September 29, 2021 — Meeting Transcript

Ready? OK, it is September 29th, 2021 and adequate notice has been given. So we are going to get started. I apologize that we're a few minutes late. We were having some technical difficulties. I am going to actually first we're going to stand and do the Pledge of Allegiance. Okay, great. And I think Dr. Patel is going to... Actually, are we going to start with our tax rate hearing tonight? Okay.

Yeah. But are you, um, yeah. Alrighty. Okay. So good evening tonight is the district's, uh, public hearing of the tax rate. Right, this works. This is all new. So the purpose of a public hearing is to have the discussion and receive public comment prior to approval. So public notices were posted as required by statute as well as being posted on the district's website. From my understanding, according to Chris, we have had no verbal or written comments received. So the state auditor provides tax forms that we are required to use to calculate our tax rate. We are also required to submit the form back to the state auditor for review and approval. The tax rate calculation was approved by the state auditor. The district's tax rate is dependent on St. Louis County's assessor's determination of the market value of real property, both land and buildings, within the district boundaries, which does include a portion of Richmond Heights. These properties are revalued or reassessed by the assessor every other year in odd-numbered years. So therefore 2021 is a reassessment year. When the assessed values increase, the tax rate decreases or vice versa. So the tax rate is inversely related to these assessed values. What that means is the district will not receive a windfall of revenues when assessed values rise with reassessment, because we will roll back our rate. But if the assessed values drop, we can increase or roll up our rate. So this is intended to provide stable public funding. Also, keep in mind none of these rules apply to debt service. We are allowed to set this rate to ensure our debt is paid and we have sufficient reserves. So during the Prop S&W campaigns in 2009 and 2010, we told the community a debt service rate of 62.3 cents would be sufficient during the 20-year term of the bonds, and that rate remains the same at 62.3 cents. So when we talk about recoupment, we need to understand that this is a process. So it starts when a taxpayer protests their assessed value on their property from the county assessor and then they win that protest. When this happens, the district has to pay back an amount of taxes that we received on the assessed value that was reduced. So as I said on the last slide, the overall tax rate is dependent on the assessed value of the properties. So when the assessed values of these protested properties change, it in turn changes our rate. And that then is changed through a recoupment calculation. So typically the district reimburses taxpayers over $1 million a year for the payback of settled protested property taxes that are settled in favor of the property owner. But recently we've been seeing some significant fluctuations in these settlements, and I'm not quite sure if that's due to COVID or perhaps a new trend we might see moving forward because it's not a consistent trend. So for example, last year during 2020, there was not as many settlements paid back to property owners resulting in over $600,000 of additional revenue to the district. However, as you can see on this next slide During 2021, and I was hoping to have a pointer. So as you can see on the bottom row is 2021. We've seen the largest number of settlements since we began dealing with this in 2012. Already in 2021, we have paid back over two and a half million in protested tax settlements. So that 60, does that work? Yeah, yay. So that 60 million right there in assessed value change is resulted in two and a half in protested tax settlement back to the taxpayers. So this table represents changes in assessed valuation and actual revenues recouped for each respective year. And as you can see, there were significant changes in assessed value through 2012, so this column here, all the way through 2019 resulting in significant amounts of net revenue. And so that 2020 year has very little change in assessed value. So specifically looking at 2021, there's been commercial appeals at the $56 million reduced assessed value and then residential appeals at the 4.6 million. in turn, like I said, resulted in $2.5 million that we've already had to pay back. So if you recall, due to the high increase in assessed valuation back in 2019 during the Prop E campaign, the district voluntarily rolled back the tax rate 15 cents in both 19 and 20 tax levy calculations so that we would only calculate what was projected during the tax levy campaign. So just so you understand, 15 cents represents about $2 million a year to the district. that we did not collect. So Missouri statutes provide that a voluntary reduction taken in a non-reassessment year or an even numbered year like 2020 results in a reduced tax rate ceiling during the following reassessment year or an odd number year like 2021, meaning that we are required to roll back the rate in 2021 this year and we cannot remove that rollback. So because of this voluntary reduction, our ability to recoup the $2.5 million that we see on these protests is It's basically impacted by that. So as a result of that rollback, it's actually not recommended to do a recoupment to the approved tax rate due to the voluntary rollback that was taken in 2020 and how it impacts 2021. So I don't mind giving the board detail on this, on how it's impacted. But in general, if you understand the tax rate is a very complicated calculation and confusing, and this just makes it more confusing. So I have had conversations with Kim and Steve on this, and I gave them the couple of options that we have, and I think they understand the reasoning for this. But I also want to let the board know that even though we're not recouping it this year, we have worked with the state auditor to determine an alternative way to collect the funds over the next few years, which is basically not rolling back the 15 cent levy on commercial properties. So it will take us, we won't receive the funding this year and it'll probably take us at least two years to get the money back, but there is a way to do it in the future. So our nice gesture of rolling back the tax rate is implicating our decisions as we try to deal with these appeals moving forward. And we can also just eliminate the rollback on commercial and still give it to the residential because most of our protests are in commercial, and that's where most of our significant funds are lost. So it really doesn't impact the residential taxpayers at all. And as always, I will run any possible scenario when calculating the tax rate to see if there is a potential recoupment that we could do and then have a discussion with board members on that. So before I move forward, I want to just ask if there's any questions on what I've said.

