October 14, 2020 — Meeting Transcript

All right, I think we're good

to go. Okay, welcome everybody. Adequate notice has been given and we are gonna start with the Pledge of Allegiance to that flag behind Sean. 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. So we are going to start with recognizing our own. And is that Sean and Robin? Well,

good evening everyone. Um, as we always do at our board meeting, we try to recognize our own. We try to recognize our students. We try to our staff and tonight, uh, we are recognizing some very important people in our team. And, uh, one of the reasons why we want to recognize these individuals tonight is for cool reasons. One, because we're celebrating a very important event during the month of October. But then the other reason why is because since we have been remote learning and response as part of a return to learn plan, our special school district staff has done an amazing job of trying to make sure that they're providing services and supports to our students in person with our students as they can. And it's just been amazing. So I wanna start by recognizing leadership, and I'm going to have leadership recognize introduced teachers. So I'm going to start by recognizing our director of special education for the central region, and that's D'Andrea Player. So D'Andrea, if you could turn on your... There she is. If you could just wave your hand a little bit so we can see you. And then we also have Melissa Logan, who is our area coordinator district-wide for the School District of Clayton. And then we have Kate Pavlison, who is our lead teacher district-wide for the district. And I just wanna take a few moments to say thank you to our district leadership. All of you have had such an impact in all of our schools and with our programming. And I will say that we really work to try to be, even though we're two districts, we try to act as one, and it's very easy to be able to do that with such strong leadership. So we wanna thank you. And then I'm going to have Melissa introduce our teachers who are here because our teachers are the ones who are working directly with our students and so want to recognize them. And these are teachers that we're recognizing as a representation of all of our special education teachers, because we couldn't have them all here. So we thought we would bring a few in just to recognize them as a symbolic way to say thank you. So Melissa, can you introduce our teachers?

Yes, thank you, Sean. So I would like to introduce Darcy and she is our occupational therapist for the district. She recently joined this year to Clayton. We also have Annette Trantanella, who is a speech and language pathologist at Merrimack Elementary. We have Tess Buchter, who is a new teacher at Widown Middle School. And last but not least, we have Jane Sweeney, who is the speech and language pathologist at Y down to joining us. And I just wanted to share how proud I am of our staff to provide such quality instruction and in-person services to our students. I wanted to share that we have over 43 staff members coming in to provide the services to the students. We also have over 50 students coming into the buildings for the services. and the support. Families and students have been very appreciative of this opportunity, and I thank Robin for help in making this happen.

Thank you so much, Melissa. And thank you for your leadership for making that happen. And I will say that doesn't happen everywhere. And I really want to say thank you to the dedication of our leadership and our teachers. But we also need to recognize some other very important people who we work in partnership with to make sure that we're always striving to be the best in terms of serving our students. And so, Robin, do you want to take a few moments and recognize our PAC-Ed group?

Yes, thank you, Sean. It's a pleasure to be able to recognize the community leaders of PAC-Ed, which stands for Parent Advisory Council of Children with Educational Diversity. Tonight, we welcome Chairperson Christina Blankenship steering committee member Chris Win, communications chairperson Tawny Jackson-Whitlock and graphics coordinator Beth Gracie. PAC-Ed has been an invaluable resource to families who are new to special education and they've provided such a supportive network for our district parents. And so while the pandemic has impacted some of the activities that we had planned together in the spring, This group has just really continued to keep the community updated on the resources available through SSD and the different inclusive programming activities available through other community-based organizations in our region. The team has been busy updating their website, so I'd encourage folks to take a look at that. They've also been doing some work to support coordinated communication between the School District of Clayton and SSD initiatives. And they do have some parent networking socials in the works that'll be Zoom meetings. And so I hope that families will take a look at their website and be in touch with the Pack Ed leadership team about those upcoming events so they can join. So again, I just wanna thank our Pack Ed leaders just for your continued efforts to build a strong community for our families and our students.

Yes, thank you, Sean. It's a pleasure to be able to recognize the community leaders of PAC-Ed, which stands for Parent Advisory Council of Children with Educational Diversity. Tonight, we welcome Chairperson Christina Blankenship steering committee member Chris Winn, communications chairperson Tawny Jackson-Whitlock and graphics coordinator Beth Gracie. PAC-Ed has been an invaluable resource to families who are new to special education and they've provided such a supportive network for our district parents. And so while the pandemic has impacted some of the activities that we had planned together in the spring, This group has just really continued to keep the community updated on the resources available through SSD and the different inclusive programming activities available through other community-based organizations in our region. The team has been busy updating their website, so I'd encourage folks to take a look at that. They've also been doing some work to support coordinated communication between the School District of Clayton and SSD initiatives. And they do have some parent networking socials in the works that'll be Zoom meetings. And so I hope that families will take a look at their website and be in touch with the Pack Ed leadership team about those upcoming events so they can join. So again, I just wanna thank our Pack Ed leaders just for your continued efforts to build a strong community for our families and our students.

Thank you, thank you. I wanna echo what Robin said. And we are truly, truly appreciative of the partnership that we have with you. And so on behalf of the administration and the Board of Education, we would like to recognize our leaders, our teachers, and our parent partners during this very unusual time and very special month. And we just want to say thank you for all that you do to make sure that You hold us accountable for making us the very best district for our students and also just doing whatever it takes for our students. So thank you.

Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you. And on behalf of the board, I want to thank you all too. It's really amazing to see the work that you have done and continue to do. So thank you to each of you. I think it's certainly part of what makes Clayton a special place and a special district. So thank you. Thanks to each of you. So we are going to move on to 3.01, which is the Disability History and Awareness Month. And I think that maybe, is that you, Sean, or is it Robin? Because I know we have a, I don't know if you want to say something. I know we have approximately,

I'm happy to read. Robin, could you give just a little background and then we could move, just so that before we have the board approve that.

Yeah, so the month of October has been designated as Disability History and Awareness Month in the state of Missouri. And so the Board of Education in the School District of Clayton is being asked to formally support this designation in the district.

Awesome, thank you. And I'll read the proclamation that we have just for the board. And we're going to ask the board to approve it. But it's Disability History and Awareness Month, October 2020. The month of October has been designated as Disability History and Awareness Month in the state of Missouri. A resolution designates the third week of October of every year as Disability History and awareness week, and encouraging our schools to provide instruction on disability history, people with disabilities, and the disability rights movement. Whereas there are approximately 126,000 students with disabilities educated by Missouri public schools. And whereas the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 is founded on four principles, inclusion, full participation, economic self-sufficiency and equality of opportunity for all people with disabilities. And whereas a key method of promoting these four principles is for our schools to recognize the contributions by people with disabilities to our society and provide instruction in disability history, people with disabilities, and the disability rights movement through school curriculum, school assemblies, and other school activities. And now therefore be it resolved by the School Board of Clayton, Missouri that the board urges our schools to provide intensive instruction on disability history, people with disabilities and the disability rights movement, especially during the third week of October and periodically throughout the school year and encourages other institutions to conduct and promote educational activities on those subjects. And of course we're asking the board to approve it. And so Gary, you wanna read the motion?

Yes, I move that the Board of Education declares the month of October 2020 as Disabilities History and Awareness Month as a way of encouraging the district to take time to honor students with disabilities as well as the professionals who work with them to provide exemplary learning experiences in the school district of Clayton.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any comments or questions? PB Harmon Zuckerman, All in favor. PB Sarah Silver, Aye. PB Harmon Zuckerton, Any opposed. PB Harmon Zuckerberg, It passes unanimously. Thank you. PB Harmon Zuckleberg, So we're going to move on then to Sean to the superintendent communication.

Thank you. I am going to share my screen.

