November 20, 2024 — Meeting Transcript

Okay, welcome everyone. It's seven o'clock, we're gonna get started. Adequate notice has been given. I would like everyone to stand up and join us in 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, would you please Read the motion.

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

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Okay, motion passes. Okay, agenda item 2.1, oath of office for Ben Beinfeld. Ben will take the oath of office for the remainder of the 2024-2020 term vacated by Gary Pearson. And a one-year term will be on the ballot for the April 8th, 2025 election to finish his term, which expires in 2026. So, Ben, why don't you come on up to take the oath of office? Right over here. Come over here. Okay. Repeat after me. Repeat after me, are we ready? Jeff looked like he was working.

Okay

good. I do solemnly affirm that I am at least 24 years of age.

I do solemn affirm that I am 24 years of age

That I'm a citizen of the United States

That I am a citizen of the United States.

And a resident taxpayer of the school district of Clayton.

A resident taxpayer of the state of Clayton.

School district.

School district of Clayton,

uh-huh. In St. Louis County in the state of Missouri.

In St.Lewis County in the state Missouri.

And that I will support the constitutions.

And that I support the constitutions?

Of the United States and of the state of Missouri?

Of the United State and of the state Missouri. And I will abide by and uphold.

The School District of Clayton Board Member Code of Ethics.

The School District Board of Ethics.

And will faithfully conduct myself in office.

And will faithly conduct myself in office

Congratulations. Thank you. Welcome to the board. And now you can take your seat. Thank you. I'd like to also publicly again thank all of the applicants we had for this position, which was a very qualified pool and we hope they all stay involved in the district and engaged in some way. So welcome Ben. Now we will go to recognizing our own, which John will take over.

Being Jim Brunel is here tonight to recognize a couple members of his team, but before he does we want to recognize Jim Brunel as well. Jim Brunel's our director of facilities and in that role he wears many hats and he wears them all very well. He leads a team of facility maintenance, a team of plant workers, the ground crew, shipping and receiving, vehicle maintenance, student transportation, and project management. Jim is always professional and solution-oriented in his oversight of contractors and service providers. His solutions are effective and take into account the longer-term implications of the decisions to be made, including the cost and life cycle of the equipment or system. I personally greatly value Jim's insights and opinions. Jim, you excel in your leadership, and we appreciate all that you do for the school district of Clayton.

Well, that was a pleasant surprise. Thank you. I thought I was here to honor others. So now that John's introduced me, I'd like to thank Dr. Patel and the Board of Education for taking the time to recognize Jim Chapman and Mike Kaiser, two of our team members in the Facilities Department. Unfortunately, neither Mike nor Jim were able to attend in person tonight, so I've been asked to share their story with you. So Jim and Mike are both longtime members of the facility services team working in our department for 17 and 11 years respectively. During their tenure, they supported the district in numerous ways, never thinking twice about lending a helping hand. Neither man thought that the effort they put in last month to support the Glen Ridge Playground project was anything special. Each of them actually told me I was just doing my job. In my opinion, Jim and Mike went above and beyond to help bring that playground project to completion. So the facilities department was charged with protecting the new playground surface as it cures. Much like concrete, the surface needed to cure slowly over time and during that time it needed to be watched around the clock to make sure that no errant balls over the fence marred the finish or no curious visitors left footprints in the surface. Originally, this installation was scheduled to take place over the summer months and because of the temperatures required a brief period of 24 hours to be watched. However, when the schedule was pushed back to the fall, the cooler temperatures created a significantly longer cure time of approximately 150 hours. So neither man batted an eye when I asked if they could work extra hours to help us ensure the integrity of the surface while it cured. Each of them volunteered to work 12-hour shifts through the week, one day and one overnight, to ensure that we delivered the best product we could for the Clayton students and community. So as a school district, we strive for excellence. And I believe what we witnessed in both men's actions was excellence in this instance. So in closing, they just asked me to say thank you on their behalf. Thank you.

Okay, we're moving now into public comment. We have a couple. First, I would like to call Jenna Schomburg.

Thank you. Hi, I'm here for a third time and this time is to ask the board to consider setting a couple boundaries in the cell phone ban discussion. To be clear, I am very glad and commend all of you for having this discussion publicly. While that is possibly complicated things, I appreciate the transparency and the willingness of the board to have challenging conversations over important topics in a public forum. However, I hope you will consider, each of you, voicing where the boundaries of this particular discussion are, specifically that no one's job, whether elected or hired, is on the line here. We aren't going to solve a problem by removing a person. I think all of us would do well to consider what type of community we are building, one that fosters diversity or one that requires homogeneity. I hope the board will arrive at compromises tonight that respect the hired experts our district has, experts who are working within their expertise, our educators. I'm deeply troubled by a community that would believe being an expert in one area is the same as being an expert in all. When we intentionally or unintentionally deride our resident experts because they don't agree with our conclusions about complex issues, that is not a win for anyone. especially not our teens whose mental health requires that the adults in the room behave like adults. I hold myself to that too. I hope the board will consider naming those boundaries so that anyone in the community who thinks it's appropriate to threaten the employment or elected office of an individual due to their stance on one issue will have an opportunity to reconsider. Have your discussion, disagree if you must, and then respect the experts that we've hired to serve our kids, the ones who've built relationships with them, and share your concerns. Stop co-signing on our culture's tendency to moralize every issue of import making a hero out of anyone who is a purist when complexity is what is most needed. And be clear that most important issues are often needing, that important issues most frequently need a variety of experts to approach solutions with humility and collaboration instead of a single approach. I hope we'll pivot from a discussion that only revolves around where our teenagers' cell phones are during passing periods and lunch, and consider other ways to boost the efforts of our higher district experts to address the mental health crisis. I hope tonight will be a moment to move forward toward respectful collaboration rather than strawman arguments about how little others care about something because they don't agree with our stance. I care deeply about our teenagers like you. I care deeply about community like you. And I hope we'll all consider that caring for those people includes making space for disagreement about the hows of addressing the important things in life. Let's be persuasive, but stop short of being inflammatory. Let's consider how to approach our goals without threatening replacing our people. These things are the foundation of a community that is ready and able to care for our teenagers and their complex needs. Thank you.

Thank you, Jenna. And we have one more public comment from parent Robin Leonard, who could not be here, and Jeff Polz is going to read for us.

Okay. Dear members of the Clayton Board of Education and Dr. Patel, I'm writing to request a more in-depth review of the college counseling services at Clayton High School during the district's upcoming counseling department evaluation in the second semester. I believe there's an important opportunity to better meet the needs of our students and families during the college selection process at the high school level. Although the college counseling program is a smaller component of the overall district counseling services, it is essential that it receives the attention it deserves during this review. I believe a deeper look into best practices for supporting students and their families would be valuable. A few key questions I would like to raise include, one, are we allocating sufficient resources to college counseling? Two, are we using the most effective communication methods, example, updated websites, meetings, et cetera? Three, do we fully understand the needs and concerns of students and families? And are there any disconnects in her support? As the district works toward fulfilling the profile of a Clayton graduate, it is critical that we address this final step in the process to ensure it receives the attention it deserves. I want to emphasize that this request is not a reflection on the people involved. I have great respect for Carolyn Blair and the expertise she brings to her position. This is about ensuring that the college counseling team has the resources and support necessary to provide the best possible service to Clayton students and families. While I would prefer to deliver this request in person, I will be cheering on my son at a CHS soccer game tonight. Go Hounds. In conclusion, I respectfully ask that the district prioritize college counseling during this review and explore ways to strengthen this essential service. Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

Thank you. Thanks for reading that, Jeff. And we'll move now to Dr. Patel's communications.

Thank you, everyone, for being here tonight. Congratulations officially, Ben, and welcome to the table. All right, quick update before we get into the presentations tonight. I do, of course, have to give a shout-out to our Clayton soccer team who are playing right now at Lindenwood. And I am checking my texts, and the score right now is 2-0, Hounds. And they scored within the first 12 seconds.

So,

yeah. So it's halftime. Halftime should be over now. So we'll see. We'll keep you posted in case in the middle of the board meeting. I hope you don't mind. I always share the scores. Yes, yes, that's true. That's true. So good luck to them. And then if they win tonight, which we hope they do, it will be the finals tomorrow at 8 o'clock. So please, anyone watching, anyone here, we'd love to see you at Lindenwood to cheer them on. Next, of course, I also have to congratulate the Clayton Swim and Dive Team. They placed third place at the Misha State Championship Meet, and a freshman named Andrew Chu got Individual State Champion. So looking forward to seeing his career as well at CHS for the next few years. And then, of course, I'm not sure how many of you know a teacher at Clayton High School, Caitlin Long. She's been with the district for about 19 years, if I'm not mistaken. Started at the Learning Center and now is in the Math Department. And recently we recognized her as the Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award winner. And Caitlin is phenomenal. She is a huge... proponent for student voice and amplifying it, and also making a lot of change in the school itself. So congratulations to Caitlin, and we will be officially recognizing her when Emerson does its own celebration. So if you see her by any chance, please make sure we thank her for all that she does. And then this morning, yeah, it was today. Today we had our District Steering Committee meeting for the Long Range Facilities Master Plan. It was very informative. We had a lot of good discussion. And if you look at the calendar here, we're already in November. We've got board presentation tonight from Paragon that'll give us an update. Then we have our community forum coming in December that we invite everybody to. It's our last district community forum. And then in January, we'll be having the Paragon coming back here to give us the final results of all of the information that we've received so far from the community. We will also be sending out a survey to anyone who would like to fill that out. We're going to send out postcards in case they don't have our email access with their QR code because we want to get as much feedback on our facilities moving forward. And with all of that information that we get, we will present it to the board. And then I really believe the real work also begins right there in terms of what direction we want to go. So a lot of good things happening and exciting information coming up. And then finally tonight we're going to have two presentations. Our first one is Clayton High School's Counseling Services with College and Career Readiness. followed by Paragon that will give us an update. So looking forward to both presentations today. Now I'm going to hand it off to you, Lucia. Thank

you. I'd like to first start off by saying that, of course, winter sports have started and that we're looking forward to some great seasons. Of course, with winter sports comes the holiday season, which has also been starting to float around the school, which is awesome to see. For high school shout-outs, of course, the boys swim team for competing at state. The NHS induction ceremony was yesterday, which was also amazing. It was some beautiful speeches, and I know Quite a couple people who were there. It was really amazing. The girls cross-country team, who finished eighth at state, and then the boys who ran individually at state, Cole Craig, Don Tezzo, and Carl Barthel, all three of them got better places than they did last year, which is some incredible improvement. A big shout out to them. Of course, the soccer team, who's competing right now, amazing. And I look forward to hopefully being able to watch them tomorrow. So bring on the good luck. The speech and debate is having a tournament. So it's called the Clayton Fall Classic, and that's going to be happening this Friday and this Saturday. So it's going to be some great times, and I know I look forward to it. to being there too. I'd also like to say that I think it was last week the teachers had a spirit week at the high school and I know it for sure was amazing for the teachers but I have to say it really cheered up the students because it was amazing to see all of their fun activities planned and especially Friday which was tailgating day. I know a couple students got were able to get like some of the leftover donuts and cookie cakes and so for that reason but also because it was amazing what's the game called? It's like corn, cornhole. Amazing. In the hallway during passing periods. I met with the middle school last Thursday and I talked with a wonderful group of students. Some common threads for Y-Down are the transition to high school, pack time and lunchtime. So we had some great discussions about that. For some Y-Down shout outs, the sixth grade camp reunion night was last year and there's quite a lot of shout outs. So it's always amazing to to be able to say these. But in September, led by Ms. Baker's Da Vinci class, they raised $900 in loving memory of the Kevin Shaw son of the principal secretary, Angie Gwynn. They hosted sixth grade families for a first ever movie night on the field showing Inside Out 2. I went with my little brother and it was beautiful. It was a great atmosphere. The preferred family health met with all three grades around the risks of vaping. 22 eighth graders were trained and attended sixth grade camp at Sherwood as counselors. in training and additionally 184 6th graders attended 6th grade camp. 194 8th graders attended camp Jekyll and an alternative local trip to various ecosystems was offered for the eighth graders who stayed back and all who had a great time. Their fall sports had very successful sports seasons, and the Waidon Theatre Company presented This Murder Has Been Staged, including a special presentation for the district fifth graders. I think it was also past week, which is amazing. Lastly, with the best, one of the most important shout outs for Wydown is that following the hurricane that devastated North Carolina, Stucco raised $1,514.57 through a PAC advisory contest to provide clean drinking water for the hurricane victims. So shout out to everyone who really worked hard on that, which is amazing. So I know there are lots of coming up concerts and look forward to all of those. I started meeting with the elementary schools as well. I met with Glenridge last Tuesday. I'll meet with Merrimack this Friday, and I look forward to meeting with Captain by the end of the month. And I look forward to sharing the common threads and shout outs between the elementary schools at hopefully the next board meeting. But I would like to, however, share my favorite quote with the elementary school kids. So in the beginning, for a little bit of context, we started talking. And with Reyna, the vice president of the SPSA club, we were like, OK, we're going to start off really broad. We're going to start up really big. Maybe just a good question like, how is Glenridge? To just start getting into the topics and see also what what common themes the kiddos would like to talk about. And when asked the question, how is Glenridge? It's my favorite. It's, oh, Glenridge is awesome. So it was amazing to start off the discussion that way. And then we had a great time. So I look forward to sharing about the specific things that we talked next board meeting hopefully. So yeah, that's what I'd like to bring.

Thanks, Lucia. Thank you for doing all that work connecting with students of all ages because it's really great and important for us to hear what elementary school and middle school kids are saying too. So thank you so much. Okay, we are moving now into our presentations. The first one will be Dr. Poole and the Counseling Department presenting on goal three of the strategic plan. And this will be on college and career counseling. I think Dr. Poole, let's see, who else? Ms. Cole, Ms. Johnson, and Ms. Blair. And Dr. Pooley is, we're so sorry, is scooting up here with a torn Achilles, yeah.

But thank you for being here.

