May 13, 2020 — Meeting Transcript

All right, guys. For everybody that's listening, we are live streaming now.

Jeff, I'm sure you're listening to this, but if you could just check the feed on your end for me and text me if

there's any issues, I'd appreciate it. Thank you. So for

anyone that is tuned in to watch tonight's Board of Education meeting, the board had a closed session at 630. They are just finishing that session up and moving into

open session right now. Do we have everybody

back? No. Yes? No, not quite. Okay, we're just going to give a couple minutes just coming out of executive session for Gary and Lily and Jason to join us. Hey, Adam. How you doing, Adam? Hi, everyone. All right, there's Gary coming on. Again, just going to give Jason and Lily a couple minutes here or a minute. I'm sure they're coming on momentarily.

Harmon Zuckerman, All right, there's Lily. Harmon

Zuckerman , We'll give everybody for warning. We're going to stand and do the pledge again. Harmon Zuckermann, Just telling you Harmon Zuckerman. Alright, alright. I'm sick. I'm just looking across the screen. Harmon Zuckerma, Lily. All right. We just Jason, Jason. Okay.

Maybe. All right. Here comes

Jason. All right. Connecting to audience waiting. Board members, can you raise your thumb if you can hear me? We're good. We're good. Okay. All right. So we're going to start. Everybody's here. Adequate notice has been given, so we're going to call the meeting to order, and we are going to start by standing and saying the Pledge of Allegiance to that flag behind Sean. Whoops. I pledge allegiance to the

flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

All right. Thank you so much. Um, so we are, I don't, we're going to start with, um, Sean recognizing our own.

You said recognizing our own, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry, recognizing our own. I'm trying to get my headset going. I'm going to start by just, can you hear me okay? And I'll head up, put in my headset. Um, So when we started our continued learning plan, we had to develop plans that were not only for academics, but we also had to figure out all the other services that we provide our students. And one of those is providing meals to our students each and every day. And so We had to make sure that we had a system in place that was gonna be able to provide meals to our students. That was going to be a plan that was gonna be manageable and also safe for people to come in and get the meals. Tonight, what we're gonna do is recognize a few individuals who made this happen for our community and just want to recognize them for all their efforts. And so I am going to recognize Robin Weems, who was our assistant superintendent of student services. She was integral to this process and really made it happen. And she worked very closely with, is Michelle on? I don't know if she... Michelle Fohey, who is part, oh, there she is. She is, she works for Chartwells and she is our leader of Chartwells for the district and She and then Julie Englehart, who works in student services. They have been so amazing in terms of setting up the systems to be able to have food for our students. They started five days a week and moved it to Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And then they're also coordinating backpacks of food that is going home each Friday. It has been an incredible system and it's been so needed in our community and I just wanted to recognize those individuals. I also want to do a shout out to Mary Jo Gruber because there's a lot of behind the scenes that needs to take place in order for us to distribute food from our district. And Mary Jo made sure that we had all the right paperwork and met all the right systems in place so that way this was not going to be something that was going to be delayed or interrupted. And I wanted to say thank you to her as well. So thank you to the four of you who have been so committed to this each and every week. So thank you. And then I want to recognize our Clayton Education Foundation. And we're very fortunate to have our director of development, Sandy Straker here, who has been jumped right into this new role and has facilitated the raising of over $31,000 for food and getting gift cards to our families in need each week. And she's done it in a way that has been completely respectful, has been able to protect the dignity of our families and also being able to support families and get them what they need. And so I just want to say thank you to the Clayton Education Foundation for their commitment to our students. And so I want to recognize all of you and on behalf of the Board of Education and the administration, thank you. And then while I have you all on here, I also want to just do another quick little, uh, recognition of Robin and, uh, Julie because, um, and Mary Jo as well. We have been having community parades in our neighborhoods for the last couple of weeks and are the city of Clayton has partnered and have been able to have fire engines and, and the police cars. And they've been going through our neighborhoods in Clayton and, um, Robbin was really pushed us to say, how are we going to make sure that all of our students feel like this is something that they're celebrated so Robin and Julie and with help Mary Jo. We're having a parade in our other neighborhoods where our voluntary transfer students live and where our students from Normandy live. And so on Saturday, we are having another parade that's parading through neighborhoods. And so we're taking our buses and have been able to connect with the city of St. Louis Police Department and are having another parade on Saturday. So the board's welcome to come and join that. We are limited in terms of number of people in that parade though. But I just want to say thank you to them because they were making sure that we were very inclusive and thoughtful about the systems that we have in place. And when we talk about having an equity lens, that is a perfect example. So look forward to being part of that on Saturday.

Sean, are we doing it in Richmond Heights too? Have we gone through Richmond Heights neighborhoods?

So I think that, I'm not sure if the Richmond Heights was connected to the one that was connected to DeMunn. I'm not sure, but I can check on that.

Thank you, Sean. That is awesome. And thank all of you. It is really, I mean, it really what folks have done is truly amazing. And I know this is a extra challenging time. So thanks to each of you. Really fantastic. Um, so I don't know if we have any public comments. Do we have any public comment this evening?

Uh, there was no public comment submitted for this evening.

Okay, great. Thank you very much. So we're going to move on. So Sean, you're up again with a superintendent communication.

Okay. So, um, So at each of the board meetings for the, can you hear me again? I put my head, I just want to make sure. So each of the board meanings, I had been working to make sure you have a detailed update about what's happening with our continued learning plan. And so we have, I have continued to observe and hear about substantive learning opportunities for our students and have been able to interact with our students in several different ways. And each time I talk to them, I always ask what could we learn from this situation or what is it that you like that you would like to do in the future? And so our students have been incredible and our parents have been amazing as part of this whole process on top of the tremendous work our educators are doing each and every day. We know that May is a time for celebrations and milestones for our families, actually for our students. And so I've been so impressed with how our administrators and our teachers have been thoughtful about implementing ways to celebrate our students. One of the things that we had last week was a virtual field day. you know it's very disappointing that we weren't going to have field day and we had a virtual field day and hopefully the board saw that link i sent you with the videos of the kids doing the activities at home it was just a really innovative and thoughtful way of connecting with the students um and also Our administrators and teachers are thinking about ways to celebrate students who are meeting those transition years. So ways to celebrate our fifth grade students. We have our eighth grade students who are going to participate in a parade on May 26th. And the high school has done an amazing job of trying to celebrate our seniors during this time. And so, you know, really feel terribly about our seniors. They missed prom. They missed their graduation, their scheduled graduation. We have another scheduled graduation in July, but we are going to have a parade on the day of May 28th. which would have been the original graduation. So the board is welcome to be a part of that. It's basically going to follow the same route we do for homecoming. And if you hadn't had an opportunity to drive the front of the high school, you can see all of the students' images, their faces on the driveway. It's beautiful. And it's been so fun each day to see people coming in and getting their picture taken standing next to their picture, standing next to their friend's picture and taking pictures. So all while social distancing. So there has also been yard signs that have been delivered to our seniors. And so the other thing is our principals have been amazing in terms of trying to support the systems that we need to put in place for getting our teachers back in the buildings and our students back in the buildings because there are still things that are in our schools that they need. And so our principals have developed systems that started this week to get our teachers back in to close their classrooms, and then soon our students will be able to get back into the schools to get those things that are in their lockers, and also to return devices and any other materials. We've also developed a comprehensive cleaning plan that's aligned to that. So that way, when people are in our buildings, we know what parts of the building need to be cleaned. So that way we're also protecting people as they come in. I wanted to make sure that everyone knows we decided not to have any type of activities in the month of June. That includes our summer programs and it also includes our athletics. And so we are going to wait until July 1st to start to consider anything. And that's gonna be aligned with what other school districts are doing around the county. I do believe we're gonna be able to finish the school year really strong in the next few weeks, but a lot of our energy now is on the fall. And I know that there's lots of information and media. There's lots of questions in the community. What are we going to do in the fall? Do we know what it's gonna look like in the fall? No. Will we be prepared? Yes. And so I just want to make sure that the board knows and our community knows is that we know this is on your mind. We don't have all the answers yet, but I will tell you that we are going to be thoughtful and intentional to make sure that we have a plan in place that's going to keep our kids safe and also making sure that we're having continuity of learning. And we're going to have to make sure that we're adhering to any guidance that we get from the Department of Health. But our goal is to get our students back in our schools. And so our team is trying to be thoughtful about how we design that. So developing a timeline, when do we want to communicate that plan? And then working backwards to get to that part where we communicate to the community about what we're going to do. At this point, what we're trying to do is develop a leveled system. So as I said before, We're not gonna go back to status quo. There's not gonna be like, even if we start school with all of our students in the fall, things are going to be different. And that might mean the procedures might be different. There might be some different types of guidelines we put in place. But if we have a level one would be our students back in school with those other precautionary procedures or any kind of other systems that we need to put in place. level two would be like a blended model. Like if we had to adhere to some guidelines around smaller groups, how could we make that work within our district? And then level three would be a completely virtual model. And I would say that what we're gonna do is make sure that we're putting energy into learning what we learning what taking learning we had from this experience and making sure whatever virtual model that we develop is even better and stronger. But our goal is to make sure that we have tried to get our students back in school as much as possible. So Some people, you know, there's a lot of things that are in the paper and there's things in the community. There's a lot of guidance that's out there. And we're going to take information and those resources and use that information to make an informed decision. But I want you to know that we're going to do what's best for our students to make sure that they're safe. And then there's also making sure that they have high expectations for learning. We're also going to engage our teachers and making sure that they're part of the decisions because they've lived this. And so we want to make sure that we are using their creativity to make some informed decisions. And we're also sending a survey out to our parents and our teachers and our students to get input from them so that way we can get some data to inform our decisions moving forward. So it's a constant of us thinking about this and we keep coming back to it. Again, we're having another meeting tomorrow with all of our administrative team and it's an opportunity for us to say, these are the desired conditions that we want, how are we gonna make that work for our students? The other thing that I just want you to know is that we will also try to keep the board informed as we make these decisions and also get input from you as we make these decision because these are, everything is new and we're trying our very best to make sure that we're trying to get back to a sense of normalcy but knowing that it's not going to be status quo and we're going to have to look different. And so I actually think that we're gonna be a stronger community after this And I think that we're going to definitely learn from this and being even, I think it's going to inform our strategic plan in a really positive way. Always trying to look at the glass half full. So I want to stop there before I talk a little bit more about the board meeting tonight and see if anyone had any questions or comments about any of the things that I shared.

