And so I think that while I'm not saying they aren't a distraction, I think that sometimes the perception that these kids are phone-obsessed, actually, to the point of where you have five kids sitting around a table and nobody's talking to each other or they're texting each other, that's just generally just not the reality. And I don't know, Lucia, you live it more than I do.

yeah what's your experience i i completely agree really um i think that it's also a perception that i think like sometimes some people have but truly when i interact with my friends and then when i see other groups of people we cherish our free time so much that we really don't want to be using it on our cell phone i see that everyone just goes and finds the people and as humans we just crave that actual physical, social interaction. And that's something that I definitely do see. We would rather speak face-to-face than on a cell phone because the cell phone still has so many imperfections like Wi-Fi connection. Sometimes you can't really even speak really adequately with a person on a cell phone, because they'll be cutting off or there'll be background noise. And so what you do is maybe a quick text like, hey, I'm in the quad. Can you please come find me? I need to talk to you about something. And then that is the majority of the time that we spend in our cell phone. But during classes, during passing periods, really, I also do not see students on their cell phone or at a table texting instead of speaking to each other but yeah it's I think a common misconception because I've always seen the high school as very lively with social interaction.

That's wonderful because I know I'm really glad to hear that from both of you because You know, we only see as parents what happens in our home. And so we see our kids just, you know, like zombies. And not all the time, of course, but it is nice to hear that you're seeing different things out of them at school. And I also just want to say that, you know, the more they're off their phones, specifically during passing period, the more we have our increased sense of belonging, which is extremely important to us, you know, with our... strategic plan and you know our goals for our district and it also i think would increase spirit which i think we all are really appreciating about our district is that we are really aren't students we are all really feeling connected and we like we have more spirit and um so i just am thinking about you know if they're like this those two things aren't impacted if they aren't like that I think those two things are positively impacted, so I'm glad to hear that that is not something you're seeing. That's really important to know since I'm not there all day, you know. Okay. That's all for that slide. The rest are just sort of some various different questions and thoughts that I have. There are really more questions. What do you do currently, or have you thought about doing to educate specifically on the idea of, to parents and to the students both, that grabbing their phone, I'm just, if it's not gonna be somewhere where they can't get it, that means it's somewhere where they can get it. In an emergency, it's very clear that we know that their life is more in danger if they grab their phone. So what is it that would justify us saying, you know, a certain amount of kids might get hurt because they can grab their phone, whereas we could have stopped that potentially if we didn't allow them to grab their phone because it was locked up.

I'm not sure if you could engage in a hypothetical. Is there a question there?

Yeah, the question is, is there responsibility of our district to make sure that we put our kids in the greatest sense of safety that we possibly can? We spend thousands of dollars and many, many hours making sure our windows and our doors and our lights and all of these things are safe. One of the other ways we can keep every single one of our potentially, every single one of students safe is by not allowing them to grab their phone because we know that puts them in danger. So the question is, is that not something you feel that we should also do in addition to our other safety and

security measures? So I think you're right in that we can mention it to the students and talk to them about that. But I only can think about when we've actually practiced intruder drills in terms of like... either evacuating or escaping or boarding rooms, you know. Right. And in those scenarios, when I've been a part of them or watched them, the kids aren't grabbing for their phones. Okay. They're moving to a part of the room, sometimes moving away from their backpacks where their phones are. Okay. they're walking out of the building or they're, I mean like they're moving hurriedly and they're not thinking about that. And that's just in the drill. So I think that's a twofold because you know, we need to communicate that with them. You know, the importance of like following teacher direction or what to do, you know, Jack and I often talk about intruder drills and what would happen. And it's really hard to be completely prepared. So you just have to have as much information for the children as much as you can. And so having those conversations is important. Yeah. but also recognizing that at times, like, they are going to be humans. So, like, as we are teaching them to be quiet, you know, like, they know it's room is dark. They know that they're going to be in the corner where they can't be seen. They know those things. And I've thankfully never been a part of this actually happening, but they also probably know, like, that they're trying to be as quiet as possible. You know what I mean? As quiet as possible as they're doing it. So I think that those are some things that we can work on. But

you've never specifically said, and taught them, and parents, that it's actually safer? Have you or have you not? This is a

question. No, I think there's a growth area there in terms of the education of parents and kids. And I would say, too, that with these conversations going on, I've received various emails and had various conversations that are very emotionally charged in the sense of from parents saying, you're talking about a ban. God forbid if something happened at the school, I'm not going to miss talking to my kid in an emergency. Granted, they're coming from a very emotional place, but I think that's something we can certainly look at too, the parent education piece around the the realities of the situation or what the data or the research says. And so I definitely think it's certainly a growth area. So to answer your question, at the high school have we talked specifically to parents about that and how it pertains to an emergency situation? No, not that I'm aware of.

I do also know that because this is tied together, is that our safety and security procedures are working at like a common information system for parents or who do they call and how do we talk about those things. Also, this is something I learned this summer when we did the roundtables with Luke and the chief of police and their emergency systems, which were amazing. But one of the things I learned this summer after years of being an educator and being an administrator is that if you choose to, and now I'm sorry, I'm escaping the word. What is the E that you say in your room? No. The one where you stay in your

room.

Anyway, the one where you lock down. I have that. When a student in a classroom is locked down in a situation and they don't escape or they don't leave, that could take hours for those classrooms to be cleared. So most of those times, the shooter has been eliminated in some sense, but before they can go room to room, it could take hours. I didn't realize that. So like, if... I had a child that was in a situation like that for hours. I may feel differently about them having to access their phone, not in the minute, not in the immediacy, not when things are going on. But I never realized that. I thought if you locked down, it would be, you know, like they'd take care of the risk, they'd move forward, and then they would get clearing of the classrooms. But in talking with and learning this summer from the chief of police and from the EMTs and from all those things, that's some of the things they... They indicated that it takes a long time. So it's a really tricky situation, and they are tied together, and we do need to educate more. But also, to be also fair, just since we brought it up, there's also a contingency of parents who have reached out to me that they also don't feel that the amount of intruder drills, the amount of stuff that we're talking about kids is actually also good for kids and has a mental impact on their lives as well. So we really are like in this really – Yes, you are. tricky gray area of like, how do we negotiate all these things with just really hoping that we never actually have to have that situation or engage in those pieces.