I practice

this all the time. So there we go. Okay, thank you so much. Good evening everyone again. And so tonight what I want to do as part of my superintendent communications is to continue to make sure that I'm keeping the board updated on the work that we're doing around our responsive learning plan. And that is a big focus for us right now in terms of transitioning our students, continuing to do our remote learning, and also thinking about what's next. But I also want to make sure that the board understands that We're not just putting everything else on pause as well. So we're continuing to look at ways that we can, we're focusing on our work around equity, our anti-bias, anti-racism work. We're looking at our capital safety improvement plans that we promised the community that we would be putting in place as part of our Prop E. We're looking in our curriculum and instruction and differentiation. So this does continue to be the main focus in terms of our responsive learning, but we also are moving forward with other projects and other things that are priorities for us as a district. And when we are thinking about our return to learn, I do want to say just quickly, thank you to the board for all of your support and trust as we have been moving forward in these unprecedented times. And I was at Straub's the other day, and one of the cookies in the bakery said, looking forward to precedented times. And so this is kind of an unusual time. And I know that the board has been very supportive of some of the changes that we've had to implement, both financially and just with additional resources encouragement. So what is our current reality right now? We started our transition with our kindergarten students last week, and that was included with that was an orientation for our students, and then also them starting full days. And so it was great to see all the people who were skipping down the street last week, and those that was just the parents, as we were walking to school last week. And so this week, we have had our first and second grade students go through an orientation process and then they started back full days on Tuesday. And so they will finish out this week and continue on. And I have been had the opportunity to go through all of the schools over the last two weeks and all the elementary schools. And I have been just so impressed by our teachers and also our facility staff who've been working to make sure that we're providing a very safe environment. And our teachers are having to adapt to a new learning environment that's very different than when they left it in March. And so really have been very appreciative of our elementary teachers. And then next week we will have orientations for our third through fifth grade students. And starting on October 26th, we will have all of them start in full days. And so now as part of this transition for our elementary schools, we have been learning from them and also planning for our secondary schools, which includes Y down and the high school. And I just think it's important for us to recognize and put it out there that this transition This all of these changes that have happened with the pandemic are big they're big transitions and so last year in the spring, we had a transition to remote learning in an emergency setting. And then we had, that we learned from that. And then we transitioned to a remote setting that was more synchronous. And so that teachers had to learn how to do that. And then now we're transitioning into how to teach in an environment that's socially distanced and has different procedures than what we've had. And so I just need to recognize that this is a big deal and that we're having to do a lot and it does take a lot of emotional energy. And I wanna just recognize that people are really dedicated to it. The other part of our current reality is that we are constantly monitoring our data. We monitor the data for St. Louis County, we monitor the data for Clayton, we also monitor just the data for what that's happening within our schools. And we're trying to be as transparent about that data on our website. And the reality is we know that not everyone lives within the zip codes that are within Clayton. And so it's important for us to look at St. Louis County. I think it's important also to put out there is that we are, as part of this process, we're managing risk through our risk mitigation and our health promotion procedures, and that there are going to be times where we are gonna have positive cases within our community. And there are going to be times that people are going to have to be quarantined. And we have plans for that. I've been very appreciative that we have a really strong nursing staff and communications department who are working with the contact tracing and the communication that has to go out when we do have cases. And so we have been trying to be as proactive as possible to be prepared for that, and also consistently monitoring the data so that way we can make informed decisions. I do get questions about the why and why we are returning. And I think it's important to know that we did get the recommendation from St. Louis County Health. And so we have, even before we got that recommendation, we have been saying since the beginning of the year is that our goal was to try to get to the second quarter and to transition back and also give our students the opportunity to stay in the learning at home model. We have also seen that there's data that supports that decision and it's connected to CDC guidelines. And we are monitoring that because if something should happen that we are having to look at that data and there's a major change, we know how to pivot back to remote learning if needed. We also feel it's important that going back to school is gonna be providing us more opportunities to provide support and feedback to our students. We know our teachers are doing a great job in remote learning, but also there is something different about being present with students. We also know those interpersonal interactions are critical to a student's success in their learning. I will say that I've observed this week in classrooms and seeing how people, how the students have been able to interact with their teachers. I've had teachers say to me, you know, I didn't actually pick up on this until I got them in person and got to see where they are in terms of a learner. And there is, you do learn more about your students when they're in person. We also are making sure we're taking care of the social-emotional well-being of our students and giving them time to be able to interact with one another beyond just on a screen. And then we also can't, again I said, attend to the student's needs in a direct way. The other reason behind this is that our schools are safe. And when we've talked to our medical professionals who have been giving us advice, they said that you are putting the right risk mitigation measures in place and you're providing safe spaces for them and that it's okay for them to return. So those are some of our whys. Now, some considerations for our secondary is that this is going to be different than our elementary schools. As I've told the board in the past, we had done a comprehensive analysis of all of our buildings to see what was the capacity for our schools. And we were able to look at social distancing and using that measure of six feet. And we were able do that at the elementary schools with our space. The middle school and the high school are a little different. And we are going to have to take into consideration that to have social distancing is, we will have to think about a different type of schedule where not everyone's in the building at the same time. The other thing is, is that people have said that you can go back and forth in terms of what that space actually looks like. We are gonna try to use six feet as our standard and continue to look at that in our classrooms. And we know that one of the most important things we could do for our students is wearing face coverings. And so beyond just the social distancing, we are gonna have other risk mitigation measures in place that are going to protect our students. The other thing is that when we were considering the secondary, we want to make sure we're having continuity of learning. We purposely went to a synchronous model so that way we could have continuity of learning for our students each and every day. And we're looking at how we can do that in a way in our schools so that way we're not having such a disruption to their continued learning. We also feel that it's important to think about if we can do this, can we do it in a way that's gonna be daily in terms of students having the opportunities to come daily into our schools? And because we know that's really important for relationships and also for their understanding of content and their instruction. And then the other consideration is that we have been proactive about making sure we have the right technology toolkits in place because live streaming will be a component of our plan. which means that we will have students who are at home, who will get a live stream of what's happening in the classroom. So we're taking all those considerations in place for the secondary return And we know that there's not one perfect schedule and calendar that is going to be out there. All of them have benefits and challenges, and we're working to try to do what's best for our school. And when we're doing that, it's that we know that we have to take into consideration a lot of different information. We need to make informed decisions. Not only do we look at the data that's happening within the region, But we've been able to meet with leadership teams at both Hawaii Down and the high school. And the teacher leaders within those groups have given us information that have challenged our thinking and have caused us to pivot and think differently about the schedules that we've been trying to look at. And so we've also gotten input and emails from teachers. What's wonderful about our community is that they're not afraid to give their input, and we do take that input and look at it. And we look at that as a strength. But we know that we can't take into consideration every single aspect of every want that everyone has. We have taken the input that we've gotten from the schools, we've taken those into consideration, we've made some changes. And again, I said, we look at the data analysis and the positivity rates. And then we also have the opportunity to learn from the people who have already in the region who've done some things to effectively do this or HAB-Jacques Juilland, To look from look for some things that didn't work well and how we can take that information. And that's been a real benefit of having weekly superintendent meetings there I get to work with superintendents around the region and different counties. that have given us information about some things that we need to consider. And then the other thing is, is that we're still gonna be figuring out a way to honor the learning at home option for our students. So that way if those students that are not able to or families don't feel comfortable returning, we still have that option. So what could it possibly look like? And so I don't have a schedule for you yet because we don't have it finalized. What we are doing right now is taking a lot of information from people, looking at getting that input, thinking about how we are gonna get some continued information on Friday during our professional development day. And we know that we're looking at a way for us to develop a schedule that's gonna allow students to come in every day to school. That might mean that it's not a full day of school. It might mean that it is an alternative schedule, but we're also looking at ways to have reduced number of students in our building so that way we have social distancing. And the other thing we know is that we're not going to be starting the second quarter on, we're not starting the return on October 26th. That is the first day of the second quarter. But we do need some additional time for some of the transitions and we also feel that We want to make sure that we're absolutely prepared before moving back into a model. And so I look at this, whatever model that we're going to be implementing as a stepping stone to our return to learn when we are able to bring everyone back. I do want to just remind the board that we We are taking consideration all of those things for risk mitigation, like the PPE, the face coverings. We've bought additional barriers for students at their desk. We're continuing to do social distancing within the classrooms. The orientations, I got a lot of feedback from people that they felt that the orientations were a good step in the right direction. because it gave people kind of an idea and the videos that we created gave people an idea what the classrooms were going to look like. And then we're continuing to look at the best ways that we're going to make sure that we're cleaning our buildings throughout the day and making sure that not just the adults, but all the students also have ownership and making sure we have a safe environment through them contributing to that. And again, as I said before, why do we feel comfortable about students returning is because we have put it the right measures in place. We've getting advice from medical experts. We feel that our buildings are been ready at the elementary level. We still have a few things to do at the secondary level, but feel confident about that. We're seeing others are making it happen. And then we're also being thoughtful about staffing and making sure we have the right people in our classrooms and the right medical support within our offices. So I'm going to stop right there and to see if you had any questions and any clarifying questions or anything that's pertaining to our return to learn.

Does

anybody

have any questions? And maybe I'll just call on folks because I can't see if you share your screen. Yeah, thank you. So I'll just start. Stacy, any clarifying questions?

No, I'm just curious. Have you had any families change their minds from their original choice, like at the elementary level now that we're going back?

Yes. And so when we put out the communication for the elementary level, we told people they had the choice. And so we gave them the opportunity to move from responsive learning to learning at home and back and forth. But we were very clear about what that meant. So that might mean that you have a different teacher. It might mean that you're going to have a different schedule. And what happened is that it actually was a complete wash. So the people who wanted to move back into the buildings were able to accommodate them and those people who wanted to stay. And so the numbers were almost exactly the same. Okay,

great. Thanks. Kim, any questions?

Sean, how are we collecting data for the number of affected students? Is it self-reported, voluntarily self-reporting, or is the county collecting that data? And the reason I ask is I know of a positive case with the fifth grader that isn't reflected in your current numbers. So I'm just wondering if we maybe need a hotline for school for self-reporting if we're relying on the county for that data.

Yes, we are reporting on people self-reported. But I will follow up with Chris and Heather about that as well because they are taking care of that data. But I appreciate you letting us know about that.

Jason, any questions? No, no questions. Thanks. Caitlin, any questions? Thank you. David, any questions?

Just one, Sean. I realize you may not have this at your fingertips, but did everything go well with the elementary installation and then building of the HVAC modifications?

I think we're still, and I think that I don't have all that information right in front of you. I still think we're in some of the process of some of our buildings, but I don't have that right in front of me right now. So I apologize. Oh, there's Mary Jo.

From my understanding, we are with kindergarten through third grade and working on the fourth and fifth grade as they come back next week. And I think they're also finished with Family Center. So I'll continue to follow up on it, and I will email you directly, David, but that's where I know we're at right now.

Thanks, Rachel. Thank you. Gary, any questions? Okay. Amy, any questions?

Hi. I just have a quick question, and Sean, I apologize if you already answered this question. I didn't hear it. But I'm wondering about the kids that ride the bus, the Vic students, if there's been any thought as to the bus and social distancing and who's kind of because it's hard to monitor that. If there's a plan in place or if there's any thoughts on it.

Yeah, and so we are looking at, yes, whatever schedule we come up with, we're able to accommodate our students who ride the bus to school. We do have students who are part of the voluntary transfer program who ride the bus school. Their parents also have the option of bringing them to school if they want to. We also have a bus that takes students to Merrimack. And then we, so we have been making sure that we have the right procedures in place in terms of assigned seating. We're trying to social distance as much as possible there. And so we've thought about those things as well and we're able to whatever schedule we're able to, that we devise, we are gonna be able to accommodate the students so that they can have that transportation.

Awesome. Thanks. And I don't have any questions, Sean. Just want to say thank you to you and your team. I know you guys are working tirelessly on the best way for all of our students to return to school, which is, you know, eventually is the objective, the overall objective of us all. So thank you.

So the only other thing I want to say is that tonight, as I said earlier, is that our work is continued around equity and working to develop a culture of anti-bias, anti-racism. And so tonight we are very fortunate to get our first update from our director of equity and inclusion. And I know that that's later down on the agenda, but I do want to just point out that when we're talking about this work, it takes, it's about developing collegiality with one another and being able to create brave spaces and also being able to create vulnerability. Because as a district, we have to take a really close look at ourselves and being able to say, you know what? That's something that we need to address and that's something that we do right away. And so I just wanna say tonight is that our focus on our report is around racial equity. And the reason why we're focusing on that is in our data that we show is that that is an area that we continue to need to improve upon That's in terms of access and thinking about students achievement and also the social emotional well being of our students. And so I wanted to let you know that that is the focus of our of our work tonight, and just really thinking about how we're building on our past to move forward in the future. And we're so fortunate to have Cameron Poole who's going to be joining us later to help us move it move into the future. So, and we it takes all of us to be a part of that, including the board administration teachers and the students. So, And now I'm going to turn it over to Caitlin and to see if she has a report. And Caitlin might be a little tired today. She took the PSAT. Yeah.

so today i'll be talking about how teachers are innovating ways for students to have physical learning experiences even during virtual school so this has primarily been in the form of science labs which gives students an opportunity to go outside and be creative with the materials they can use for the labs so some examples are that in a AP Environmental Science, they did a lab in the nearby park to measure biodiversity and they used tools that you could find outside like sticks and grass. For AP Biology, there was a lab where we measured 30 samples of something alive to find natural variation and explore that concept. and also in some of the honors american literature classes they had a typography writing assignment where they went outside and wrote about a natural object and then connected that to a religious concept and i've heard that students have really enjoyed these opportunities and like having these screen breaks in order to do their school work outside and enjoy nature And for orchestra, they had an optional in-person rehearsal, which was using social distancing and masks. Members seemed to like this and said that it was nice to hear each other play again. And some upcoming events that the students have are that, yes, the juniors took the PSAT today at school. And Speech and Debate will be attending their first full tournament, which is hosted by Francis Howell North and will be virtual. And that starts October 21st. And on the side of student leadership, then we met with the Middle School District Advisory Council for our first meeting and we will continue to be meeting.

Thank you, Caitlin.