So I'm just going to go across the screen again just for efficiencies. Kristen, any questions? Okay, thank you. Stacy, any questions? Amy, any questions? Gary, any questions?

Sean, just really quickly noticed and it got a lot of attention today and yesterday that the state board has taken some actions looking to the fall about what districts might be doing. And I think we'll all probably start getting more questions about that if we haven't already. And so I just wanted to... Just ask if you could maybe talk about that a little bit in terms of start dates and things like that, if those are things that we're looking at or talking about. Obviously still a lot of unknowns there, but it's a topic people are bringing up.

Yeah, so what Gary's talking about is that the state board is allowing a one-year waiver for the start time. You know that there was a new law that was put in place that pushed back our start time, and so there's been a one-year waver saying that we could reconsider that time if we want to. So definitely, you know, that's something that we might consider, but we have to think about like, what is the time too that we need to be able to prepare for whatever system that we're putting in place. And then we also are gonna have to adhere to whatever guidelines are in place at that time as well. So we'll keep that in mind, but not saying, the conversation right now is not about changing that start time. One of the things we did do is we pushed our summer programs to the end of the summer so that way we can have a jumpstart for our elementary And we also have made the decision to go virtual for, you know, we've talked about the high school is going to be virtual. We've also decided to make sure that to guarantee for our middle school students, we're going to go virtual in June as well for them. But then we're also going to have what we call a bridge program at the latter part of the summer for middle school students. So yeah, we'll definitely take into consideration those decisions that were made at the state level.

Okay, thank you, Adam. Any questions? Lily, any questions?

No, thank you, Sean.

Jason, any questions? Jason, we can't hear you if

you're... No. Okay, thank you. Awesome, thanks. Okay, go ahead. I don't have any questions.

Thanks, Sean. You can keep going. So tonight, our focus is going to be around one of the commitments that we made during the Prop B campaign around safety of our schools. And so... Even before all this happened with the pandemic, we have been talking about making sure we have the safest schools possible for our students and our community. And when we're talking about safety, it's not only about their physical well-being, but also their social emotional well-being as well. And so tonight you're going to hear an update from Chris, who has really been leading that work around a safety audit. And that was part of the commitments we had for Prop E. And then the other thing too is we're going to be giving an update around capital improvement plans and where we are with and status of those plans. And obviously we've had to make some decisions based off the current reality that we're living and that we may have to put a hold on some of these plans. We are going to make recommendations to put holds on some of these plants, but we wanted to make sure that the board was updated about our thinking so that way you can ask any questions pertaining to those capital improvements. And then the other thing too is as part of the, and actually when I'm talking about the safety audit, one of the things that the board talked, asked us to put on an agenda. And we just also want to just give an update as part of that audit, we asked them to do a, give us information about what it would take for us to have gender neutral bathrooms in our school and give us in our schools and give us some information and some guidance around that. So Chris is going to present that as well. And then the study items are budget draft. And so Mary Jo is bringing forth this draft and I wanna make sure I'm emphasizing draft because this is still a work in progress. But I will say that we are bringing forth a budget that's gonna be fairly flat to where we were last year. And our goal right now is to build that fund balance and that was what we wanted for Prop E and that's what you'll see, that's a focus area in our budget. But this is also going to be an opportunity for Mary Jo to give her perspective about the budget and then thinking about how we can best forecast with a lot of the unknowns that are out compared to now that we're in this pandemic. So that's what our agenda is going to look like tonight. I'm going to go ahead and see if Adam has any updates that he wants to share with the board.

Thanks, Dr. Doherty. I did want to share a little bit about what I've been doing as a student and what my day looks like. And I know I talked a little bit about that. I think it was one of the first few days that we had online learning, but I wanted to show you from a high schoolers perspective, what Google classroom looks like. So I'm going to share my screen and let's see. All right. So can, can everyone see, give me a thumbs up if you can. Awesome. All right. I wanted to show you what Google Classroom is, which is what all of my classes have pretty much been using. And so this is my French class, for example. And there are different ways that our teachers are using Google Classroom. So Madame Kaspari will post every day what our assignment is. And so each of these individual tabs tells us what we need to be doing for that day. She gives us the links right there, and then we can go ahead and do that. Some of the assignments take a little bit longer. And so we can see up on this up, it says upcoming right here on the left. And that shows us what we have the next assignment that's due. So we can just click right there and it'll take us exactly to the assignment that we want to do. which is really neat. It's an amazing way for us to stay organized and connected among our classes and know what we need to be doing at what time. So that's, for example, what my French class looks like. Then there are some different ways that other teachers are doing it. So this is my math class with Mr. Schwent. And what we do is we get a syllabus for the unit and they add everything that we need for that week. Each new week on Monday, they'll post it and they'll add it to this syllabus. So on this document, I'll go through and I can click on intro to calculus. And right then and there, it'll take us to the presentation, the video, whatever we need to be working on. Um, and then I also wanted to show another way that our teachers have been doing it. So this is my biology class. And so if you see here on the left side, if I go. I can go to my stream, which is where he'll give us updates on whatever he needs to tell us about AP tests, for example, other things. But if I click on classwork up there, it can take me to all the topics throughout the year and it can divide it by unit. So if I go down, he'll give us learning last learning assignment. from our last online lessons. And we can look through and it will give us the exact dates that this is, that we're gonna be working on this and how we need to do it. Another thing I wanted to share is we have our, even like my baseball team has a Google Classroom. So we'll see. what's going on. So for example, our coach Wheeler posted this reverse dry drill. And so we can go check that out. And it's been a really great way to stay involved with the team and to keep up with, with our work off the field as well. And then I want to share one more thing, which is my statistics class. I didn't get it. Sometimes we'll do our, what's we're doing, what's called a learning log. So I'll log every day what I've been working on and for how long it took me. And Then what I do is I share the picture to Mr. Komacher, who's my statistics teacher, and it takes him to my work that I did. And so I created a picture and there's all my work that I and that's been a way that he can stay in touch with us and he can leave us notes if we need it, if he sees anything that's alarming or he wants to talk about. So I'm going to stop sharing now, but I just wanted to give you a little glimpse into our lives as a student and a high schooler, and that's what we've been working on.

Awesome. Thank you, Adam. That was really helpful. That was really fun to see. That's

great.

Yeah, thank you. So we are going to move on to our first information item, which is 6.01, the safety study update and the gender neutral bathrooms.

Wait until we get everybody up there. Good evening, everybody. How's

everyone doing this evening? Sean, did you want me just to go right in or did you have anything beyond your initial comments you wanted to say before we start?

No, I didn't want to add anything else. I'm going to go ahead and get started.