Yeah. So yeah, I would just say, I really appreciate all that, that you said, this is incredibly tricky for all of us. And for all good reasons, right? We want what's best for our kids, our students. And it's hard to know exactly what that is. So we're all in this for the right reasons. And that's what I appreciate about this district and this board and obviously Dr. Patel as well. So we're just really trying to manage how to get to that place where we really feel like we're being the best educators that we can be in the best community. And you know, really that's all we're doing. We're all on the same team here. We're just having this thought about What is it exactly that we should do. That leads me to saying. That I'm so glad we're talking. I'm so glad you started talking about this two years ago, guys, and that you're continuing to talk about it. And that leads me to say that regardless of what the policy ends up being, let's say these policies stay exactly as they are. Let's say they change in the next month or whatever. I want us to really look at this. I want our CEO and all of us to really look And the reason I say that is because technology is changing so rapidly. I mean, every year it gets more rapid. And if kids have access to their phones, even if it's not during instructional time, that technology that they're going to have on there, I mean, AI is everywhere. And it does incredible things. And that's going to change how our kids are as students, much less as they're walking down the class. What they're doing, we don't even know how it's going to change. We don't know. But I'll tell you, AI is going to get more and more different. And we will have to spend a lot of time talking not just about phones in the future, but AI as well. And so I would like for us to look at technology in general, including phones, as something that has to have maybe even a specific committee dedicated to this, just like we have a committee dedicated to health and wellness. We have a committee dedicated safety and security. I just want our administrators to really understand that we're in an age and time where we don't understand at all how it's going to be the next year, much less five years. We just don't. So we have to be on it. We have to be proactive. We have to have people dedicated to understanding how this technology is going to change our school environment, change our brain chemistry, all of that. And that might take having consultants or like I said two years ago at this table, consulting with very specific experts who aren't educators, but do know more about those, either AI or about brain chemistry, et cetera. I think in this day and age, I really want to see the right people at the right table. And to me, you guys are the educators, and then there's all these other people to bring in as resources to help you as educators do what I just said, which was give our kids the best education we can. So I want us to not be afraid to, and I know we have consultants all the time, so I just wanted to really encourage us to really bring in others so we can ask these other people, how does this work? What are we seeing? What is happening? All those things that we can't answer because we haven't had that educational background. Okay, maybe one more. Let me see. It talked about safety. It talked about the policy being very evergreen. I guess I'll just say to finish this up, I'm really... The health classes to me are extremely important. So I just said a little bit at the beginning about I'm so glad we've talked about it, but specific to what I just said, I had a conversation with a Y-Down Health teacher because I had gotten an article from a Y-Down counselor that was for parents and it did such an excellent job of describing what's going on during cell phone use and how for the parents, it was educational, right? And I thought the students could really benefit from this too. I guess when I wrote to the health teacher and said, is this something that you talk about in class? And they said no, right? So I want us to be really robust in our coverage of technology. We are already doing amazing things But I want us to be teaching the brain chemistry of addiction around cell phones. I know we don't do that with cigarettes per se, but addiction in general needs to be a topic that starts to be offered as young as maybe elementary school, depending on what experts say is developmentally appropriate. Because the longer kids wait to do any of these addictive activities, the better off they'll be as adults. So if we find out that, yes, this brain chemistry, I mean, if you start early using this phone and it gets really bad, again, we haven't had enough time to see what's going to happen. I just want us to realize the longer we delay these things on a developing brain. the healthier and they'll be in all those areas, which we know certainly, you know, cigarettes, alcohol, that stuff. So I want us to group this in there with that and be really robust in our education for these kids so that they know what this phone and this screen is actually doing to their body. what is safe not you know in those ways of you know we tell them what they should or shouldn't eat you know nutrition labels all of those things um should also be applied to our our kids technology use

that's all thank you chris um kim questions or comments

yeah no so i want to thank you guys also for all of the work that you put into this i think that the You know, surveys aren't perfect, petitions aren't perfect, but the internal stakeholders, which is you guys and you're in the schools, you see what's happening, the feedback we've heard from students and parents in the high school in particular where I think there seems to be the most consternation and concern is very valuable. And I'm with Jason. I mean, I like to deal in facts. I don't like to deal in fear. And so fear of technology or fear of the unknown or the fact that we haven't figured out as adults yet how to use this actually is not a reason for an all-out ban from my personal opinion. That's maybe not the collective opinion of the board, but that's my personal opinion I mean if we if we lived with that fear across all areas of our life We don't think we'd ever move forward as a society You know I do think when it comes to safety and security just like anything that we look at with safety and security we have to balance the practical application of that against all the other times when we're not, we're always concerned about it. But you know, as we heard from the FBI advisor that came here and talked to our board last year, we are now talking about things about the unintended consequence of some of the training that we're doing. And is it really necessary when you look statistically at the incidence level in elementary schools when there's only been two across, you know, two major incidents and yet we're subjecting elementary schools across the country. kindergarten students to shooter training. Is that really necessary or should we really only be preparing teachers? You know, so I think that those discussions that we're having now as the fear is subsiding are actually more valuable than the initial reaction sometimes that we have to let's put something in place because we just aren't sure how to deal with it, so let's ban it or let's do something else. I intentionally took a tour of the high school this week to see for myself what it looks like. You were with me, Pam. I think we went into five or six classrooms, Dan and Nisha. I didn't see a single cell phone use in any of the classrooms. So that's great. I think we have all agreed that there is broad alignment that it should not disrupt instructional time as the sister of a lifelong educator who is my sister and my mother, who is also a teacher. I also believe very strongly in teacher autonomy. And I think that that is actually more important as there are electives and those types of things that occur at the high school level. and although I can understand the slippery slope argument of maybe you use it for a Calculator use it for something else. I think that autonomy within the classroom is actually what makes great teachers great And I think that's what makes student love those great teachers. Because even though I teach physics and Jason teaches physics, I'm much more fun about how I teach physics because of the autonomy in the way that I get to choose to teach it. So I think that a one-size-fits-all approach actually is also not the answer just from, again, the dinner table conversations. The one thing I think is missing is digital literacy for parents. And I think that's huge. We talked a lot about, there's been a lot of discussion here about what happens that we're missing in health class or maybe there's a gap in curriculum here and I think those are important things. But I think the other thing is there's a real gap as far as digital literacy for parents. Remember, the school does not buy cell phone for kids. And I think it's a false equivalency to compare cell phones to, like, smoking. The school did not buy, even when we had a smoking lounge, cigarettes for kids. Okay? So that is just a false equivalency. And when we use, you know, statistics, like, in the absence of context, like, you know, an adolescent's brain isn't fully, you know, developed until 25. Well, we let kids get their driver's license when they're 16. I mean, you can balance one set of facts with another set of facts very easily. And in isolation, they really don't do anybody any good other than to make the whole issue more murky. So I'd like to see us get away from that what I would like to see us talk about is the statistic Dan that you guys said you're measuring now through power school and the the Consistency and the disciplinary actions that are happening at each of the grade levels. So, you know, there's I don't know 850 860 students at the high school maybe less this year because I know last year's class was the biggest class. But if you've had, what is the number of incidents? 20 confiscations and no repeat offenders. That's like 2% of the population. That to me indicates both from an objective statistical measurement and from what I saw with my own eyes in the school this week that there's not a huge issue in terms of cell phones being abused in the high school during instructional time. I did see one kid using the cell phone during passing period. But it's allowed during passing period. I know that kid. And I'm not going to name his name here. But he's actually a very good student. And so, you know, I would doubt that his use of the cell phone... And by the way, passing periods are five minutes. I asked specifically how long is passing period. The reason I asked that question is... I think if we had 20 minutes between passing periods, it might be a different story. But in five minutes to get from one side of the school potentially to the other side of the school, you're hot-footing it to get into class so you don't get a tardy because we all know the new attendance and tardy policy, okay? Of which we've also had some debate, you know? It's not going to be very forgiving to that, and no kid wants to serve a lunch detention or whatever the consequence is. So, I mean, I think that, you know, those things are... I think those are positive, just from what I can see. I do think, and I think Leo pointed this out, and it's been said before, and I think I said it even when we had gotten updates on this and when you spoke previously about you know, please don't take away our phones. I know that's not what you said, but, you know, that I think the threat of a potentially harsher policy and the enforcement of the existing practices has actually been beneficial. And I think the continued enforcement of that is what is key. And I agree also, Leo, with what you said, that, you know, it seems like there are other districts there are other schools that have you know stricter policies but I can tell you from talking to administrators and teachers in those schools just because it's written on paper it doesn't mean that it's practiced in application and none of those schools have the same open campus that we have