All right, so this is, thanks for having us. This is the first of kind of a multi-part presentation over Goal 3 of our strategic plan. We will be dedicated to the personal growth of our learners. and their social, emotional, and physical well-being. I'm excited to have the counseling team from the high school up here to talk to you about kind of their programming as it pertains to college and career readiness. The reason I kind of like where we're going with our Goal 3 updates and having the counseling department up is when I think about Goal 3 and it being very based on a lot of the components within our strategic plan as well as SEL development. Our counseling department is kind of the first line of defense for that. They're on the ground doing the work every day, so I feel like it would make sense for them to kind of explain what their day-to-day looks like as it pertains to the strategic plan. And in this case, as we talk about the profile of the graduate kind of being the final piece to students achieving that image. So without further ado, I will pass it on.

Good evening. My name is Carolyn Blair and I work over at the high school in the counseling office, ironically enough, here we are. I might switch places with Jacelyn because what we're going to do, I'm going to do a real brief introduction and then Toby and Jacelyn are going to walk you guys through our programming of what we do, the assured experiences and everything that happens in counseling. And then I'm going to answer whatever questions you have. So I'm going to switch places with her just so that we don't have to keep moving the mic around. Yeah. Sorry, my bad. I just. Okay. So do we have a, okay. I'm doing the clicker. All right. Okay, so just to start out, you know, when Cameron came and asked if we would come and talk about college and career, my first response was sure, but college and career is related to everything that we do. It's not a separate thing. There are counseling offices that have a college and career department, and then have a separate department that is not what we do at Clayton High School. Because in our view, everything that we're doing, whether it's your child is in the fetal position under our desk, or whether it's helping you with a situation with a friend, we're building skills to help you move on and transition out of high school. So for that reason, we're going to walk you through our not entire program, but most of the things that we do. It's not 100% just college and career, but all the things that we doing to support our students. And so basically helping students succeed in high school and preparing them for after graduation. Toby, you're up.

So I'm Toby Smith. I am currently the 10th grade counselor at Clayton High School. I've been here for about 17 years, so I've gotten to meet multiple layers of students. We're going to start off with talking about the three areas and, like Carolyn said, assured experiences, which we expect all student and hope all students have. And we're going to go do an overview where all students are at and then break it down by grade level. So the first thing is the ICAP, which is an individual career and academic plan. This is actually something that is required by the state of Missouri. We do start it off really briefly in eighth grade, and then the ninth grade counselor is able to continue that into freshman year. So freshman year they spend time meeting one-on-one. It's a three-part plan. The first is really about crafting and communicating your course requirements and kind of beginning with the end in mind, looking at where do you want to be and making sure we cover some of the experiences that you'd have in courses as well as graduation requirements. We also spend some time in that freshman year talking about life after high school. What do you see? What do you envision for yourself after high school in kind of that dream big kind of place? And then we finally talk about how to make the most of high school in terms of engaging and smart goals and things like that. And that starts at the freshman level.

Hi, I'm Jacelyn Cole. I am one of the senior counselors. Another short experience every year with every counselor are these annual group meetings. Typically they've happen to take place in Science Lab. This is an opportunity for counselors to meet with a small group of students to review their courses that they've taken so far, have a chance to look at their transcript, look at any course offerings that we have coming up not only for the entire school but for individually their grade level, look to see if they have any outstanding course requests and have us help them think through any of their post-secondary plans and any potential career or major related classes that they could be selecting through this process. We also talk with them about eligibility and all kinds of other really important credit associated things.

So after that, ideally, the master schedule is created. And now we get to have individual registration meetings with every student where we're able to kind of look at what does that schedule look like for next year, go over their ICAP, make sure that kind of some of the things that they had wanted are showing up there, make changes, look at conflicts, things like that. And so we are able to do that one-on-one with each one of them, ideally in April-ish.

The PTO meetings will break down by grade level as we move forward, but these are strategically placed in a collaboration with the counseling department to kind of meet the needs of where each grade level and parents are at to ease some questions and concerns at certain periods of the year.

Okay, so now breaking it down kind of to each level. So freshman year we do freshman success seminars and those start in first semester of ninth grade. The freshman counselor actually goes into the social studies classes this time twice in that semester. The first time it's really how to make the most of high school, how to look at executive functioning, look at how are you planning for things, really talking about how to get connected, advocate for yourself with teachers, things like that. We're also able to introduce the ICAP and kind of work on that kind of together at the, to do that together and kind of kick that off. The second time we're going in and we're getting a little bit more into details around graduation requirements, really looking at a transcript and how to read a transcript so they're able to be familiar with that before they see it in January. And then finally really helping them prepare for finals since this is their first experience through and making sure that covered.

So in the second semester of freshman year, the college counselors and the grade level counselor again visit with the students. At this point, they've had a semester under their belt. They get to take a look at their actual transcript and understand what that looks like. Alongside that, they take a learning style inventory where they learn how they learn, you know, where they might learn best, those kind of factors, and get to reflect on the current transcript that they have in front of them and decide whether or not they need to implement any of those things. They just learn about themselves through that inventory and think about how they have now kind of control over their path moving forward with the choices that they make, and all those important student skill factors. They also get a chance to look at various transcripts with different GPAs, so high, kind of middle, and low GPA range, and think about how that plays out in the college admission side.

So for sophomore year, we do address some social-emotional counseling in the health classes. It's an assured experience for any student enrolled at CHS in the health. We partner with the wellness coordinator and talk about mental health and signs of suicide. Sometimes we take that presentation on or sometimes we bring in community partners

to assist with that. Sophomore seminars are given by the grade level counselor to help students think about opportunities that are coming up for them, both in professional growth realm but also in post-secondary planning. So we introduce them to programs like Missouri Scholars, A Plus Program, South Tech, Early College, HOBE, all those kinds of fabulous opportunities. And then we also help prepare them and get them started thinking about the PSAT 10.

So then we lead into sophomore empowerment meetings, which kind of is the second installment of ICAP where we bring the family and student together. It's about a 30-minute meeting, and we review the ICAP. But then it's kind of an organic meeting in terms of we either talk about where the student's at right now, maybe classes they're looking for in the future, how they're getting the most out of high school, and then really gently starting to think about how to start planning for that junior year and what kind of is up ahead in terms of the college and career process.

In the second semester, the college counseling team again visits classrooms and we have students take a survey called the Do What You Are. It's a Myers-Briggs inventory. Students then look at those results and get to think about how their interests relate to any potential work major interest. Again, learning about themselves and how that could relate to shaping their future after high school.

So we have a belief that the summer between 10th and 11th grade is a unique experience that you don't always get to have. And so trying to help them create a plan to be intentional about what they're doing during those summer months. So whether it's helping them with job opportunities or exploring volunteering and job shadowing and being very unique to what a student needs, we're providing that along with supporting the application process, writing rec letters and things.

The PTO this year is strategically placed in the spring. As sophomores rise to junior year, they have a lot more options that open up for them about their course selection. So this is strategically placed around or before registration to alleviate any concerns or just really answer questions that parents might have. These PTO meetings for us that we are in collaboration with, we typically allow for time for us to give a short presentation but really then open up the floor for Q&A So we meet families where they are, and we're able to answer kind of whatever questions they have at that time related to that grade level. Oh, sorry.

We're switching. Okay. No, no, no. The college application process starts off in English classes. And the senior team goes in, and they're in there right now. And they're really helping them understand the overview of the application, really looking at how that process works, financial aid, and really doing a college admission simulation, which is fun and unique. And then there is an official kickoff to college meeting in January. And this is a pretty robust meeting with families and students, and it kind of is a major overview of everything that's going to be encompassed in the next year and a half-ish, year.

So after those two things happen, we then really open up our calendars to meet with every junior and come up with a plan for whatever they're looking to do. So we meet with students who are thinking about going to a four-year college or a two-year college. We brainstorm ideas for if students are wanting to work or go into the military. have that meeting to understand where the student is at, understand what their ideas and interests are, talk about all these factors that go into this post-high school planning. A part of that is coming up with a testing plan. So for students who, at this point, they have taken the PSAT in the October of their junior year and then the practice ACT in January. So by the time we sit down to have this meeting, coming up with a test plan is important for them to understand, have those two data points, and then compare and contrast and see if they want to concentrate on one plan or the other and kind of move forward. So all of that goes into those really important individualized planning meetings.

So recognizing that parents can get really anxious at the start of junior year, the PTO has an early fall meeting where it's able to bring in parents who have maybe questions, burning questions that they need to answer, anything to kind of help ease the anxiety a little bit before the whole process starts taking off.

And then moving into the senior year, we have college application bootcamps. These are really fun. It really kicks the senior year off. We have it before school starts and it's a great way to bring students back together and start thinking about their senior year. We help students with whatever phase of the college application they're in. So we have students that come in to that session where they haven't started at all and we help them start really from the beginning of actually working through their application. We have students that I've worked on a little bit over the summer and just want to go a little bit more in depth. So we take students where they are and

take them off. So there are two big meetings that kind of happen in the beginning of senior year. The first is really a college application meeting. This is, again, for students and parents. And it's kind of the nitty gritty of how to get through the application process. Then a little bit later in the fall, they do a financial aid meeting where they're bringing in a representative from WashU to kind of do a line by line, walk through an overview of the financial aid as well as how to fast fund how to complete that application.

In the fall, the whole first semester we are intentional about meeting with every single student. We have students that are seeking us out, we have students that we are wanting to connect with to make sure that we have an understanding of what their plan is both for that semester and moving into the second semester. So not only do we have opportunities, Toby will talk about App Labs, but for college application boot camps and for the app labs for students to kind of work in a bigger setting and hear questions that each other has to ask but we are available and intentional about individual meetings to have those private conversations review students plans maybe come up with a plan A and a plan B whatever it might be alongside that is monthly communication that we send out to do some of the prompting of come to app lab come set a meeting with us here are things that you should be focusing on in September here are things you should be focusing those kinds of things. So that is all individualized and targeted for that whole first semester to make sure that we're understanding and supporting students with where they're at.

And the final layer to that is App Labs. They open up during Greyhound time twice a week, starting in early August all the way through December. Anybody can stop in at any point and ask any questions. So no appointment is needed, and it's available. Random questions from did I do this right or I'm writing my essay on that, they're available that whole time twice a week for the entire semester to finish off that process.

I don't know. So, well, I'll just keep going and then we'll do questions afterwards. So one of the major responsibilities that comes through counseling is testing, pretty much soup to nuts. Counselors are responsible for everything from ordering the tests to training the proctors to assigning the kids to rooms. managing special testing so that means anybody with extended time any kind of special testing accommodations that are required at all that all comes through counseling for every test that you see up there so that's one of the major responsibilities that comes through our office but the main thing kind of like i was saying in the beginning is that we feel like really everything that we do um is just managing students access to learning that's our job and if we're doing our job the way that we should be doing it it's it's usually pretty much under the radar um you don't have to know everything that we're doing to know that we're doing what we're supposed to be doing for all the kids who are there And we don't do the same exact thing for every single student, but the students who need us, we're there for them to provide mental health, social emotional support, self-actualization, just developmental, you know, for adolescents, et cetera. And obviously transition to post high school. So quickly I'm going to walk you guys through some slides that I, that I added based on some questions that I think people had in terms of outcomes of what we're doing. So I have some slides here and I am not a, um, PowerPoint, you know, efficient guru at all, but I did my best, but, but I'm just going to say this up front before we get started. Cause I know y'all. So sometimes it rounded like, you know, if it was a 0.8, it rounded up to one. So there's a slide where it doesn't exactly equal 100 because it rounded and I, it was taking too long for me to figure it out. I'm just going to say that just out front, but feel free to do the math and we can talk about it. But the point is, and I did four years to see where our students are going, what are they're doing? As you can see, most of our students are doing four-year schools. We have several students doing two-year schools. military zero tech school, zero employment, zero sometimes, um, unsure also can include a gap year, which, which includes college counseling on the front end, deciding what you're going to do, taking a gap year and then coming back to that. So that's not, but in our, in our, the way that I pull this data is for the students to say, here's where I want you to send my final transcript. And if I'm taking a gap year, then I'm not sending that yet. So if that makes sense. So just taking you through the years, they're all relatively similar in terms of what our students are doing and what that looks like. Last year, 2024, again, very, very similar all since the pandemic. So just a breakdown of kind of seeing like. Who's doing what? Most of our students are actually deciding to go on to some sort of post-high school education. Where do they go? These are percentages here. So in-state is losing to out-of-state. Most of our students tend to go out-of- state for college. Public versus private, it's about half and half. Again, these are percentages. So you can see pretty much... evenly split for the most part. These are, someone asked a question about HBCUs, these are actual numbers and so what I pulled was the number of African American students in a class and then of that number how many students chose to go to an HBCU. So you can, just to make sure that you're understanding the graph there. There's a question about students with disabilities. So this is the entire class, the school, 801 students at Clayton High School. And what you'll notice is do the math, about a quarter of our students have some sort of 504, IEP, some sort of disability. And what are they doing? They're doing this. These are those students, right? There's no specific pathway for a student with it. They're going to four-year schools, they're going to two-year schools, their going to tech, they're doing all the things that every other student is doing. Our approach is not sort of this is the pathway if you decide to do this. at clayton we usually have a opening year thing and they ask those of us who have been here for a long time to say you know give a little fact about clayton and mine is always we tend to do things one student at a time so whatever you come with that's what we deal with and and that's what we use moving forward to help you with whatever your post high school plans are going to be so as one example when i was putting together the slide of students i reached out to a uh to a to a parent who had a student who graduated in 2023 and i asked her if i could highlight her student because he had it has a unique pathway for you saw those zeros and that with the military but um ironically i'm old enough that this the mother of this student was my student I know, embarrassingly. But I want to show you this picture. That's Makai Pickett. And his mom sent me an email. I emailed her really late and I said, hey, I'm going to talk to the board and I'd really like for everybody to know what Makai is doing. Makai was a student who didn't go the pathway that many, many high school students do. He chose to go into the military. And so what did we do for Makai? We arranged for, we called a recruiter and arranged for the ASVAB to be given in our counseling office. We gave him an ASVAB study guide so that he could study and get up to speed on that test. And he did so, and he took the ASVAB, and I'm gonna read what his mom said, that he decided in joining the Navy early due to his high ASVAB score, he was offered a specialized job in information technology and a $25,000 signing bonus. Upon graduation from bootcamp, Makai was selected to attend an A school in Pensacola, Florida, where he went through an accelerated IT training in just 10 short months. In November 2024, Makai has graduated with a certification in information technology systems and is an E3 rank. And what she said was in her email, she said, she gives a shout out obviously to counseling, right? She's my former student. What else is she going to do? And Mr. Keene, his special education teacher, who she thought was extremely influential. So I can give you other stories. We had a student a couple of years ago in the same class who went to tech school. and then went to a highly selective college in California, one of the Claremonts. So the point of these anecdotes are to say that we don't have a door A, B or C for if you have this go through that or that, whatever you have. And the way that we work together in terms of counseling office and why I think it's really important for every counselor to be at the table and not just the college counselors is because we meet together regularly to talk about what's happening. And oftentimes, if a grade-level counselor comes and says, I have a family that has a question and they're worried about what's going to happen post-secondary, we get together all the time to talk about that. 100% of the time, what Toby Smith would tell you is what my answer is going to be is whatever that kid needs right now. Whatever they need, whatever it has to happen, whether it's a medical withdrawal, whether it's drop that class, switch this class, we will deal with what they need when they get to us for the college process or whatever process they decide. It is very much one student at a time. There's no sort of pre-planned answer for what happens in post-secondary. And that's it. I'm happy to take your questions.