Great. Okay. Thanks. Let me share my screen here. Okay, excellent. So this is kind of an update on the safety study that we've been working on. We've been working on throughout most of second semester. The work looked a little different after about the middle of March or spring break, but we've been moving forward with that. And I think that we wanted to take some opportunities to focus on safety this year because I think next to teaching and learning, it's kind of one of the most important things we do, making sure that our students and staff are safe. As Sean mentioned earlier on in his comment, we did make a campaign promise when we were out campaigning for Proposition E back in April of 2019 that we would take some of those additional funds and we would really start looking at safety and security enhancements that we could put in place across the district. So this study kind of represents the first step of fulfilling that campaign promise and fulfilling our continued obligation to make sure that schools are as safe as they possibly can be for our students and staff. Wanted to talk just a little bit and just set expectations for Kyle Magyera, kind of this this conversation is going to be at a very high level, simply because you know we're because there's there's a lot of things related to safety. Kyle Magyera , Within the district that we don't necessarily want to have to discuss in a public forum or post information up to board docs for people who may have. Kyle Magyara , You know other kind of nefarious motivations to learn that sort of thing, and it is a topic that. by board policy in Missouri law that we're allowed to limit the disclosure of information for those types of things. So when we started out going into this safety study, we kind of set some very broad goals about what we wanted to look at across the district. We wanted to look kind of on just physical safety, but also just see where there were gaps in planning training and security. So in the way that we're working with our staff and trying to make them partners in providing a safe school environment for our students. We wanted to find out if we had vulnerabilities anywhere within the district and offer options to improve those type of things. And we did that by looking at all of our buildings and all of our campuses. So we looked at, of course, all of our schools. We looked at the administrative center. We looked at our fields. We looked at our maintenance facility, that sort of thing. And looked at things like how they were physically set up, what types of security measures were in place, what types of perceived threats that staff that worked in those buildings felt that they had. Again, where were opportunities for improvements that we could make to not only the building but also to the structure of everything. And just looking at any sort of operational procedure or systemic gaps that we might have in terms of kind of the broad safety umbrella that hovers over the district. So to move forward with this process, we put out an RFQ in late fall of 2019. We brought those consultants to the board who are, I can't see them in my window here, but they are here with us tonight. So the board approved working with a team of bond architects and tier one tactical solutions. Mark Benthien, ECA- fortunate to have art bond of bond architects and Eric Wilson on the zoom call with us tonight to talk a little bit about the safety study. Mark Benthien , ECA- But what we got when we approve this team to work with the district on the safety study is is two groups with really extensive experience in ensuring that schools and interior ones case businesses. are as safe places they can be for the people that need to work, live and learn in their buildings. Bond Architects has an extensive safety audit experience with schools throughout Missouri. It's a process they call BASE. They're gonna talk a little bit about that here in a few minutes. And Tier 1 Tactical Solutions is one of the premier safety training and consulting groups around. They work with school districts throughout St. Louis County and all across Missouri on a variety of different safety items. So with that, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce Art Bonds and Eric Wilson from Bond Architects and let them talk a little bit about their process that they go through when they partner with a school district to do a safety audit.

Thanks, Chris. I'm Art Bond of Bond Architects, and Eric is in the background. He'll jump in with any of the details that are needed, but Wanted to give you a brief background on the BASE initiative, which we started to really develop in about 2016 is when we really started focusing on that with about 80% of our project work being in the educational design arena. We felt that there really needed to be some focus and kind of a and establishing a best practices as we've seen them in schools across the country from the perspective of what can be done from a physical perspective and design perspective to make schools safer. And there are a number of things that come into play when we talk about schools being safer. We look at those from the perspective of social and emotional safety and well-being, bullying, transgender accommodation. Visitor management and intruder deterrence. So it's a little bit broader than you might think at first blush because we really look at the facilities from the outside in all the way from the site in through the facility. But if we were to leave you with one thing tonight, one aspect of this that we find to be the absolute most critical is That is in approaching safety and security, schools need to be inspirational environments. And we need to make sure that all the safety protocols are secondary to what's put in place for the learning environment. You really as students and staff shouldn't feel or interact with the safety components of the school They really ought to be a kind of an overlay that is really pretty much unseen and unknown. There are a couple of points at which you will come in contact with those, but overall they really shouldn't be an impediment to the teaching environment. And I think that's really important. As we looked at this and one would say, okay, what was the process for analyzing each of the facilities? We had our teams basically come in and evaluate all of the campuses, both from a site standpoint and through the building interiors. It really was a fairly holistic view looking at from the approach to the campus, coming onto the campus and then moving into and through the facility. We had a number of meetings with administrators at each school, the SROs and a number of different staff at each facility. Each of which had a little bit different perspective on where vulnerabilities might be and other concerns. And so we went through and really did a pretty thorough analysis of what we were encountering and what other people had kind of highlighted us to as well. While we were doing this process, tier one tactical was with us and was reviewing a number of the policies and procedures. And Chris, I think, will expand on that at the tail end of this. But we really were evaluating each campus against best practices and kind of the latest thinking in safety and security. We looked at perimeter, building entries. Single point of control is really a very important aspect of looking at schools today. And that becomes especially challenging when you get to middle school and high school level as these facilities are fairly porous. Egress and evacuation. And then we really are looking at a number of the technological aspects in the building Not only cameras, but also a lot of the door hardware is operationally different from what it was originally set up to do. And so we've looked at and clearly identified and evaluated where those issues might be at each facility. We also looked at, and I know that the district had gone through and done a fairly extensive security film on glazing. And we evaluated a number of windows, well, all windows and doors and identified areas that needed to be additionally strengthened and bolstered. There were also a number of... Somewhat inconsistent aspects in the ADA compliance. And we're trying to, as much as we can, address those issues too because typically we're talking about entries and exits that in most cases are the primary ADA ingress and egress as well. So it becomes... fairly involved in the overlay, but the ADA compliance comes into the equation significantly as well. Wanted to give you kind of a highlight of some of the things that were differentiated one building to the next. And so kind of launch in Captain, for example, we looked at expanding the secure vestibule. We did look at some ways in which to potentially lock down the stairway doors and provide more secure ingress and egress through the building in that regard. And we'll get into more detail as we present the further details of this at a later date. As we looked then at Glenridge, we looked at Remodeling the entry such that the Oxford entry would become the primary entry. It'll be a more easier transition to make into the facility from an ADA standpoint, and we're looking at that as being the primary security entry to the building as well. And then at Merrimack, we looked at what were the opportunities to have the best and most gracious entry into that building. We think that the main entry along the northwest side of the School makes the most sense to address with both ramp and access. At that point, we do have an alternative to look at affecting the primary entry at the front of the building. But we also wanted to be sensitive to the existing aesthetic and of each of these facilities. and try not to disrupt those or when we do address those to be as really careful in application as we can. So that was a secondary consideration in looking at Merrimack as possibly coming in through that middle entrance on the, I believe that's south facing side Um, why down middle school had more to do with hardware and controls from that standpoint. And some of the security aspects regarding the fencing at the perimeter of the buildings. quite new and so as on the whole really has a lot of the predominant safety protocols built into it, but we did have a few minor additions that we're going to look at further in implementing there. As we get to the high school, we were looking at a number of different situations. As I mentioned, there are a lot of doors into the high school. We were looking at a secure door with a card swipe at the Greyhound entrance around to the west. We were looking additional hardware and card swipes through a number of the entries. such that most of the perimeter can remain locked at all times, and that really it will require card swipe access, student ID, and that can be monitored at each of those entries as well. The main entry is also one that we're going to be looking at securing a little bit more from what's currently there, and we have a fairly detailed approach to that. As we then went on to the family center, we were looking at ways in which to connect both entrances, one at the lower level and the main entrance at the upper level, and trying to tie those into a single monitoring station at the front reception area so that they can both be actively monitored at all times. We also looked at the facilities building as well as the administrative center. The administrative center follows much in the approach to the other, I would have to say most of the other buildings in trying to secure that entry a little bit more and There's more detail to that. But as we looked at the facilities building, there were a number of hardware issues, gates around the performance field, which would have more egress function added such that If folks were to discharge onto the field, they would have ready access out of that area from a safety standpoint. We also looked at adding some gates as well and some things like adding a telephone in the press box and getting full communication throughout that campus. We also did look at the locker room facility and getting card access into that as well. Chris, I think that pretty well ties up the physical side of that.