So we are going to move on to our study items. So 6.01 is the first reading of Policy IC, which is the academic calendar. So I'm assuming that's probably Milena, right? It's actually Chris. Oh, I'm sorry, Chris. So Chris,

you just give a brief overview and we'll see if the board has any questions pertaining to this policy.

Yeah, absolutely. Happy to do that. The policy I see just makes two main changes to the requirements and the policy that's already in place regarding the academic calendar. First, it includes language kind of related to a lot of the pandemic issues that districts are dealing with right now, clarifying When is the board's role and opportunity to make decisions related to school closures? And then it also includes language to ensure that the district has an AMI, an alternative method of instruction plan in place to continue learning when school is closed or canceled for an extended period of time.

Thanks, Chris. So I'm just going to go through. Amy, any questions?

My only question was on page four at the top, Chris, it looks like the new language indicates that now we're making the final decision on amendments to the board adopted calendar. So I mean, I guess my question is like with all this COVID stuff, is that a change from what we've been been doing? Do we need to change our process somehow to comply with this policy?

Yeah, that's a great question. So that does change a little bit of what the practice is. I guess if you look at the three parts of that last sentence, it talks about the board being involved in amendments to the calendar, closures that are expected to last longer than a week, and decisions to end the school calendar early. Two of those three, so the very first thing, so amendments to the calendar and then decisions to end the School Year Calendar would actually involve changing the calendar, which is actually something that the Board has to approve as any changes to the calendar. So that middle piece is just put in there to deal with school closures that are expected to last longer than a week. What I'm not entirely clear on is we've yet to actually close school at any point yet. during this pandemic other than, you know, a day or two back in the spring to try to get ready for our emergency remote learning. So I'm not sure if we think about, you know, the decisions that we made at the beginning of the school year, the decision we made last spring, in terms of transitioning to remote learning, um, those really aren't decisions that are, that are closing school as much as they are decisions about how, uh, what's the best way for us to deliver, um, teaching and learning, you know, in, in the current pandemic environment.

So Amy, can I add on to that? I, I was reading, going through these again before the meeting and I, that hit me too when I, right before the meeting. And I, um, I'm wondering about, um, PB Harmon Zuckerman, I am. I feel like we do need a clarification on that about whether or not that means closing school or closing our buildings and going into remote learning because PB Harmon Zuckerton, That would be different than what we've been doing in the past. And I think we need a clarification on That PB

Harmon Zuckerson, Gary. Any questions.

No, I do think given that the summary of the information that we have just suggests that it's coming from MSBA, we probably should clarify what they were meaning by that, whether closing school means closing it physically or just entirely. And I can't think of why else they would have prompted this change right now other than what's happened in the last few months. So I think that would be good to get more input on.

Harmon Zuckerman, Great. Thanks, David. Any questions. No. Harmon Zuckerman. Thank you, Caitlin. Any questions.

Yeah. Harmon

Zuckermann, Jason. Thank you, Jason. Any questions.

You know,

thank you, Kim. Any questions. Okay, thanks. Stacy. Any questions.

No, I had the same question as Amy, but I would say that the first sentence of that paragraph does say decision to close school buildings. So let's definitely check on it.

Great. Thanks. And I agree. I think it would be good to clarify that. So I don't think any thank you, Chris. So we're going to move on to our next study item. Actually, the next two are Milena. So sorry I mixed that up. But this is 6.02, the first reading of policy IHB, which is class size.

Good evening. So the change in the class size policy is really related to if a student is attending a school that loses accreditation and the transfer into another school in that system or another school in an adjoining system. And it's on the last page is the big change. And it just talks about that the district would allow the transfer as long as it does not result in a class size that exceeds the standards set by the state. So when you look at our class size standard in comparison to DESE's standards, our class size standards are actually smaller than DESE's. So we did reach out to MSBA to get some clarification on which class size standard is the one that we would use. And their interpretation right now is that we would use DESE's standard, but DESE has two standards. So they have a class size standard and then a desirable standard. And when I asked the question about which one they would use, they did not have an answer for us. They said until this happens, that a school would be found unaccredited. They don't feel like there's much direction from the state on it right now.

Thank you, Milena. Stacy, any questions?

Yes. So because of what you just said, Melina, and it says MSBA does not recommend that we officially adopt these standards, do you recommend that we... vote in favor of this or not vote on it yet?

Yeah, when we talked to the lawyer, she said because of the fact that it's tied to the House bill, that we should go ahead and move forward with it. And that we would get more direction if this becomes a situation.

If it becomes a law, I guess. Okay.

Well, if a district becomes accredited.

Okay, thanks.

Thanks. Kim, any questions?

What is the difference between the two different standards and our standard? In terms of size of classes.

Yeah, so you see our standard on page three. For DESE's, their standard for K through two is 25 and the desirable standard is 17. For third through fourth grade is 27 and their desirable standard is 20. Fifth through six is 30 and 22 and seven through 12 is 33 and 25. So as the students age up, it's significantly larger than what our preferred standard is.

Thank you.

Thank you. Jason, any questions?

Yeah, can you all hear me pretty well? Okay, so what's the origin of this change? I don't really understand where it's coming from. What is the change? What's the origin of the change? Do you know, Milena?

it's coming from that house bill six Oh four. Um, and I, I'm not sure why it's coming like at this time, um, because it feels like something that probably should have come a while ago. Um, and, and I didn't get any clarification for them as to why it's coming at this time.

Yeah. So, so that's, so I don't, you know, I look online, I didn't see anything either. Of course it's kind of fairly new. It's not really a resolve, but, um, I didn't see anything either, which also makes me skeptical about wanting to sign it. Because the communities that are most impacted are ones that are obviously poor and African-American. So I'm not sure if I understand where it's coming from, why now, and what's the origin of it. So I just need more information before I personally and Melaina say yes. Okay.

So I'll seek out some more clarity for that for

you.

Melaina, can I ask you a clarifying question on what Jason just said?

Mm-hmm.

So... But the way that I'm reading this, this would... it says that if a school becomes unaccredited, that the kids from the unaccredited district would be eligible to transfer into our school district, which is I think what which I think is a good thing, right? Which is what we, I mean, we, you know, that's what happened with Normandy and Riverview. And those kids still are in Clayton that chose to stay in Clayton. But I mean, if a situation like that would arise again, this is it's basically reiterating that those children would be able to to transfer into our schools, correct? Am I reading this wrong?

Right. The one thing that I wonder about that Jason's also... Jason, I wonder if you're wondering about this also is that it puts a limitation on it. So it's not saying students can just transfer in. It's saying students can transfer in if... we stay within the class size determined by DESE. And so the way I was interpreting what Jason was saying was, does that almost like constrict too much? Am I interpreting your thing right, Jason?

No, you're 100% correct. So at first I thought it was conflicting. So Amy, I saw what you read as well. And then I had to go back and read what the... It does sound like there's a cap on how many you can allow into the district, which essentially we work on a med step per class on average. So essentially no kid would be able to transfer. And then I was also wondering is that retroactive or is it starting the moment it's approved? You know, when does it start and how does that affect the current children that we have now coming from Normandy right now?

So is your question with that part, meaning if our class sizes currently were bigger than DESE standard, would a district turn those students away? Like even after they had been enrolled?

Exactly. In particular, I'm thinking about Y-downs. And I'm thinking about that situation there. And then, of course, some of the other schools as well. But yeah, exactly. Maybe you have to turn away kids.

Jason, it makes me wonder a little bit about the policy that we looked at last year that we actually ended up changing the language to be more inclusive as opposed to the restrictions. So I'm wondering, is the board interested in me pursuing that with the lawyers also of like, could we write this as a more inclusive policy? So if a district becomes unaccredited, the district would take students or are you saying like, so regardless of class size or I guess I'm asking what should I be asking the lawyers?

Good question. So I think, wow, it's a good question. I haven't thought that far on it. Go ahead, Sean, what do you think?

I think that... PB Harmon Zuckerman, I think there's some some clarification. We need to get on this and if I if I understand this correctly. The reason why this is being revised is that when we when previously went unaccredited districts became when schools districts became an accredited. There was no PB Harmon Zuckerton, There was no guidance in terms of how many students could come into a district. And so what happened was during that time, and I can't remember the year The district that what happened was that DESE put in place, like, what are your class size standards? And then that's the number we'll use because it was unlimited in terms of students could come into this as many students as possible could enroll. But then at that time they put in these standards saying, what were the district's class size standards? That's what they adhere to. So right now I think what they're doing is saying, You know, so putting in policy that we would adhere to the class size standards, basically putting in practice what they did in 2011. And so it would limit. I think that it'll be good for us to get some more clarification on that and we can get some additional information about if that's the reason why. The other thing too is that right now there aren't any other school districts that are unaccredited right now.

Mm-hmm. Right. So that's what makes me give pause a little bit because I'm thinking about maybe there's something we don't know. You know, it's always something you don't know, right? Right. Let's get ahead of this before it gets out of control. Like there's going to be a, you know, COVID can be causing a lot of problems that we don't know about. There's a data hasn't come back yet, but we'll find out in January. And then they're like, well, we're going to deem some of these schools to be unaccredited. and then all of a sudden that policy is in place, which then shapes how we're going to take in children.

So,

okay. Okay, so I'll ask

some further questions on that.

All right, thank you. I appreciate that.

Thank you, Jason. Caitlin, do you have any questions? Okay, thank you. David, any questions? Thanks. Gary, any questions?

I have a lot of questions. I'm not sure any of them can be answered by any of us, but it does seem like since this was passed in the spring session 2019, it's worth taking time to at least try to get some answers to these questions before we adopt it. I would be kind of hesitant about adopting this policy at the moment, given the triggering event of an unaccredited district certainly hasn't happened. So it seems like we have some time to sort it out. So I know that's easier said than done, but appreciate those efforts.

Okay. Great. Thank you. And Amy, did you have any other questions? All right. Great. Thanks. Um, I don't think I have any questions, but just a, uh, I do think we need more clarification because the practice when Normandy and Riverview were unaccredited that school districts went by versus the law and what the Missouri Supreme Court said were a little bit different. So just as a reminder, they were not necessarily the same. And nobody made a legal issue out of it, but we should do a little more research into it. Because there's some history there from before.

Right.

Okay.

Question. Sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead, Stacy. I don't know if this is new this time around Milena or not, but am I understanding correctly by that first paragraph that the first step, even though it's a district as a whole that's unaccredited, the first step is to move to another school in your district with a higher APR score? And if that... isn't an option, then you would choose outside the district?

That's how I read that also.

Okay. Thanks.

Which is also different, Stacey, than last time.

Okay. I wasn't sure if that was the case last time or not. It

wasn't. It was not.

So it's confusing because districts get the accreditation, but each school gets their own score. Yeah.

That's right. It was all or nothing last time. If the district was unaccredited, it didn't matter if there were schools that had a score that would have been the equivalent of accredited. You could still choose to transfer to a accredited school.

The preference is keeping kids within their district, but maybe at a different school if possible. Okay. Okay.