Thank you so much. That was great. And thank you for the slides that you added since we saw were so helpful.

I'm sorry, I was a little late. The camera was pressuring me, but I was like, I'm at work. Stuff is happening. I don't have time to deal with this PowerPoint.

So

thanks for indulging me for letting me add the late slides.

Yeah, that was great. And I have a few questions, but I'm going to just open it up to anyone else on the board that has any questions that wants to start.

Don't be shy.

Okay, yeah, don't be shy. Go ahead,

Pam. Oh, does this mean in the future that Ben's going to have to start? In the future. Okay, thank you so much for this. I have a few questions. I don't think any of them are too tough. First of all, in the junior year slide, you talked about something. I think it was you, Ms. Cole, talking about how you communicate with the families. And as a current senior parent, I just want to say You guys do an incredible job sending emails like these are all the things your kids need to do. These are the things that you need to do or need to not do and let them do. So I just want to say, I think that the communication, at least at this year and the senior year, I really appreciate it.

And let me just say to that, that that was one of the questions I think that someone had was I did some focus groups at the end of last year. And that was one of few things that came out of those focus groups. What we heard and we heard you was that we needed more communication. You needed to know what was happening that lowered the anxiety of parents and students set to have more communication. So that is one of the things that we implemented. And I'll tell you about others.

Well, great, because that was my question. And that was going to be my next question. I'm happy to set the stage for the focus groups, but I think you can, just to let everybody else

know. Sorry. So last year, at the end of the school year, to be honest with you, I don't remember what prompted it, but I decided to do focus groups for the 11th and 12th grade parents to come in and just give us feedback. I think it's just sort of... We are a department, quite frankly, in transition. I am transitioning out. And my goal has been to leave this department in great shape. and to pass on every single thing I possibly can, and to get as much feedback so that we're meeting the needs of the community, whatever that is. And so in those focus groups, I learned a lot. It wasn't even just about college, but a lot of it was focused on college. And one of the things that came out from that was, was the communication. And it was, how that came out was people, I remember people saying, well, we need this, this and this. And I was like, well, we do that, that and that. But if you don't know that we do that, it's not effective for us to be doing that. So that's when we went back to, you know, sort of the drawing board. And one of the things that we did this year was we had an evening session where all six of us, um, offered to the entire parent community to come out and, um, Let us tell you what we do. And we were happy that there were more parents than us. There were seven. parents that came out to hear that but we um sort of decided on a series of just sort of things that we we talked about this in a couple focus groups like specialized things that we would have a night to talk about whether it be early decision or if you have a student that's going into art or an athlete and that kind of thing so that's the series that you know that will start in the spring doing those kind of things we started out already with um with all of us coming out of the gate to do that but we do realize that communication was something that we want to

Were there other big take-homes from the focus groups?

I mean, to be honest with you, that, I think almost every single thing could be boiled down to that, if that makes sense. Everything that I heard was, well, why don't you do this? And it was like, oh, but, like, so we do do that. So, but... Again, if you don't know that we do that, and I was talking to people in the process, right? Like if you guys were there, it's not helpful, right? To do it or if everyone doesn't know. So trying to figure out that piece has been... And, you know, sort of the community, you know, I think I gleaned sort of the... For the people that came to the focus groups, the community sort of... leaning on What what you want in terms of you know college counseling, etc? So yeah

Thank you So again one of you mentioned how you know we students have the same advisor 9th through 11th grade and then in 12th grade they graduate to the college counselors how I imagine that we've been doing this for a while at Clayton, and I'm just wondering why Clayton has made the decision to end the relationship between student and grade counselor to then start over? The other piece I think that's underneath this is I've heard a lot about students who are like, I can't go talk to my counselor about all this stuff happening in my life and then be like, oh, can you write me a college recommendation? So I know there's a reason behind it, so I'm just curious.

Yeah. So... i'm not the most i i don't have much of a filter so there's an answer right um so two things number one this is the model that we had many years ago right when i first started at clayton a few decades ago this is the model we had we changed the model for that reason because we felt like students were you know feeling like they couldn't tell their college counselor things which is which is not and i understand the sentiment but it wasn't an accurate sort of way that we we need to as the college person we need to know as much as possible it's to the student advantage for us to know as much Right. We're the advocate. We're not there to ding you because you told us something that wasn't favorable. We're there to help you figure out how to take that thing that's not favorable and move through the process and advise you in terms of what would be a better fit for you based on whatever that thing might be. Right. So that is part of that. But after we switched, but more importantly, honestly, it was it was more about access and um because a lot of the college piece requires travel and long meetings those meetings that we have in the spring are are usually quite long with families or behind closed doors but when we were when my colleague my partner in crime if you will marianne moduleski retired And I am on, you know, hopefully the precipice of retirement. I think what we realized was that when we went to hire, to be honest with you, we went through a pool and... we started over again. There was not someone that we felt was gonna be sufficiently able to address the needs of the community, so we started over again and what we ultimately have the privilege of doing is that I had a conversation with Nisha and Dan about me not having a caseload and taking the two college counselors, Jacelyn moving. She had done college counseling in Kansas City and I maybe strong-armed her a little bit because I could see this is something that she had done and was very capable of doing and then Katie Jane coming over from U City. So the first year I went to every single solitary college meeting. So the reason why we have that went back to that model is so that I could sit with every single, I'm sort of like the backup counselor for every single one of those families and we consult around pretty much every single thing that happens. It's hard to understate the amount of moving pieces and parts that go into college. And it's not something that you can just write up a little, you know, do this. There's no, like, here's a door for this or here's that. There's just things that there's... It's not possible to think through... giving somebody a roadmap to do. And I think we had one today where someone came in and the best way to understand the different routes and roads and pathways and things that you can put together for a student is to do it. but at the same time wanted to make sure that everyone was covered, that there wouldn't be any cracks, that we would be covered. That's why we switched the model and I would imagine that when I leave the model will go back. To likely, I mean obviously I'll be gone so I won't have any say, but I would imagine that it will go back to splitting out the college counseling from the grade level counseling. if that was your question, right? Right, so prior to two years ago, what we had was you had a grade level, you had a counselor nine through 12, same person, and then you just added a college counselor, right?

And so you think perhaps that would then go back. So they would have a 12th grade counselor and maybe not. Okay.

Again, I mean, you don't like, I don't have a crystal ball there. Um, but, but, but I will say we, this model that we're doing now, we've done it here at Clayton for many years, actually. Yeah. I came up under doing this, this model, um, that we're doing. Okay.

Thank you. You're talking about how specialized the work is that the college counselors do. Thank you. Okay, I think my third one is about testing. You had a slide in here about all that testing that you organize. Thank you for doing that. Now that college... is test optional, some of them nothing, some of them required. How has that changed? Has it changed what we do here? How does it change how you advise families, et cetera?

So it hasn't changed what we do because we use testing for more than just the college. But it also gives us, it's helpful for us in terms of advising. Right regardless as to whether you're going to use your test score or not use your test score, having that test score for us on the back end and knowledge of the student skills is helpful for us. And then we advise don't send that. Send that right? Um, but I can tell you that I was just at the college board, um. few weeks ago and um tests are coming back so we haven't i mean you know the college board has kept track of all the students who have not submitted test scores and so what the colleges have done is pushed out the names of those so there's no confidentiality they've said here's the students that we have so the college board has all the scores So what they were able to do is put in, put out the data that says here's what it looks like for the students who had scores. Here's what things look like for the students that did not have scores. And so in the process if we, I just had a student today that I was talking to that had a score that might not have been within the bandwidth but it still was a score that was better than the lack of score which has its own narrative if that makes sense. But in terms of just Clayton, right, and what we're doing with testing, et cetera, we changed nothing, right? Because we were in the shift of pandemic, et cetera. We didn't know what was going to happen. And so we kept giving the test to all the students that needed it, giving accommodations, doing all the things. And luckily, I mean, it's been great for the students because they had the option. Is that what you were asking or no?

Hi, thank you for your presentation. I have a couple questions that coincidentally align with the public comment we got a little bit. And like the public comment, it's not any reflection on you guys. I haven't actually, my kids are young enough that I haven't worked with you guys yet, or my kids haven't worked with your guys yet. But I do know a little bit about college counseling and I know it can be an almost, can be a very deep pit to throw time into if you want it to be. What's the ratio of you guys? I mean, how many students is each person in your office responsible for?

For college or just in general? Let's talk about college. For college, over 100. Over 100? 150, more than 150? No, not more than 150. The class is about 218, so 208. Half of the class, yeah, okay. 216, I think, is the class.

So there are definitely schools and models that where that ratio is lower. And I'm just curious how you guys manage, do you guys draw some boundaries to manage what the scope of your work is? What do you think, is there anything you identify as being lost because of your time constraints? Is there a scope that you define for yourselves to kind of say this is how far we'll go for an individual student, that kind of stuff?

No, in a word. So we, I would happily put up what we do in college counseling to any school, particularly in the area. And I say that having worked with privately, students from other schools. I think that we, but understand this, we as a public school deal with what comes to us, right? So we offer a meeting to every single family. We can't make you come. Right. We offer, you know, services. We we have boot camps for students. They don't come. We have, you know, one of the I don't know if it's the pandemic or what it is, but even there's there has been a bit of a change. Right. In the parent climate. And I you know, there was a question about. private consulting, which I'm sure we'll get to. But one of the things that I've noticed with regard to that is that we don't have the number of parents coming to those big meetings that used to be bursting at the seams where we couldn't get out of the meeting. It was almost an all night. After the meeting finished, we had a line of parents coming up to ask their individual question. The last meeting we had, it was sparse in the room. And I don't know if that's because I'm going to hire somebody to just tell me individually what I need to do, which I will say is often detrimental to the student, right? Because that person doesn't have the context. And more importantly, then your counselor doesn't have a context of your student. So as we're advocating for students, if you are getting your information elsewhere and we don't see you, And kids are kids. We can call you in and do a check-in. How's it? Fine. Okay, great. Or quite frankly, the kids usually even tell us, oh, my other counselor's doing that. Okay, great, right? So that is a thing. But we absolutely with fidelity deal with every single student and issue that comes to us in a... whole and thorough way. I mean, as much as we can, right? The numbers are the numbers. So you might have, we might not be able to see you right now, right? I had a parent call me today, furious that you talked to my son at nine o'clock and you haven't called me back yet. Well, it's 1230. No, no, I haven't, right? So if I get to you today, then great. But I also have, right, a list. So I guess that would be part of the answer, right? Sometimes it's not right now. But we will get back to you. We will deal with whatever situation is in front of us and whatever students, so we have students that'll come regularly. I guess the boundaries that I would say that we do put in place is that we have students that chase us and part of what we make sure to do is to set aside time for the students we have to chase. right so we have students that are in our face about getting to whatever they need and what they want and strategizing and everything else and we have students that we need to say sit down and fill this hour here right you're not leaving my office until this is done And we have everything in between, right? So those students have different interests and profiles, et cetera. So I don't know if that's as thorough of an answer as you want, but I think that we, yeah.

No, it's great. What you're saying is there is some non-participation that makes it possible for you to manage that larger number. Do you have any sense, do we know of how often the private counselors are engaged? Do we have any sense of that? So let me

also add this to that though is the other thing that we do is we do a lot of group work, right? So App Lab is an opportunity for any student. We have this every single week, twice a week, the entire application from the start of school Until the end of the semester, twice a week during the time where students have no other thing to do. Well, I won't say no other thing to you, but they have no other responsibility. Like, they could have every other thing to do honestly, but they do have the opportunity to make an appointment and come in or just stop in or not. But also. The beauty of App Lab is that when you have a bunch of seniors who are applying to college and testify to this, and you're sitting in App Lab and someone asks, oh, do I have to send my scores? The student who didn't know that they had to send their scores to even ask the question is like, oh, I have to do that too? Yeah, you have to do that, too. So it's helpful. for the students who don't even know what their question is to just sit. And it's a place for them just to come, work on their application, get help, ask any question they have at any time. We do thorough essay review for any student who wants it. So our English department is great with regard to writing a personal statement at the beginning of the year, but we make it very clear that you can have a beautiful piece of writing that may not be helpful getting you into college. So we really push our students to bring their essays to us and let us read them. We have students who have taken their essay elsewhere and vetted it, and what generally we're not going to do is you can take an essay to five different people and get five different answers. So if you have an essay and you've worked with somebody else and you came and it's quaffed and I read it, I'm not going to battle that. over, you know, what I think versus what someone else thinks, right? But I am going to read it and give some feedback. And what the student misses if they don't bring their essay in for their college counselor to read it is their college counselor having the context. What I usually tell students is the best essay is one that I read and I have to change your letter of recommendation after I read it because I learned something new about you. That's the best essay you can write. So if you never even bring it, you're at a disadvantage. But we try and do as much as we can group-wise both with the students as well as the parents and then do the individual. Nobody wants to talk about their actual plan of their list where I'm applying or where I might be applying early in front of everyone else. We do that privately. But everybody needs to know how to send my scores or what am I going to put, how many students are in the class. There are certain questions that every single student is going to have that we can answer those in groups. And then we do the same thing for the parents. But I will say, so the meetings that we talked about there, the PTO, so for my entire career here, and I've been here for a couple decades now plus, We had those parent meetings and strategically placed, right? The beginning of junior year, you're anxious. Something's happening. Everybody else knows something I don't know. We try and nip that in the bud, have that meeting. In the sophomore year, we have it during registration. So I don't know if it was after COVID, but I reached out to the PTO. They're usually chasing us. I said, hey, do you want the college folks to come and have the meeting? No, that's okay. Okay, that was great. Luckily, I reached back out to the old PTO, which was Celeste Gillette, who had run the PTO for so long. And I was like, Celeste, what's happening? She's like, I got you. And so she hooked up with Robert Leonard, who actually then took over so that... Now, when we had the meeting, they raved, right? But there's some sort of disconnect of like, we need to actually get out to this thing and learn the information because... answer to your original question is that group piece right trying to do as many things and then individual things you kind of spawn from that

that's great thank you and I guess in addition to thank you for your presentation it sounds like thank you for your hard work

I got a few. Well, first of all, I do want to recognize, Carolyn, I think you've mentioned maybe four or five times so far that your retirement is coming up here. Is

that it?