Yeah, thanks, Art. I think that we wanted to just put a few little highlights of what is, depending on the site of the school, a 40- to 60-page report for each of our buildings that looked at a lot of things. I think that if we look at overarching themes that came across out of this, as we move forward to implement this work across the district is one really looking at all of our facilities and making sure that we have a single point of entry in control. So how can we, what are some simple easy or maybe in some cases not so simple things but things that we need to do to make sure that we can control access to those buildings as best we can while we have students and staff in the building. Part of that includes looking at options for potentially implementing visitor management systems across the district, looking at where we have gaps and where we can improve the monitoring and the security monitoring systems and cameras that we have across there. So I mean, the things that we looked at throughout this span the gap from everything like that to trying to figure out is there a way that we can develop an accountability system for students at the high school so we know who's on campus and who's not on campus if we were to ever have a crisis or an emergency in the middle of the day because, as you know, that gets a little complicated with the open campus that we have there at the high school. But as Art mentioned earlier, you know, in kind of his intro, and Sean will do it to this in his superintendent comments, You know, this whole study and everything that we looked at wasn't necessarily just about physical safety and about infrastructure. We wanted to take a look at, you know, if there's any social emotional issues, social emotional safety issues that we can address as part of this work. You know, part of the conversations that we had with all of the building administrators were just about bullying and if there's any spots in schools or anything that we can do to enhance or change the physical nature of those buildings to address bullying issues that are happening in those schools. I'm happy to say that we didn't really get a lot of negative feedback on that type of issue, but we did want to take this as an opportunity to look at, I kind of got ahead of myself, but I will come back since we're already there, to take a look at Solutions for exploring the idea of putting gender-neutral bathrooms in all of our schools. And there's really just a number of different solutions that we could implement at each school. And they range in everything from just identifying current existing single-use restrooms, making sure that they are ADA accessible and designating those. as gender neutral restrooms, all the way up to converting banks of restrooms into single individual stall restrooms with kind of a common sink area that could be used by anyone in the building. We're in the process of still finalizing those costs. If you think about the range of those two different options, there's a pretty wide range of costs associated with each of those. And I know that Eric and Art and their team are kind of drilling down into what that specific application of each of those ideas would look like at each school. And we may have a different solution for each school, depending upon the needs that we anticipate at an elementary school versus a high school. And our plan is to come back in the future. I think potentially Sean and I, we have it slated for the June meeting to talk a little bit more about where we wanna be with gender neutral bathrooms and some recommendations for what's the best solution to implement that at each school if that's a direction that we wanna go. I'm gonna back up just a little bit too and just talk about, let's skip this slide and talk about procedures and training. So we talked... talked a lot about this, and this is actually one of the things that Tier 1 came in and really provided some great just outside objective analysis on the safety procedures that we currently have in place, the training that we do with our staff and with our students. And they identified some opportunities where we can further align the training that we're doing with our staff, with current best practices and what they're seeing a lot of other school districts throughout the St. Louis area do. They found some opportunities for communication not only just with our staff but also with our parents about the different types of safety procedures that we use in buildings and had some great insight on how we can work even better to make parents partners in making sure that school continues to be a safe place. Just some other things with reinforcing a common language for some of the things that we do with training, having the advantage of being able to sit in all these meetings across all the buildings with that. It was pretty clear to me that we need to work on some common language and some consistency in the way that we talk about how we train for this or how we train for that at all of our different buildings. And again, I talked a little bit about visitor management earlier and taking opportunities to expand the monitoring and oversight of the security cameras that we have there. An interesting issue that came up that I didn't really anticipate was really looking at how can we do a better job of if schools are gonna continue to be sites for elections, whether it's April municipal elections or federal elections. what policies or practices can we put in place to better separate the voters that are coming to those schools from the rest of our building, regardless of whether students are in those buildings or not, but just figuring out a way to do that. So that kind of talks a little bit about kind of the procedures piece that tier one works. We covered gender neutral bathrooms and in terms of next steps as we move forward We hope to return in a June meeting to kind of present the final results of the safety study. So the final results really at that point would look at kind of a priority list of recommendations for how we want to move forward with some of the things that Art and his team in Tier 1 have recommended. that we consider as well as a phase plan for doing that. I mean, it's not everything that we're going to be able to do in one summer or in a couple months. There's things like installing cameras or changing procedures that we can handle internally. There's other items like if we want to consider redoing the main entries to some of our schools or just reproportioning a lot of those things so we have a better single point of entry and control. HAB-Jacques Juilland, That are involved, you know, having a contractor architect involved and that's going to be work that's going to have to be done over a summer as opposed to things that can be implemented. HAB-Jacque Juilland, Within the next year, you know, with with once in the next year, just kind of right after we start this HAB-Jaciques Juilland, We're still working also with our principles to kind of go through all the items that they've identified that have been identified for each of their buildings and we want to take that priority list and the phase budget list and then kind of have Tim and Tim Walsh and Jim Burnell work that against, you know, what our capital improvement plan looks like over the next couple years to figure out a good plan for moving forward with all these recommendations. And that is the extent of the safety update.

Thank you, Chris. And thank you, Art. That was a very thorough update. And I recognize that it's just that, an update. And you certainly don't have all the answers. Having said that, I'm going to see if each board member has any comments or questions. So I'm starting with you, Kristen. You got anything?

I do. So first of all, I want to thank Art Bond and Eric Wilson for being here tonight. And Art, thank you for your introduction. It's great to see you again. I wanted to touch on your introduction and just thank you so much for really prioritizing the idea of a welcoming and inspirational environment, and that the safety is something that's seamless and not threatening and not noticed when as little as possible anyway for our students. I think that's huge to the mental health as you're coming into the building for learning. So thank you for that. I also just wanted to say, I appreciate it. Obviously there's so much detail on this and I know we don't have time when you're going to come back and discuss this with the board later, but a few things I want to touch on with signage and how important that can be to helping with the safety. And I really feel like our signage in our buildings, it's great that we're looking at that. I'll just say that. So I appreciate that. One thing I was thinking about is as we're going through this pandemic and we're all so sensitive to touching things, those cards those card entries are you thinking about uh no touch entry somehow with the cards that you're not actually holding on to handles and opening up things i know we have some of the ada and maybe that's just part of it and that will be included but i was thinking about that and lastly um i was thinking about the bathrooms and appreciate the thoughts going into that specifically looking at the high school when we did the addition at the high school It was not included in the budget to have bathrooms on that new wing. And so I think that it's a, I think this is how this is, that if you're in that wing, you have to walk all the way back to the main part of where the original building is to access bathrooms. So if you're thinking about adding bathrooms, if there might be any opportunity to looking in that new space so that the bathrooms are more represented throughout the whole campus instead of just on where the original building was. So those were my thoughts. So thank you so much for your presentation and and I appreciate all the work that's gone into it.

Thank you. Thanks, Kristen. Amy, do you have anything?

Hi. Yeah, thank you for the presentation. It was great. It was really thoughtful and intentional, and I like the direction where we're headed. I'm sorry if I missed this, and my internet's a little bit spotty for some reason, but with the gender... Neutral bathrooms. Was there any talk about the locker rooms or just the bathrooms?

The locker rooms are under consideration as well with a separate changing area that could be set up for that accommodation. We haven't gotten into as much detail right there, but that is a topic that has come up and it is going to be under consideration.

Thank you. Thank you, Amy. Gary, any comments or questions?

It's great to see all of you and thanks for your work on this. One quick question that I had was about the high school. You mentioned the number of entry points and doors and that that makes it for challenge. Can you just explain to us Why, because I know some doors now do have card readers. Are there other doors that just don't have those? Are those doors not operational during the day? What would be the change in terms of adding card readers in some places?

Part of what you have is you have a number of doors that have motion detectors on the inside and release the doors when somebody passes by. There are also doors with proximity readers or card readers, but they're not adequately monitored. You don't have the ability to remotely secure those or watch somebody that is addressing those doors. And so that's going to be another consideration too is if a door is on the other side of the building, can that be monitored? monitored through an A phone or a camera in such a way that it can be secured against the prox reader as well. So there's kind of a threefold review of how those doors all function.

Thank you. Gary, just to clarify, I mean, all of the exterior doors to the high school are locked during the day. You know, there are, I believe, four or five entrances that do have key card readers that students can access throughout the day. But that's still a number of access points that students can go in. And if there's someone with tier one, the term tier one use, if there's someone tailgating behind them that kind of comes in to our point that's not monitored, that potentially creates a risk.

Are those places, I mean, that could happen at a card reader door as well right okay so and then there are other doors that someone could come out and there's not a card reader to get in but someone could come out that door it could be open from the inside and then you could connect potentially gain access that

way. Gary, part of what we're looking at is door monitor switches so that there is a central recall point where if doors are open throughout the perimeter you can identify what doors are being opened and closed and that can also trigger cameras such that you can much more readily observe and manage what's coming in and out even with the card or prox readers at those doors.

Great. Thanks for explaining that.

Thanks, Gary.

Adam, any questions? Yeah, I have two quick questions. Thanks for the presentation. It was really great. One of the questions that I had, I know that you talked to different groups of people at the school and I didn't see the students were on there. I know we're talking about social emotional well-being and I thought it might, I don't know if you had talked to the students yet, but In that light, I think it might be a good idea. I'm not sure. Have you talked to the students yet?

We have not, Adam, and you are spot on with that. That's a critical piece that we're going to have to reconnect with a number of the student population to kind of hear from your guys' perspective how you use it currently and how you would desire to change it from how it's currently used. So

you raise a terrific point there. Awesome. That was one thing just to make sure that we're keeping in touch with our students. And then the other one I didn't, and I'm not sure if I missed this, but was there any talk of the center of Clayton on there? Have we looked at the center of Claydon yet?

That is also a good question, especially that connection point that is right. Well, as you come from sort of Not sure exactly what series of doors, but yes, there's a hinge point right in there that is a critical juncture. And it's been kind of a stymieing point for us in the past, but I think we've got a pretty good solution.

All right, great. I think that I know from the student perspective, that's an entrance and a point that's important for us because if anyone gets access into the center of Clayton, they automatically have access at this point into the high school. That's just something that.

And yeah, it's almost functioning the opposite way that it should. Yeah. Currently. Yeah.

All right. Thanks. Appreciate it. Good question.