Some of that stuff is marketing, right? Like some of it is literally marketing. I just want to say that. Yes. And it's an aspiration that they like to hold out there.

Yes.

Now I think some of them are trying to do more in some ways, but anyway.

So I think it's also good that we're going to review policies. I looked at the policies, not the practices, but the policies that we have. And man, they're old. I mean, they say things like pagers. Who uses a pager in school anymore? So we do. We need to bring that up here as the board and we need to review that and make sure it's consistent with the practices that are being reflected. And that's something that, again, you educate us as the experts. you know, to the board. Our job is not to tell you how to run your schools. You know, our job is to fund things properly, to manage the superintendent. She's doing a great job. And, you know, to be fiscal responsibility. Those are the broad goals of the board. And then if there's a major problem or something or the community in this case comes up with you know, hey, we think we want you to look at cell phones, then we undertake those types of things to look at them holistically the same way that we did with SSD or some of the other, you know, big issues that have come to this table in the last couple years. I don't know. I mean, I think that where you guys have ended up is a good place, and I think that, you know, I support your continued kind of enforcement of the school rules. And I do think that there should be a difference between how you treat the early stages of education, early elementary versus middle school versus high school. Because again, you have to balance the practical application of these technologies against the potential harm. And in a lot of cases, it is potential harm because I'm certain that there are some kids that are addicted to their phones, that at home are on their phones all the time. And then I'm also certain that there are kids that are not, that have learned through self-regulation or digital literacy for parents to limit the amount of time that they're doing that, to sit down at the table without their phones if that's your rule at home. And it is a holistic kind of approach to this. And so partnership with the community, I think we want to look for ways to extend that digital literacy out and make sure that the folks that really did want to see an all-out ban know the reasons why we may not enforce an all-out band because we believe that what we have is adequate. I think, Jason, you said the other thing, which is, you know, nobody loves the Chromebooks. They're not great, which is why so many kids come to school with their own devices. All of my kids, you know, come to school with our own devices because, yeah, you can't, the Chromebook camera is horrible. Like trying to film that for the physics experiment that somebody said or do any of that, it's awful. um so you know we do we approve budgets at the board level so what chris you said about looking at technology as a whole and seeing if there's a better way that we can deliver technology to students well we actually purchase that technology and if there's something that we should be investing in that's a better investment um then we should do that and that might help the slippery slope thing leo that you talked about in terms of Well, the Chromebooks maybe can't have these apps that are on it. But if we had a better device in the classroom that could, it could also solve an equity issue, right? Because thankfully, we can afford a different device that's not school issued for our kids to bring to school. But that is maybe not the case for every family. And again, we don't buy cell phones, but we do buy laptops. So I think it's beneficial for us to look, again, holistically technology That's it

Thanks, Kim So many of you already touched on things that I said so I I don't want to Duplicate much but you kind of took the words out of my mouth about the Chromebooks And I might be opening up a can of worms here. Sorry Jeff the current Chromebooks that our kids have like What's the plan? How often do we replace those and get newer versions or four years? Okay. They, yes, they are not so user-friendly. They're heavy and the cameras aren't great. So anyway, I just wanted to ask. And are we, Lucy is shaking her head. This might, I should. And I do know the answer to this, but maybe I'm asking more for the public's sake. The reason we have Chromebooks as our school-issued device, that's a partnership we have or a deal we have with because it's Google? Or no? Or how did we choose Chromebooks versus MacBooks or

something else? So we did a comprehensive study, and we brought it to you. If you remember, you were on the board when we did it. So we did the technology study the same way. I don't remember it. The same way that we do curriculum review and that type of stuff. And part of the way that Jeff and I ran that work was to talk through with teachers about, as opposed to starting from a place of what device do you want, we started from a place of, what do we need students to be able to do? And then be able to fit a device to that piece. Also, when we're thinking about going to a one-to-one kind of approach, you're talking about a lot of money. And so we made some decisions based on at the different levels. So at the elementary level, the Key Stage 1, so K through 2, is essentially one-to-1 with iPads. because of what we the decisions at that time that we made with that study of what we needed students to be able to do with those devices so like things like an integrated keyboard are not important as much because those students are doing more things with swiping more things with apps and The kinds of curricular things that we're doing, it was more app-based that we were looking for. And then as students start to age up through the system, we started to need different kinds of things like an integrated keyboard, that type of stuff. And so that was how we made those decisions. But we were very specific in that work of not starting from what device do you want, but starting from a place of what do we need the device to be able to do in order to support the teaching and learning environment And then that was when we brought it forward to you all. So that was a pretty big – that was a significant change for us because at that point we were lab-based. Yeah. And the ratio for students to devices, it was pretty – limiting with some of the stuff that we wanted to do, and then it would have been extremely limiting when we got to COVID. So those decisions that we made did actually help us significantly when we had to deploy an entire fleet in a weekend to 2,500 students. The year that we did the study? Yeah, maybe 2016-17. I'm kind of... Don't hold me to that. But it was around then, and it was a two-year self-study similar to what we do with curriculum.

And I was kind of also asking because I've actually had parents ask me about this, that, you know, we have a neighboring district whose district-issued devices are MacBooks. And so it just kind of begs the question, like, have we ever, I don't know, rethought that? Because it seems the kids that are bringing their own, that's what they're bringing because...