I think you do deserve a public thank you for your two decades plus of service to the school district and our kids, and your passion for your work is clearly coming through tonight. And I will say, I happened to, before this meeting, have been eating at one of our fine local dining establishments. And I had a dad actually come up to me, reintroduce himself to me, and tell me he has a freshman at U of I, Illinois, and how great of an experience that kid is having, both in terms of the preparation, the academic preparation, but also how great of a fit this school was. So I just thought it was sort of a nice coincidence. I thought I'd mention it here. I just have a few quick questions. One is, you mentioned the initial family meeting and I'm just sort of curious, like roughly what percentage of our families participate in that initial family meeting? Is there any meaningful trend in those who don't participate in that?

Yes. So most of our families actually do participate in those meetings. It has declined in the same way as the outcome of people coming to those meetings has declined, but... if i speak you know just sort of historically when we would have our initial kickoff meeting when we started doing um the online calendar we didn't open the calendar out of fairness until in that meeting and we would open it and then it would just be like ding ding ding ding everybody would because everybody because a lot of not everyone a lot of families are trying to schedule that meeting so that they can schedule college visits for spring break So there's a big rush at the beginning for parents who are fortunate enough to be able to do things like that or figure things out so they can visit. What we will notice is that the students that probably are in that smaller part of that pie graph are generally the students who aren't chasing us, that we have to go in and say. So when I say sort of back to Leo's question, it's not that we don't see the students. I don't think that there's a student in the senior class that has not come in to meet. It's not like, okay, we just didn't see you. There's a difference between, you know, how, okay, everything's fine. I got a plan. Here's what I'm doing. You know, thanks. And a meaningful, right, conversation about what's happening. I need a strategy. What are we going to do? And making sure that, you know, that's following up. Oftentimes, I mean, we even will have the community college last year come in, like the actual admissions and run a let's fill out these applications right here. Well, we have a bunch of kids back in our back room filling out their applications to the community college and having the rep there talking through what they're going to do. So our cycle, what we understand, right, is that... There's a cycle, and in Clayton it feels like, and probably you can attest to this, it feels like I'm late if I haven't done anything by Thanksgiving. Well, it's early, and it's literally called early, right? So... Somehow, however, people seem to think they're late if they haven't done something early. So what we know is that most of our work, right, if you look at the pie graph there that you saw there, most of those kids have applied somewhere early, right? So it's huge in the fall. That's that's the chasing us even if it's just did you send my transcript? Did you send my stuff? Have you done, you know, have you gotten my checkboxes marked off? Then. We know right there's still plenty of time left to apply to CMO or to apply to even Mizzou or to apply to other schools that don't have an early program. So, you know, we often, probably the biggest indictment I think that our office generally gets since I've been here is that we're only working with the kids who want to go to Harvard, which could not be farther from the truth. I think we spend a lot of time with anyone, quite frankly, who wants to come in and work with us. That's probably an answer to your question. The students that later we have to track down to figure out what are you doing? Where are you going to go? What do you want to do?

Okay, that's helpful. And that's part of what you said is a lead into another question. So, you know, I was the one who logged in the private counselor question, right? And I just have to say, you know, and I went to a public school and I just had the most amazing college counselor. But is that part of what you like this sort of like, pressure and anxiety, for lack of a better term. Is that maybe what's driving some of this? Is there something else that's driving this trend that just one person is seeing towards an increasing utilization of private college counselors? Like, this is an honest question. I really don't know. Like, what is driving this? Or am I wrong in

my observation? I mean, I almost feel like This is my line. But I'll say this as someone who has worked with people who are like, I need somebody else outside of my school to help me through this process. You know, people hire tutors all the time for physics or math or whatever else. Parents tend to feel like if there's something that they're unable to help their child with, they're going to hire somebody to help them. the college process is extraordinarily difficult. I did a presentation about a month ago on the national level to a bunch of deans of admission, and just as an almost like... not humorous, but just almost a satire. I literally listed every single thing that a senior has to do to apply to college. Every single thing, if I listed it now, it would take like five minutes. All the different portals you have to go through, the different things that you have to understand and know how to do, and how they get confused, and isn't the Common App the same thing as Maya Learning, and do I have to go to this, and oh, I have to go the College Board to send this, or what if I have ACT scores, right? All those different things. And a dean from a prominent college stood up and he's like, you should write an op-ed, right? Like, on like a day in the life of a senior, right? So it's complicated to actually, yeah. In addition to, right? While you're still doing school, while you're still doing your sports, while you're being a member of your family and trying to have dinner and be a human, right? All those things are happening all at the same time. Right. So I do think, I do understand, right? That sometimes it's easier to have my own personal chef, right? Like right next to me and not have to wait in line for somebody. I get that. Um, I get that sometimes if I pay a little extra money, you might feel like I might get a little extra, you know, whatever. I don't know. Um, I think that, um, there's something about the not showing up. I don't I mean, it's not, generally speaking, we don't always know, right? Other than the, you know, I mean, if you ask kids, most kids are going to tell you anything, right? They don't know, like, am I not supposed to tell you that? So, I mean, I can give you a lot of different answers. Sometimes more is more. You know, I think there's just a lot of different reasons. Yeah.

That's fair. Last quick question. On the slide related to the African American students that attended an HBCU, I know for the past couple of years we've helped fund the, I don't know what the proper noun is, but the bus trip,

right?

Yeah. So has that increased those, has that made a difference in those numbers? Are we seeing some sort of tangible result from that trip? I'm supportive of the trip either way, but is that steering more kids to HBCUs or how does that impact?

I think if I went back for many, many years, we've always had students that look at HBCUs. Yeah. I don't know that it's like there's a significant... I went back as far as I had to do it by hand. So I went back as long as time would allow for me to do. But I think we changed our systems that we use from Naviance to Maya Learning. So I don't know that, so those are actual numbers, right? Like the five is like there's actually five students. I don't know if that's a significant uptick. I know that it's helpful for any student to be on a campus that they're considering going to at any point. Undoubtedly, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is more

just intellectual curiosity, like is it made, you know?

Since we have been doing the tour, schools that I've been visiting on the tour, students have, a lot of the students have attended those schools. So I'm thinking of a few students right now, they went to schools on the tour. Great.

All right,

thanks. I don't actually have any questions. What I wanted to say is that last spring we attended a talk by Director Blair for freshman parents, and I got to say it was really good. And I thought the questions asked, it's like – but what it really instilled in us was that this is something that we need to start talking about earlier than – for me, thinking back to college, it's something you start to think about your junior year, right? Like not prior to that. Yeah. And as a result, we've actually gone and my son's a sophomore, so it's coming up, starting to come up. But we've been on a couple of college visits as kind of part of other trips we've taken. And it's really been good. Like it really has helped us continue to think about what kinds of schools can you see yourself here? So anyway, I just want to make a comment that it was greatly appreciated.

I think in combination with that, an answer to actually Leo's question of one of the things that probably happens at a private school that we don't have the capacity to do. I didn't say that. Well, sorry. I mean, like the sort of intimated was kind of what are the things maybe that are happening is we don't have the capacity to start working with students earlier than what we do other than pushing into the classroom that we do for both years and parents probably don't hear about that but we do push in just so that they start to understand and get familiar, and we talk about A+, et cetera. So we do do that, but we don't do that at the level, we don't start sort of managing your extracurriculars and that kind of thing. But thanks, I think. And that was the meeting that was turned down originally. They were like, oh no thanks.

Well, it was very well attended. I know it sounds like there's been some drop-off here and there.

We're back, right? And then after we got it established, it was like, yeah, let's do this.

I suspect both on the private schools and the private tutors that the parents feel better about that. There's more... attention to the parents in both of those places. That's probably one of the things that's going on. Just to say that

explicitly.

Yeah,

the book, what is it? The Anxious Generation? I mean, I think that the anxious parent. Right, right, right. Parents are anxious, right? And parents don't have... the access even to us that the students do. And so what I find is that there's a lot of anxiety on the part of the parent, and it's so much too much. So sometimes parents give themselves away. Sometimes parents are the ones in there filling out that Common App. They'll even lose their minds at call and be like, so I'm on the Common App, and what's number seven? I'm like, that's really not yours to do, but... So people are anxious in general all around, and it's understandable. It's a very complicated, complex thing with high stakes.

Yeah. Lucia, do you have any

questions or comments? Not a question. I'd just really like to say thank you. I know you guys have been our guardian angels, especially senior year, but just throughout all of high school, and so really from all the students, just thank you.

I had a couple questions also. When do you talk to students about dual enrollment? I know, and how many, what percent of our students do that?

Well, so the district will only pay for five. Oh. So we try not to, you know, so we have an application process. So we have a hard, I mean, that was said by Mayor Zuckerberg. It was a hard five. We did have one year where I put on a campaign hat and we got seven. But to be perfectly honest with you, We, I don't know how much of a hole that is for us. So, so we, we advertise it. So in the meetings that Toby and Jason talked about in sophomore year, sophomore seminar, et cetera, we start informing students that that's a thing and at first it sounds great oh wow i can get college credits early i want to do it and then even i think it was even last year right so every single year since we've done it we have students apply and then they learn a little bit more about what it is and we tend to have more students who are interested in doing that traditional four-year thing and not wanting to do that dual enrollment we had great candidates Actually say never mind. Actually, I don't want to do that. I want to be that traditional college student and not do that and And then there's a gap between the students who do want to do it, who should be doing it, right? Because when you're doing that, we don't have control. I can't go upstairs and talk to your English teacher about what's happening if things aren't going well, which is important for students. So there's GPA cutoffs for that. And so we have a little bit of a gap between the student who want to do it and the students who should be doing So that I don't know that we necessarily, I mean, if I really thought we needed more than five, I would have been having. Well, that was my next question is how many kids are

we turning away that you think should

be? I don't know. But what I do think actually Katie Jane and I just had a conversation about this today is I do think that there, we might turn the corner on the, on what we're doing with regard to dual enrollment. The community college has a different program that we, I think, wasn't that today? It feels like today. Yeah. that we just talked about maybe exploring the three of us will get together or really all six of us to kind of talk about what it might look like and then probably set up a meeting to see what you guys think financially. It might be a little bit more of a financial commitment that I heard maybe we could do, but I think it would be a better fit for our students.

That's great. I would love to hear about that. My next question is, do you keep any data on how much merit aid our students are offered? Like, could you say the class of 2023 was offered X amount of dollars, I don't know, in merit? Is that something, I know when the kids go back in Maya Learning and they check off if they were accepted or deferred or rejected, is there any kind of database for Merit aid they've been awarded. I'm just thinking because it's good for the community and parents to know Those kind of things that you're helping with to or kids are getting

so we do ask and we have students fill it out, but we also ask Students where they were admitted and I'm like So sometimes you know they get a little confused It's self-reported, but only way we can do that is through self-report. On the admissions side, we hear from the college, right? And we kind of know what's happening versus not happening. So we do collect it, right? I could actually go back in the same place that I pulled that and get what the self-reporting data was if you're interested in knowing what it is.

I'm just curious, as college is getting more and more expensive, I think it might just be good for parents to hear. It's like we get that list from the district every year of all the schools the kids are going to I just always wonder, like, and how are they all affording this? You know, I don't know if there's merit. I

mean, so that's a good point, but that's a conversation that we have individually with every single family on the front end of the meeting because we can say that we got $20 million in scholarship, but that may or may not affect you.

Yeah.

right when you're sitting in front of us and so that is very much an individual conversation that we take on and have in that one-on-one family meeting and either we sort of push parents to either take that off the table we have plenty of families who are able to say we're not worried about it we have families say i'll pay for this one but not that one we get all that information up front so that the student is not left in the lurch on the back end to say this i got into this school but it's not affordable We do that work on the front end.

I think sometimes the final decision, though, is that a student may pick a school that's not necessarily the highest ranked school that they were admitted to, but because of the quality or amount of the merit aid they received. And so that's something that statistically is not coming out on the reported schools for admissions. especially with the advent of smaller, and you guys were really good advocates of this, I know, in past parent meetings, especially with the rise of honors colleges within larger schools. And they really like Clayton students, and some of them like Clayton students enough to give them full tuition-based merit scholarships. And so they're picking those schools, even if you had the conversation with the families about it's not a primary criteria for us but becomes like a very compelling, it's real when at the end of the day it comes through in a letter.

We even have that conversation, right? So that I just had a conversation with a family who was trying to decide about a school. And here's the conversation. If you apply to that school, you will absolutely get in and you'll get probably a full scholarship. So if you don't want to go there... You need to think about that now because it would be very difficult from April to decide I'm going to pay $80,000 even with the family being affordable. And a lot of times parents don't understand that that's important to the student too. Right? Students will often come in and say, yes, my parents have it, but I don't want to make my parents spend that amount of money. So on the front end, it's still a matter of saying, let's talk about this to decide. And then that's part of our job is to say... okay, you're going to need some money. So based on your profile, here's some schools that will throw some money at you. Here's some schools that we'll give you nothing. Right. And to, and to help sort that. So that data we do keep right for our, right. I mean, it's just in our head, I guess, but that's just data that we use in advising students in terms of where they should apply.