I have another piece that we're looking at and that we've identified related to the center of Clayton is just trying to make sure that there's some overlap with the alarm systems within that. So for example, I mean, if a fire alarm goes off at the center right now, it does not necessarily trigger a notice at the high school. So they're reliant on somebody from the center to call and say, hey, there's a meeting room on fire. So we're looking at opportunities. And I think the same should go from the high school over to the center. So when there was that fire that we had at the high school you know, up in the band area. You know, the center of Clayton didn't know that there was something going on at the high school until they heard the fire trucks pull up. So those are the types of things that we also looked at for some opportunities for overlap and coordination.

Great, thanks. Stacey, do you have any questions?

Yeah, I had one of mine, which was in Clayton, but the... The gender-neutral bathrooms, and I'm sorry if I missed this, are you looking at that at all of our schools?

Yes. We're looking in each school to make sure that the accommodation can be made. And in some cases, you already have a... sort of termed a unisex restroom that we think could be transitioned. But we're testing that model to see if that will work or if we need to provide additional, in some cases we do.

Okay, great. No, I just wanted to make sure that you weren't for some reason only thinking about the high school or the middle school. So

thanks. We're taking it all the way down to the elementary.

Great. That's great. Thank you. Thank you for including social and emotional safety in this whole process. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Lily, do you have any questions?

I do. Nice to see you Art and thank you and Chris for the presentation. Really glad that we got back to the gender neutral bathrooms this year. And I wanted to comment on one specific area. Don't have any other questions. I am wondering if at some point We might consider expanding safety. I really like, as Stacey said, having the social-emotional piece in there and bullying in there and gender-neutral bathrooms. I think what's missing is looking at safety around mental health issues. So not necessarily social-emotional generally, but mental health like eating disorders, suicidal behaviors or thoughts of our students, anxiety, depression, kind of the mental health stuff that could result in injury or safety issues to self or others. So I guess my question is, would you consider or just kind of throwing out an idea there in the next safety report that it's expanded into some of those areas and thinking about both budgetary impact, what we might need to improve in that area, any kind of staffing considerations, as well as just kind of reporting on where we're at with those kinds of safety issues for our students.

Yeah, I think I'll take that. I'm not sure that that's really Art or Eric's area of expertise, but I mean, that is something certainly that we'd wanna have, you know, Robin Weans, our assistant superintendent of student services and our social workers involved in and looking at. When you say next safety report, I mean, if you're talking about the one that's in mid-June, I'd say that I don't know that we would have information like that ready to come back and present at that point related to that topic. But I think that's certainly a conversation that we can start and then we can see if there's any opportunities within the broader safety work to to integrate that. But I mean, I would certainly want to take my lead from, you know, from my colleagues that have far more expertise in that area than myself.

Absolutely. And I think it's really great that we've added safety as a discussion, you know, and the physical buildings. And if we then, if we continue to be talking about safety, I think it just makes sense to add kind of mental illness and mental health piece to at least reporting on it. So thank you. Appreciate

Thank you. Jason, questions, comments?

No.

Thank you. I don't really have any questions or comments, just only to say thanks. And I do think the social, emotional, mental health well-being of students is a really critical component. So I think that's really exciting that we're thinking beyond physical safety. to that. So thanks, everybody. We appreciate it. Thank you. We're going to move on to 6.02, which is capital improvements. And I think that's probably, is that Mary Jo? Yes.

I just want to say thank you, Art and Eric. Thank you for being here.

Thank

you, Doug.

Thank

you,

everyone.

So this is just a quick update. Back in August, I presented the board potential capital improvement projects that exceeded the level of funding that was allocated in the capital improvement plan and would need to be funded through capital financing and or the proceeds from the sale of the Maryland school. So several other projects required hiring an architect and consultants to move forward, which administration has done and Art and his team is one of those. And therefore, we're going to update you on the progress of all of this. So in the budget document also, we have included additional funding to the capital improvement plan. If you noticed, it was about $150,000. Overall, the capital improvement plan addresses general building maintenance needs as well as educational needs. And it's continuously updated as the needs of the district and its students change. As a result, some of the projects get deferred over a period of years and never even get prioritized on this list. So that budget has been kind of worked on for the next five years and currently doesn't have any of these safety and security improvements in it. As always, it's an ever-changing document and it does get reprioritized as needs come about. But looking at other funding sources is also one of the things we might need to do. So Even with that additional funding that I mentioned that we put into the plan, all of the projects will not get completed. And as Sean mentioned, we're already looking at not considering some of the projects and this doesn't mean that they don't provide necessary improvements or enhancements to our facilities. It just merely means that there are limited funds and we're trying to work within a budget. So also funds from the sale of the Maryland building provide a unique opportunity to be reinvested into these different projects. But unfortunately these funds are also limited. We have spent some of those funds already on current projects. As a result, we did do capital financing to do some other projects because we knew these funds would be limited. That was the COPS that we used to pay for improvements to the Senator Clayton. We also did COPS 20 years ago when we built the administration building. So having capital financing allows us to make deferred but necessary improvements by spreading the expense over 10 years out of our operating fund That also allows us to grow our fund balance. So the projects that were presented in the executive summary that we've been wanting to talk about and move forward with are the building safety and security improvements that are going to be recommended by bond and tier one tactical once that report is finalized. As well as renovations to the high school library to enhance functionality, flexibility and collaboration in that space. We did provide a conceptual from architects on that. And we're looking to get some conceptual costs. Preliminary costs are around $800,000, but we're looking to give that a little refined Renovations to the Black Box Theater to minimize safety concerns. There's probably different levels we can do on that project, but based on a couple of the presentations that were provided and the information that I gave the board, it looked around a million dollars for that project. Renovations to our press box at Gay Field and the addition of press box at Adzick Field, which will enhance the athletic facilities to accommodate the increased use of technology as well as safety at in our athletics program. We already know the price of the ATSIC Field press box. We have not had any study done on the Gay Field one, as we want to see kind of where all of these projects come in, as well as the additional dugouts at ATSIC Field, which will provide protection for our players and much needed storage. So due to the successful passing of Proposition E, we were able to begin several necessary projects which include the replacement of the slate roof at Merrimack, the replacement of the chiller at Merrimack as well as Glenridge. Furniture enhancements are gonna be able to be made in some of the learning spaces, as well as one of the newest ones, which was replacement of the Glenridge play field with a synthetic turf, which will improve the overall usefulness, safety and aesthetics of the field. And finally, we did decide in those presented back in August to put some of the projects on hold. Because of the preliminary estimates of a lot of these projects that we've received, it's apparent that we will not be able to fund all of them and the projects will need to be deferred. So that included changes to the administrative center, as well as cafeteria improvements and some other projects that we were looking at. So we'll consider prioritizing these projects in the future when funding our budgetary issues change. So we will continue to finalize these actual costs and conceptual designs of these projects and bring forward to the board after administration has prioritized and determined potential funding sources. So that's really all I have

on that. Can I add just something to that? And I appreciate Mary Jo putting this together, but when we're talking about a project that's in review, that doesn't mean that we're necessarily moving forward with it. We're just getting information about that because it has been something that's been a priority, but we're also being cognizant of our current situation and looking at financing and potential impacts of the current situation with the pandemic. The other thing, too, is that although we say that there is, you know, we're deferring some, like the school bus, there might be some implications down the road that you know, in terms of social distancing that might influence that change, like a decision around school buses and number of students sitting in seats. And so this is all very fluid, but we are really trying to be cognizant of the current reality that we're in, but also thinking about making sure we're following through with commitments like the safety and security and prioritizing those ones that we think are absolutely necessary. So I just wanted to put that out there.

Great. Thank you. Kristen, any comments or questions?

No, thank you very much for the presentation. Oh, I guess I should make one comment. I did really love the graphics in the booklet, especially the one about the dollar bill all divided up. And those kinds of interruptions in the document is very helpful because this is a lot of information. So thank you for doing that.

Thanks. Amy, any comments or

No, I'll echo Kristen's comment, though, that the booklet was very helpful. And it did a good job of explaining things. And I liked it a lot. Last year's was good, too. But this might have been better.

Great. Thank you. Gary, any questions, comments? All right. Thank you. Adam, any questions, comment?

No.

Thank you. Stacy, any questions, All right, thank you. Jason, any questions, comments? Yeah, just let's hold

on real fast. I'm going to find it. You're on page three of the booklet.

Okay, wait. I haven't presented

that. That was a capital plan. So, yeah. Okay, good, good.

So

there is parts of the booklet that are aligned to the capital improvement. Yeah.

Okay. I referenced the budget in this discussion, but I haven't presented the budget.

We're going to talk about the budget next. So if you have a budget question, save that for next item. All right. That's cool. I

got a little scared. All right.

You're

good. That was way too short to cover

the whole budget.

Absolutely. Thanks. Lily, any questions about the capital improvements?

No, no. I'm glad because I was getting confused.

Awesome. Thank you. Okay, perfect. So now we're going to, and I don't have any either. Thanks, Mary Jo. We're going to move on to our study item, which is the budget draft. And obviously, Mary Jo, you're up again.