The other thing, when we were making those decisions, we also made decisions at the secondary level around access to more powerful machines. So we do have carts of MacBooks. We have carts of iPads in the secondary buildings. And part of that was as a response to the majority of what we needed students to be able to do could be done with the Chromebook. And there were times where things for particular courses or particular things, so like our science labs, for example, have more powerful machines in them because we needed them for those purposes. But we didn't need 801 of them. We needed fewer to be able to meet those needs. So we were trying to be very deliberate I think I would say we were also trying to be fiscally responsible at the time because it was a big move to say we're going to increase our fleet that much. Yeah, I appreciate it.

Yeah, the only thing I would add, well, it's what Melina said, but the idea of the right tool for the right job on the right day. So this idea that there's no perfect device maybe, or if it's a perfect device for one, it's not necessarily a perfect device for another. And so I think that concept or that philosophy was sort of pretty pervasive through the thinking so that when we kind of try to arrive at what's sort of the best ratio or what's the best combination of things to ensure that we're trying to meet as many needs as we can without overspending. And so I think that, you know, I've heard a lot tonight about balance and I think that's another example of that. IT'S ALSO TECHNOLOGY HAS BECOME SUCH A VERY PERSONAL THING FOR PEOPLE THAT IT'S NO WONDER THAT IF I HAPPEN TO HAVE ACCESS TO AN ULTRA-LIGHTWEIGHT DEVICE THAT I AM USED TO USING, THAT I'M GOING TO HAVE A PREFERENCE FOR THAT OVER SOMETHING THAT IS MORE OF A FLEET DEVICE. AND BY THE WAY, IF STUDENTS ARE ACCESSING things to their district-provided device, maybe they're getting blocked at something that they're wanting to see that maybe is something that they shouldn't be seeing. So I think there's components of this that are very subjective, and so we try to pull as much of that out as possible and talk about the things that we want students to be able to do And and in ways that they can show evidence of their learning Knowing that one tool is not going to ever be the right that like the one answer for everything.

Thank you I appreciate that background reminder of that the background and the information have we ever I'm not sure I haven't really necessarily thought hard about how I personally feel about this but have we ever considered not a not allowing students to bring their own devices and only letting them use district-issued devices just from an equity issue, then everyone's using the same thing. Or I don't know, maybe Dr. Poole can even speak to this. Do you see phones and or the Chromebooks, laptops, is it a big equity issue? Do we have many students that don't have phones that feel like they can't participate like their classmates? I don't know. I don't know if Dr. Poole might know more about that or you principals.

Honestly, I haven't seen it, and I don't want to take care of three of you. I haven't seen that personally as an equity issue. It really is more of a parental concern. So like a parent who where I get approaches like by incoming sixth grade parents or parents that say we don't want to give our child a phone and we don't want them to be left out. Right. So it's that more than like race, culture, gender, things like that. Or what I've personally experienced. I don't know about the rest.

I know we've done some informal surveys of things at the high school level, and I You know, and what I would say, there's a very, very small percentage of students that don't have a cell phone at the high school level. I know our staff are also sensitive to that. That's something that we pay attention to, like in the example that I used for digital photography. And then the same way, too, that even in the lab work, like we mentioned, too, I know that if a student doesn't have a cell they're partners. So as long as somebody in the group has it, they share the data.

Okay, good. Did you have anything else to add, Dr. Poole?

Yeah, I would say maybe about 10 years ago it was probably a big equity issue, but I think just as phones have become more accessible and there's more ways to buy a phone, it kind of has minimized tremendously. So I would say in terms of phones being an equity issue, that wouldn't be something that would be on my

radar. Okay, thank you. Okay. somebody mentioned power school earlier which in a different respect but I was curious when I think about kids on their phones during the school day and I think I even brought this up a few years ago have we thought about at all You know, the kids get like power school notifications all day as teachers are entering grades and I'm sure you're like dying to see how you did on your test or whatever it is. That is one reason I think kids probably are reaching and checking their phones is literally related to that. I don't know if Jeff, if this is a possibility, Is the default that those notifications like have to come through right away and students have to choose to turn notifications off or is there a way for us as a district to turn those off and you just search for it later? I don't know if that makes sense to you. But I mean, I know parents have our, like our power school as a parent, we can turn off and set notifications like I only get updates once a month because that's just me. But I don't know, students have that option. I know that's one reason they probably are checking their phone during the day.

Do you know the answer to that? What I will say is related to that, and it caused a lot of consternation, but I think for good reason. The GPA function on power schools actually used to be like a stock ticker. Actually, it would be the best comparison that I can put to it because what it would do is recalculate your current GPA in real time. So like if you put in a homework assignment or something, it actually influenced the total points. And we could actually see on the back end how often you check, like – that like, like log in and check it. And so we had, we had some kids that were checking out and parents actually, but more kids that were, that were checking a hundred times a day, actually I'm like, Oh, and, and we unilaterally, well, Carolyn Blair and I, to be perfectly honest, talked about it and we made the decision to turn it off actually. So it was no longer, it was no longer a function. So we, we made that decision and The number of upset kids we had that came to appeal to us to turn it back on, which we didn't do. So I only use that as an example of I totally understand where you're coming from. I imagine there's got to be a setting, but that's something I'm just curious,

like something to think about. Like, you know, I know that they're waiting for the teachers to input grades from tests and stuff. And so that's something we could maybe control. Okay, let me see some of my other questions that maybe haven't been addressed. Just as a comment, I appreciate that not only did you look at literature, general literature and research that supports your thoughts here, but I appreciate that you worked so hard on doing research and surveys with our Clayton community and our stakeholders, because I do think despite what other districts are doing around the country or even around us in St. Louis County, that we are unique and we need to be looking into specifically what's working and not working in our schools. And we do of course have a, especially at the high school, a whole different culture with the open campus. And if we value that, then it really, looking at what other high schools are doing really is kind of irrelevant. So I just want to appreciate that we were so focused on surveying and doing research with our teachers, our parents, our students, because we really need to do what works best for us. Every district, you know, of course is different. So I just wanna say, I appreciate that. And I know you spent a lot of time on this. I also will... I disagree with you, Kim, a little bit about the autonomy. I was a high school teacher. And I agree with you on the autonomy as far as teaching styles and so many other things. But in this case, I actually really appreciate the consistent language in the practice and the clear consequences because I do think that helps take the burden off of our teachers. And that was a huge concern of mine when we started kind of thinking and talking about this last spring And I know the parents for a phone-free district also expressed their concern about that. And I didn't like that there was such a burden on teachers to enforce a rule that maybe the teacher next door wasn't. And I felt like that comparison with students was probably hard. So I appreciate that we have cleaned up not only the language, to be consistent, but also that the consequences are clear so that it's consistent across the board and does take that pressure off of our classroom teachers. So thank you for that. Another question I had is, are we planning or would you plan to do another follow-up survey at the end of the school year or in the spring as we did in September? Because even still, that was only a month into school. I do think it would be interesting to look you know, survey the teachers, students, and parents again in April and just make sure, first of all, that we haven't become complacent, that we are still being consistently enforcing those practices. And also, you know, I just think it might inform us on, you know, do we need to change anything at that point? And like to Chris's point, that this could be evergreen and