Not just a question, but Joe, we discussed this last year about rolling back. We were both going at it a little bit about whether we should roll back, and we did, and this is the result of that, right? But what we're saying now is that we're not going to roll it back commercially anymore because it kind of doesn't really make sense to do that.

Potentially,

yes. And so we're also looking at this at a snapshot in time each time it happens. Right. We're not looking at like a five-year... run, which then it looks like it balances out anyways. But the hassle of having to roll back, recoup, recoup, roll back is pretty tedious and a waste of time, I'm assuming, right? Essentially, right? Yeah, I mean...

Right.

Right. Yeah. Right.

even to funnel down further to non-taxable commercial entities that then become taxable, is what is affecting our decision to roll back on the residential side. Oh, thank you. Um, and, and so it truly is kind of an unintended consequence. Um, but there are a number of different things that we're looking at pursuing and you're right. It has to do with kind of holistically looking at the statute. We actually had a meeting with Mary Jo with the state auditor. He was a state auditor, right? The county assessor. And we read the statute. He read the statute. We provided our interpretation of the statute. The statute itself is silent to either interpretation. And so that's where we are in terms of trying to figure out how to move forward. But there is meaningful tax money, we believe, that can be recouped on the commercial side. Mm-hmm. that doesn't affect our families from a residential tax payer standpoint, which is what I want to emphasize. Yeah,

and that's what I understand and that I agree with. But I do mean like how we look at this annually and then having to run back and go through the gamut of trying to get the money back, the process.

Yeah. It

can be time-consuming.

It is. But

is there a way to look at it differently? Is there a way to interpret this information by looking at it three to five years over time? No. I guess the ebb and flow, which shows you at the end of the five years, this is where we are. We're even. Yeah.

Unfortunately, no. Uncle Sam collects every year whether we want him to or not. Each one is really a snapshot. I mean, and that's part of the reason why I run multiple scenarios. I actually presented four different scenarios of options that we had to them because if you only look at the one and you're not looking at how it does impact you moving forward you know this in this we could be trued up this year but it it makes us lose money losing moving forward which that's annual every year so you know you're gaining 1.2 million dollar this year but you're losing 1.2 every year moving forward so it's a much better decision to waive the 1.2 million that we could collect this year and try to get it over the next two years because we're going to keep the 1.2, you know, every year moving forward. So as I said, it's confusing. I sat down with them, and we had probably, what, over an hour-long meeting discussing it.

No, it is confusing because it was confusing last year. And then even after that tutorial that we went through, it's still, when I read it for the first time this time, I was like, no, what did I do? You know what I'm saying? I was almost against it, and I was like, oh, okay, I got it. Yeah. All right, cool. I appreciate that. And it's just one

of those things where people think you can just always recoup, and every recoupment is not an assumed recoupment. You have to look at it and make a decision based on... Well, and there

are some properties that we should... It should be... I don't think it's gray, and neither does Mary Jo, where we should be getting a tax collection. These are not residential properties, and that's the stuff that really we should be focused on.

We're trying to get the county to work with us more on some of these decisions that are causing these issues. Yeah, I think I know what

properties you're talking about. Gotcha, okay. And does this affect business at all? Businesses coming to Clayton, setting up shop, knowing that we're... It's

mostly developers. Yeah. Property, commercial property

developers. Right, so could that affect business in the long run? I'm just asking. I mean, have you thought that through?

Yeah, I don't think so.

All right, thanks. Appreciate it. Good job, Steve, Kim. Go ahead,

Steve.

So at that meeting we talked about discussing with our attorney of taking the county assessor up on his suggestion about suing him. And did you have that conversation?

We were waiting for some additional information from the county, which I did finally get. And so I would like to meet with you guys again to kind of talk about it. I'm actually trying to get some clarification because I'm confused with it. It wasn't what I was expecting. So I'm trying to ask a couple other districts if they're

understanding. an employee from the county would suggest that the school district sue him? Yeah, I don't think any of us were.

It wasn't actually that, but the information we requested didn't, it was by no way what I was expecting.

Well, it would be a friendly lawsuit to get a judge to have a final interpretation of that law that I was talking about, which is silent to the details of whether or not a property should be on the tax roll for assessment.

Yeah.

So on the, you know, there's one interpretation that says no because it doesn't speak to it, and the other is, well, if it doesn't, it doesn't mean that it shouldn't be. How do you have a non-taxable property that clearly it's a taxable entity? So that would be why, you know, that would be the rationale for a suit because then a judge would read it. If we thought we could win. If we thought which, yeah.