Okay, great. Thank you. And so, Milena, we're going to move on to 6.03, which is first reading of policy IKF, which is graduation requirements and also you.

yeah so this one to me feels a little bit easier you we asked we did this policy last year also and so it's back on the table and the really the only change is number six under earning credit and substituting credit and alternatives and we had spent some time actually on this section the last time you all approved this to clarify language And so they're just further clarifying the language to limit it to one credit of a math, science or practical art by replacing that one of those with computer science course. So this one feels like a very small minor change but the one credit limit does reflect what Desi's graduation handbook says also.

That's your thanks. Stacey, any questions?

No, thanks.

Amy, any questions? Gary, any questions? No, that one seems a lot more straightforward. Jason, any questions?

I don't have any questions, but once again, I do wonder who benefits from this. It's not like... context behind it. We're just getting a policy and we're just supposed to, I mean, of course, we're all reading it and at face value, it reads what it reads. It's like, oh, it's not big deal. But it might be something I don't understand about it. So are we passing this tonight or next time?

No, next time.

So I got time to do some research. Is there any way you can just find out a little bit more about the origin of that as well? The origin of this one? Yeah, it just seems a little simple and simple change. But I'd hate for one of our students or any student to be caught up in a trip back

Right. When we talked about this last year, one of the things that we talked about was the language around the district making the choice to fulfill that piece and that was part of my concern also. Because as a district, I had a lot of conversation with the counseling staff at the high school about this in particular. Because if you continue to read, it starts to talk about the district requiring to let the parents know in writing that doing this actually could adversely affect them. with their college admission decision. And so we are not in support of replacing a math course or a science course with a computer science course. So like replacing it within your sequence, we believe that the sequence that we have put in place is the best sequence to set students up for success in college. And so that's why we were super specific about making sure that the language said the district can choose to fulfill this And we do not have it in our practice right now that this is able to happen. So the only change here is like when we wrote that before, we weren't specific about the one credit. So it almost made it sound like you could replace all of your science classes and all of your math classes with Comp Sci, which would not be a good decision. And so that's why they wanted to limit that to the one credit to reflect that handbook. But this is not a practice that we have in place in the district.

Okay, okay. So then does it matter to us?

No, not really. I mean, the reason why- Can we- We can't get rid of it because it's in statute, but that's why we specifically wrote that the district can choose to fulfill it. And then we would write it into our practices if we thought that was a good practice.

Gotcha. Yeah, I just feel like a total shrink bag. I mean, it just feels like, gee, like some kid wants to take all computer science classes because engrossed in those classes are certain math metrics that need to be met to get into Harvard. All right, cool. Right. And last year, that was the thing that

gave us pause was that part about like having to give a parent something in writing to say this might adversely affect you. Well, then like our feeling was, well, then we, you know, that's definitely like that to me is like a red flag.

Yeah, it's a lot of ability also. I think it's almost like I'm pushing the onus off into the district. Sorry, that makes sense. Okay, cool. All right. So we could effectively punch and just push it down a line, right? Or what do you think we should do? What's your suggestion?

With this one, I think we just need to approve the language because it limits it to the one. And because it's in statute that it has to be there. But then the district then within the procedures determines whether we're going to move forward with it. And we've determined that we're not going to move forward

Gotcha. All right, cool. Sounds good. Thank you. Appreciate that.

Yep. Thank you. Good

work.

Caitlin, any questions? Thank you. Kim, any questions? Okay. Thank you, David. Any questions? Okay. Thanks, Milena.

Thank you. So

we are moving on to... information it's an information item um which is the equity update and uh

so joe can i just make sure i i mentioned um cameron giving the report and i I'm remiss and Robin is also very integral in this work. And I just wanted to make sure she is, I recognize her and forgot to mention her and I apologize. But she helped contribute to this report and she has been such a leader in this area within our district in terms of looking at systems. So I'm gonna say sorry, Robin, and thank you for all of the work that you're doing. Great. Thank

you.

Robin and Cameron are going to give us, this is an information item, but we know it's important. So there will be some time for questions after, even though it's an informational. So Robin and Cameron, the floor is yours.

All right, cool. Sounds good. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and then we can get going.

Is everyone good? I'm sorry, I didn't see. Yeah, we're good,

Cameron.

Yep. Okay, cool. All right, perfect. So, again, this is kind of the first quarter equity report. You know, it's been a lot of work put into it and kind of a culmination of the first 60 days that I've had in the job. And, you know, the district has done an awesome job in terms of, you know, helping me learn the information that I didn't know within the district and, you know, really showing a focus and a commitment to equity, you know, and creating an anti-bias, anti-racist district for our students and for our staff. So I like to start off with a quote. There are no shortcuts to equity, we must commit ourselves to the slow painstaking work of anti bias and anti racism day by day and system by system. I said that because I think it's very important for us to know, you know, it's we're at a point in society where, you know, we're kind of hit our head against the wall in terms of having a lot of the same racial discussions and talks and not really seeing a lot of movement. And I think people are definitely at a spot where they want to see a lot of movement and in terms of equity and looking at inequities and how they were created, it's, we're looking at systems changes. You know, one thing that I said to a group of teachers is that, you know, in our time in education K through 12, we didn't take any any courses on character education that had to do with empathy and equity, nor are we really trained as teachers to really have an A-bar equity lens while we're teaching based off of whether it's undergrad, masters, or even higher in terms of classes. So we're kind of learning something that no one's ever been taught or taught to use within the educational realm. So we're doing a lot of soul searching and a lot of work in order to try to really fundamentally change the minds and the way we look at our students and the way we view education. So here's a quick table of contents. I'll kick it off with continuing with this introduction, then I'll go into a lot of the groundwork that was already made prior to the appointment of my position. Then we'll head into kind of what the first 60 days have looked like within my position and some of the work I've been doing. Chapter four goes into the audit and analysis stage where, you know, we've compiled a lot of data, whether it's quantitative or qualitative, and really trying to see the conclusions of equity need that we've developed and want to use to spearhead our work moving forward. And then taking it to the next level, what are some fundamental conclusions that we're using in terms of creating next steps? And then some closing, just kind of to drop something in closing in terms of kind of what we want things to look like and where I think we're headed. So first introduction, you know, based off of course just the appointment of this position, and a lot of the things that have happened within the last year or so, and just me familiarizing myself with the Clayton community. It seems that you know the school district of Clayton is focused on being, you know, an anti bias anti racist district. I think, you know, where it comes down to everyone wanting to kind of get the work done and see some progress, it's really looking at what inclusion and equity really means. And I think kind of that's the first step in really setting the tone for our work. I like the quote by Lisa Friedman here. Inclusion is a mindset. It's a way of thinking. It's not a program that we run or a classroom in our school or a favor we do for someone. Inclusion is who we are. It's who we must strive to be. So inclusion is more so a mindset and a way of thinking rather than saying, hey, here's a strategy, let's do it. And it should clear up any inequities that exist. So a lot of the progress made to this point. Again, a lot of great programs and work was already being done within the district, which made my transition into the new role easier than it probably would have been in terms of starting from ground zero. So I know a lot of teachers, there are a lot of passionate teachers in the district that have a passion for A-bar work. Numerous book studies have been done, especially over the summer and last school year, in order to kind of gain education and a good foundation on what systemic racism and inequities look like, not only within the school district and in education, but in America as a whole. I know there's equity focus with our new teacher cohorts. As new teachers come into the district, they go through mandatory trainings, whether it's year one, year three, or year five. So there's an equity focus with a lot of those cohorts that are going through those programs currently. And then this past summer, the district hosted courageous conversations where a number of our black faculty shared what their experience was like just with being black in America and within the school system and education. And every time I speak with someone and kind of talk about work that's been done in the past, they always kind of mention this event as being groundbreaking. Educational March for Justice has happened to speak out against systemic racism. A lot of the curriculum coordinators are being critical of their curriculum right now in terms of making it more culturally responsive. This year, the entire district went through implicit bias training as a part of the opening up to the school year. There's a bar presupposition committee that created the presuppositions for the district. You can see those on the equity and inclusion portion of our website. I know they worked really hard coming up with the right verbiage to kind of set the tone and the framework for the equity work to be done. A lot of work, I know Robin has put into the gifted education placement process in terms of, you know, making a more equitable, you know, make it creating a more equitable situation to have a more diverse population within our gifted placement. And then grading for equity, you know, grading for equity is trying to, you know, eliminate a lot of failing grades that might be at the bottom. And I know the secondary and middle and high school have adopted a Grading for equity, which is a you know, which is a theory that's being used in order to try to combat against low grades. So there's a lot of work being done and a lot of things that are already set in motion. So then my first 60 days on the job. What have I been doing So here's a list of a lot of the trainings and professional developments that I've already led. You know, one great thing is that, you know, I love being thrown into the game, you know, right off the bat. I don't know. So my second day on the job, I was leading new teacher induction, you know, in terms of, you happened by accident, but it ended up working, you know, working out really well. And I was happy to do that. Um, then, you know, we let our Clayton ed talks, you know, during the opening day, um, of our teachers returning in terms of, you know, myself, you know, Robin and a couple of other, um, black administrators in the building kind of sharing their experiences as being black with an educational system. Um, and that paying dividends for our, uh, to humanize the black experience within the educational system to our staff. On September 4th, on our PD day, I led a session on the power of humanization. You hear me say humanization and perspective a lot, because that's kind of the foundation of the work we want to do In regard to equity through school leadership, I led an equity session with our district leadership committee on the 17th of September. On October 7th, as you all know, I started equity talks in small groups with the board of education and those have been going really well. This Friday, I have a half day professional development with our classified staff that I titled the field medics for equity. And then next Tuesday, with our Missouri State elementary interns, I'm leading a couple hour training in turn to kind of get them familiarized with what equity work looks like as they get started in their careers. I've had like a million conversations in terms of just kind of getting the experience, you know, talking to teachers, talking to administrators about their experience and their work within equity, asking who are some good parents to contact or who could I talk to in order just to kind of get what the experience is like, you know, within Clayton, especially from, you know, some of our Marginalized minority groups. So I've talked to, you know, our A-Bar groups within the district and our A-Bar parent group as well, as well as some young alumni. And then a lot of teachers too. Students of interest, I've been able to talk to teachers and staff of interest, parents of interest. Like I said, all building administrators. I've met tirelessly with our central office personnel. scrubbed in on some curriculum coordinator meetings, a lot of PLC and teacher groups, been scrubbing into the district PTO and school PTO sessions as well. So really, you know, the goal of this is just to really, you know to establish myself in the community, you know, as an active partner and to build relationships because I think relationships are key. And we all think building those relationships are key in order to, you know have meaningful equity work take place. And I've had a lot of equity coaching that's been going on. A lot of staff and administrators within the district have reached out to me just to kind of get my advice or to help with different equity snags that have kind of come up. And I've been able to kind of consult, coach, and have deep, rich discussions with them in terms of their practice and improving, you know, moving forward. So a lot of that has happened as well. Here's some just, you know, some titles in terms of personal education and development that I've been looking at. I love, you know, I've been looking Paul Gorski a lot in terms of, you know, his equity and literacy institute that he had. It was a seminar that went on for, you know, five Tuesday evenings in September. He also has a book, Case Studies on Diversity and Social Justice Education, that I've been using with some professional development, as well as a few other books and podcasts that I've been working on as well. And then my building equity audit. We got together, me, Sean and Robin, and we really talked about what's a good way to compile some foundational data that has to do with just where we are or where each building is in terms of equity. So we were able to create a Likert scale style survey with comments in each section for administrators and various staff and stakeholders to, to kind of fill out just about how they feel about equity within the district or within their buildings. It had categories of school policy, organization and administration, climate and environment, staff, assessment and placement, professional learning and standards and curriculum development. So that's pretty much been my 60 days, what I've been up to. So as a result of that equity audit, as well as a lot of the interviews and conversations I've been having, here are kind of some of the general findings and conclusions that we were able to draw in terms of kind of where the equity disconnects are within the district. So a lot of the quantitative data use came from our building equity audit, our panorama survey data, which was the wellness survey with our students to see how they're feeling, especially amidst the pandemic that we're in. And then looking at discipline data from the year 2017 on up to this year. And then the qualitative data just consists of a lot of the student, parent and staff interviews and conversations I was able to have and take notes from what they said and kind of pull some commonalities and parallels from each conversation. So here are some of the main conclusions I was able to pull and kind of put them in four categories. The first one is communication. I think the main idea for that is communication, whether it be externally and internally in regard to equity data initiative needs to improve. There was a lot of work being done in a lot of pockets of the district and a lot of conversations being had. But I'm unsure, we were all unsure as to if the community, if the staff, if the schools actually knew everything that was going on. You know, in terms of the data we saw within our building equity audit and matching that up with different things that have already been set in motion. It seemed as if a lot of our staff and stakeholders just weren't necessarily aware that things were going on. And the main thing is, if you don't know something that's going on, you're going to assume that it's not. So that communication really needing to improve in terms of how we get out information and how we, you know, we show the progress that we're making with the inequities that we have. A big focus of mine that I've noticed is kind of a disconnect between just perspective and experience. There seems to be a disconnect between our staff's perceived experience of our Black students and parents compared to their actual experience. We had some numbers within the... within our equity audit that staff for the most part in each school was 75% plus and thinking that the data or the interactions between students and staff are respectable and really equitable. But in talking to a lot of the parents and the students, we kind of saw a disconnect from that. And I think, you know, that's when we talk about, you know, what we're going to do in terms of development, really focusing on the humanization of each student's experience, really building perspective on, you know, how each kid handles their experience within the district and really trying to work on you know, the sole murder that takes place within our school. So really trying to kind of bridge the gap between the different perspectives and try to bring them together so that everyone is a part of the moral community, you know, that is Clayton School District. And then Robin, you can go ahead and you can go ahead. Thanks