Are we planning on that? 100%. It's something that at the high school I can speak to that Craig Sucker is one of our main teacher leaders and so he and I talk daily actually but this is one of the topics we talk about and he's been one of the teacher leaders that has kind of spearheaded just kind of like the push with teachers to kind of maintain consistency actually and and kind of like the idea that we're all collectively responsible for the culture and the climate. So, no, we had already planned on doing a follow-up survey, particularly with staff, to see what they need to continue the momentum that we currently have and what other support that they need moving forward. So that's something we're definitely looking at. Okay, I'll be curious to see those

results. I think that's great. And I did also want to just say, I guess – in closing that I think it's important to also just think about our strategic plan and the profile of a graduate when we talk about this work, that just even the title of our strategic plan, Profile of a Graduate, is that we are making sure we are sending out into the world all those competencies in the strategic plan. responsible adults ready for what's next and I think some of the parents and students touched on that earlier and I agree with all of that that we do need to make sure as our kids graduate high school whether they're going to college or to the workforce or wherever that they do have with them the tools to responsibly use their cell phones and so I appreciate that we're gonna bring some digital citizenship and more education to our high school students. I also just want to say too between the parents for phone-free schools and the board and our teachers and students and other parents, I think at the end of the day, we're all actually really have the same common goal, which is what is best and healthiest for our students? What is best for our students, both academically and socially and emotionally? And so I appreciate that we are finally coming together to discuss this, to achieve a common goal, which at the end of the day what's best for our students so thank you again to all of you for all the work you've been doing for several months and i appreciated also hearing dan that you really were working on this for the last couple years but um i think that the push from the board and the community was actually really great because it did force us to create common language and expectations and practices which i think is really important so thank you for for all your work on achieving that this common goal that we share. Oh, sorry, I remembered one other thing that I think Chris mentioned and maybe Jason. I do look forward to looking at policy change because as I think you two mentioned, Policy is one of our big responsibilities as a school board, not day-to-day operations of our schools but policy reviewing and writing. So I also would like to explore when we get to that point that maybe this is a policy that we review annually because our practices might change. If they don't change, maybe that's fine. But because we want it to reflect current practices, this might be a policy that we want to look at annually just to make sure it is continually reflecting our practices because Like we said, it is so outdated now that I don't want to get to that point again. I want to make sure that we really do have an overarching policy or policies that do reflect what we're doing day-to-day. So that's it. I guess now we can open the floor for further discussion. Thank you.

It's late. I have to say, as someone... I've made my position pretty clear. I think that I'm very happy with how the practices are at the elementary and the middle school level. I am very happy with the changes that you have made at the high school level, and I see room for improvement. And so a few moments ago you were talking about power school GPA and you said like it was like so obvious that having a GPA on there is unhealthy for many students. And you said we took it away, but then there were so many students who were really angry and they wanted it back. With every decision that we make, there are going to be people who are happy and there's going to be people going to take us back to the smoking lounge not in the way that I have in the past but when I went to high school here we had a smoking lounge right outside the cafeteria we did not buy cigarettes for the students but they had them we don't buy phones for the students and they have them But what we did say was you cannot smoke your cigarettes as you're walking through the hallway. It was probably also a national law at the time, but we said you can't do that. You have to go outside, and this is the safe space to do that. And so I'm wondering if you, we, can envision a policy slash practice where phones are put away and not accessible during quarantine I'm going to put school day in quotes here. I'm only talking about high school students, OK? For high school students. But that they can have them when they leave our buildings. So when they leave during Greyhound time, when they leave during a free period, if they really want a phone, they can walk outside to the steps or to the phone lounge And use it there. Can you envision that working so that we take it away during class time? We take it away in passing time. We take it away. I hate the idea of taking it away. It is not accessible to them for all of the reasons why it's not healthy for them. And then there is a green zone, as people are calling it.

Honestly, this is something that we discussed when we were brainstorming different ideas. I would say my resistance to that is that I'd be reluctant to incentivize kids leaving campus. Actually, so basically if you were going to use your cell phone that you have to go off campus and And I kind of envisioned it as smoking, like having 50 kids standing on the other side of the globe using their cell phones, which I don't know. I don't know if that's healthy either, to be perfectly honest. So that's as far as the conversation has really gotten. But we did kick that around a little bit.

I think one of the things we also talked about with that, Pam, when you talk about envisioning this, and we talked a little bit about, Kim said, the digital literacy piece for our parents that we can help with. I'd love to envision also our parents utilizing apps like Apple Screen Time or Google Family where they can, from home, lock their child's phone during school hours too. And I see

that as an equity issue. I see putting the control in solely the parent's purview feels to me like an equity issue that those parents have. Some parents are digitally literate. I think that there's some parents who have the digital literacy to know how to manage these phones and there's some who don't. And I do believe that it is incredibly important for us as a district to partner with Parents and families through what you know PTO parents as teachers etc all in coalition to educate our entire community from Family Center on But this is I mean Chris has been saying this from the beginning This is a public health issue. And so to put all of that on the family, I just It doesn't seem I think we have a responsibility as well, as a school district, not just leaving that control. If we could do it, that would be awesome, right? Or if we could get all of our parents to learn how to put on controls, that would be great. But I don't... I think that

speaks to what was mentioned earlier by many of us, and them too, is I think it needs to just be... a partnership between home and school so that we can work together to help our students use their phones in a healthy way and a responsible way. And it's hard if parents are letting their kids be on their phone 24-7 at home to then come to school, and vice versa. So I think that exactly speaks to why the partnership between home and school is so important, and the education for parents as well as