So I just want to go back to just make sure it's clear for everybody from last year. For Prop E, we raised over $7 million of funds from our community, from businesses and residents. And then because of the way it worked, because of the increase in assessed value, and we could collect on that also. We could have actually got a $2 million windfall. So I just want to remind everybody, I think we did the right thing, which was to say to the community, you know what? You gave us $7 million, right? Seven plus million dollars in an increase. And that's why we roll back that 15 cents. I know it's created complications, and I'm sorry for that, and thank you for working through those. But I will say that I do think it was the right thing to roll that back because it would have been perceived to the community as double dipping. Right. So I just want to say that out loud.

And we've been dealing with the paybacks and everything. So this is the largest payback we've ever had, but it's not something we're not used to dealing with. So we'll deal with it and we'll keep going.

No question for you on the double dividend. So, so, but in the, we're going to need some more money, you know, based on how school districts operate and taxes operate, we're going down the line. Could be five, could be seven years, right? What was the pro forma that you put together? How many years are we looking at before we think we might need some money?

Basically, I had told the board that I could pretty much guarantee five years. And the reason that I had only said five were like on the last one we had said 10 was because of that commercial assessed value change. So if we would actually take this recoupment, it actually puts our commercial at its ceiling, the highest it can go. So because we're not doing that, it's not actually at its ceiling. But commercial is very close to the ceiling, which means we will max out on the revenue we can get and we won't be able to get any additional. Even if assessed value goes up, we will not get any additional funding for it. So once we hit that, which we are just floating right by it right now, then we will kind of see. But I just don't – I can't predict when that's going to hit because assessed value is just all over the place. But we just – we're monitoring it and we're watching for it.

Because I was just thinking like when you have the money, you kind of keep the money. You don't give it back. It's kind of a long-running business. Like if you get the money, you take care of that money. Steve, you disagree. We're in business. So that's why I'm thinking. That was my notion last year that we're going to need it in the future anyways. We're not really double dipping. I mean, I get what Joe's saying though. It changed a little bit, right? So why not give back? I'm just saying, I just want to make sure. Is it better to keep it or not? So if you think it's not better to keep it, then we'll go with that. But that is my

question. I think we're keeping an adequate reserve. If you look at the chart that Mary Jo has at the end of this,

we are building the fund balance. So we are building, in essence, what you're requesting, which is a rainy day fund.

You did ask a question two meetings ago, which I thought was a great question, which was about... Can we take some money and put it into some kind of financial tool? Yeah, we can't. I know, and that's unfortunate because if we could. I

know.

All right, I'll let it go. We're getting our

awesome half a percent, and we're excited about it. All right, so since this was a reassessment year and there was a significant change in assessed value, this chart shows those changes. So please keep in mind that although that commercial shows a decrease of $3 million, those protested taxes actually means that commercial went up $56 million. And so overall, if we wouldn't have had those protested taxes, we would have actually had a little over an 8% increase in assessed value, which is pretty typical for us on a reassessment year. But we just had some pretty significant protests, which gave us a 3.5% increase in assessed So this is a further breakdown, and so as I previously mentioned, the reassessment was the key. That was 39 million of the changes in assessed value. We had some significant personal property increases, which we don't receive the details, so I'm not quite sure what, I don't know if that was from Centene coming online or something like that. And then the construction, the new construction as you can see, that's just typical homes and improvements. There were no new developments that came on this year. So we'll be looking next year for the hotel that's across the street basically off of Forsyth and then the larger building that's coming on. Those are in the projections for next year and you'll see that increase in the revenue. So as I previously mentioned, the operating rate is inversely related to the property values. So we saw the largest increase in assessed value with the residential properties. Therefore, that rate is rolling back 11.5 cents. And then commercial, since they had a drop in assessed value, their rate's going up slightly, a little over 3 cents. And so personal property is at that ceiling, kind of like I mentioned with the commercial. So that's why that's not changing, and we kind of maxed out on what we can get on the personal rate. This slide represents the proposed rates by fund. And so as you can see, the capital fund is the only fund that's increasing, which is primarily due to the capital projects we've been working on. And part of Prop E's discussion was that we were going to do some capital improvements that we've been wanting to do that we didn't want to finance. And so we're still building that fund in order to do some of these projects. So even though the rates in the general and the special are decreasing, they are sufficient to cover expenses and maintain the strong fund balance in those two funds. So budget revenues for 2021-22 were based on assumptions that included a 1.4 CPI growth, which is what we received this year, due to an increase in assessed value. It was based on historical five-year average for normal new construction, and we knew new developments were coming on, and it included that $0.15 rollback. So the revenue from new construction was approximately $84,000, and overall we anticipate the tax rate to generate approximately $50 million which was 232,000 over budget because basically it was due to the increase in personal property set values. We did get a little increase on that. The projections have been updated based on the changes in tax revenue as I had described. So you can see we flattened out because we're going to be losing that $2.5 million this year, but then this bump is basically showing – I don't normally include recoupment and projections because I don't know, but this is different. We already know we're not going to most likely roll back that tax rate, and so I put about a million dollars each year coming back into the fund balance on those two years. So that puts the line about where it was, this fund balance line. Even though it dips, it's coming back up because we'll get the money back. So any other questions? Yes, Steve. I