Okay, this is definitely a much longer presentation and I apologize. I do not have a PowerPoint on this. So you're going to get kind of a big regurgitation for me. And this presentation. Part of the reason I don't have a PowerPoint is because I am really not going to talk a lot about the actual budget document. I'm going to talk about more of the current economic situation that we're in and what like What we're experiencing right now, so I will say the budget development process for the next school year began back in December with administrators fostering inclusive budget discussions with staff. To ensure the budget is developed to align with priorities for instructional practices and organizational needs the board was provided the budget framework in January. Not much has changed with that framework. So the framework mapped out the district strategy for the creation of the budget. It's an overall macro fiscal strategy regarding revenue projections and proposed expenditure plans within specific departments, such as school buildings, facility maintenance, and categories such as salaries and benefits. Since this time, administrators have been finalizing the more micro budget that is presented tonight in draft form. I will say most of that work was done prior to spring break. I've been trying to get all 6,000 accounts compiled and analyzed in order to make this presentation in that document. So I want to make sure everyone's kind of aware that when we were preparing it, it was before most of this timeframe. So this is kind of the update since then. As discussed during the framework presentation, The five-year projections are used to build that macro budget, and those are continually updated as information is received. In order to build projections, however, certain reliable expectations are required. So the stay-at-home mandates imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in a sharp downturn of our economy. So the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered the first recession ever caused by the contraction in the services sector of the economy. The Great Recession in 2008, which was one of the biggest issues for the district requiring the tax levy recently, was caused by the housing sector, which is considered a goods-producing sector of our economy. The services sector includes entertainment, tourism and travel, bars and restaurants and retail stores. March and April have seen steep drops in these areas for sales. A service-based recession such as this causes a very sharp loss of employment. Unemployment has been reported at 14.7%. approximately 20.5 million people. This is the highest level since the Great Depression, where employment was at 25.5%. Unemployment is currently higher than what the nation experienced during the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009. For further comparison, the national unemployment rate was 3.5% in February of this year. So that discusses a sharp decline that we have said. Everyone is eager to know when the nation's economy as we know it can get back to normal. It's very speculative, however, to predict at this point how long the economic disruption could continue. What is known as the degree of the economic downturn will be related to the length of the current restrictions that restrain economic activity. The longer the length of time that day-to-day operations are not resumed, it is more likely that economic conditions will continue to deteriorate for a longer period of time. Since this is a services sector recession, the assumption though is it could potentially recover more quickly than it did in 2008 during that recession. Given the high uncertainty regarding the economic trajectory, many operational considerations and budget implications due to COVID-19 are unknown at this time. Short-run economic disruptions will have little noticeable impact on the current fiscal year. However, future fiscal years could see budget implications that are much more significant. So I can talk a little bit about what we do currently know. Federal monetary policies have been put in place to stimulate the economy through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act or CARES Act. Among other things, this act will provide states with funding to prevent, prepare for, and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief Funds portion of the CARES Act will provide DESE with approximately $208 million in federal funding. We anticipate receiving $96,000 from this funding. We will receive about 75% of this funding will be received this current fiscal year, probably in the next month. These funds will be used to offset the current $50,000 of expenses we've incurred this year already to coordinate the preparedness and response efforts of the district due to COVID-19. These expenses include supplies to sanitize and minimize the spread of the infectious disease and technology for online learning. So just so you know, we are tracking all expenditures that are outside of our normal purchases due to COVID- 19. Looking at state revenues, on May 4th, the governor outlined the Show Me Strong Recovery Plan. This provides guidelines or guiding principles to Missouri's recovery. It is the beginning of a gradual process that will evolve based on the changing situation across our state. However, state budgetary pressures due to revenue shortfalls have already begun to emerge as sales, income, and other major tax categories have started to decline. For example, reductions in gaming revenues due to casino closures will affect the classroom trust portion of our basic formula payment. This is the majority of that payment. We do anticipate about a 10 to 20% reduction in this funding level. And sales and gas tax losses due to the stay-at-home mandate affects our Prop C funding. Again, about the same reduction there. On April 14th, Moody's analytical study projected potential revenues across the 50 states through 2021 equivalent to 50% to 20% reduction of the state's general fund revenues and anticipates potentially significant spikes in Medicaid costs, which is a large portion of states' budgets because of the large increase in unemployment. Overall, the potential fiscal shock to the state could reach 18% to 23% of their general revenue funds, which will most likely then impact other reallocation and cause other reallocations of funding sources which would result in further reductions in state funding in areas such as parent education or vocational grants. Those haven't been announced yet, but they're anticipated. In regards to property tax revenue, if the economic impacts of the current state at home mandates continue into 2021, not the actual state at home mandates, but the economic impacts of it, the St. Louis County assessor anticipates a negative impact on the 2021 and 2022 property assessments. This is because commercial property assessed values are based on the income producing abilities of a property, their rents and their sales. So if all of these decrease, then the assessed values will in turn decrease. For this same reason, we expect a rise in appeals for the 2020 tax year even though it's not a reassessment year, which is normally where we see our appeals. If real estate owners can provide proof that the income producing ability of a property has declined for the year, then they will be entitled to a reduction in assessed values on that property. And further, we anticipate seeing an increase in uncollected taxes due to the high unemployment rates. And looking at other local revenues, loss in revenues is expected from gate receipts, facility rentals, food service, family center and kids zone, driver's education, student activities, summer quests, as well as interest income. We have refunded over $265,000 to date on these revenue sources. This includes $135,000 in family center fees $25,000 in KidZone fees, $75,000 in SummerQuest deposits, and $30,000 in student activity funds. Of course, there will be offsetting reductions in related expenditures for food service, driver's ed, student activities, as well as SummerQuest. However, Family Center and KidZone staff are being paid through May based on their anticipated work schedule. In addition, all district issued extra pay contracts, which includes spring coaches, and club sponsors are also being continued to be paid through the end of the school year as well. Some savings will likely be achieved organically throughout the fiscal year as a result of COVID-19 restrictions. These include related overtime expenses for hourly staff, reduced substitute costs, energy savings and other facility costs due to closed operations including maintenance to facilities, facility materials and supplies, savings on fuel and rental buses, reduced professional development costs, meaning training for conference attendances, and reduced instructional supplies such as art supplies, science supplies, and paper. However, decisions on how students and staff return to school in August could also have budget implications. This would include costs associated with personal protective equipment requirements for staff, Modifications to facilities to promote social distancing, separation and contactless use. As we mentioned during the safety audit, automated door opening or something, automated toilet flushers and paper towel dispensers. We haven't finalized all that, but we are looking at it. Increase in fuel and rental buses to allow social distancing and separations of students. Leave and other accommodations for staff under the Family First Coronavirus Response Act. and instructional expenses to continue remote learning if necessary. We also have to consider the potential cost of the district for its portions of loss for the operations to the Center of Clayton. They have furloughed all of their part-time staff and suspend all operation contracts to minimize expenses. However, they have refunded over two months of memberships and have extensive membership cancellations. With the new county guidelines, they will not be able to open for the foreseeable future. The earliest expectations are July. They are also currently looking at other options to reduce expense, but the district will be responsible for 50% of the losses incurred. Finally, the impact on health care costs is yet to be determined. An early study released in March by a company called Covered California, which is a free service that connects Californians with health insurance under the Patients Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, projected potential 2021 premium cost increases due to the virus alone, ranging anywhere from 4% to more than 40%, based on the number of infections HAB-Masyn Moyer- And cost of testing and cost of treatments, the degree to which coven 19 testing and treatments costs are continuing into 2021 the extent of elective surgeries and other treatments deferred into 2021 and the impact in 2020 on our self funded reserves and the need to rebuild their reserves as we move forward. HAB-Marsyn Moyer- The district did elect to waive members cost shares, including co pays co insurance and deductibles for diagnostic testing related to coven 19 as required by the Family First Correspondence Response Act, Coronavirus Response Act. In addition, the district structured premiums last fall to rebuild reserves after its high claims year. While many of these factors will hopefully become clear over the months ahead, we will continue to monitor the impact of claims related to COVID-19 and their impact to self-funded reserves. Budgeting entries in the response to all this uncertainty is definitely a challenge. At this point in the crisis, it is difficult to draw specific conclusions about the potential impact on the district's revenue and operations. We will continue to identify key information over the next several months that hopefully will provide a clearer picture of the overall impact to the district. Budget revisions and contingency funds as well as our fund balance provide the board and administration flexibility to allow for more informed decisions as we move forward. In summary, operating revenues is projected to decrease 2.4 million or 3.79%. This is primarily because of the information we know today. We do not anticipate any recoupment of protested taxes. There have been no major settlements this year for the district. That amount was 1.2 million of our 2019-2020 budget. So that is not moving forward and we are projecting a more conservative level of financial institution taxes in 2021 due to the significant fluctuations in revenue streams over the past year. For 19-20, that was a $1 million fluctuation in that revenue stream and so I'm a little uncomfortable projecting that moving forward. Operating expenditures are projected to increase approximately 1.2 million or 2.7%. This is due to salary increases of 1% budgetary impact for certified and 2% for classified and benefit increases with a 9% budgetary impact. As I said, that's what we know today, but the coronavirus pandemic could change that. Further, the budget includes additional staffing at the high school to accommodate a large freshman class and an increase in capital projects funds as we talked about with our capital projects is due to the successful passing of Prop E, which has allowed for an additional 150,000 towards capital projects. Although the district spent down fund balances of approximately 10.1 million over the past four years, because of the successful passing of Prop E, the district is projected to have approximately $2.8 million surplus in 2020 and 2021. So with that, if you have any questions.