students is so important too. One of the things that struck me from that Anxious Generation book was one of the authors speaking about car seats. And he mentions about the idea that like back in the day, like when I was a kid, there wasn't the need of car seats and booster seats and sitting in the back seat and all those things. And while the education perpetuated itself and a consensus grew that you would now never pull up to a school and pull out your nine-month-old child not in a car seat, right? I think that the cell phone intelligence, as we partner and learn and grow, it becomes less of a, like, I'm an active parent, I know this, to, like, this is how we operate as a society and a culture for our kids. Because the reality is, like we've mentioned, and especially in middle school, like, I read you the data about the cell phones that we've taken, right? So that's from 7 or 8-15 to, you know, 3-12. But we still have had social media things popping up in the day that's coming to us from the weekends, from the whatever. So it's just a continual education, understanding where we grow, where we grow and building consensus among the families in that way. And I do think we will. do better in the next 10 years than we did in the last 10 years as we know more and we learn more about where the cell phones are taking us and how they impact us. I think where we sit, and several times tonight I've been thinking about the difference between the middle school and the high school. Clayton High School is a very unique community. I've been in four different districts, and I don't know, and I get in trouble about this all the time, that there's just a level of autonomy and professionalism and things that they reap there. And I do feel like where at Whiteout, it was a pretty clear decision that I was like, this is where we're going, this is what we're doing. You know what I mean? And because of parent feedback and different things like that, It's a very different beast at the high school. And I really do understand that. And I feel like with lots of things we talked about today in terms of the curriculum that they deliver, they may need more explicit kinds of things to access it with. the way that the kids interact. I do have middle school kids that come in and sit. They were sitting in Main Street. Those of you who walked into my building, you know, sitting right next to each other in Main Street for 15 minutes on their phones, not talking. Lucia said that's not happening, you know, as they develop and as they're high school kids. So I really just appreciate the ability to, like, look at each school as its own entity and each developmental area as what they need and evergreen. We revisit practices every single year. Every single year. I can tell you what's going to come up, why down bells are going to come up. We're going to talk about these things every single year. So we do need to revisit it and we'll learn and we'll grow but I do feel like Clayton High School, I can't believe I'm saying this on the record, is absolutely, it's just a unique place. There are not other high schools like that in the area, in the district, in the area, and the state. And it's because of what they're built around, the Greyhound time, the freedom of periods, the come and go, what they're doing with all the different practicum pieces. It's a huge component of the culture of that school. So I don't, that's my own personal opinion. But I think it is very different.

And I appreciate that. And I would add, anecdotally, of course, I think one of the public comments mentioned this earlier about, I think maybe one of those, I don't remember if it was a student or a parent, that we hear very often how well prepared our students are for their next step, especially like college students, you know, being so prepared. And that's not just academically. Like, I really do want to believe and do believe that we're preparing them socially, emotionally, you know, in all other ways as well. They're not just talking about that they know how to write well from conference writing, although that is part of it. But I really am proud of that. Like, I hear that a lot, that our kids are so well prepared for the next step. And I think that what we're talking about here and the digital literacy is another piece to that. because as we all know, they're gonna be with phones forever. So I think that's another piece that we can prepare our kids for as they leave.

I don't agree. That's okay. I was just saying, that's why I said anecdotally. I wanna put this in a perspective of something else. Before I came onto the board, I guess the school district saw in the world that there is a massive, terrifying rise in the rates of anxiety and depression and teenagers. And so you all invested tens of thousands of dollars and likely hundreds of I don't know, I wasn't a part of it, a lot of money to make this wellness center to minimize and support our students mental, social, emotional life. And it's great. I love it, clearly. As a psychiatrist, I love it. Removing phones from their learning time, including their passing time. If I could, I would take it away all day long. I can't. This is Clayton High. It's very different. So to take it away from 8.15 to 11.15 or whatever it is that they leave and then put it 12.15, whatever. It is a very, very inexpensive way to support our students' mental health needs. And I just can't comprehend how this board could It doesn't make sense to me that we say we'll spend tens of thousands of dollars and all this time and all this space and multiple new positions to support our students' mental health. And there is irrefutable data that shows that having cell phones is not healthy for our students. We can't control what happens when they're not in our buildings. But I don't understand why we, you know, it's six hours of a day.

Can I push back on that a little bit? Please. Do you not believe what the students and principals are saying, that kids really aren't on their phones that much during passing period or at lunch? If they were saying that was a huge problem, I would totally support what you're saying. But I'm hearing from them that it's not. Which is why I'm pushing back on that idea of it being locked up all day.

It's a fair, I appreciate it. It's a I want to take the burden away from our teachers. This policy is new. I would imagine in all of the schools we're going to see pushback and slide as the year goes on, which speaks to your point of repeating it in the spring, the survey in the spring. I want to think about what happens when slash if that happens, which it inevitably will do because that's what happens with rules. So... Yeah.

And I think that's why that follow-up will be important, right? And that if there is a slide or they realize maybe it's a bigger problem than we thought, that something like you're suggesting could be an option next year. But I think right now, in my opinion, right now because they're saying it's not a problem in lunch and passing period, that there's not a reason to jump to something as strict. That's why I think he's saying, or Jamie, they're all saying they will review this every year, right? But I have to right now, I personally am trusting what the students and what Dan is saying is that it's not an issue in those times of the day. If it becomes an issue, I would... When you

say the students, are you talking about the students who came and spoke to us tonight or are you talking about this survey?

And what Lucia said, too. But really just listening to Dr. Kaczewski say that it really hasn't been an issue. If it becomes one, I'm totally supportive of what you're saying. But to jump to something so strict, like to create a solution for something that really isn't a problem, kind of bothers me about not trusting the students.

And I think in reference to the burden on the teachers from the survey, 95% of our teachers at the high school feel that what we have in place right now is appropriate.

From that follow-up.

And as an aside, in the comments section, because we had an open response about what do you need, the most common response in that was also Nothing, just keep supporting us however you're supporting us. I mean, that was the most common response overwhelmingly.

Were there any other, and this might be in the aggregate data you mentioned that you got, were there any other follow-up questions or responses at any level that you feel like stood out that you want to share? I guess you would have put it in the presentation, but anything else like that, like extra information?

Those were all the questions we asked on the follow-up. There was just three questions.

Got it. Okay. Have any of the small amount of students that have had, like, offenses or repeat or parents that you've talked to because are the parents reacting – how are the parents reacting to that? Are they mad about the new strict rule? Are they – happy that you're, you know, enforcing a rule? Happy may be a

stretch. No, they honestly, they've been very supportive. I mean, we were very clear about we sent a separate letter. We talked about an open house. We were very clear about what it was happening. That's why the middle school level be different than the high school level. We call with the warning because it will take a parent to come to the school. But honestly, we've had no parent pushback at all.

Bring up something that I forgot to mention earlier is that I also really appreciated the clear communication at all levels this year. I actually asked Dr. Patel to forward me all the meals that all the principals sent out because I only have a high schooler, so I only get the high school newsletters because I was just curious what the communication looked like. And I mean, I said back in the spring, I actually think that was our biggest problem was it wasn't communicated clearly to anyone. And so I appreciated that the level of communication and like that there were the direct emails only about that. I think was so important. And what you said, how you've been talking to all the students about it at class meetings and stuff. I think that really was our biggest issue in the past is I just think no one really knew what the practice or the rules were. And so thank you for that. You can never do too much communicating. So I appreciate all that too. Did you have something to say, Lucia?