have a question about the debt service rate. So you indicated that that is not affected by the change in assessed value. So does that mean... we do we pay bonds off faster or we just accumulate the debt service fund balance

you would build up the debt service fund so when we first um did the rates back in 09 that was prior to the recession and so initially with the several years of recession that we had we did not have a fund balance that was projecting to be able to pay off the bonds they thought we would be short about three years um however due to the increase in assessed value we we built that up so we did restructure a bond issue uh back in 2019 and we We cut a year off of the payment cycle, so they all expire in 2029 instead of 2030. But they are telling me that with the continued assessed value growth that we will be probably by 2027 be able to roll back the rate even more, that we won't be able to set it at the 62 cents, that it will actually. Right now we are rolling back the rate a couple pennies. We could set it at 68 cents, I think, or something like that. And we're setting it at 62. But by 2027, we'll probably only be able to set it, say, at 60 cents or something like that So the board will have to make a decision. Would we want to do another master plan study? Would we want to look at doing some bond funding or capital plans or something to keep the rate flat would be like a no tax increase bond issue or something like that? So we have a couple of years to make that decision. But I think it's something we need to be looking at. Are

there any other questions? OK, Stacy, do you want to go ahead and read the motion?

I move that the Board of Education adopt the tax rates by category as presented with the blended tax rate for 2021 in the amount of... Is that... Dollars, right? Okay. Sorry. It's blurry on here. Okay. $4... $4.3534, that includes a 15 cent voluntary rollback to be distributed with a special revenue fund rate of $2.3321, general fund rate of $1.1483, capital projects rate of 25 cents, and debt service fund rate of .6230 cents. okay sorry all

right

it has been moved and seconded are there any further questions okay all in favor motion passes Okay, so we're on number five now, so I guess we need to just adjourn the tax rate hearing.

I move that the tax rate hearing is adjourned and the Board of Education will enter into the business meeting portion of the agenda. Okay.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Great. All right, so I think now we are going to turn it over to Dr. Patel. for recognizing

our own. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. So tonight we're going to start off as we approach the month of October. October is designated as the Disability History and Awareness Month. So we have some amazing students and parents here that are going to be part of the recognition. And you should be able to see them on our screen behind us, I believe. And Dr. Wiens is here as our assistant superintendent of student services who will read to us and the board part of the proclamation and do the introductions of our students and our parents that are joining us today. So welcome students and parents.

all right good evening everyone we see a lot of friendly faces in our zoom meeting here and before we get into our proclamation i just wanted to invite some of our special guests to introduce themselves um so if you could just state your name and which building you are associated with in the school district of clayton that would be great so we're going to start with the bradford family that's

you

what's your name conrad So

welcome.

Great. Welcome. And then I'd also like to introduce the Crow family.

Hi, I'm Jenny Crow and this is my daughter. Can you tell them your name? This is Maggie and she goes to Y down.

Welcome Maggie. And then I also like to introduce Kirby.

Hi, I'm Kirby Miller and I'm in my junior year at Clayton High School.

Welcome Kirby, and I also wanted to introduce Melissa Logan.

Hi, Melissa Logan, Director of Special Education.

And the families who are joining us tonight are also involved with PAC ED. And so I thank them for their preparation for this evening. So we're going to go ahead and read this evening's proclamation, and we're going to do some shared reading together. And so I will start us off. So Disability History and Awareness Month is in October 2021. The month of October, in accordance with Missouri House Bill 555, has been designated as Disabilities History and Awareness month in the state of Missouri. This legislation encourages schools to provide instruction and activities to expand student and community knowledge, understanding and awareness of individuals with disabilities, the history of disability, and the disability rights movement. Does the Bradford family want to unmute?

Where as approximately one out of every five American is a person with a disability. Where as? Where as?

Disability. Disability. They, natural,

are their life. That's right. Whereas the Americans 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 the 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 in the disability rights movement through school curriculum, school assemblies, and other school activities.

Whereas as citizens we should recognize the value and intersectionality of the disability experience in our schools and communities and the important role it plays in our rich diversity, Recognize the barriers presented to those with disabilities and the negative impact they have on both individuals with disabilities as well as our communities. Recognize that equitable experiences in full inclusion for individuals with disabilities is a matter of social justice, thus creating equitable inclusive environments is a shared community responsibility. And whereas, as citizens, we should advocate for policies and practices that create and support systems that are truly inclusive and equitable for all, especially those with disabilities in all aspects of life. So now, therefore, be it resolved by the School District of Clayton Board of Education, Clayton, Missouri, that the board urges our schools to provide intensive instruction and activities to expand knowledge, understanding, and awareness of individuals with disabilities, the history of disability, and the disability rights movement in courtesy. institutions to conduct and promote educational activities on those subjects. Thank you to our families and to our students and to Melissa Logan for joining us this evening. You guys did a great job.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Dr. Wiens. Thank you, parents and students. And now I believe for our next group, we should be having some others join us. I think we're doing a transition. So for our next recognizing our own, we actually have a junior from Clayton High School. His name is Graham. And I want to make sure I pronounce your last name correctly. It's Zucker. And he's going to be joining us with two of his coaches, head coach Mr. I want to make I get that right, Mr. Robert Locks and Mr. Darien Williams. And I thought it would be wonderful to recognize Graham today. He broke a 33-year record at Clayton High School for the 100-meter backstroke. And he actually, this is what I found out also, that this is his third swim record that he's breaking for Clayton High School. So we thought that we would really recognize him because a lot of learning definitely happens in the classroom, but you learn a lot also outside the classroom. So Graham and his coaches are here, and I'm going to hand it off to you, Mr. Locks, if you'd like to add anything else.