Thanks, Mary Jo. All right, Kristen, questions, comments?

No, thank you.

Thank you. Amy, questions, comments. No.

Thank you. Thank you, Gary. Questions, comments? No? Okay. All right. Thank you. Adam,

questions, comments? No, thank you. Thank you. Stacey, questions, comments.

Just a big thank you to Mary Jo, because everything that's going on now with COVID and the economy was an additional lot of work for you to go through in addition to the big job that it already is. So thank you for all of those updates and the thoroughness in which you presented. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. And Jason, I bet it starts on page three, questions, comments. Oh, I have a lot of them.

So page three is really just a typo, I think. It's last paragraph, first license, preparation of the 2020-2019. Yeah. I think you mean to say 2020-2021.

Yeah, as we said, this is a draft. And I apologize. Normally, I'm in the office. Yeah,

it's all good.

Somebody look at it. I did not get anybody to get a second set of eyes on this. So we will have that before the final document. So yeah, that is it.

Oh, I gotcha. Yeah. Yeah, I got a shot. So I didn't continue reading that thoroughly. I kind of want to go through that type of detail. You all will catch those things. But I do want to go back to what you were saying about COVID and how we're going to operate in the foreseeable future. So tell me just based on what we do know, right? and the assumptions that we can put in place here, how will we be looking in the fall? Will we be at a disadvantage? Will we be able to operate our, I'm sorry, these headphones are making me talk funny. Will we be able operate, will we function properly or will we be at a loss for revenue? And then also do we Will we receive any PPP money or any funds from the government to help us out? That's my first question.

So regarding the funds from the government, we're not eligible for PPE. Government entities are required to pay their staff and they're required to do it with their own funding. And if you think about it, we've collected the majority of our taxes. We are waiting for our protested taxes to be released, which is about $12 million. But we do anticipate that coming this month. So, and because of the Proposition E passing, that did build our fund balances up a lot. So as I mentioned, we spent down $10 million, but we got back around $7 million this year to help build it back. And so it won't build it back all the way, but with that, we are in a much better place. Had we not passed that, we would be in a much different situation right now. So with all of our taxes being collected, and it's not a reassessment year right now, we are actually going to have some minor fluctuations based on this, which we will know more as the months move forward. But we're not anticipating any major revenue fluctuations at this point because of this. As I mentioned, the only federal money we will be getting is the $96,000 through that the state passing through what they received from the federal government.

Gotcha. Okay. And then, so with all the assumptions going into the fall, assuming we were not to be in school, assuming the worst, are we losing money or are we, do our expenses outweigh our revenue essentially is what I'm trying to say?

We haven't finalized all of the parameters of what it would look like. But if staff are still online, the assumption is we would be moving forward like we are now and still paying them. I think the bigger issue is if we bring students back and we have to make the class sizes smaller, how will we accommodate that with staffing? Sean, I don't know if you want to comment on that.

So, I mean, currently, I think what the question was is our revenue is going to be out, our expenses going to be outweighing our revenues. And at this point, no, we're actually putting money into our fund balance in the fall. And so if there is a need for us to look at staffing, we would definitely bring that back to the board But right now, those are all a lot of unknowns. And so what I would say is that we would look at first, how do we utilize the current human capital through whatever plan that we have in place? And then if we need to ask the board, we still have money in our fund balance that if we need to, ask for additional funds, we could ask for that. Right now we're looking at, um, trying to build our fund balance. So that way down the road, if we need to spend down our fund balance, we would need, we would have that. But, um, in the fall, I think. Yeah.

Yeah. We're not anticipating anything major this fall. Kind of what I was saying is that our major source of revenue is taxes. And then, so with changing and assess values in 2021 to 2022 is where we could potentially see some, uh, impact. So our impact is going to be a little bit further down the road. So unless our expenditures change in the fall, we shouldn't see any major changes in revenue.

So right now, what we're experiencing right now in this second semester, third, fourth semester of the year, have our expenses outweighed our revenue right now? Are we hurting right now? because this is a good indicator of how it's going to look in the fall, essentially. And then create a model and forecast out how it's going look in the years to come as well if they had to look at it right now, snapshot in time. So I'm only asking these questions because revenue is, I know we all want kids to come back to school. We're all on board with that. We want that to happen. But I'm just saying worst case scenario, If it doesn't, how are we looking revenue-wise? And so based on right now, are we losing more money than we are bringing in or that we have access to?

No, because as I mentioned, we're still receiving taxes. So as long as people are paying their taxes, our major 80%, I think it's 76% of our revenue stream is real estate taxes. And so we'll get our payment in June, and then we should be in line to get our following payments this December.

Got you. And Barry Waymiller, I know he's building that building right now across the way. He's going to have a whole new business, going to generate more revenue. How much money are we looking to get from that business? Do we have any projections on that by chance?

Yeah, those are included in my projections, but that building is two and a half years out. So it's included like a 2023 year, I think. So based on what the city has told me, yeah.

Okay, all right, cool. And I think I have one more question, hold on real quick. And what you just read to us, is that in the report? Did I miss that? Is that in our document? I might add some

of it in the final, but I haven't put it in the draft.

Gotcha. All right, cool. Yeah, I'll talk to you offline. That's a personal conversation between you and I. That's awesome. Thank you very much for doing such a good job, by the way.

Thank you, Jason. Lily, any questions?

Yeah, I have a few things. One is, as last year, this document is really, really good, Mary Jo. It's so useful and I hope that we have two or three, we'll have two or three new board members that it's definitely a really good document to provide to them that kind of gives an overview. And then to add on to that, your presentation, which I wasn't expecting to hear so much about, I had some questions about COVID related expenditures and revenue. So that was really helpful. Thank you so much. And I appreciate, I think, bad news is hard to deliver or ambiguity is hard to deliver. And I very much appreciate that you're putting it out there for us to be aware of and to be thinking about, even though it's not this kind of bright picture right now. So thank you. So I had a bunch of questions related to COVID that I can now skip. So what I am going to focus on is one kind of big area, kind of high level about kind of our board role and accountability. And I think about that, I guess, related to that we have a couple of board candidates that are really talking about kind of the fiscal responsibility of the board. And I'm excited to see that. And what that takes me back to is last year, we talked about before the tax levy and before it passed, we talked about having a something equivalent to in the past long-term financial planning or resource allocation. And so for me, what this raises sort of separate from the whole COVID piece is I see that we have the great fund balance, but we also have more increase in expenditures than we do increase in revenue or, and then we have a decrease in some of the revenue. And so that really, in light of that and our kind of promises, I heard it too, the board and the community, I really would like to know kind of, or throw this out there here for the board that kind of where are we with bringing in community members and a group to be talking about our long-term financial picture And how are we ensuring that that group is sort of looking at some things and holding all of us accountable, the board to hold the district accountable. And so that is my, I'm not sure if that's just for you Mary Jo to address or just to put out there, but I really would like to hear kind of where we're at. And if that's something that we foresee really making sure that we build in the near future.

So yes, that is going to be something. And we actually were in the process of the application because in the past, what we did was an application that we sent out to the community and that was supposed to go out this spring with everything that happened. We felt like it wasn't necessarily the best time to start like starting a group that we were going to you know, put out an application for we didn't know what how people the time commitment. So we are continuing to we're gonna have a board advisory that's a fiscal board advisory that's going to be in place for next school year. And that's going to include community members similar long term financial planning. But we are going to look at how we did this in the past and look at how we can improve it for the future. So that is going to be part of what we're doing.

Lily, any other questions or comments?

I'm glad to hear that. At the same time, I'm disappointed that it wasn't done. We've been talking about it since last year of doing something. I'm disappointed that hasn't already been done. And yeah, it's not going to be the same and the times aren't the same of whatever we've done in the past, but It's really, it's very important. And I hope all you guys, I won't be on the board. I hope all you stay on this and stay on getting the information that's happening there. I think it's really valuable. Thank you.

Great, thank you. And Mary Jo, I don't have any, I think there's very thorough thank you. I don't have anything, any other questions. I look forward to the final presentation and know that it's a trick box right now. And so thank you for your presentation. So I think, Sean, anything

for checkout?

No, so I will, in terms of budget for checkout, we will... You know, we'll make sure that we include some information some way that Mary Jo relayed around COVID. I think that, you know, some of the questions that were asked about like what's this going to look like in the near future versus the long term future and so we know that probably next year it's we're not going to see as much of an impact, but we are going to monitor the long term impact of this and we may need to make some adjustments based off future planning. And I think that we heard about making sure that priority of getting community input to the budget is important and we will have a process in place so the board has an advisory group.