I just wanted to say that it truly has been effective in the classroom. The first day of school, all of the teachers, basically for eight periods, it was eight of the same little like powwow pep talk. But it was really important because it really gave all of the students this clear mindset of wow, okay, this is becoming a real big thing this year. Like cell phones has been, especially this year because of this meeting, because of the maybe potential like cell phone ban, I suppose been on people's minds more, but it has truly been effective in classroom and for the little like small cases for the tuning in orchestra and in band or I think maybe even like calculators a bit of a stretch because teachers are in all of my classes. And then when other students have communicated to me, it is really effective. And it still has, like teachers still have autonomy because some of them say on the wall, in the little calculator shoe pocket, or in the organizer, yes, on the door, and then you may not touch it for the entire 90 minutes that you are in my class period. And others might be, and then if they don't say that, then the rest of the teachers are, you may have it in your backpack, but it is, if I see it, I will take it away. And it has truly been effective, unless, of course, the really particular circumstances when the teacher makes it clear. For example, I was in the physics class where we had to do it for the spectral analysis with our team for the projectile motion. We grabbed our cell phones, we did it. And then although there wasn't even a clear communication like you must put your cell phones away, everyone sort of realized because they knew that if they were caught doing something that wasn't class related or wasn't teacher related that there would be consequences to the action. So it has been effective into the classrooms. Do you

think that will last for the school year?

I do believe so. That's why that

follow-up is important.

Yeah, I agree that there should definitely be a follow-up. But in the beginning, I think it's even improved from the beginning of the school. Because in the beginning, since there was still this transition period of being able to have your phones and the teachers not really acting on any consequences, there might have been a period of like a week or two where teachers were like, I can sort of see your phone. Make sure that it's really good in their way. And then no chance if it's just over here texting. from then, and then when the consequences really have been acted upon, students are even more realizing this is real and this is happening. And so they're enforcing it. And I think that it's going in a good direction.

I also wanted to touch on, Lucia, what you said earlier about that it's a bigger problem for the underclassmen, you know, like the freshmen. Because they come to Clayton High School and all of a sudden they have all this independence and freedom, right? I'm hoping and suspecting that that might go away a little bit now that the practices are stricter at the high school and stricter at Y-Down. So kids are coming from Y-Down already being used to not being able to have their phone out all day and they come to the high school and now there are clear consequences about it. So I'm hoping that that changes as well and kind of as these ninth graders go through that. Absolutely,

and that's why the teacher alignment is so important and has been working so effectively because of this communication between the elementary schools it's really progressing I believe that there's not as big of a jump anymore from middle school that's like you really can't have your phone for almost at all and then last year maybe when rules weren't as clear or maybe they were up to the teacher to decide so with this like real place teacher alignment, it's been going.

From what it's worth, the junior class is leading in cell phone confiscations.

Interesting. I have two points. So this is from the Missouri School Board Association safety person. And this supports the current policy that schools that restrict cell phone use see an improvement in test scores. What is important here is what comes next, especially among lower achieving students. So higher achieving students, more independently motivated students who are in these honors and AP classes, they are less impacted at baseline by their phones during class than our lower achieving students. And I really want us as a board and you all as leadership to hold that, that there is a differential on who is impacted by restricting cell phone use or allowing it. To follow that, I say this improves test scores. And this goes back to what Jason said, like how are we going to measure success of this? If in April we send a survey and everyone's happy and there's only whatever, you know, not so many taken away, how else are we gonna measure success? Or is that the only success we want? Do we want to- That's a good question. I don't know, test scores is a huge thing. It's a huge thing. So how do we want to, and if we keep this policy from this year to next year and the next year, how can we measure the success? You asked a good question and I want us to bring it back or at least keep it in our consciousness.

But how do you make sure that you're not conflating correlation with causation there? And that even Missouri School Board hasn't done it. I mean, can you really say that higher test scores are associated with less cell phone use in school? How?

Because if you... Have you read the studies? I mean, the studies that have looked at this show that test scores improve... both immediately when phones are taken away and schools that have removed them. And

what types of schools exactly? This has happened

in science and labs, in lab studies.

But what demographic of schools? Is it the same in large schools versus small schools, private schools versus public schools? I mean, even that book, The Anxious Generation, there's been a number of pushbacks on the statistics and the data that's in there.

And then there have been studies that have followed up, pushing back on the pushing back and showing why those pushbacks. That's what I mean. That's what data is. Data is reviewing those effect sizes, reviewing those methods. And so what

data are you asking for? That we correlate test scores with a stricter cell phone policy? I guess I'm...

One would be what I'm throwing out options, right? What do teachers say? How do they feel about the policy in April versus the next April versus the next?

I think the important thing is

whatever the specifics are, that we find a

way to measure

it. Because if it makes things worse, well, we should know that too.

So what's the problem that we're trying to fix here in terms of what are we going to measure for success? What's the problem?

Yeah, that is a better way to ask my question.

That's what I'm just saying that out loud. Well, I guess if the problem is just You know, if we have all agreed that cell phones are a distraction, that we're trying, I guess, to just figure out, just like this survey did in our follow-ups, how maybe it's the same survey over and over. You know, do the staff feel like, I don't know. the current practice is effective, or how big of a distraction is

it? I want to be cautious in tying test scores to this. As the person who's responsible for teaching and learning and assessment, I'm really concerned because we have a whole lot of other initiatives that we're trying to do to affect student achievement. I don't want to tie phones to, like we have a huge MTSS initiative right now of knowing our learners well and responding to their needs And I'm nervous to then tie something like this to that piece.

So then that is

a

perfect answer for that's not one of the things that we're measuring. We can look at it to see if it's interesting, but that's not our end point.

I think, like I was just saying, if we're just trying to see if cell phones are a distraction in classrooms, that the follow-up surveys... like you planned on are probably the best way to measure that. And discipline records.

Yeah. Yeah.

Or even the

panorama survey, you know, sense of belonging.

Yeah, maybe that increases with the new practices. That's a great one. I like that. I like your tie into that earlier too. I do think that is really important.

Because it's two things, right? That's the goal. It's the academics and the social and emotional. That's what's been articulated. So

those are

two different

things. Right. Can we also, with the panorama, be careful with that one also? Because we also have two other goals in our strategic plan that are focused on that initiative. And so I want us to make sure that we're really identifying, like we have a lot of sort of forward momentum with those things, so I want to be careful with what we tie to say that's a metric. Because I don't want to come and present panorama data to you and you'd be like, That's because of cell phones.