No, please. Thanks for having us. We're really excited to be here to celebrate Graham's accomplishments. Graham had already earned his place on the record board his freshman year by earning three relay records, but since then he's continued to train hard year-round with CST, which is a local Olympic development swim team, and often he trains twice a day. Graham's consistently trying to learn more about swimming mechanics, and he works hard to be the best swimmer he can be. He consistently displays a mature... balance of pride in his performances while always looking to find ways to continue to improve. The way he approaches his work and celebrates others' achievements makes him an actual leader, and he's a great asset to our team. We look forward to his many achievements. Graham, congratulations. Thank you.

And Mr. Williams, I didn't know if you wanted to add anything.

So just to throw in there kind of what Coach Locke said Graham is not only just an individual swimmer, he's a team swimmer as well. So he consistently cheers on other athletes in the pool and tells them good job even after a tough race. So Graham, I can't say it any better than Coach Locke did. So congratulations, Graham. Keep it up. Thank you.

Graham, congratulations on behalf of the administration and the Board of Education. And I did not know if you wanted to say a few things as well.

I don't know. I don't really have anything to say. I mean, I guess I'm proud of myself, but a lot more to come still. A lot of season ahead of us in state in a month or so, and hopefully I'll do well there. So just the beginning.

Graham, we're excited to see you at the next Olympics.

I don't know about that, but thank you.

You never know,

Graham. You never know. Congratulations. Congratulations. Thanks so

much for having us.

And thank you, coaches, as well, for all the support you provide for Graham. Thank you. Take care.

Thanks.

Goodbye.

All right, so that was great. I'm really excited that we did that proclamation for Disability Awareness Month and wow, what an incredible athlete we have here at Clayton. We are lucky to have all those kids with us tonight. Dr. Patel, you wanna go into your superintendent communications?