Thank you. I know, Kim, you didn't hear all of our previous questions. I don't know if you had any. No, but I don't know you had any. 4-0. Yay!

Yes. They are going to the championship game tomorrow night.

Oh my god. It's

exciting. Yeah.

Wow.

Well, did anyone else have any other? Oh, Chris. Sorry. No, it's OK. Go

ahead. Hi. Thank you. OK, several different types of questions. Tell me what we do about we offer the SAT to every student or do we require them to take it?

We don't require them to take it. We pay for it for every single student. If a student decides, sometimes we might have a student who took the ACT. We had this this year. I took the ACT. I got a 36. I'm good. Yeah, you're good. But what we require is for their parent to call them in just for attendance purposes. Or, I mean, it doesn't have to be. They could just not want to do it. They could just decide it's optional. They do not have to take it, but it is offered at every grade level.

And we pay for it?

We do. That's great.

Okay. But that is all we do in terms of supporting. Which is not common,

by the way.

I

know it's not. We're very lucky.

Both the SAT is not common, you know, to be in the Midwest and be doing that. But we, Elena and I hashed that out years ago. But the paying for it is actually extraordinarily beneficial to our students. Yes, the paying for it, but also because we pay for it, it allows the students to sit for the test at our school. Correct. As opposed to having to go somewhere else. It's huge. Yeah, it is very accessible. It's

really

great. Mm-hmm.

Yes. Is that all the... I mean, that's an amazing thing that we're doing. It is. Do students understand through your work that you go in, you push in when to start studying for those tests? And how does... Like, what do you do in terms... Clearly, you're not giving SAT prep classes. So how do you advise around that?

So two things. Do you want to... Let

me just... Yeah, I... Freshman and sophomore year will look very different than junior and senior year. So freshman and sophomore year, I really advise not a lot of studying because it takes off the pressure and allows them to just experience the test. And then I leave it to these guys for when the test becomes a little more high stakes. So the point of it

is that the PSAT 9 and the PSAT 10, even quite frankly the PSAT and MSQ-2E are practice tests. And so the beauty of those is they give a projection and they're standardized based on that grade level. So we used to just give the PSAT to 10th graders so they could see because we had a lot of kids who were national merits and they want to see what it is. That's different than taking a test that's normed for 10th graders, that gives you a projection of your next year's actual score. So that's also why it's advantageous to our students and to us in terms of advising. But we don't say like, oh, you need to go study for this until the PSAT and MSQT. And we do offer actually, so we do two things. We offer a, we partner for the last couple of years before this was Prince Review for the last couple years, it's Revolution Prep. If you remember, it was the one that people said we were stalking them. So I did talk to them and told them to back off. So RevPrep, what they do is offer practice practice. So anybody that has a junior, you would have gotten an email that said, hey, the PSAT is coming up. It's digital now. So if you want to go on and just see what it feels like to take this test, you're able to do that. And then after that, they did offer prep. which is for pay. But if we have students that actually contact us and say, I need help, we have funds to help families and have.

Okay. So they're given an idea of when that first, not the practice, but the real one, that they can take junior year or junior year summer or even fall, very early fall in the season. They're given ideas about the timeline there so that they can sort of, and you help them plan ahead for that?

In our classroom discussions with them and in all kinds of communications, we have literally a timeline. Here's what happens this year. Here's what's happening this year. And then if you have a junior, I send out a testing calendar to say here's all the tests that are coming up for this year. What we don't do is... sort of put pressure around, like we have a fair amount for our, the size of our school fair amount of national merits. Um, so for a few years we did do national, like a PSAT prep to sort of get more national merits. And that just sort of was providing a lot of angst of people feeling like they should be doing that. So we stopped pushing that and more just started saying, Hey, if you're interested in doing this, you can do it.

Sure. Okay, so the communication, I'm so glad to hear that it's improved. I was at the focus groups, as you know, and it's wonderful to know that that's already going so much better. Can you comment on how much the website has changed? Is that also more up-to-date? It has not. Okay, so that's our...

And that is, you know, if I could get a website updater, that would be great. Yeah, I think that is

important. I mean, I think across the line, across the district, every school, I mean, we have to, the website has to be as up-to-date as possible, you know, every chance we get for. So have you been, does your department actually, who decides what's on that website? On your specific page?

We do. Okay. It's not a matter of deciding. It's a matter of actually, like, executing, like, you

know

what I mean? Okay. When am I doing that?

Okay. So it's a timing. It's a time issue. It 100% is. Okay. That's good to know. Secondly, let's see. Oh, in terms of educating the kids, you know, come... all the different years that you do, that you push in. I really liked what you said, Carolyn, about because I read your essay, I now can put something else in your recommendation, because I didn't know that about you. Is that something that you help students understand?

When we go into the classroom to talk about, with every single student, in English class, so everyone has English.

Yep.

So we go into English classes in the junior year and have the discussion. Now, I can't get you over the head with it, but

I absolutely

do.

So they know what support they have for writing their actual essay. They also know. that you, whoever their advisor is, is going to be writing the recommendation and what they can do to. And

we also say it to the parents in that junior meeting. We really push that out to parents because a lot of times parents and students think that what's happening in the English class is the finished product and we really we have an understanding with the English department they even changed it from calling it the college essay to the personal statement so that there's because we would have students that were like I can't apply yet because their English assignment was not the first one it was the second one and they weren't finished yet so they thought they couldn't apply so there was confusion with that that we pulled back but we as much as we can you know sort of say yes we we we Straight out say, please don't send anything out to your college without us saying it.

Yes. That's also been a part of the monthly communication that we've been sending out too. Every month we say like, we want to see you. We want for you to come in, book a meeting with us. We want to review every part of your application. So that's a reminder that has been in our kind of quick bullets. We're not wanting to overwhelm people with a whole bunch of information in that. But here are some things you should be concentrating on and that's definitely one of them.

Okay. And then how do you feel if you don't, If you have a student, you know, the two that I had who never came to see a counselor once in their four years at Clayton High School, how do you write a recommendation for a student like that?

Well, my first answer is off the top of my head, I could write a recommendation for someone I've never met before easily, right? But because some writing... What do you mean by that? This is what I mean by that. Writing a letter of recommendation is like a research project. You know, I want to Right. So I'm talking to the teachers, right? I'm talking to parents, right? I am talking to the student. So there's a student survey that every student has to fill out and they do that in junior year to tell us what they're doing, et cetera. It's all those types of things or things that we use to piece together. Okay. And I said that flippantly just because in my world we have, you know, of people that do what I do. It's a little bit of a joke, but seriously, it's most helpful to the student to actually come see us. It just is. But if not, we encourage that. We say come and see us. We have a survey for the parent to fill out, and we have a survey for student to fill out. And the teachers. And the teachers, but if none of those things happen, it's not great for the student

right

i'll just say that

and is it that is it their junior year teachers or is it their senior year teachers

it's good yeah

good okay good um That initial meeting that you have, that's at least an hour. Some of them happen over Zoom, some in person.

That was another thing that came out of the focus groups that we had. I think we heard that loud and clear that we're going to bring back in-person meetings.

Yes. Okay. Great. Done with that question. I do think in-person is extremely valuable for that first one, at least. Extremely.

Bringing them back. Um, but I will say that the zoom meeting was nice because in all my years of doing this, there were more both parents there. Right. So one parent, you know what I mean? There was just so much more participation. Right. Um, but I'm a, I'm a,

In my particular case, there was also a dog and two little sisters. You know what I mean? It's the focused attention of both the student and the parent with the person that is the expert is so valuable. The second thing I'll say is in that meeting, is that the only meeting, I shouldn't say only, but is that the primary meeting where the counselor ends up coming up with a college list for that? Meaning, is there one meeting with this student who maybe you've literally never met and then after which that one meeting you give them this list of here's what we recommend from that one meeting of talking to that person for that amount of time.

The end of that meeting culminates in this sentence. Here's a list of a starting point. Right. We're not saying to apply here. Right, right, right. We're saying based on everything that we talked about here, which is everything from your finances to we're looking at your transcript to everything else, here's what we recommend. From that, what we need is to hear back from you.

Yeah.

Right? You can come back and say I hate every single school on this list, but what I need to know is why. Exactly. And then from that, I can take, well, if you say, I don't want to go to this school because it's too Greek, then I can take a whole other list of schools off your list, right? It's a starting point.

Sure. Okay. So when you talk about how individual you are with what each student needs, that's incredible. The problem is, right, and you guys know this better than I do, that they don't always know what they need, right? So you do a lot of sort of trying to help them figure out, like, Well, what is the difference between a medium school and a small school? You know, there's a lot of educating they have to do, especially for kids that haven't been on a single college tour yet, right? And so they may not know exactly what they need. So a lot of your job, I'm assuming, and I think that this is probably a hard part of your job, is to help them understand all the various options that there are, et cetera. So is that something that is built to or is that concentrated mostly on that first meeting as well?

I mean, I think that if, so, I mean, I can answer that. So, if you think back, right, to that meeting, we don't say, did you, you know, do you want to go to a big school? Right? We say, are you interested in having a relationship? If you're sitting in a class and you're, are you comfortable, are you assertive enough to go ask questions of the professor in the front of that class? We're asking questions to get to the heart of what we think is going to be best for the student without saying, they don't know what a big school, large school, and we know that. So every question that we ask is something to get to those things, but we're not asking that directly. And then we ask them to go out and do some research and then come back and let us know.

Cool. Okay.

OK, what about, oh, go ahead. We do start it in freshman year, though. They do. One of the key questions that we say is, you know, you didn't pick Clayton High School. Where would you envision yourself over the next four years after here? And not school name as much as adjective. So getting them to start thinking about what style, Is it urban? Is it not urban? And that's my gentle job of just kind of starting that conversation so they start thinking in terms of that piece. Right. And then they're more equipped, and then we talk about it again during sophomore empowerment because that comes up with the parent of like, okay. And so we're building to help become a more educated conversation when they get to junior year.

Exactly. Here's the thing, again, this is hard. If you don't know the student at all because they've never come to you once, it's hard for you to know whether or not when Fred says he really has the ability to be assertive, whether or not you've seen that in action over the last four years. So again, it's just a hard balance, I can imagine, to really help these kids know what's great for them if you don't know them well. So I guess I think about that and I think about how good, the fit is really important, right? And so I wonder if some of the private consultants can spend more time figuring out from that person who doesn't really know because they haven't visited or they've only visited this type of, whatever it is, what the best fit is. Because again, even though they haven't known them for four years, they haven't known you, right? But if they spend two to three hours sort of saying, let's look at this school, we'll go on the website, we'll do this. You know what I mean? That's serious research that that person's helping them do. And that's, like you said, and that's fine.

We're not

anti-consultant.

Say it again. We're not anti-consultant.

No, I know you're not.

I know you're.

I 100% know you're not, Carolyn. I'm just thinking out loud as to your question, why do you think this is happening? And I think your time is limited. You only have so much time to help that student educate themselves about who they are slash what they want and then also help them do that once they figure it out, right? It's a big, so I'm just sort of globally saying, I think that's a hard part of college counseling. It's really helping to know that kid and to really therefore find that right fit for them. Okay, the last thing I'll say is what feedback do you get from students and parents at the end of every year to find out how they felt about the process.

So about the college process or about what they're planning? Your

work with them. Do you give a survey of some kind and say- I

mean, we have our evaluation, right? That's what I mean. Where they get to say like, hey, you were horrible or you were great. What does that look like? So I think, Katie Jane, didn't yours just go out? It goes through HR? Just like every single teacher, right? Every teacher has to send out a survey to say, how was it? And it goes out and we get those back.

Okay, but it's not specific to their college experience. It's just specific to their counselor that year in general.

It's specific to me.

Right. So the questions, so for Katie Jane, right, she's only asking questions related to, right, your college experience with her, which was going through the college process, right? It's like your physics teacher doesn't answer questions about, like, what happened in math. It's literally just what your experience was as you traversed with her through the process.

Okay. And what kind of, what are the results of that typically? And where do you, where does it, where do the results go? Do they go just to you? Where do they all

go? It's an evaluative tool.

What? Where the feedback goes? That's what I just said. No, no, I'm asking where it goes. Does just their department see it? How does it work? You would know the answer to this question.

They get the results back, the individual. And then they can discuss it with the principal if they want, their department chair. So it's more of a conversation. Great, thank

you. We're happy to take feedback at any time from people if anybody ever wants to come. Most people aren't shy about giving us feedback. It only helps

you with the following class, right, to know. So I know you're not against it. I know you. Yeah, so I just wondered how it worked. If it's one of those ones that we all get for every teacher, I'm just feeling like that's a little different than the type of information you could get if it was a little more... I don't know. So after, you know, were they, how many did they get? Like, I don't know, I just, it doesn't seem quite as much data as you might want to get in terms of, you know, how did the process go for you? Did you have a consultant or not? Was that good or was that bad? Did you, do you, how many did, do you feel like you understood this or not? Again, I don't what those questions would be, but I'm just thinking about this parent who, you know, and I'm just thinking you know, whether or not parents and students have the opportunity to say here's what worked really well and here's what didn't. Very specific to the college process that they go through.

I will say that I think that we do get pretty drilled down feedback from students and parents about how they felt their experience was in the college process. And I'm happy to share one of my evaluations with you so you can see. Oh, I don't need to see them. I wanted to know to see them. No, but so you can just actually like see what, people say whatever they want to say, even if it wasn't the question. All right, we know, we

know that. Yeah,

yeah. We get the feedback.

Okay. Okay.

Oh, sorry.

If a parent didn't get that opportunity, is it the only opportunity is through that HR send out?

Or to call us. You can call us anytime. You can call Kachewski. You can call Nisha. People call people a lot, and we give tons of feedback.

Because on that thing, there's a space for you can write whatever. Is that why you're saying you can get anything?