No, and I think you're right. We don't need to officially tie it. Let me

just jump in here since it started and I appreciate the call because I did ask the question earlier. And my question, I was not looking, to be clear, and if I wasn't clear, I apologize. I was not looking for an aha stat, right? Like this has gone down by X percent. That's not really what I'm looking for in success. When I say that I trust our school leaders, what I'm trusting is that if we're going to do a follow-up survey and we're going to look at, continue to look at this in a continuous improvement with a continuous, sorry, It was a continuous improvement mindset and with a sense of like doing what's right for the kids. And what I'm trusting is that if we look at a broad set of data, how you guys have laid it out tonight is a great way to look at it. And it tells us that what we are doing in spite of our best efforts and best intentions isn't working, then we should revisit this and look at a different approach. That's really all I'm looking for. I'm not looking for like another report on this. So just to sort of clarify that.

Can I add

one thing

there, which is I agree with everything you said. The other piece of this, yes, the student or the parent group brought this to us. This is a national discussion that's happening. And so what other districts are doing is also part of how we're and what other literature comes out is also going to have to be part of what we look at as we update.

I guess if no one else has anything else, I would just say in closing that I appreciate your next steps and recommendations because now basically where it's like, where do we go from here? Right. And I as a board president and as a school board, like I said earlier, I appreciate that the last one was about updating policies because that's what the board does, right? We work on policy. And I appreciate that you called out one policy but you said and other related ones or something because there are a few that this has mentioned and I think it's important to look at all of those as well as, and Kim had brought this up prior to this meeting, as well as some of our technology acceptable use agreements that our students and parents sign I mean everyone signs those but like you know no offense I'm not sure anyone's reading it and there there is language in there about about this too um they sign it because they know they need to sign it if they want to you know district issued device um so I think anything related to this we need to we need to look at and I do understand what Dr. Patel said that the policies we do have to wait to get back from MSBA so You know, we're kind of on their timeline. But hopefully that will be sooner rather than later. And I am looking forward to then when we have a first reading of these new policies with your suggestions and MSBA's suggestions that we'll have another discussion about the policy language. And so I think as a board, that is like the perfect next step for us is working on policy. So I appreciate you calling that out. and all the other next steps that you're going to be doing in your buildings with education. So I think we're heading in the right direction. I think we actually started this year in a great direction with the new practices. So thank you all again for all the work you've done from, you know, not even just last spring. I know you said you started it whenever, years ago. But we appreciate you staying late on a Wednesday night to discuss this with us. So thank you so much.

And I think, Lucia, you could probably head out too if you need to.

It's late. Uh-oh. Dr. Kaczewski did not. He's like, what? We don't have the ninth hour. Okay. Yes, Lucia, You can definitely go. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. So we are now agenda item 7.1. Paragon architecture to expand their scope and John Brazeal is going to talk to that

Okay. So we are now agenda item 7.1. Paragon architecture to expand their scope and John Brazil is going to talk to that

Good evening. I'll try to be brief Earlier tonight there was a slide in the superintendent's presentation that showed the calendar events on our long-range facilities master plan and over the past number of weeks we've had many meetings with buildings and a couple with steering committee And as we reconnaissance discuss those What we listen to and hear in those meetings? and consult consultation with our consultant and dr Patel and I talking we've believed that additional assessments are needed really to measure the Educational effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of these buildings using a recognized standard so we're proposing to add that as increase the scope of work with our consultant and You can see the proposal there to do all six buildings for $34,000. So we recommend that to you. And if you have any questions, I'll be happy to respond.

I'll just say real quickly that just both as the treasurer who's been able to meet with John offline, then also as one of the representatives to the district steering committee on this, I think I never like to see scope creep with professional service providers of any kind. And you know, that's I'm always just sort of watchful for that. But I think one of the things has bubbled up is we do kind of need to answer some of these questions about our buildings, right? And it would be a disservice to the community to not have looked at this just given the age of some of our buildings. And so, you know, I think it's important to, in this case, to expand the scope.

Sorry. No, no, go ahead. I feel when I read this, I felt like, whoa, I was very naive to what actually was going to happen. You know, I thought this was a part of the original plan. I'm just going to be honest because it is very obvious to me that this has to happen in order for us to effectively move forward with our plan. So thank you very much for seeing this need and for bringing it to us. I'm happy to support it.

I was actually going to say the same thing like I didn't real like this is a big piece that I didn't necessarily realize was missing and. And I'm happy to see that it's been added so. You can read the motion probably yeah.

I move that we authorize an expansion of the scope of work for the long range facilities planning project with Paragon architecture. to add CEFPI Hawkins Lilly assessments of all six district school buildings for an additional fee not to exceed $34,000.

Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, motion passes.

Thank you.

Thank you. We will head to consent agenda. Chris can read

the motion. I move that we approve the consent agenda items 8.01 through 8.3.

Second. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Okay, consent agenda passes. Okay, board communications, there have not been any committee meetings since last time, but, oh no, you had one just today. Uh-oh, sorry. Yeah,

so let's get an equity update. Equity. We started with, I mean, they're amazing, Dr. Daniels and Dr. Poole. Started with this question of what superpower would you want? And then we discussed it with other people at our tables of what superpower and then talked about how that superpower helps them to become better educators. They are so amazing. It was a great way to get to know each other. Then reviewed the equity walkthrough updates, and they'll be finalizing the teams for this. I have a list of like each month that they're going to see all the schools, but I'm not gonna say it here. Spent the last part of it reviewing, kind of returning to, he called it the A-bar kick-up reflection reboot. And in 2021 to 22, a survey went out about anti-racism to our staff. So Dr. Poole gave us all, and we worked in pairs, the survey, and we edited it in real time on the paper and then discussed it as a group and gave it back to him so that he can revise that as he considers giving out a new survey. That's it. What is your superpower?

I like that.

Good. Even though there might not have been any other official committee meetings, does anyone else have attended anything else district-related that they want to share or anything like that?

Yeah, homecoming. Homecoming was great. Parade was great. Yeah, Heike, thank you for all your help getting us all ready and making us look fantastic as always. The decorations, the candy. Three generations of Janice's there to make sure that we showed well.

It was great.

And the football team with a nice win over Afton.

Football team, nice win. And the halftime, as Dr. Kaczewski mentioned, the halftime honoring the 2014 for 20 years ago was really special. And they made such a cool video. to honor them. And the Clayton Education Foundation has

twice as many attendees this year than they had last year, so that foundation is really crushing it. The foundation's doing awesome. Yeah.

Luke, you should try to put some of those Clayton players on your fantasy football team if you need some

help. Two of them went to the NFL. Okay. On that note, yeah. Okay, on that note, Chris can read the motion to adjourn. Yes, indeed. I move that the Board of Education adjourn.

Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, meeting is adjourned. Thank you.