Yes, we will do that. So a few things I wanted to touch base on, obviously the community and the board knows that, but I wanted to make sure since this was our first board meeting after the announcement that we officially do recognize Wydown Middle School for being recognized as a National Blue Ribbon School. That's a very, very high achieving school and it was recognized by the state of education. the National Award. So I'm very proud of all the staff there for all the work that they did, and especially during a pandemic. So definitely want to give them a huge congratulations on that. And then it seemed like we've been spending a lot of time at Y-Down Middle School recently. In addition to being recognized as a National Blue Ribbon School, one of their teachers was outstanding, Mr. Dave Powers, who teaches math over there, was one of the recipients of the Emerson Teaching in Excellence Award, which is an award recognition given to educators from kindergarten all the way through college, and about 100 educators get this recognition. So we have colleagues nominate each other, and then there's a committee that's put together from previous Emerson Award winners who then select this. And so Mr. Dave Powers was the recipient of this, and I actually... I wanted to read one of the quotes that one of his colleagues said about him, and he said, Dave sees the whole human being, whether student or teacher. He gives everything he's got with joy and enthusiasm. In short, Dave wants the very best for his community and those around him. He's a shining example of what is imagined when people think of that teacher that changed their lives. Clayton is lucky to have him, and I couldn't agree more. In just my short tenure here, the number of interactions I've had with Mr. Powers you can just tell that he loves what he does. He loves his kids, and he's amazing at his content. So congratulations to Mr. Powers. Homecoming week, we just finished off all the festivities, and it was a success. I know Itana is going to be talking a little bit about that later on as well, but I know the students had a great time. It was great to see. Thank you to the board as well who joined us in the parade. We had a lot of fun. The football game went well. And we won. We're on a two-game winning streak, just so we know. And we play U City this week. And then according to the Clayton High School administration, the bonfire that they usually have, which is part of the tradition, that they had the largest turnout there that they've ever had in Clayton. So that was huge. So overall, I appreciated everybody following along with all the mitigating factors. I think we did it in a safe way. And all of our students and families had a good time. So that was great. And then later on today, Cameron is going to be giving an update on our strategic goal number one, which is a place for everyone. And just so you know, throughout the year we'll be giving updates. And we're going to branch it off as that's the first one that we're starting with tonight. And then later, on we'll have to grow as learners and then in head and heart. So we'll be sharing that throughout the year because that's important as well. And then let's discuss a little bit about the COVID-19 update. This is the dashboard with our current reality right now. We are from 585 total staff. As of right now, we have one total active positive case, zero staff that are in quarantine. And as far as the students, we've got two positive cases right now and 23 that are in quarantine, which is 0.09% of active cases that are positive amongst our students and staff. And the reason we wanna definitely discuss this is that we know that even though we're having homecoming and we're having our kids in school, our priority is making sure our kids come to school every single day and that they're safe. And we also know that COVID-19 is still a reality. And how are we dealing with that? And how are we putting mitigating factors in place for that? So I wanted to make sure that we share this to let you know that I do believe that what we have in place is working, and we just need to stay strong and continue to have that balance of having our kids be in school. A couple of other slides I wanted to share tonight. This is the positivity rate in St. Louis County. So if you look at that, it says right now our positivity rate is about 7.9%. and this chart shows you all so one of the good things is we now have data for over 18 months right so if you look at the bottom it's from march to october And the part that's shaded to the very right, that's the last three months of data. So you notice in July it starts picking back up and it goes all the way into the high zone, which is over 10% positivity rate. And then it starts dipping back down, which is where we're at right now. We are seeing a slight decrease of 7.9%. But what's more interesting is the next shaded area. And Chris, do you mind clicking that for me, please? The next column right there, you can compare the two. So from last year, the same three-month time slot, you can almost see the same trend in positivity rate. What you will notice that obviously this past few months is slightly higher than the last year's three months and that we could attribute that to the Delta variant with the high transmission rate. So that's just one of the interesting things that we can now almost track being over a year into it and predict. So if you look at this, it's not meant to be scary, but it's a reality, right? If you're looking at this chart, starting in October, according to last year, it starts peaking in November, drops back down, and it really peaks around November, December, January again. Now, we don't know if that's what's going to happen again this year, but if you were looking at a pattern, that's something that you could point out. So that's the positivity rate. The next slide is the transmission rate. This, again, if you look at the yellow portions of this graph, you can kind of see the pattern. Anything obviously reproduction number over one means it's spreading more than it should. If you're at one, it's stable. Anything below one is we're in a better state where it's going down. So if you look at this year, we are starting to get closer to the one mark, but it's pretty comparable to last year at the same time as well. Again, it could be the Delta variant, but we're not sure. But you can almost predict last year, October, November, December, you see the spikes again. And that's around the holidays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. And then the last one is school-aged cases. Now this, I recognize it's a bunch of lines when you look at it, right? So let's try and break it down. The first one we want to focus on is the green line. The green one is 15 to 19 age group. So the shaded area is the most recent three months. If you click it again, Chris, for me, we can compare the two. You can compare the green line for school-age cases. Last year around this month was pretty high. This year, it's around the same months, it's also high. But the thing you notice the most is the 0 to 4, 5 to 9, and 10 to 14 last year was pretty low. Right. Compared to the 15 to 19 this year, that number's gone up as a whole. That whole group has gone up again. It could be the Delta transmission. It could be. And you can couple that with not having a vaccine for the younger aged kids as well. So I share this information. obviously to make sure we're cognizant that we are still in this it is still a reality but one of the things that we can talk about is the covet night with in terms of covet 19 we have a strong mitigation plan in place and that's in consent agenda item today and it's the same that we started the school year off with which is universal masking indoors trying to social distance as much as possible when we can the hand washing, the sanitizing. All of that we have continued this year and we're adding one more thing right now which is if anyone enters the building and you're student facing like parent volunteers that come into the classroom because a lot of the elementaries want to start having maybe one or two volunteers that are consistent coming in. just having a proof of vaccination. If you don't have the proof of vaccination, we would be requiring a negative COVID test. So that communication will be going out and that's part of our mitigation plan. It's just adding one more layer, right? As many protective layers we can, we're gonna do that. And then we're also exploring that for the staff. The last time we checked our staff and we're trying to gather that proof now in terms of showing us your vaccination card is that we had 90% of our staff report through a survey if they were vaccinated or not, and of the 90%, 97% were. So now we're just trying to make sure that is accurate, and then we're going to ask, you know, we're exploring how do we get them to either be vaccinated or go through a weekly test. to just do a 48-hour negative test and you come to work. So that, we're still kind of working out some of that and we'll be bringing that to the board, hopefully at the next board meeting to go through that. So with all that, we're going to continue to monitor and adjust as needed our plan, but I just want everyone to know that we're staying strong and we're going to take it quarter by quarter. So as we approach the end of first quarter, we're going start making plans for second quarter and we're going try and remain tight I want to thank the parents for their patience as we go through this because I know that we want to get back to as normal as possible. There's some things we just have to be a little conservative on for right now, you know. So thank you for all the patience through that. And now I'm going to hand it off to our student board rep, Aitana.