So yeah, there are open-ended questions that allow people to actually just write whatever they would like to. There's multiple opportunities for them to say whatever they would like.

Great. Thanks. Sure. Thank you so much, of course. Appreciate you all being here and for your presentation, for your time. Thank you. This is a very vital role, obviously, being that our strategic plan is the profile of a graduate. So making sure that what they're doing when they graduate is important. Thank you so much. And next up is our presentation from Paragon Architecture, the consultants for our long-range facilities master plan. Paul Cameron. We have Brad here. Thank you. Thank you for your patience. Waiting your turn. You've got your coffee, too. It's water, actually. Oh, okay. No, that's been my

life this whole conversation for the last year with my senior daughter as well. So you can relate as well. Yep. Okay. Thanks for having me back tonight. Again, Brad Irwin with Paragon Architecture here to give the board an update. I know I've had the chance to interact with a lot of you guys during both subcommittee meetings and steering committee meetings, so it's great to be back to give a recap of where we're at right now. just a quick reminder our process and the things that we're sharing with you tonight have been based on both our individual walkthroughs of the buildings with each building level administrator our own assessments the subcommittee meetings and the steering committee one of the things that is different this time that we're talking to you is the demographics so we'll show you some of that And then last month, you released us to do an additional scope of work, which was the appraisals. So we'll share some of that information with you tonight as well. Again, just a high-level recap. We had really deep engagement with the subcommittees at each building to help provide us with the foundation to build off of, but also to get their feedback and input as we went through. So if you remember, we had them identify the highest priorities they felt that was most beneficial at each one of the buildings, each one of the campuses and pulled that data in along with ours to propel us here tonight. We've had a lot of engagement and that's really what's been really about the last month, the last two to three weeks especially where we've had building level community forums at each one of schools plus the district wide one over at Y Down just I think it was last week. And so again, a lot of great opportunity for dialogue and feedback and more data points than we had before. A reminder, we do have, let's get back, community survey being released here in the coming weeks that'll help us again give us more data points as we move towards the district forum. Um, this looked great on my screen and online. I'm not sure what happened, but, um, we are right in the middle of that mess, but it doesn't feel that way. Um, so right there, we're right in the middle. Of of the heavy community engagement, like I said, we've got 1 district forum coming up district wide community forum coming up on December 4th and then, um, we're bringing back. The subcommittees and the steering committee and a group session on January 8th. And we feel that it's really important because right now at the subcommittee level, it's been a little bit more siloed. Conversations mostly around their buildings. And it's really important that we hear from every group because moving forward, we don't want individual facility plans. We want one long-range facility master plan for the entire district. And coming out of that meeting, that's where that is really solidified to be back in front of you at the January board meeting on January 22nd So jumping into the demographics, you'll notice pretty flat. Obviously, Clayton had a little bit of a peak there in 15, 16, 17, but it's flattened back out to be basically almost in line to where it was 20 and 30 years ago. As you know, as you're familiar, but one of the things that is different in the demographic report than other districts that we work with is the high level of non-resident enrollment. So it's averaging about 10%, and that's the tuition-based but also employee students. The district is is small Only about three square miles. There's only about six or seven that are smaller across the state So that is reflective though also in the sites, right? so the school district with Clayton When we look at the land use is more of an urban school district properties versus the suburban and so that has an impact in in this long-range plan and some of our analysis so far and And one of the things that really jumps out within that demographics is when we're looking at the projections for the resident enrollment, the small boundaries, the small boundaries that are very well developed with an aging population and then the lower birth rates all really combine into that flat or that little bit of a dip in the resident enrollment. So it's really important to be able to focus in on that because there's some things that you just, you can't change as a district. We're not going to find new green space for new subdivisions to come in. We're in that point where a lot of families are, kids are about to age out of the system, but they're not yet ready to turn over their house yet to younger families coming in. And we know that the price points also within the district are a little bit higher than normal as well. So all those things have that impact. It's important, the slide, because a lot of conversations have come up during our meetings about the impact of some new multi-family residences, especially in the city center. And so this is just one of those examples where we start to look at where is the population density of the students in the different attendance boundaries. And you can see some obvious white gaps where there's high level of commercial development, where we have our higher education developments, but also And the city center downtown so right now it's still pretty low amount of students that are coming from the new multifamily high rise and that's because of the price points, but also because of what those are so one bedrooms studios efficiencies those types of things not really young family oriented. What's nice about this graph and what we wanted to really highlight here is, again, this is really more focused on our projection based on the resident enrollment. But you can start to see where you have some of the smaller classes or where some of the bigger classes grade levels and how they track back through the system. And so when we look at this, it's important to note that if we see a peak, we have to be able to address that peak down the road versus right now. Because that really leads into what our utilization of our buildings are right now. We have this term, the green line there in the middle is that functional capacity. And that's really that sweet spot because that allows you to have really good efficiency and use of the buildings without being too crowded. It allows for that big second grade or first grade class to be able to work through the building and not have the building feel overwhelming. It also allows if you have a maker space or if you have a gifted classroom or a special ed classroom, for example. But that can stay that use and not have to be commandeered as a grade level classroom to address the needs of a large grade moving out. And just the overall sense of well-being within the facility, you just don't feel packed. And so here you can see the different schools. Pre-K is never involved with this because it's such a selective choice of how to get there. But you see on the left hand side what the current enrollment is, the projected enrollment for the next five and 10 years, and how that plays out for that capacity utilization. Because if you said right now, hey we have to design a new school or build a new school or a large addition or whatever it is, By the time we go through the design and construction process, that facility really isn't coming online for probably about three years. So as we're looking forward and looking at what those enrollment projections are, that 2028-2029 is really our first real opportunity to make a significant impact from a facility standpoint when you're talking about utilization. So right now you can see Merrimack's a little bit heavy, and it feels that way when we're in that building, when we look at how it's utilized. But that's also one of your buildings that has the highest non-resident population as well. As we trail off into the next five and 10 years, we hover into that yellow and green. But again, that is based on what the Clayton boundaries are representing from the projected growth of kids coming in, not necessarily what Clayton's have been able to do with the non-resident population. And so even though the resident populations expected to decline a little bit, we're pretty confident based on the past history and talking with administration essentially the enrollment will be flat moving forward because of that ability for Clayton to attract non-resident students in. So what's really important about that is that we can focus our efforts not on just creating more space to hold kids for the general education grade level classrooms and really focus our energy on those spaces for specialized learning that really get the engagement level of those kids up, the hands-on learning. Dr. Patel did a presentation prior to one of our steering committees about that profile of the graduate and what the future of learning looks like, and it really allows us to focus our efforts in the facility master plan on addressing those types of needs of the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years, not just the challenges and issues of today. So that's what's important is that what we see moving forward, we don't see a bunch of red coming up. It's really we're able to hover in that sweet spot for all of the buildings moving forward. Going back to a lot of the conversations related to the steering committee but also with our subcommittees is making sure that we have these common themes addressed in all of the proposed solutions as we go through this master plan. We've touched on this before, whether it's the safety and security that's related to cellular service for incidents or if that's a medical device being able to communicate outward of the building. Our maintenance, HVAC and our infrastructure. Those are high dollar, high cost items that we have to make sure are addressed because they do affect the learning environment inside. But then when we're talking about the learning environment and recognizing that that occurs both inside and outside the building. It occurs on the athletic field and in the playgrounds as well as the classrooms. But making sure that our buildings are, even though they're ADA, they meet code, they're ADA compliant, but how can we increase the accessibility both around the building, in and out of the building, and throughout? So those are some major themes that looking forward will play an impact and a part in everything that we do moving forward. So touching on the Hawkins Lilly school appraisals, and this is what you released us last month to do. So we took some time. visited, revisited each site. I'll give you a back story of how we did this. So we had data points and surveys for each site administration team, myself, and then a member of our team that hasn't been part of the master plan process. So almost kind of like a true third party that hasn't heard and hasn't sat in all the meetings to kind of give almost like a third party appraisal on the things, on the different aspects within the process appraisal approach for each building. And so you can see really how each one of these sites scored and we'll go into each one of them, but right now a lot of the challenges that you're facing is in the older buildings that were designed constructed in the 20s and 40s. Little good nice additions that have been fantastic moving forward on some very, very tight sites. So we'll dive into each one of those here. And I've highlighted a couple of things on each ones. And it's totally cheating, but I want to make sure that we touched on the ones in yellow because they also align with some of the priorities that the subcommittees brought up and what has come up in the steering committees. So the family center, again, it's a beautiful building. It feels awesome in there, but there's still some inadequacies. And so whether that's the playground that's the oldest in the district at this point, or two classrooms that only have windows eight feet up the wall. The lack of restrooms, both for staff and for students, there might be the right number of toilet fixtures in the building, but they're not in the right spot. And that has an impact. As everybody knows, Gayfield, the traffic way, goes right past the site. And so when we're looking at pickup and drop off, you got littles out there and a lot of teenage drivers. There's some concern there, right? And so looking at ways to be able to calm that traffic down and set them up for success. Oh, and the indoor space for multipurpose space, but also those gross motor skills. So those are things that showed up in the assessment and also showed up when in talking to the subcommittees about some high priorities. When we start getting into the elementaries, you see a little bit of a different story. So like Captain Elementary, one of the unique things about that building is it's a concrete structure. And so even though the upstairs is wide open and easy to manipulate and change, the overall structure's a little bit difficult to do based on that construction. When we look at the second floor, it was really important for the subcommittees to maintain the identity of captain. but looking at different ways to do it. And that's really what those assessments picked up as well, is the acoustics have become to a point to it is a barrier for student activity and learning. It can be done in different ways, it just has to be adapted. And so for those that don't know, it's the entire first, second, third, and fourth grade basically in one room that's separated by the library. Again, going back to the tight sites, there's just a lack of that green space for student play, physical education activities, and overall wellness. And then touching on wellness again, making sure that there's that dedicated space for students to be able to serve those mental health needs. And then like the other elementaries as well, the cafeteria is too small and it's right in the middle of the school. The kitchen that services it is too small. The gym right next door, it works okay for physical education, but it's even a little bit too small for that. And all those spaces combined are still too small to really have those school-wide events and that bringing that sense of community outside the building and in. And so that again held true as we're looking at what this looks like in the appraisals. At Glenridge, again, it's honestly probably one of the best libraries we've been in. It's awesome to have those meetings in there. But there's still opportunities within that building that really need some pretty heavy improvements. So we're dealing with a building from 1920 that has, in the 20s, it's got three levels plus. You kind of have to walk through the front office. Actually, the front office is basically in a hallway. We look at the quality of the space, the educational adequacy of the space on the lower level and it's just not right. The lack of accessibility inside and outside of that building is a challenge. So again, even though you come in from that front door that's at the back door, you have to go to the elevator to go up a half a flight to get to the main level. And so if you're a student, to get down to PE, you're going through the front office kind of through the front door to get into PE. So those are some of those challenges that we have to look at for an everyday learner of how to make these spaces more suitable for educational activities. And while the gym is awesomely cool and beautiful, it's still undersized for most events. When we held our event in there, it was tight with 30 people because it's not set up well. And if you have any sort of event with spectators, We've seen pictures of the sing-along and how packed that space can get. And you want a crowd, right? Everybody wants to be part of a crowd until it gets to be too much. So those are some of those things that came up in the analysis of Glenridge. And you'll see some similarities as we get over into Merrimack. So a lot, again, lack of accessible entries. The parking lot is really, really tight. There's and both of those sites, you're at least half to almost or two to three times. less the amount of parking than you should and so it's some of it is convenience right to be able to get in and out of the facility but it's also to be able to do it safely so when you have a lack of parking that generally means that you're sticking kids and cars too close together and when we look at merrimack that's especially uh true and especially there um on the west side so um Dedicated space for student wellness also is an issue. We talked again about the quality of the educational environment in the basement levels, some that have almost a skylight for a window, others that have windows. A little bit more than that. And then, again, our site is so tight. While there is some natural play area on the south side of the playground, there's really not that active green space where you can kick a ball around and not get scraped up by the asphalt. So those are, again, some things that help lead into why we're in that yellow zone on the borderline at Merrimack. Why down? one of the newest additions to the district, and it's scoring really, really well. There's some little touches there that can really do some really big things at Y-Down. So even though, again, we're back to the parking and site circulation where we're using public streets for pickup and drop off, which is not best practice, but understandably so why that's there. But with having to do four to five PE classes at once, the gym's slightly undersized to do that. And without having, so let me back up. Having green space on top of the parking garage is awesome. But when you get to this time of year, it isn't always usable. And after a rain, it's not really usable. It drains really slowly. So one of the items that has come up for there is how to make that space more usable for PE, but also for lunch and for recess and for other community activities is to potentially put turf, artificial turf on that field. to make it more usable for more activities throughout the day. And that really held true is when we're talking about PE and other activities, there's just not enough space. You've got neighbors very close on both sides and streets on the other. So there's not that many places to go for kids when you're not in the valley of classrooms right outside. So those are things that popped up within our analysis that little moves like that can make a pretty big impact, especially at YDOT. And when we get to the high school, a lot of the classrooms, especially on the lower level, are slightly undersized. Which means as we go to adapt those, we want to make sure that we have them most, and several of them don't have access to natural daylight. And so making a big improvement, especially on that lower level. Restrooms are outdated and needing just general updates and finishes, getting our student support spaces in areas that are easily accessible and together. But then really focusing in on, and this came up during our subcommittee meetings is there's really good space for the classrooms of yesterday, but looking at what the classrooms look like moving forward. So there's programs that are coming online and are already there We need space for those specialized programs. So that's, again, the high school is in a pretty good shape right now, but we also have to keep making improvements to facilities like the Family Center, like the high school, like Wydown, to keep them in the green, maybe to push them up into the blue. Because if we let them go without more further investment, they will drop down into that yellow zone. So we wanted to touch, use this opportunity tonight to kind of touch in on that Hawkins-Lilley appraisal. Review that information and see what questions you have.

Thanks so much, Brad. Leo or whoever has questions or comments, go ahead.