Cameron. So one of the other conclusions that Cameron and I were able to make based on the data that we collected was also some incongruence between the perception of discipline and how discipline is handled versus the reality in terms of what our student data says. So in the building audit, it asked respondents to rate if they thought that students were addressed in the same manner and held to consistent standards of behavior, some or most of the time. And more than 80% of our respondents, our staff members said that they did believe that students were addressed in similar ways and held to consistent standards. In addition, more than 75% of the staff believed that discipline infractions and or praise were distributed equitably in the classroom. And when I took a closer look at the discipline data from the last three years, I found that the results from the building audit, the teacher reports, was definitely in contrast with what our discipline data says. So, for example, while Black students make up approximately 15% of our overall student population, at the secondary level, more specifically grades 6 through 12, nearly half of all the suspensions, both in school and out of school, were actually given to students who were Black. And in addition, when we look at student referrals that have been made, so again, not all of those referrals end up in suspension. They might go toward other types of consequences. African-American students made up a little bit more than 40% of those referrals. And so there's a disconnect there between the perception and the reality of our student data. Also in our building audit, a couple things came up related to equitable access. So several staff members articulated some concerns about how students were able to access special opportunities, particularly opportunities that happened before or after school. Some respondents talked about fees and fees being a barrier to participation for some students. Others talked about transportation, particularly for our out-of-district students. And some of the problems that that created in terms of, you know, it being discouraging for students to want to participate in those things. And I think that feedback reflects some of the challenges that the district has faced in engaging some, you know, reliable transportation providers for those eligible non-resident students.

Awesome. Thank you, Robin. And then, you know, kind of in the chapter five, kind of what are we thinking in terms of our next steps? You know, after the conclusions we were able to draw. In terms of that communication, one thing that I've put into motion within the last couple of weeks is really stepping up kind of our district communication and in terms of what I'm doing or what we're doing as a collective in terms of equity. So I've updated our equity and inclusion portion of the website. There's a QR code right there if you want to check that out to where it not only has our A-bar presuppositions that were created by our A-bar Presupposition Group, It also has an online resource center in terms of, you know, if you want to have talks or learning how to have talks about race with your children or what are some great anti-bias, anti-racist books to read or podcasts or literature or YouTube series. There's a ton of information in terms of resources there as well. I've also put in there a biweekly blog. um that i want to continue uh to write uh titled at the equity corner just to kind of talk about every couple of weeks what i've been doing what are some of my analysis and what are some of thoughts in terms of equity within the district and what are some things that we're looking to kind of get going I've also created a Twitter as well, and just having the ability to tweet different articles or make different announcements that kind of come up on the fly. So really maintaining the website and really developing my Twitter to kind of be a good means of communication between myself, the rest of the staff within the district, as well as all of our community stakeholders. And then a step two with that is equity updates included in building level parent communication, as well as staff communication and development. Again, there are a lot of things being done at each individual school that people just aren't privy to. So we want to make sure that from a district and admin level, when we are compiling data and starting to analyze that data, that we're really sharing that data and some of our findings and being intentional about sharing that with a lot of our students you know, building level staff in terms of so they know what our focus is. So when we see them and we start to meet and talk about things, it's not necessarily, you know, something that they haven't witnessed before. So really opening up that communication in terms of the data and the information that we're gathering, as well as, you know, in the parent communications that go out as well, really including some of that equity work that's going in, you know, that's going down in each building. So kind of really step in uh communication not only from a district standpoint but from a building standpoint to our outside community as well as um you know the employees within the district and then that perspective and disconnect is huge um you know The majority of our PD focus will have to do with humanization, soul murder, and perspective. And kind of how we define those terms is humanization is just humanizing someone's experience and having empathy with it. based off of your identity, who you are, where you're from, just what makes you you, you have a natural moral community of people that you naturally accept because you have a shared experience. And I think so often when we're putting into positions where people don't have our shared experience, we fail to humanize their experience. So oftentimes, they either have to earn our humanization or people never get it just because what's foreign to us is uncomfortable as well. So we lean on not being comfortable. So we shy away from really getting to know and humanizing someone's experience, which leads to us relying on stereotypes and other data that might be false in terms of how we approach people. And talking to a lot of the parents Just that disconnect or parents feeling like they had to work to be humanized or their kids had to work to humanize before they were taken seriously was something that came up. So really working on our teachers and our staff and our administrators, really understanding a student's experience and creating dialogue with students. You know, I always say ask the student. If there's an equity issue or we're looking at numbers, we need to get the story behind the data. So really working on getting that story, which leads to understanding perspective. And I use a term that I call soul murder because when kids see the inequities and they feel the inequities and I see someone is being treated differently than me, It's kind of like a soul murder that occurs. It's a dehumanizing effect that kids kind of go through when I see, hey, I did the same thing as this kid, but I'm 50% more likely to be punished for it. You know, our kids are very vigilant in seeing what goes down and our parents are vigilant in knowing how their kids are feeling and we really need to work on that experience. So a lot of our PD focus in terms of training and sessions will focus around these three terms. Then the development creation of student staff and parent affinity groups and really having, you know, kind of a safe space focus to them. You know, we've been, I've been done working and we've begun working and creating affinity groups within our staff and kind of, you know, game planning, you know, what that looks like in terms of, you know with parents and students as well. and really creating a safe space and a brave space as well. And when I say brave space, I mean to have uncomfortable conversations, but we want to get in the spot where we're safe before we're ready to be brave. So really kind of following that model and connecting those two together, as well as, you know, really looking at creating, you know, and putting into place an equity group within the district that really spearheads a lot of the work that's being done and really looking at the teachers who are not only committed to the work, but naturally humanize and do the work. And how can we create a team that has a multitude of perspectives, but humanizes their students and has the right idea. And then step three, including student voice based on identity and programming and decision making. Again, did we talk to the students is always kind of my big thing. If we're going to help the students, we probably need to know their opinion. So I think that's a big thing. And our kids are very candid on their experiences and exactly what they're going through. So in getting that information that we need in order to push things forward, I think we will be able to get that as long as we open up good lines of communication with our students. Robin, you can jump in.

I am still on mute. There we go. So in terms of action steps for our discipline related to perception versus reality, the first thing is Office of Student Services is going to be finishing up the analysis of the discipline data from the last three years. We're also going to develop some common documentation and reporting practices for all of our buildings, and then supporting our building leaders in sharing and unpacking their discipline data with staff. So in the analysis of the discipline data, some of the things that we're looking for are identification of any redundancies with incident types. I'm also looking at any discrepancies with consequences and also trying to find points of uneven reporting practices and trying to find ways how we can make them more consistent. We're also going to start moving into data collection related to the current use of restorative practices. which was also an action step outlined in our end of year equity report earlier this school year. And I'll be collecting that data through interviews with our building administrators. And ultimately, I would like that to lead to a clear set of expectations for how our discipline is reported system wide. And then also finding opportunities where our restorative practices can be applied more equitably. And then lastly, this kind of goes back to our communication pieces. It's hard to talk about discrepancies and disparate outcomes with discipline data if we're not having conversations about discipline data. And so I think through the improved documentation reporting practices that will lead to more effective and regular analysis of discipline data with our building team. So I look forward to supporting our building level leaders in that capacity. As it relates to equitable access, I'd like to quote the words of Cornelius Minor, who's an educator and author of the book, We Got This. And he often talks about looking at different programs and asking yourself, you know, who is this designed for and how can I remake it to serve more students? And I think that's a lens that we can apply to some of our special opportunities in the school district, particularly when we think about before school and after school activities, not just at the elementary school level, but also the secondary level. And so one of my action steps is going to be working with our building leaders and communicating with activity sponsors to really collaborate with them, to find opportunities where we can make some adjustments or engage additional resources to make sure that we are really maximizing the opportunity for students to participate in those programs and try to eliminate as many barriers as we can.