This is exciting because I'm going to show pictures today. Yes, you are. Okay, so yeah, we'll start off. So the past week, I think it was during our homecoming week, the All In Coalition had a donation drive where they were collecting items through the Little Bit Foundation, which is focused on breaking down barriers to learning. So I believe they focus a lot on getting students who are in poverty and helping them to get the best access to any education that they can have So basically, they were out there in the cafeteria over the past week. That's some of our students. And then those are the students who are involved in the ON Coalition. And yeah, they were doing this right next to where all the homecoming tickets stuff and stuff were being sold, which I think was a great way to really raise awareness for it all. OK, and then we had Spirit Week and homecoming and all of that. I think it was a really fun week. We had a lot of hallways decorated. The cafeteria had a lot of great decorations, which I believe was because of the seniors. Our theme was lights, camera, homecoming, so a lot of movie-type decorations. And then for our different theme days, we had PJs, country versus country club, class colors, movie characters, and Greyhound pride. And it wasn't just at the high school. We also had theme days at the middle school and all the elementary schools. And so at the middle school, I know that they had a Decades Day and a Fall Harvest Day. And then elementary school, they had Crazy Hat and Crazy Soft Day, which I was a bit jealous of. And then you can see in the bottom right is one of the junior signs. I just wanted to show that because I'm a junior, and I think it's pretty good. And then we had all our homecoming festivities, so starting with the class games and the bonfire on Friday night. The bonfire, yeah, it was pretty great. There were a lot of students, a lot of people that I hadn't seen in a while, which is good to see. It was very hot at one point, Love burning my face a bit, but that might have been just because I was too close. And we also had one of the Clayton High School student bands performing there for about an hour. It's a band called By Her Candy. I think you can find them on Instagram. So it was pretty great to see them performing there. Then Saturday morning we had the parade that started here at school and went to Gay Field. And we had different floats from different sports teams and all the different classes. And the band led the whole way there and then stayed throughout the whole game and played a lot of the time which was pretty impressive so congratulations to them. Then we had the actual homecoming game, which was a bit of a nail-biter because, I'm going to be a little honest, we weren't looking too good in the first half or so. But then we came back in the second half, especially that last quarter, and we ended up beating Principia at our homecoming game. And the class of 2022 got the Golden Greyhound this year, so congratulations to the seniors. I think that's it for Homecoming. Oh, and of course the dance, which happened in the cafeteria, the gym, and outside in the quad. It was a lot of fun. I think they also had a pretty big turnout there. even though apparently the sprinkler system decided to go off halfway through. It was just, I don't know, I think it was a good idea with the separation. Even though it was a bit more sparse than usual, it seemed that all students were able to distance themselves and we were able to keep it safe. So now with the more boring stuff, we've had a lot of – I've heard a lot of opinions lately on the new grading system. So I'm going to – I've been working with Dr. Wachowski, and we're going to make some sort of – Google form to see what a lot of students think about this new system because I've heard a lot of students say they feel very anxious about it because they think that their grade only depends on their specific test grades and they say they're not very good test takers. And I've also heard about some students who think they're completely indifferent to it because They think that as long as these tests are good markers of progress, then it shouldn't really impact their grade. So I'm hoping that by the next meeting I can have some sort of update as to what students think about the new system and hopefully we can kind of clear up what exactly the new system is. And then we are still working on expanding our district advisory council. So for the high school, we have all of our applications in, and then we're setting up some interviews to find out who exactly is going to be in the council, and that should also be done within the next week or so. And we also have been making a council both at middle school and at Captain Elementary School. We decided to just stick with Captain for at least these first few months or so just as kind of a test run because we haven't really had an advisory council at all. one of the elementary schools before. So yeah, and we did a system where students were made aware of the council and then they could go up to their teachers and ask to be involved with it which is different from what we did last year where we had a sort of like teacher nomination system. And we had a pretty good turnout so I know we had I think 15 students at Widown and 15 students at Captain that were all interested in joining the council. So soon we're gonna start meeting with them once we can figure out different times and dates. And then lastly, I just wanted to say on behalf of all students that we would like to thank our custodial staff because I believe this Saturday is Custodian Appreciation Day. They really do a lot for us and they help to keep our school safe and clean. And something that I've noticed a lot lately, and I'm guilty of it myself, especially like during the lunch hour, we aren't the best at cleaning up after ourselves sometimes. So I'm hoping that we can work together as a student body and we can motivate each other to clean up and do some of the work that we should be able to do, like throwing away your trash to make the custodian's life easier. So I think that's something that we are going to try and work on over the past or the next couple of months. Yeah. Thank you.

That sounds like a very good plan. Thank you for that update. It was great. So we are going to talk about our audit tonight. That's study item number 10, and I believe Mary Jo and our fine auditor is going to give us some information.