I don't have a lot. Look forward to see the more full picture in a few weeks. I did want to ask questions about this graph with the enrollment by grade level. I think it's maybe on the seventh page of the thing. It looks kind of dramatic. One back actually one back. Oh one

more. Sorry

that one the one

mm-hmm

So first of all we started at a hundred The zero is a hundred on that which makes it look more dramatic But but but the other thing I wanted to ask about is and I don't know if you're the right person to answer this There may be other people do we do we know? Is it typical to experience inflow of at various points on that scale. In other words, is it usual to have a smaller kindergarten class and to have it be larger by the end of the sequence? And where do we see those inflows typically?

One of the things within the demographics overall is you'll see is that the kindergarten is a low correlation to what the actual enrollment is or projected to be because kindergarten is so wide range of how families choose to participate in kindergarten. And so to see a large influx at first grade is typical.

On average, when we look at our cohorts historically, we see growth from kindergarten into first and then basically every grade up through ninth grade. So the big influxes are into grade one, six, seven, eight, and nine. And then, but there is growth two through five as well. Once we get to 10, 11, and 12, just flat lines.

Okay, so it's typical for there to be smaller classes at the lower grades in our district. All right, thank you. That makes sense.

Anyone else have any other questions?

Sorry, I do have one quick question. Sorry I didn't ask this this morning. For how long do these assessments last? Like, how long are they good for? Did I make sense of that question?

Yes. So as we look at the Hawkins-Lilley appraisal very specifically, the idea of that assessment is how do we analyze buildings that were designed and constructed in the mid to early 20th century for the learning environment of today? And so it is, it's a snapshot of time that I don't think can get better. Meaning you're, you're with time, your scores aren't going to go up. Well, my, well,

just to clarify, and maybe you, sorry. Um, but my question, my follow-up question is like, does the decline in score accelerate? as we move through time? In other words, is there a drop-off? So if we were to do this in five years, that 70% might be a 55%. I made that up, but you see where I'm going.

Yes, because if we look at what the analysis is without... improvements investments into the quality of space or to um and like just as an example enlarge your site or to have more areas for physical education or that specialize yes it will continue to drop down because your buildings are not getting any better they were only going to be stagnant or drop Yeah. So to put a point on this, like three to five years would be my guess is like, if we were to evaluate this in another three years, you'd probably see another five to 10% drop in several of those categories based on what they're asking. Now there's, there's one of the specific sites or one of the specific sections that are almost artificially high when you look at it. Cause one of the, there's like six questions and one of them is, is it removed from natural hazards? Yes, that score is not going to change. Is it in a really supportive community? Yeah, I don't think that's really going to change. So there's like 20 out of the 50 points that I don't think are going to change. You have to look at really the details within that. And so yeah, that's where I see some of it will drop, but some of it might not because of just what the questions are.

Great, thank you.

Thanks. Anyone else? No? We'll see it? Okay. Thanks, Brad.

Yeah, thank you.

We look forward to having you, you know, to seeing you again soon. Thanks so much. No, are we okay? Okay. Okay, let's keep going. Okay. Okay, item 8.1. At the last meeting, Pam had made a motion that we approved to add a discussion item about... Yeah, sorry. Oh, I thought you were saying no. Regarding hiring or contracting a professional survey writer, so I'm going to turn over to Pam since she proposed this discussion item All

right, thank you I just felt I wanted to raise the topic for a discussion of would we as a board be willing to invest the financial cost into hiring survey writers for our district? I don't know how broad, I don't have an idea. I think we would need the administration to tell us like how broad that would need to be but to write a survey is both an art and a science and it probably takes an incredible number of hours of our administration to do such a survey. And I wonder if it would, especially as we're talking about at least for the personal electronic devices to do this on some regular basis. I'm sure there are other things we do. I just wanted to open that up.

Who has a question or comment or thought about that? Go ahead, Chase.

Nisha, if you want to hire a survey writer for a particular purpose, I think the board would support you in doing that. That's where I'm at.

Thank you. Because we have in-house surveys that we do. We partner with Panorama. That's a company that does a lot of our surveys as well. So I think it really is going to depend on if the board is directing me for a specific survey to hire an outside entity or whether we're just saying that it's up to administration to decide when we need to hire someone and when we don't.

I think you just answered this question. You have used a panorama to write some of our surveys? Our panorama

surveys. We use panorama to do a lot of our SEL surveys, which they allow us to tweak a few questions. We can add them in or not, but a lot of our surveys, our students take them through panorama.

Tell us about the surveys that aren't through another, like that you specifically do. How many do you do a year? How many of them are annual versus how many do you need to have randomly? You know what I mean? I just wonder what the numbers are.

So I don't have an exact estimate, but let's put it in two buckets. There's in-house surveys that we do within the schools to our students, to our families, and then there's like district-wide surveys. So like an example of a district-wide survey would be the cell phone survey or the one that we're going to do for the long range facilities plan where Paragon is partnering with us to create the survey and we will deploy it. um another one i believe in 2021 we did a huge community engagement survey and we actually had creative entourage partner and we paid them to develop that survey and we got all the data from them right and that was in 2021 so we do that survey almost every four to five years okay with our entire community then we have all the ins in-house surveys right so a principal set doing a survey with their staff or You know, just to see how their culture and climate is going. We have surveys that we just talked about with the counselors called client surveys, which we write and we send them out to parents about the effectiveness of the educator. We have principal surveys. We have a superintendent survey that we created. Then we have professional development surveys. So every time we do a professional development, we have partnered with KickUp, which is a company that creates the surveys and we have the data from that. So it's just a variety of them. So I appreciate the support saying that if I need an outside consultant to write a survey, the board supports that.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, there's nothing else on that. Okay, moving right along then. We are onto action items. First one, 9.1, which is the second reading of policy EHBA, student use of personal electronic devices for instructional purposes. So this is our second reading, which means that the administrators took our input and Have now come back with the recommended recommended policy based on the input we gave at the last meeting Obviously you'll see the green, you know is what is new and added the red is what is being suggested to be deleted So I will open it up for any thoughts on this one that is brought forward now. Wait, Chris has to read the motion first, right? Sorry, Heike's looking at me.

Okay, sorry. This is hilarious. I move that we adopt policy EHB, what's that? She was saying someone else could read, he was saying someone else can read the motion. Yeah, that's okay. It is what it is, right? I move that we adopt policy EHBA student use of personal electronic devices for instructional purposes with the recommended changes.

Second.

Okay, so it's been moved and seconded. So now, thanks Jason. Now open it up to anyone that has questions, comments about this second reading, this version that we're voting on. that we have a motion on the floor to vote on now. Anyone?

Go ahead. So I have a bunch of thoughts. I think I want to start with the two most important ones to me, which are this first sentence the school district of Clayton, that very first one. I am not quite sure what the purpose of just that statement is. It seems like a very broad statement that doesn't say much and it would make more sense to me to start with our goal and objective rather than to say like we know that people have personal electronic devices.

So are you recommending like to strike that first sentence? I think I am,

Dr. Patel. Unless someone can explain to me why that is an important sentence.

Because it's factually true, maybe?

I mean, if we're going to get into this, I mean, it does set the stage for the need for a policy.

Yeah.

Right? It does say, hey, look, we recognize this is a problem. Therefore, here's our goal and here's our policy or objective, and here's what flows from it. I'm kind of indifferent to that.

What Jason's saying makes sense to me, but it – I don't see that as a vital, it's not impacting the policy to me. So I'm fine with that either way. How does everyone else feel? Any thoughts? Push

your button, Ben.

Well, I'm just trying to think what, I mean, I think, well, part of it also is because, like, we've had to change the definitions in here a bit, right? Like, it's not just phones. It's wearables. So in a sense, it's like there's more and more of these things ever present. So it kind of sets the stage for why there's a policy. Right.

Okay. Okay. What else? You had something? You had others?

Yes. So... Thank you. In our last meeting, Leo had made a proposal to include a goal statement and in that was a specific phrase which was a phone-free educational environment We sort of went back and forth between for instructional purposes and also in the classroom. Sort of those were three things that were thrown out. None of those made it into this mission statement, the second sentence. And I would really like to encourage us to include something that says to the effect of phone free, whether it's classrooms, instructional time, I have heard from Nisha that they don't have a quote, they don't have place in instructional setting. Phones don't have a place in instructional setting, Kim said at our last meeting that we, I'm looking for this quote, but we all have said that we want phone free learning or phone free classrooms And so it seems important to me to put that phrase into our mission statement. And this, I'm not, so yeah.

So I have some language that we could include. We have a motion on the table with a current policy.

Right.

I'm mostly of the view that what's important here is that we come back in April and see if what the administration's doing is working. That's my primary view. If it would allow us to adopt this policy with unanimity or with more votes, if we add the phrase, and to encourage a learning environment free of personal cell phones, to the end of the an objective sentence. That's language that I would suggest. But the main thing here is... I throw that out for consideration. I will say, I would vote for this policy as it currently exists. But that's language that if it brings some consensus to this issue, I throw out there.

So basically what it would read is, if I'm capturing this right, an objective of this policy is to foster a learning environment which minimizes distractions from personal electronic devices while allowing for differentiation in usage guidelines by school level and encourages a learning environment free of personal smartphones.

Cell phones. Cell

phones.

What's the pedagogical definition of learning environment? Would that be better replaced by classroom to accommodate the different usages and guidelines at school level?

I'm looking at my team. Classroom or learning environment, it doesn't matter, right? Okay, so how about it encourages a classroom free of personal smartphones?

Oh, does the library count as a learning environment?

It would.

That's why I asked the question.

Yeah, that's why we're going to get into...

instructional setting was what you had said in an informal setting is that different i mean that feels like the same concept but excludes a library i think the

library is

some teachers take their um classes to the library like sometimes teachers like what if they're going to search for a book or even just because they'd like

to utilize that space so

So that's still

instructional. Instructional. It's still instructional in the library.

Because even that includes outside. Some teachers take whiteboards outside, and then the class sits in the quad, and they have a class there. I think instructional time.

Would be

better. Than learning environment. Yeah. Okay. And encourages an... I think, though, if you just change that in this sentence, we don't need to add what Leo's saying. It feels redundant. What do you mean? Just an objective of this policy is to foster instructional time, just change it right in there. Or something. Otherwise it seems really redundant. We're saying minimize distractions for personal electronic devices and then minimize those distractions in instructional time. How does everyone feel about that? If we like instructional time or whatever better than learning environment. And that kind of captures what Leo was suggesting.

Well, the purpose of what I was, maybe it's redundant. Somebody said that it's redundant and maybe that's right. But if there is a purpose to it, it's calling out cell phones which have the handheld size and the 5G, which is a little different than other electronic devices. But as I said, I would vote for the policy as it currently exists, but that's my thought.

I would vote for this policy also. However, if that phrase is, if the majority of the board prefers to change that phrase, I'm supportive of whatever the majority wants there too. I think personal electronic devices include cell phones, so I don't see a need to call that out specifically.

the free of phones and instructional setting piece. That that is something we have all said, minus Ben, that we agree

with. So if we changed learning environment to instructional setting? Because

that just minimizes distractions from them. But the point is for it to be free from. That's the piece that I'm getting held up on. But I don't think we can

guarantee or enforce that it's totally free from when there's some classes and some teachers that use phones for instructional purposes.

But we can encourage it. Right, we're just encouraging. The verb is encourage. We're just encouraging. We can encourage it. It's to

foster for encourage.

What's the word here? Foster. So that's right, right?

And the word I used was encouraged. Right, which is? And then the following sentences delegate to the administration. I mean, it's a push in the implementation of the administrative discretion. That's all it is.

Okay, okay, sorry. What were you going to say, Jason? With it saying instructional, oh. encourage instead of foster? Is that what you're saying?

No.

An additional clause encouraging.

Instructional time free of personal cell phones.

Sure, yes. And then I would like to suggest that if we do that it comes back and it could pass relatively quickly.

I'd be happy to make a motion to do that.

We could just amend it right now.

Do we want to amend it? We don't have to bring it back. That's

fine. So I think, Jeff, we just need to make sure we can capture that. Okay. So after the guidelines by school level,

after guidelines by school level. I think HICA has

it.

Yes.

Yes. HICA is working on it.

An objective of this policy is to, is this what we're changing foster

to encourage? Well, if we're making an amendment, I actually have another thought too.

Oh, okay.

To the idea of bringing this back or bringing up any presentations in the future. I know that the board has had conversations about that. What if we put in here somewhere that the Board of Education would be, this was my wording so we can wordsmith it right now, the Board of Education will be informed of any significant changes to building level practices around personal electronic devices. So if that's in policy, then you know that whenever there's a change, we'll bring it back. That's good. Okay, so where could we put that? That's a great

idea. Okay, let's add that sentence too. I think that can go... I mean, we could just tack it on to the first paragraph. At the very end of the first paragraph. Okay, I get it. All right. But I'm still stuck on the previous one.

Yes, me too.

Were we just changing the language in the objective of this policy or are we adding a sentence? Or wait, you might want to give it to me. We're adding a phrase. Adding a phrase, okay. An objective of this policy is to foster a learning environment which minimizes distractions from personal electronic devices while allowing for differentiation and usage guidelines by school level and to encourage instructional time free of personal cell phones.

I think the reason this sounds weird, like reads weird. Well, it's a really long sentence. Right. The whole part about while allowing for differentiation and usage guidelines by school level, that more goes with the sentence right after it. And I don't know if it's redundant or not, but in the one after we say building principals get to choose, which is by definition by school level. So is that phrase either need to be moved to the next sentence or just not necessary?

I think you're right. If we're authorizing the superintendent and building principals to determine, then we probably don't need to say differentiation in usage guidelines by school level. Does everyone see that and agree with that? So I would say to strike while allowing. So that would make this a better sentence. I think we can do it right here. I think we do it.

Okay.

I have faith.

All right.

Yes. Okay. Heike? Okay. So how about this? I think this is what we're saying. An objective of this policy is to foster a learning environment which minimizes distractions from personal electronic devices, then Leo's phrase, and encourages... What does that say, Leo? And encourages instructional

time-free... and encourages instructional time free of personal cell phones.

Okay, give Heike a second.

Yeah, because then we're going to add on Nisha's sentence too. Do you need us to read it again, Heike?