Great. Thank you, Sean. So we're going to move to our action items, and I think we have about 13 of them. So the first one is 8.01, approval of the staffing recommendations for the 2021 school year. Gary?

8.01 I move that the Board of Education approves the 2020-2021 staffing recommendations as presented.

Second. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded. Does anybody have any comments or questions? All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Okay, I pass the agenda. Thank you. So we're going to move to 8.02, which is, there's a bunch of policies now. It's an 8.02 approval of policy FED collection of construction manager at risk.

8.02, I move that the board of education approves policy FED selection of construction manager at-risk as presented in the report provided to the board.

Second. Second.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, Did we

hear a second

HAB-Danny

Teodoru, Ami and HAB-Jacque

Juilland, All right. Sorry. It's been moved in second and I think I froze there for a second, guys. HAB-Jacqe Juilland, Any comments or questions. HAB-Judy Nogg, All right, all in favor. HAB-Charlotte Pitts, Aye.

HAB-Masyn Moyer, Aye. HAb-Jacques

Juilliand, Any opposed Okay, motion passes unanimously. Thank you. So 8.03 approval of policy GBCB staff conduct.

8.03 I move that the Board of Education approves policy GBCB Staff Conduct as proposed.

Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Any comments or questions? All in favor?

Hi.

Any opposed? Okay, passes unanimously. Thank you. So 8.04, which is approval of policy GBB, protected staff communication.

8.04, I move that the Board of Education approves policy GBCBB, protected staff communication as proposed.

Second. Second.

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

Aye. Aye.

Any opposed? Aye. All right. That passes unanimously. So 8-2-0-5, approval of policy GBE criminal background checks.

8.05 I move that the Board of Education approves policy GBEBC criminal background checks as proposed.

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

Aye.

Opposed? Okay, passes unanimously. 8.06, approval of policy GBLB references.

8.06. I move that the Board of Education approves policy GBLB References as proposed.

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

Aye.

Any opposed? PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Passes unanimously. Thanks. So 8.07 approval policy G. PB, Harmon Zuckleman,

8.07 I move that the Board of Education approves policy GDC support staff recruiting and hiring as proposed.

Second. PB, HarmonZuckerman, It's been moved and seconded any comments or questions. PB, Harmonzuckerman, All in favor. Any opposed? Okay, policies unanimously. Thank you. 8.08 approval of policy GDI, support staff reassignment transfer.

8.08 I move that the Board of Education approves policy GDI, supports staff reassignments and transfers as proposed.

Second.

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

Aye.

Any opposed? Passes unanimously. 8.09, approval of policy GDPB, support staff resignation.

8.09. I move that the Board of Education approve policy GDPB support staff resignation as proposed.

Second.

Harmon Zuckerman, All right. It's been moved and seconded. Any questions or comments. Harmon Zuckerman All in favor. Harmon

Zuckermann, Opposed

Harmon Zuckerman Passes unanimously. Thank you. All right. Harmon Zuckerma, And approval of policy GDP support staff termination.

8.10 I move that the Board of Education approves policy GDP support staff termination as proposed.

Second. Seconded. Any comments or questions? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Passes unanimously. 8.11 approval policy JHG reporting investigating child abuse.

8.11, I move that the Board of Education approves policy JHG with the proposed changes.

Second. It's

been moved and seconded. Any comments or questions? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes unanimously. 8.12, approval of policy HAB-Jacques Juilland, It's Jo student records.

HAB-Danny Teodoru, A point 12 I move that the Board of Education improves policy J. Oh, with the proposed changes. HAB-Masyn

Moyer, Second, HAB-Michael Leccese, We moved and seconded any comments or questions. HAB-Michael Reyes, All in favor.

HAB-Charlotte Pitts,

Aye

aye aye. HAB-Terry

Palmos- Opposed. It passes unanimously. Thank you. 8.13, approval of policy KB, public information.

8.13. I move that the School District of Clayton Board of Education approve the changes to policy KB public information program as submitted.

Second. Second.

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

Aye. Aye.

Harmon Zuckerman, Any opposed. Harmon Zuckerman. All right, it passes unanimously. Alright, so we're moving on to the agenda. Harmon Zuckermann, Go ahead, Gary. Gary

Shefferan, So can you give me one second.

Okay,

sorry. 9.01, I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Any comments or questions? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay, passes unanimously. All right, so we are moving on to our board communication. Does anybody have anything? Board communication, Stacy, go for it.

I just wanted to let everyone know that Y-Down is holding their annual give back night online this week. And if you don't remember or didn't realize, It's an annual event at Y-Down where the students choose a charity that the money they raise goes to. And this year, they chose Mission St. Louis, which empowers local families to break the cycle of poverty. And instead, of course, that they couldn't have an in-person event this year, they're doing it all online. And I'm sure if you go to the Y-Down website, you could find it. You couldn't just... outright donate money or you can bid on different and play different games and do different challenges and a bunch of teachers even offered up a bunch of like dares that you can pay them to do and challenges and it it looks really fun so I just wanted to let everyone know that and I'm sure if you go to the website you'll find a link to it but it's all everything that you're paying for and submit all your entries are due I think this Friday is when it ends

Awesome, thank you. Any other board communication? Lily?

Yes. I had two things that I wanted to ask or just again throw out there a couple of things that I didn't see on the agenda for the rest of the year that I thought we were going to get back to. One is we were going to revisit kind of how it went with the student rep and student advisory and just make sure I mean, Adam, you have been tremendous. I have to say, and tonight was another example of how much you add, but I know we talked about revisiting that. And the other one is the equity final report. You didn't see that on there. I know we talked more recently than at mid-year, yet we also did talk about having a final report. So those are my two things. Thank you.

Dave Kuntz, Okay, thank you. Dave Kuntz , Any others in terms of. Dave

KuntZ, board reports or board communication. David Ensign, Joe just mentioned a couple of things.

David Ensign , To normally we would be doing website of advocacy meeting updates and things like that which obviously we haven't been doing this spring, but I did want to call attention to. the fact that there's been some legislative things happening last week and this week, moving pretty quickly that I would just encourage everyone to pay attention to. NSBA noted the other day that there was a kind of a massive bill in the Missouri legislature that was moving through some of the processes this week and last week and getting a lot of things added onto it that could have a lot of impact on things that would affect us from distance learning and charter schools and a lot of different things like that. I have to confess, I don't know what if anything happened on that today, but it's been moving quickly. I just would encourage everyone to just pay attention to that and as appropriate contact legislators and weigh in on things and encourage people that you know to be paying attention to it as well. A lot of things are moving fast and that happens when legislatures are acting under kind of unusual circumstances, which they certainly are. So things can slip through that might be a little more noticed or just be done in a little bit different way. So you have to be paying attention to that. Also, I just wanna point out that with the upcoming elections, there's some deadlines coming up soon if people are interested in looking at things like absentee voting and early in-person voting, some of those deadlines are coming up next week. So we just encourage you all to be thinking about that and just be aware of those issues too. There's been a lot of questions and a lot of interest out there in the community, I think. So just a couple of things that noticing this time of year, so.

So Joe, can I add something to piggyback on Gary? We will put an update in. I mentioned some of the legislation in the last board memo about that and I have reached out to our legislators about those those pieces of legislation and our concerns about them. And we'll give an update about what happened this week and have that in the memo too for you. So that way, and then we'll also put the information about the numbers you can call if you want to make personal phone calls, but I have written letters on behalf of the district.

Thanks, Sean. I was just wondering, that's great to put the numbers in and appreciate that. I know you said something in the memo. Can you send a sample of what you wrote so that we have that verbiage for if we make

phone calls ourselves.

Yeah,

I'll do that.

Thank you.

Yeah, a number of our local area legislators have been providing updates and suggestions on that too. So you can take a look at some of their websites and social media and stuff like that too if you're interested in following that. It's been changing so fast every day, so it's hard to keep on top of that stuff sometimes. That's important.

Thank you. Any other board communication? I have just a couple things real quickly. One, I just want to again, it was really fun, might I add, to put out yard signs for teachers last week. So I got to put out six. I got to put two in Pacific, two in Eureka, and two in High Ridge. And it was awesome. Two of those Six teachers were in their front yard as I put them in and they were so excited. So let me just say that was, so thanks Sean. And thanks administration again. That was awesome. Great

fun. That was a lot of fun. Thanks.

Yep. And then second, the deadline for absentee ballots, by the way, and you can email in a request is May 20th. So just to your point, Gary, I mean, it's, you know, there's a form you can, you know, if you, if you want. to uh send in and then third and finally we do we were going to have a st louis county board plc meeting on may 2nd obviously we didn't um but we are having a check-in with board members this saturday you would have seen a link to that but you might have missed it and so um if you want to spend your saturday from 9 a.m to 10 a.m it's going to be really exciting virtual experience um Just checking in with some other board members. Just FYI. That's it. Anything else for the good of the group? All right. Do we have a motion to adjourn?

I move that the Board of Education adjourns.

Second. All right. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We are adjourned. Thank you all very much. Take care.

Thank you, everyone.