All right. In conclusion, I wanted to close with a clip. A teacher at one of our elementary schools sent me this, and I think it kind of epitomizes where we want to be as an anti-bias, anti-racist district. One big thing that I talked about was perspective and humanizing the experience. And one way we do that is kids being able to see themselves within their curriculum and really being able to see ourselves within the learning. So a lot of our elementary students recently read the book Crown, an ode to the fresh cut, where it talks about, you know, the unique experience of, you know, Black boys and Black men in general going to the barbershop and kind of what that experience means within the Black community. And it was awesome because a lot of our kids were able to dive in and not only, you know, and see themselves and see their experiences within the the book. And when that doesn't happen to you on a regular basis, it's super exciting when you're able to see yourself in a lot of the characters and the stories that you see. And it also opens up perspective and a lens to our non-Black students as well for them to really humanize the experience of their Black peers and really see some of the experiences they have from a cultural standpoint. So I'm going to play a quick clip, you know, where one of our young students is kind of giving their opinion on the book and kind of giving a brief overview and summary of, you know, their experience with it. Oops, let me go back.

I like the guy who walks. I like why his hair was long. And I like the kid on the front cover because he looks like me and his hair texture is the same as me.

So yeah, I just wanted to share that clip. One of our teachers shared that with me. And she was proud because she saw a moment to where a kid had an equitable experience and saw himself. And we want to be able to know the perspectives and experiences of all our students so that we can create these types of experiences for everyone on a daily basis. So that concludes our report.

Thank you, Cameron. And thank you, Robin. We'll just going to go through and ask folks if they have any, I know this is very important. It's an information item, but just going to ask folks if they questions for either Cameron or Robin or thoughts. So I am going to start with you, Kim.

No, I mean, I think it's an excellent report. I think actually if Everybody has not done so. The written report contains even more information than the slide report. So I wanted to thank Cameron, you for your work. You've obviously been very busy your first 60 days on the job and the report is very well done. And Robin, I want to thank you for your continued work in this area along with the rest of the other administrators and teachers. So thank you.

Thanks. Thanks, Kim. Stacey, any comments or questions?

I would echo Kim's sentiments. Cameron, you've had a busy 60 days. Thank you to you and Robin for all you've been doing. And I do agree with one of your main focuses about the communication. I think that's been one thing we definitely have not done well with our equity work in the past. And like you said, if they don't read that it's happening or understand that it's happening, then they assume it's not. So I'm really happy. I love what you did with the website. I looked at that. I think it's so great that you're going to do a better job communicating our work to the community. I was curious, you had that pie chart, the building equity audit, like where you asked the staff, where are we on becoming an A-bar district? Was there any correlation, like did the amount of, the percentage of teachers that answered disagree, for example? Did they come from mostly the same school or was it across the district? I'm just curious if you were able to pinpoint maybe certain buildings that

That's a good question. For the most part, the data that we collected was fairly even across the board, give or take 10% or 15%. you know we didn't see many disparities in terms of whoa this is at the high school and then at these two elementary schools they're completely you know on the uh on the other uh another spectrum so i i think you know we got a good mix just in terms of you know clearly there's a lot of work that needs to be done uh but at the same time you know there are some things that you know that are happening that are moving the needle forward But also, again, understanding that perspective of our students I think was the biggest, our biggest takeaway that we kind of talked about just in terms of, again, if you've never had the experience or the training in order to really, you know, be an equitable educator because it's just, that's never been a push within our system. You know, it's really letting the teachers know that, you know, we're kind of starting this work from ground, you know, from ground zero, but at the same time, you know, the system also failed us for not preparing us to be able to do this work straight out of college. So, you know, kind of, you know, trying to build camaraderie with knowing that, you know that fact and hopefully, you know, everyone coming together to push the work forward.

Good. And I also appreciate you saying about in the beginning, it's a marathon, not a sprint. I think it's hard to be impatient because we want changes to happen so fast, but we need to understand that big changes do take time and we want to make sure we get it right. So I appreciate that. that perspective. And I also like how you talk about humanizing it, and I do think it's so important to see each student as an individual. In some of my own personal work, anti-racism work and research I've been doing lately, so much of it says how white people and white students are seen as individuals, but often black and brown students are labeled as a group. So I think that the humanization that you talk about will help so much in individualizing this for each student. So it's great. So thank you for all of that. I think you made some really good points and you obviously have been really busy and anyway, great start. So thank you so much.

Thanks. Thanks, Stacey. Amy, comments or questions?

Yeah, I'll just, I'll make a comment. So, well, first, thank you so much to Cameron and to Robin for putting this together. I know that it took a lot of time and energy. It's a wonderful report. I enjoyed reading it. It seems like we're on the right track. I was kind of reflecting as I was reading through it today on back when I was first elected to the board back in 2015. I think Joe was around that time year after me. And it was like, I would be remiss to not also thank Sean and Sherman and Susan and Lily and other board members and pass boards and, um, community members too, who have, who have pushed us and pushed us to adopt, um, an equity lens. And I think that we're far from perfect, but I think all of this, these people's support, um, and dedication have, have helped to push us and set us up to succeed and to really, um, take it to the next level. So I'm excited to do that and to see our black students continue to succeed and to do even better. And it's going to be a great thing. So thank you.

Thanks, Amy. David, any comments or questions?

Yeah, I've got a couple of questions. And I think Amy said it well, so not to Not to belittle the point, but Cameron, I'm impressed with the work that you've knocked out in 60 days. It's a hell of a mountain to climb to start to build a foundation that we can grow from and learn from and track progress. And, you know, I've got nothing but optimism that the foundation is going to be something we can work from. So thank you for the work that you put in and Robin for the support and pulling it together. Just a couple of questions on the panorama stuff because I'm one of the most junior board members. So I'm still getting my feet wet with panorama data. I see that we had a 60% response rate. So just two questions on that is 60% kind of what we would normally anticipate in a regular year from a student survey. And then secondary to that, Is the distribution of our different racial groups reflective of the population there, or did we skew our weighting in any one way or form?

That's an excellent question, David. So in the times that I have been in the district, last fall was our first really big data catch grade three through 12 related to the Panorama Survey. were able to get up into the 90s. But we also were able to have a much longer response window. This one was a little bit smaller, mostly because some of the questions we were asking about were related to students' social emotional well-being right now during remote learning. And we wanted to make sure that that data didn't get old before we could start following up with students. So we had a slightly shorter admissions Or I guess open window. One of the other challenges we have was that because we were in remote learning, it was a little bit trickier to kind of have that dedicated time to have all the students completed so You know, so for some buildings, you know, we were able to get a really, really high response for others. it was a little bit more of a challenge, but I do feel confident in the amount that we did get was a good sample on how students were feeling. And it was really helpful and I've already had conversations with our building counselors about how we can use the data and a few things that jumped out to me right away by looking at it.

And our distribution, the racial distribution aligns with the district, is that right?

Yes.

Cool. Sorry. I'm sorry if you said that. Thank you, guys. I recognize it's a starting point where you're trying to turn an aircraft carrier here. And it's great to see the work. I appreciate the focus.

Thank you, David. Caitlin, any questions or comments?

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Poole and Mr. Weems for all of you. Your work. I had a couple questions. So starting with the discipline data. I was wondering if that's If incidents like students being sent out of class is also reflected in that data. I say this because black students on the district advisory council have consistently mentioned to me that not only have they been noticing black students are disproportionately facing disciplinary measures like detentions, but they're also being disproportionately sent out of class more often. So I was wondering if the data has any information on that.

Caitlin, you just totally nailed it. Yes, one of the things that I have found thus far in my data analysis is that one of the things we need to improve upon are tracking all of those removals from the educational setting that aren't necessarily a suspension of in school or out of school, but where students to your point, of any grade level frankly, have been removed from the classroom due to some type of behavior or where the teacher has sent them to an administrator's office for some particular reason. And I think that is really where we can start connecting some dots around humanizing the students experience. Because, you know, there are other things that happen disciplinary wise that don't always result in an in school or out of school suspension. And so those are really the things also that impact our school classroom climate and our school environment. And so by tightening up our reporting practices, we'll have a much better idea on how students are missing class and for what reasons and what are the patterns in that. And are we seeing disparate outcomes either based on race, on gender or ability? So that is one of the areas that I'm looking closely at of how we can put some systems in place to improve in that area.

Thank you. My next question is about the conversation. I really like the conversations. I've noticed that they're also focused on specific groups. Have you looked into developing allyship between different minority groups by having collaborative or joint conversations?

Yeah, I mean, that's a huge goal of mine. I think the wrench in that right now is just the pandemic and not being able to really dive into, you know, a huge student interaction just because, you know, everyone's kind of, you know, going frantically right now just because we're not in school. So hopefully soon with a return to some level of normalcy, we can really start to make that connection. Like I said, that's the one thing that I do miss in terms of seeing kids and having those conversations and wishing I could have had more student conversations, you know, if school were in. So yeah, definitely in terms of I want, my goal is for each kid regardless of how they identify whether it's racially by gender, religion or whatever that is to have a safe space to where they can have some common people that share the same characteristics as they do but then also using those groups to spur a lot of conversations to where each person can share their experience and perspective. I had tons of strategies I want to model that I've used in the past, you know, with a lot of students. So, you know, Caitlin, I know we talked about meeting, you know, fairly soon to kind of, you know, talk and see how we can kind of get that going and, you know, what that can look like even if it is virtual.

Yeah. And kind of on that note, I noticed that the presentation mentioned students of interest. So I can like communicate to the students and like for any students watching this now, how can students kind of show their interest in being like one of these students to like have discussions with you and talk with you?

That's an awesome question. Just shoot me an email, you know, and I'll work it in. Like I said, a lot of A lot of the student conversations were based off of me reaching out to different faculty members in the schools and saying, hey, what's a good group of kids I can talk to to have these conversations with? So I really haven't been able to do that organically. So yeah, if you could definitely pass a message out to the student body and really let them know, hey, if they want to reach out, have a conversation about something specific, or if they just want to talk

about things in general, then we can definitely set that up and get a good group going so that we can open up that dialogue.

Thank you. Thanks, Caitlin. Jason, any comments or questions?

Yeah. First, I want to say Sam, Ray, and Robin, good job. That was a really well done report. And for the most part, it did a great job of managing expectations. and which curbed my enthusiasm on how I would want to deal with this topic, this issue that we're facing. I do have a question. I want to know a little bit more about like, this is kind of a two-pronged question, but first question is, how have the teachers or faculty responded to the suspension data? And what kind of pushback have you received from faculty centered around this subject

matter? Robin, did you want to? Yeah.

So I would say that one of the things that came through in our building equity audit data was that a good chunk of staff weren't really sure what their discipline data was. They just didn't know what it looked like, how often it was being talked about. And so Cameron and I realized that is a very easy piece to address in terms of we need to make sure those conversations are happening So people can be more reflective about the teacher moves they're making in the classroom. And again, how that intersectionality with humanizing our students. That also comes to point around one of the things I'm looking more closely at is the redundancy we have in some of our incident types that we use when we report discipline. And by incident type, I mean the way we label certain types of behaviors. And there are some labels that I feel like are duplicated. They may not say the exact same thing, but certain behaviors that might actually be the same could be potentially coded as a different type of behavior. And so I'd like to bring some consistency to that. So our conversations with teachers can be more meaningful. And so we can even coach into those things about the different types of behaviors we might be seeing and the functions of those behaviors and how that connects to building positive relationships with students. I will say what we've seen so far, again, we haven't walked down this path as far as we'd like to at this point in time, but there is interest in learning more so that way people can make changes to their practice.