No, I think I got it. So this one will say an objective of this policy is to foster a

learning environment

and encourages... No, no,

a learning environment which minimizes distractions from personal electronic devices, just as it is in the green right now. Yeah, and instead adds that phrase that Leo suggested After devices it says and encourages

That's good

And then we want to capture Nisha's suggestion. Right, I just want

to make sure she's getting this one first.

Yeah.

But I like Nisha's sense.

It's like putting it in the middle.

It's going to be a long motion.

Correct Yes, and then at the end of that paragraph we're going to add The sentence Nisha suggested

Ready? Yep. The Board of Education will be informed of any significant changes to building level practices around personal electronic devices. I like that. That way it's assured that we'll bring

it back? Right. Anytime there's a change, so that's good. Okay.

So now we need a motion

to amend

the original motion.

And do we have to read that language in the motion? Okay.

Make a motion.

Do you want to say or do you want me to say? Okay, I move that we amend the motion to include the new language in the policy. Second. Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Yes. Okay, one opposed. Motion passes. Okay, thank you. Okay, moving on to 9.2, the second reading of J.G.

We have to approve the policy

now. Oh, I thought I was just, right. I just voted on the amendment, sorry. Okay, now we go back to, okay, now it's the same motion as the first one, right? Okay, I move that we adopt policy EHBA, student use of personal electronic devices for instructional purposes with the amendment.

Second.

Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? One. Okay. Motion passes. No, seconded was Kim. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Heike. Now 9.2, second reading of Regulation JGR1, Student Discipline. Do you want to read that motion or do you want someone else to?

I move that we adopt regulation JG-R1, student discipline with the recommended changes.

Second. Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Any comments or thoughts on the recommended changes for the second reading of JGR1?

I just want to bring to our attention and the public attention that on page 7 of JGR 1, technology misconduct number 2, we are striking out there that using phones, et cetera, on any or personal electronic devices during the regular school day including class change time, meal times, or instructional time unless it is part of the instructional program is not permitted. I just want to point out that we are, this vote is striking that out of our policies. Correct.

I have one too. Go ahead. You're done? I just wanted to ask admin, how is it that we are gonna be able to police whether or not generative AI has been used by a student when not given permission to do so?

So some of the work that we've been doing, we have a subcommittee that's been working on talking through AI and the use of AI in the classrooms and developing some belief statements for us. So this is one of those things that we know it's there.

We

know... it's not going away. And so what are the ways that we've been thinking through that? So we've developed some sample language for teachers to use within their syllabus to talk through and to handle it through a similar conversation like we handle other academic integrity kinds of things. The idea of policing it is, so that's a challenge for us in thinking through it. And so we're looking at it more from an educational standpoint of what are appropriate uses and appropriate times to use it and ways of helping support teachers in the thinking through of practices within the classroom that then they can help students think through. within the classroom also, but it's similar to other kinds of plagiarism types of things of ways that we look to have conversations with students about that, lean in when we think that that's something that they've been using and sort of use it as an educational piece as opposed to a like a policing piece, a lot of those tools are not necessarily the most reliable things. And a lot of our conversation has been around sort of some of the analogies that we've made are sort of like when Google came to be, when Google Translate came to be. So world language teachers had to think very differently about the way that they were instructing. And it was pretty easy at that point. Like I was a world language teacher at that point, and it was pretty easy to figure out when a child had used a tool like that because they're using things that you haven't taught them. Some of our professional learning and conversation with teachers has been around like what are the ways that we develop provocations for students so that that tool isn't really something that they could be using during that time. So the same way of like, developing an assessment that can't be Googled and get your answers, the same thing with AI. So like what are the things that we have talked about within our classroom that we can embed within our provocations to students to think differently about them really generating their own material as opposed to relying on a resource like that?

That's cool. I'm so glad that you have the subcommittee. That's obviously extremely important. So that's wonderful that you're already on that. When I say policing, I meant it more, I appreciate you putting that different spin on it. Is it gonna be something for teachers that they are gonna have to feel stress around because they don't know for sure and the student says, no, I didn't use it, and they say, well, I think you did. Because there's no objective way to know for sure, I just wonder what your thoughts are about how that's gonna play out.

I think similarly to how like plagiarism kinds of things have played out in the past. So like we, we've had tools before that teachers have used, like turn it in.com and that kind of stuff where a teacher can feed a paper into that and, and get a sense of like, has it been plagiarized? Has it been somewhere else? Like there, there have been tools that we have used in the past within that context. Um, I don't think like we're not encouraging the use of like going out and finding tools to figure that out. we're really actually spending more energy on thinking about what are we having students do and what are we asking them to do. I think a lot of our conversation with the committee at first has been, like we were reading a book at one point where you have two ends of a continuum of sort of like people kind of stressing out about the use of AI and like going back to blue books and people writing on paper or people embracing it and thinking through like, what are the ways to help? So it's similar to like the PD that we are the parent night that we did the other night with half the story and thinking about like what are ways to really help students to think through this in a more positive, like constructive way of like you could use a generative AI tool to help you start to think about ideas, but ultimately it's your responsibility to put your own ideas into whatever product that you're creating because that's the learning. piece, right? So helping students to see that piece as opposed to the I've gotta turn something in so I'm gonna use dot, dot, dot to do it. Yeah,

that's great. Have you had any cases where students are having to have disciplinary action around this?

Yeah, we've had, yes.

Okay. Is it what you would expect? I mean, in terms of numbers or is it surprising? What are your thoughts on

it? So I don't know the numbers. I would have to, it's mainly high school that like Dan and I have had that conversation and I don't feel like Dan and I are having a lot of conversation about it so I'm not thinking that the numbers are It's not extremely high. Like

out of

this

world?

Yeah.

Pretty much in line with our usual plagiarism.

Okay.

Numbers. Okay. Nothing alarming to

wear. That's great. That's great I can pull those and we can look at it.

He means another time. In general, there hasn't been a difference to where, hey, this is something that needs to have

a

stronger

look. But I do think it is a pretty consistent conversation for us. And it's been interesting to watch sort of the ebb and flow with the teachers, so with the faculty, in thinking about when chat GPT became a big thing. Yeah. the immediate reaction of some people was like, what are we going to do? And I think that teed us up to be able to have some conversation to bring a group together to really think through as we think through these tools because they're not going to go away. And there are benefits to some of these tools. But we have to help students in thinking through them in a responsible way. The same way we're helping teachers think through them in a The AI tools can be helpful in teaching.

For

sure. And so we've had to have some conversation also about what does that look like in a responsible way. There you go. So it's an interesting kind of journey that we're on, but I don't necessarily feel like it's the first journey we've been on like this. I think we have other things that, you know, the examples that I gave of like Google, Google Translate, those types of things that have had us have to sort of think maybe differently about our teaching and learning environments. And that's what I'll say on

that. That was great. Thank you very much.

Good question. Does anyone else have questions about JGR1 comments? Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. And now 9.3, the second reading of policy IGA basic instructional programs. Chris, would you read that motion?

I move that we adopt policy IGA basic instruction programs with the recommended changes.

Questions or comments on this one, Pam? Yeah, I just want to make a quick one. I don't know who wrote, who did this edit. I know it was in, like, one of the board members. Melina. It's beautiful. Melina did it. And I just, I mean, what was there felt like it was from the 20s. Chris asked about it. Chris asked, and it's really beautiful, and that's what I wanted to say. Yeah,

I agree. Definitely needed updating, so thank you. Any other questions or comments on this one? Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Aye, any opposed? No, okay, motion passes. Okay, thank you all. Okay, consent agenda. Chris, you can read the

motion for that. I move that we approve the consent agenda items 10.02 through 10.6.

Any questions or comments about anything on consent?

Just a quick comment for our YouTube viewers at home. John has done a really nice job of changing the disbursement report that comes to us monthly to really highlight those larger ticket items and explain what they are, which is the treasure I really appreciate. And so anyone who's trying to look through things can look at that, but it's posted on the website.

Thank you. Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, consent agenda passes. And now we are on to board communications. I know, I think Chris attended the Clayton Education Foundation meeting for PAM. Did you have anything to report? And she

didn't. Oh, okay. I had a parenting emergency. That's okay.

I actually ended up, I was early for something else. And you

went to Clayton Education Foundation?

And I went to about 45 minutes of it. Okay, great. And they were doing.

Great. Okay, anything to report from the meeting?

You know, they're brainstorming some really great ideas. Good. About individual outreach was the main thing they were talking about. And it seemed like a good constructive path.

Great. And Jason and or Leo, did you have a CRSWC meeting that you want to report on?

Yes.

Okay.

Anything important? We approved the addition of some artwork to the center. That's the main thing that happened there.

I will say compliments to the staff that's overseeing that because the mandate for the past two or three years there has been grow membership revenue, and they really have done that in a really nice way. And so, you know, that's appreciated.

Great.

Especially the grow revenue part.

Yes. Okay, I had a Teaching and Learning Committee meeting. We reviewed some, with Dr. Paul Helcher, some curriculum changes in social studies. And just a few highlights. I loved that meeting, Melina, by the way. I just thought it was so interesting. He said his whole thing was that We want to move away from history and towards social studies. That we are not necessarily wanting our students to become historians, but we want them to become engaged global citizens. So a lot of the curricular changes have moved from history to social studies, which will help create engaged global citizens. And we broke up in small groups to talk about how that is happening and how the Missouri Learning Standards look and fit into our Clayton framework, into different pockets that are identity, diversity, justice, and action. The categories for us are like history, let's see, culture, history, geography, government, and economics. But I just love that phrase of engaged global citizens. And what I also found interesting is that we went over the social studies inquiry model, which like I've learned forever that claim evidence and reasoning is an inquiry model used in science only. And I just thought it was so cool that they also use it in social studies and probably other topics when looking at sources and note taking. So that was

great. Also, I just have a quick question just so that that doesn't like moving. It's not that we're not gonna stop teaching history. I don't want anybody to misinterpret what you just said in terms of the recap of that meeting. Yes, thank

you.

So we are still teaching history in the Clayton School District. It is still very important in order to become an informed global citizen that you know where people came from, how they got there, why they're where we are. In fact,

there are five social studies enduring understandings in the areas of history culture, geography, government, and economics. And the one about history says, the engaged global citizen investigates the past and makes connections to the present to inform decisions about the future. So yes, history is absolutely part of that, part of social studies. Okay, something else is last night Jason, Kim and myself along with John and Nisha went to a CCBA membership meeting. CCBA is the Clayton Condo Buildings Association so they have a large membership of people that live in all kinds of condo buildings all over Clayton. as we've talked about improved and increased community engagement and communication with the community, it was a great opportunity to get that demographic of people in a room where they can go back to their condo buildings and share what they've learned. We talked a lot about the Long Range Facilities Master Plan. John talked to them about the financial health of the district, and they were able to ask a lot of questions, and they really appreciated it. We even got applause at the end. And you just said, wow, it must have been a great meeting. We had a lot of room full of people clapping at us. So anyway, that was great. They were very appreciative. And we'll hopefully see them at the community forum and other things to come.

I don't know how many of you guys know this, but during our campaign, they had the three of us come and speak.

I did that too.

At the CCBA. Great.

Did you have anything to add to that?

No, but I do have a quick report. Last night was the Financial Advisory Committee meeting.

Kim

was there. Leo was there. Still

on

the list. John did a really nice job as usual just walking through. There's a handful of people representing various stakeholders in the community walking through the trends that are driving Our financial performance and our financial management enrollment Talked a little about how TIFs work and you know related to in particular the South Brightwater Boulevard project things along those lines and it's it's a good group and and it's good to hear sort of the get outside of like our little bubble here at the community's feedback on various issues that we face on a daily monthly daily weekly monthly basis

Yeah, that's good and a couple other things I I think Pam was on Monday night, the half the story, Larissa May's presentation, which I thought was great. And I don't remember if she said it was recorded. It was, yeah. For parents to go back and watch? Okay, I would encourage everyone to do that because, first of all- You're going to have

to have a sign in, and they're still trying to figure it out how to share it.

Okay, but I'm assuming Jen McEwen or someone will share that when it's ready. It was, by the way, put on by a partnership between the All In Coalition and the Wellness Center, which was great. But I, first of all, was just really impressed with this Larissa May. I mean, she's 30 years old, and she's done a lot of work around digital wellness, which is actually important because I feel like I'm probably too old to have done this. And she has grown up in a more digital age and understands it a lot better. But there were quite a few parents on it. Melina was on the call, too. There were quite a few parent. I think maybe 45 or so I saw. And she had the opportunity to ask questions at the end. had some links to her sub stack where she's written articles about it, even for adults and their digital wellness. It wasn't all geared towards, um, towards kids. So that was great. And I was just happy that we've, you know, hopefully one of many things to come that we're offering to our community to learn about digital wellness. So that was. And just another reminder, um, that Saturday, December 7th is the St. Louis school boards professional learning council event. that is, the topic is safety and security. And I believe we have confirmed coming to speak the chief of the St. Louis County Police, the Normandy Schools, I think, security, safety and security coordinator, maybe someone from the FBI, and there's a... to be determined in a fourth person. So it's a quite impressive panel of experts that they will not only be presenting, but also we're going to have a lot of opportunity to ask questions. And then there will be breakout groups also to talk about safety and security in like physical safety, emotional safety, different groups. And it's always If any of you have been to this before, it's a great opportunity to network and just meet and get ideas from other school boards in other districts. So I know Luke just sent out a reminder if anyone is able to go on Saturday, December 7th from nine to noon, it's in Parkway this time. We all take turns hosting to RSVP for that. Breakfast is provided too. And that's it for communications so we can motion to adjourn.

Thank you. I move that the Board of Education Adjourned to executive session. Second. Yeah, okay.

All those in favor? Aye.

Oh,

that's right. Oh, correct. Okay. Correct. We weren't adjourning. We were adjourning to executive session. Oh, and do we need to read

why? Wait, what's

this?

Not in here.

Not in

here. Okay.

Okay. All right. Leo?

Yes.

Pam? Yes. Ben? Yes. Jason? Yes. Kim? Yeah. Stacy? Yes. Me, yes. Okay.

Is that it, then, Heike? We're good? Okay. Okay, now we're adjourning to executive.