Question for you, Robin, real fast regarding behaviors and coded language. Do they cut both ways? So like meaning that some behaviors for white students might be different than encoded differently, although the same. Ask for African American students where it might be coded differently, but it was the same. It might just mean something different, like the way we code it. Is that what you mean?

That is what I'm looking for. That is exactly what I'm looking. And it's taking a little bit longer than I thought it would because I need to actually look at the narrative, like the notes about the particular incident to see where similar incidences may have been coded differently. Does that make sense?

So

that's part of my current analysis.

And

I think piggybacking off of that, you know,

I think strengthening that data or that foundation of data is key in tackling the true work. So we have two situations, but one is coded in a more dehumanizing way than another. And the description behind it says, oh, well, little Jimmy was just messing around, but little Johnny, I was fearful that something was going to happen. So really looking at What's being coded? You know, what are they using to code it? And what are the descriptions? And if we look at, you know, kind of get to the nuts and bolts of it and see that the situation was identical, but the teacher's lens viewed it a totally different way than what actually happened. It's really trying to get that data so we can use that as a teaching moment for those teachers.

Okay. Does that answer both my questions, right? I think so. I

think so. All

right. Well, I have another one. The other one is, you know, when you go to like a work site, a manufacturing plant, there's always like a dashboard. And sometimes it's simplistic. It's like we haven't had incidents in like 90 days. You know what I'm saying? OSHA certified incidents. Do we plan on having a dashboard that makes it easier for faculty members to have access to the information that we're talking about that they didn't know about, right? Some of this. I mean, this is not, I know this is kind of early, but is it something you thought of? Is it even worth it? Could we be then, you know, I guess, this could be a good or bad thing, but like, you know, curbing our behaviors or skewing our behaviors towards the outcome of what it might look like if we have that kind of dashboard.

Go ahead. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. I think that's where that communication piece that I was talking about in terms of teachers being aware and staff being aware of what the data is and what we're collecting and being transparent with that work. I think that could definitely be in the form of a dashboard. There was some amongst staff where they could click a link, you know, in their email or in their Google Drive and see, oh, okay, for this month, the data is looking pretty good, you know, in terms of, you know, what's going on. And so, yeah, I think, I mean, that's a good, that's a great idea in terms of being an easy, you know, and I guess simple way to access and see that data, you know, once we get to the point to where we have the system in place, you know, that we want to, you know, incorporate.

Gotcha. Gotcha. One last question. So Is there like a hypothesis, kind of like something you've come up with already in your mind? And you are thinking that could be a problem down the line, but you haven't, you don't know for sure. But it can be a problem down line to make this really be substantiated and validated, just able artwork that you notice now, but you're waiting to see based on more data, more hands-on, you know, getting involved in this process. I mean, is there anything you see right now that you can mention that you might think may be a problem down the line when it becomes reality?

Well, one thing that has already stood out to me, and I don't necessarily... I wouldn't characterize this as something as, like, going to be a problem down a line, but I think it is a good... indicator of the individual desire to push one's own individual practice is that since Cameron has been added to the team, we have so many more staff members stepping forward one-on-one wanting to engage in conversations around race and equity in the classroom and wanting to engage in really authentic ways and having really tough conversations and willing to be vulnerable in those conversations with Cameron and with other people. And so, you know, Cameron had mentioned in his presentation that he's done a lot of equity coaching. And I think that was something that has really gained a lot of momentum and it's humming very organically where people who maybe aren't kind of at the front of the marathon pack when it comes to a bar work are putting themselves into an area of more discomfort. because they know something happened or they saw something happen, or they were part of a conversation that made them feel a certain way. And they are reaching out to Cameron for advice on how they might be able to handle a situation like that again in the future or how to handle the situation they're currently in. And the way Cameron's been working with them is really helping build their own capacity to continue to engage in this uncomfortable work. And he's very straightforward about it, but he's also very compassionate about it. And so I think right away, one of the things that I have seen is that with the addition of this particular position, people are much more willing to step into that uncomfortable place.

Okay. That's all the questions I have. May I have a lot more, but this is really,

really good. Great. Thank you, Jason. Gary, any comments or questions?

Yeah, thank you both for this. And I have to confess, I've been listening to some of the Supreme Court confirmation hearings this week. So I'm going to do like all the senators do and say some things that are on my mind before I even pretend to ask a question. So you can bear with me for a little bit. But in all seriousness, I just want to say that I think, you know, Cameron in particular, like having you here and you're talking about your first 60 days, I'm just thinking about as you were talking about what a value that is and what a great thing that is for our district. I mean, we've had a lot of people over the years that we've hired. We've hired facilitators and we've hired speakers and trainers and things like that. But I mean, somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but none of them have been here anywhere close to 60 days. So you might feel like you're at the beginning of your time with us, but you're already way further into this than anybody else has ever been able to get before. And that's, we'll just, I'm just really glad for that. You can see, we can see a lot of, you've been busy as a lot of people said. So thanks for that. And I'm just, I'm proud that we're able to do that and to to have you here. I also appreciated you mentioning a lot of those personal resources, and one of the things that I recognized, I stumbled on that Nice White Parents podcast, and at some point in the future, I can't wait to have a conversation with you about that because I wasn't looking for that and just kind of stumbled onto it, but it was And it was a lot. So I'd love to talk with you more about that sometime. So I guess maybe some of the questions, like two questions that kind of have come to mind as I've been thinking about this. I'd love to hear what, if anything has been the most surprising or not what you expected about working in the district. And two, I'd love to get a sense for how settled you feel into the process of getting started. I mean, do you still feel like you're at the beginning of getting started and settling into this position? Are you firmly in it now? Are you somewhere in the middle? That makes sense. I just love to hear what you're thinking about that.

Got you. For sure. So, you know, in terms of, you know, my impression so far, you know, I think, you know, I've worked in Parkway and I've worked in Rockwood. And in terms of looking at things from an equity standpoint, you know, there are a lot of similarities just in terms of, you know, demographics, you know, racial makeup and things like that and some of the issues that exist. So a lot of the conversations that I've been able to have haven't necessarily been things I haven't seen or witnessed myself. before and I think that, you know, and that's something that I've been communicating in a lot of the discussions I've been having in terms of, you know, people knowing that these are citywide, countywide education issues, not just specific to Clayton. So it's a hill that a lot of districts and a lot of people are trying to climb up. And I think the uniqueness of Clayton has definitely been something that, you know, has caught my eye just in terms of it's the first, you know, smaller district I've been in in a while. So everything's a lot more, I guess, condensed. So, you know, it's, in talking to so many different stakeholders at many different levels, whether it's students, whether it's classified staff, certified staff, tons of parents, you know, board members. But if people want to access you, they're going to find you, you know? So, you know, really, really, you know, getting used to that. But I think that's a good thing in terms of transparency and being able to, you know, to kind of get to the source. You know, so that's one thing, you know, that's for sure. And then just in terms of, where I'm at. I guess if, if I'm about to run a marathon, I feel like I've warmed up. If that makes sense. Cause I got stretched, I've gotten loose. I'm warmed up. I'm ready for them to blow the whistle so we could start the race. So I think I'm warmed up kind of like in like day 30. I was like, man, I don't know. But I think once I got to the point to where, especially once we got, you know, out of the equity audit and really broke down a lot of that data and And I started to get a good sample size in terms of, you know, just different interviews and discussions I was having, you know, when I can kind of get a good foundation. I think I was feeling good. So I think I'm warmed up and ready to start the race now, if that answers the question.

Well, I'm glad you feel warmed up because it seems like you've been running a lot. So I hope we're not wearing you out and we're not burning you out. No,

I'm in shape now.

Great.

Thanks. Thank you, Gary. Um, I want to add my, uh, thanks to both of you, Cameron and Robin. I think it's very strong report and Cameron, I think you're, uh, You're clearly doing a lot of great work and building on a lot of great works. So thank you. I will say Robin said one of my favorite words in the data world, which is intersectionality. And my next favorite word is disaggregation. And so my question, I do have a question. I can't help myself. You guys might guess my question because I always ask this question. which is, you know, in your audit as you move forward, have you thought about kind of disaggregating the intersectionalities and disaggregating the data? Because if you look, you know, whether you're black or white or Asian or multiracial, It's not necessarily the same if you have an IEP or if you don't. It's not necessarily same if you're free and reduced lunch or you're not. It's not, et cetera, et cetera. And so talk to me a little bit about your thoughts around both the links, the intersectionality but also the disaggregation of the data, even the race data.

I think the big thing is concentrating on you know, especially as we get deeper what those inequities are, you know, in terms of, you know, when I look at balancing equity with inequity, I'm really looking for the places where the inequities exist. So as we look at the data, if we see things that don't really show an inequity, you know, then I guess in terms of a focus and diving in, you know, it's something that's kind of not necessarily tabled, but checked off to a certain extent because an inequity doesn't exist. I think when you talk about things like, you know, IEPs and free and reduced lunch, you do see a lot of a lot of crossover, you know, just, you know, nationwide, you know, black, you know, Black boys are more than likely to have an IEP. So what does that look like in terms of the process of how we're identifying who has an IEP? Is it they just don't understand the kid or is it this kid truly needs an IEP? So really getting to the point to where we're using that humanizing lens through all of the work that we're doing, whether it's free and reduced lunch. What exactly is the experience or what are some of the shortcomings that our free and reduced lunch students have? What does that data look like racially? And what are the differences between race within free and reduced lunch data? So I think as we really get going and get into the weeds, we'll really look for those things. I think the big thing is really looking for where the inequities exist and then kind of diving in for those specifics as we pinpoint those

specific inequities.

Yeah, I think another example of where we're disaggregating data is looking at gifted identification. Our testing cycle this year is a little bit fragmented because we gave families the option to postpone testing to the spring. So right now, not all of our students who we wanted to move forward with individual evaluation decided to actually test this fall. And so actually today I just started taking a closer look to see if like what are the patterns of families who decided to wait until the spring and who wanted to go ahead and move now because that could potentially impact what our identification rate is just altogether. But throughout that process, taking a look at, for example, like how many black boys are we evaluating? How many students who have IEPs do we have in the individual evaluation process? So those are some things that we're keeping tabs on. So that way we can find any discrepancies or at least keep our eyes peeled for them if they're happening.

Great. Thank you. Well, thank you

again. I'm sorry, Joe.

Go ahead. I'm

sorry. I forgot this earlier, but what you just asked reminded me. I realize this hasn't been a focus yet, but something in your report did catch my eye that said something about that Asian students do not feel as connected to their peers as the black and white students. I'm just wondering is that like on your to-do list of something to dive deeper into at some point as well?

Yeah, for sure. We definitely saw that parallel and we've had some big dialogue on that in terms of, you know, especially that from a social emotional standpoint. You know, we don't really see it, you know, academically or from a behavioral, you know, or discipline standpoint, but kind of that social emotional, you know, feeling of acceptance seems to be, you know, seems to be something that we really need to work on. So yeah, for sure. That was something that definitely jumped out at us. Okay.

Yeah, and I think also one thing that I haven't had a chance to look at more closely is looking at the intersectionality between the students who rated feeling lonely, et cetera, especially our Asian students, and to see how that correlates to students who might be learning at home versus responsive. Again, like I don't, I don't feel comfortable making any specific hypotheses, but that is one intersection that I want to take a

closer look at. Exactly. Okay. Thank you.

Awesome. Thanks. Thanks again, Cameron. Thanks again, Robin. One

last question. Thank

you a lot of times to you guys because there's going to be lots of questions. Go ahead, Jason.

You may not have done this and it may be a dangerous thing to do. But have you done any study on whether or not what the makeup of the folks that are home versus who are coming back to school? Have you done any research on that, collected any data on that?

Yes, we do have data on that. I don't know all the numbers off the top of my head, but that's information that I can work with Sean on to provide you guys with. But we do have that.

Gotcha. Thank you.

All

right, I'm going to say thank you again. We really appreciate it and look forward to your subsequent reports, right? It's great to have kind of this regular discussion. So thank you all very much. So we are gonna move to action items board. And the first action item is 8.01, which is the second reading and adoption of policy ACA sexual harassment.

All right, 8.01, I move that the Board of Education approves policy ACA regarding sexual harassment under Title IX for the second reading and adoption as submitted. Second.

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

Yeah, one comment. I don't like it. That's my only comment. Okay.

Any other comments or questions? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, it passes unanimously. So we're moving on to 8.02, which is the second reading and adoption of policy DBAT, or D rather, telework.

8.02, I move that the Board of Education approve policy GBA-D regarding teleworking for second reading and adoption as submitted.

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

Aye.

Any opposed? Passes unanimously. Okay, so we're moving on to 8.03, which is the superintendent search

firm. 8.03, I move that the Board of Education approve, sorry, I'm on the wrong page here. I have these things on two different screens. Is it, sorry, I don't have the name of the firm in front of me. I didn't have it earlier in

here. McPherson and Jacobson.

Sorry about that. I just, I had that pulled up on another screen here. Let me start that over. I moved that the Board of Education approved to hire McPherson and Jacob as a consulting superintendent firm to hire a new superintendent at a cost not to exceed 14,900. Again, apologies. Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded. And I just give a quick frame, and then I'll take any questions. So just as a reminder, we narrowed it down to three firms, Ray & Associates, School Exec Connect, and McPherson & Jacobson. They were all solid firms. We're thankful that each of the firms answered about 20 or 22 questions that the board asked them. We had interviews with them in a subcommittee, Jason and Amy and I, we created a rubric. Sandy did some reference checks. And in the end, when we tallied everything up, McPherson and Jacobson was the one that came out on top. So just so having said that any comments or questions?

Sure, David, go ahead. So, you know, when we interview, it goes both ways, right? Do we know, I mean, have we followed up? Do we know that they're, did they like us? I guess for lack of, you know, just for lack of a better way of putting it, you know, and then, because the reason I ask is if they felt like that we're not a good fit culturally for them, you know, I'm assuming the rubric has a plan B that we could vote on on the next session, right?

It does. It does have a plan B. And I will say they seem to really, really want this search and really be motivated to work with us. So I'd be really surprised if they didn't. We haven't reached out to them until we had, you know, have a vote. Right. But but I would be surprised if they didn'T accept Any other comments and questions or questions or other Okay, all in favor.

Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? Okay, it passes unanimously. So we are moving on to the consent agenda. So consent items.

If I can redeem myself here and not not fumble through this one. I move that the Board of Education approve the Consent Agenda 9.02 through 9.03. Second.

Okay,

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

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? Okay, it passes unanimously. Thank you. So we are moving to public comment. Sean, Chris, do we have public comment?

Yes, we do. We have two public comments that were submitted for this evening. I will read them. The first comment is from Suzanne Whitman and she writes, I'd like to convey my gratitude to the district and the school board for the work that they've been doing on equity, inclusion, and anti-racism. I saw the redesigned equity page on the district website and Cameron Poole's blog, and it makes me so hopeful for the future. I'm heartened by Mr. Poole's humanistic approach to this work, which recognizes that everyone starts where they start and his willingness to put his heart and soul into it to help us move forward to a better place. Knowing that Dr. Daugherty's heart was in this work all the while, seeing it move forward into this action of hiring Mr. Pooley is beautiful. I know as well as some of the school board members, in addition to learning from Mr. Poole, are moving forward on their own, reading and learning, to get to a place of greater understanding. The Clayton Anti-Racism Collective is facilitating book clubs for parents to read and discuss the books stamped by Ibram Kendi and Jason Reynolds. Thank you to everyone who is stretching to grow. Someone shared an image of generosity with me last week, which at first I did not understand. She said that generosity is like the bigger kids running around the toddler who is first learning to walk. When I pictured this, I imagined a bunch of four and five-year-olds running, playing, and totally ignoring the toddler. I imagined them so involved in their game that they even knocked the toddler over once in a while. How could this be generosity? Then I realized that the bigger kids, by being themselves with the skills that the toddler needs, were giving a gift. And I mulled over the fact that in my experience, toddlers are totally unfazed by this scenario. In fact, contrary to being upset, they usually pay an enormous amount of attention to the bigger kids. In effect, receiving the gift that is being given so that they learn to walk even more quickly than a kid who doesn't have that access. I hope that our students of color will have the experience of being able to truly be themselves. I hope that white students learn the value of connection that does not have to be severed on the basis of skin color. Everyone benefits from this. I'm grateful to receive the gift of Mr. Poole's generosity in coming to our district, as well as the generosity of the students and parents of color in our district who know what we need to change. I will support it as best I'm able. Thanks for your kind attention this evening and always. Next comment is from Chi Chi Amumare. She writes, over the summer, a cohort of Clayton alumni joined to create a call for justice and equity for black students. Although the School District of Clayton claims inclusiveness as one of its five core values, we felt as though the school district had been failing its black students since the beginning. A few of us met with the superintendent and other officials of the school district to talk about next steps, yet we have not seen or heard any new developments on the side of a school board or the school district. We asked for more transparency between the school district and their approach to creating an inclusive learning environment. We've seen no advancement in this issue. My main concern is black students and their ability to enter honors and AP courses. To my understanding, a student still must receive approval from a teacher before enrolling in higher level courses. The only exception to this are the history courses. I would like for the Board of Education to ask themselves why this policy exists. The answer is to deter black students from achieving at higher levels. I was told that models must be tested first to see the outcome of such a change but that seems like a roundabout way of saying that the district does not wish to address the issue head on and just eliminate the rule of teacher recommendations altogether. While I was in school, I was literally the only black student in my honors and AP classes. I am positive there were many other black students capable of taking those classes, but the inherent racism of teachers towards black students blocked them from achieving at those levels. From fifth grade, students can enter into honors classes for middle school And I want to know why the school district does not believe black students can make it in those classes. There was an attempt to block me from advanced math in the sixth grade, yet I was able to make it through and years later took AP Calculus BC as a senior. I feel as though there are deliberate attempts to dissuade and prevent black students from achieving at higher levels in their classes. Black students are never given a chance to succeed like their white counterparts. While I may have graduated from CHS four years ago, I and other black alums will never forget how the school district tried to hold us back from the beginning. The school district and every teacher should work towards allowing more Black students to take honors and AP classes if they want. They have absolutely no right to prevent a Black student from participating in higher-level courses. In fact, they should encourage their Black students to enroll in more challenging courses. Finally, they need to do better when it comes to ensuring a quality education for their Black students. I understand that the school board has other issues to consider, such as ensuring the safety of their students during COVID-19. but do not forget about the issues that have been ongoing before the pandemic began. School district needs to take more concrete steps to ensure their Black students receive an education just like that of other students. I encourage the school board to finally start taking action and bring justice to their Black students. With the everlasting inaction of the Clayton School District, this issue will not disappear, and as long as it continues, neither will my fellow alumni and I. And that's the end of her comments.

Thanks, Chris. So we're going to move to board communication. Does anybody have a committee or liaison report? Oh, David, go ahead.

All right. So last night was I think it actually was the first council meeting for the year. And so it was pretty well attended across all the schools. I don't believe we had the high school there, if I remember correctly. A couple of the key points that were talked about that I wanted to relay to you guys so you can share with folks that you talk to is there's a lot, all focus and all eyes are on the food drive now, so we can get the pantry stocked up. The PTO websites are all updated to reflect the donation capabilities and have the need lists. hit your local school's PTO site and see how you can help and share the word. A couple of highlights across a few of the schools, You know, it's kind of interesting because things are different now, right? We can't do a lot of the back to school activities that most of our classes are used to. But, you know, Captain shifted their popsicles to popsicles on the porch. I thought that was pretty crafty. Glenridge, you know, held their readathon, which is one of their primary fundraisers. And this year they shifted the proceeds to that to go to the food pantry rather than keeping it in house, which is pretty fabulous. Merrimack and Glenridge both kicked off their funds for excellence programs. But of course, there's concern over the amount that we'll actually be able to pull in given the current state of a lot of the families. And family centers locked down a sponsor for community give back. The date has been figured out and the sponsor has been figured out, but I'll leave the surprise for them when they announce it. We should be able to see that hopefully coming out soon. And the last piece that we talked through was kind of interesting for me because I've not actually sat through one of the presentations, but the all-in Clayton Coalition presented the current status there. Just a couple of data points that were fascinating was the 30-day use data for, you know, we track and trend alcohol, marijuana, and e-cigs. Alcohol and marijuana were up over the data from 2018, but e-cigs are down. So I guess that's a little bit of a small victory. But our 30-day averages are actually lower than the county as a whole. But probably the most relevant thing that we should all take away is that the federal funding that All In Clayton Coalition gets requires a matching volunteer hour component. So every dollar that they get donated requires a dollar's worth of time in volunteer hours. So that's where they struggle a little bit. So if there's ever an opportunity that you see or you're your contacts and friends see to help kick in some time and help the coalition, it would be well received. I think that's all I've got, Joe.

Great, thanks. Kim, go ahead.

Yeah, I just want to emphasize what David said about the drive for funding the food pantry. So as of today, only $1,000 has been collected and there's a $50,000 goal. That's based on the $30,000 that was collected in early spring when school shut down. So Please spread the word through friends, family and community supporters because I know that our community is very generous and they will donate if they know that there is a need and there is certainly a need. For a number of our students not being in school means no breakfast and no lunch. And so this funding is to help to meet those shortfalls for the remainder of the school year.

Thank you. Any other committee or liaison reports? Okay. Do we have a motion to adjourn? I

move that the Board of Education adjourn. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. We are adjourned. Thank you all.