Good evening. My name is Brian Wirtz. I'm a partner with Krobrac and Breckel, and we're the independent auditors for the district. And I've been asked just to kind of give an overview of our upcoming audit, what we plan to do, and some of the procedures that we're going to perform. If you look at our engagement letter, the first couple paragraphs sort of describes what each other's responsibilities are when it comes to an audit. And so when we do an audit, it's performed in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards, governmental auditing standards and uniform guidance which is related to federal program testing. So the next bullet is the management's responsibility as it relates to a financial statement. It's management's responsibility to prepare the financial statements in accordance with the basis of accounting they are selecting, which is the accrual basis of accounting for the government-wide financial statements. And for the fund financial statements, they're presented on the modified accrual basis It's also management's responsibility to maintain an internal control structure to safeguard the district's assets and to make sure that the financial statements are free of a material misstatement, whether it's due to fraud or error. So if you're having us perform this audit thinking we, if there's a misstatement in the financial statements, oh, we'll find it as a result of our audit, We are no longer independent because we've now become a part of your internal control structure. So you can't get an audit and rely on your auditors to find errors or irregularities in the financial statements. It's our responsibility then to basically audit the financial statements and determine and give an opinion on their fair presentation. When we plan an audit, every audit as it relates to internal controls, there are two things that we have to assume in every audit that's a risk. One is improper revenue recognition and the other one is management override of controls. So in this audit, we can confirm a significant amount of the revenue. So that sort of goes away because when you're doing an audit, the best audit evidence you can get is a third party telling you what the number should be, and that's what a confirmation does. can confirm the tax revenues, we can confirm a lot of the state revenues and we can also confirm all the monies that come from DESE whether they be state or federal. So we get a lot of third party confirmations on those revenues. So then the other risk is management override of controls. So when we plan our audit We, as it relates to the internal controls, we will get an understanding of the internal controls. We may test internal controls if we think it's necessary, but we never give an opinion on the internal control structures of an entity. That's outside the scope of an audit. Also review or determine the audit procedures to perform. It's all professional judgment. We determine where we think there are risks in the financial statements, that there could be a material misstatement. We then formulate audit procedures to address those risks and make sure that everything is going as we would suspect it's going. And so every audit is planned different. There are different risks in every audit. And so the procedures are always different. The other thing that we're required to do is have a procedure of unpredictability. So that's a procedure that we may do once every three years. We may do it once every 10 years. It's something that as you get an audit, you know the auditors are going to look at 80% of the things you're going to know. And so every audit has to have an element of unpredictability where we're going to be like, oh, well, you guys never asked for that before. And it's like, yeah, because we just decided that this is the procedure we want to do as it relates to unpredictability. So when we do the reviews of the internal control, we get memos from management as to how the internal controls work as it relates to the payroll cycle, the cash receipt cycle, the cash disbursement cycle and the financial reporting cycle. and then we will do walkthroughs to determine that those procedures are working as they have been described to us. So we'll maybe take five things that we think are significant internal control items in those structures, test those five items, but we're only doing a couple transactions unless we're actually testing the internal controls. which we do sometimes as it relates to federal programs, but we also will test internal controls as they relate to expenditures and payroll because those are the significant expenses of the district. So what the auditing standards will allow you to do is basically say you can look at X number of payroll transactions or expenditure transactions And if you find one error in that sample, then you have to go up to the next layer. You have to look at more. If you find another error, then you get to go to the next level. But if you find another error then you're basically like the internal controls are not working and you can't rely on them. And those are just mathematical formulas of how all that works as to the number of transactions that you have to look at. The other part of the audit that we are required to do is it relates to the Schedule of Selected Statistics, which is the budgetary and disbursement procedures and the accurate disclosure of attendance records. So on the budget side, those procedures are performed in accordance with attestation standards established by the AICPA. But in those procedures, so like we'll look at the originally adopted budget, look at all the resolutions and roll that forward and make sure that that total equals the budgeted numbers that are given to us by management. From an attendance standpoint, we will review the attendance procedures like we would if it's a cash receipt or a cash disbursement. So if every school does it differently, we'll get a memo on how each school does it to get an understanding of how each school does We perform a lot of analytical procedures. So we'll take membership data for the two count periods and look at what the percentage of attendance is as it relates to those numbers, look at it as it related to prior years. It's sort of odd, but maybe you don't think it's odd, but you'll see like percentages by school will be pretty consistent from year to year. And as you go up the ladder, the attendance gets worse. As you get to the high school, the attendance is worse than it is for kindergartners. So we kind of look at that to make sure that it makes sense from year to year. We do computations to make sure by looking at the calendar and determined that no student can have more attendance hours than what the counter even says. So we do a test of that just to make sure that we're not overreporting our attendance. And we recompute the ADA and look at that from year to year as well to make sure it seems reasonable and comparable to prior year. I talked a little bit about the internal controls as they relate to federal programs. So if we're doing an internal control test as it relates to a federal program, we'll also look at the procurement part of it, the processing of the disbursements and the processing of payroll, which I talked a little about. That's just basically doing an expenditure test. Um, our audit planning is sc it was done, um, early mid July the 15th and 16th. We plan on coming out in November for two weeks, which is about what we do every year. And then we always present at the December 15th board of education meeting. There are some new standards that are effective for 2021 and 2022. I wasn't going to go into detail on these things. We do have discussions with management as they may need help implementing those standards, so we might help them with that, but we're not relied upon to make sure that these standards are implemented correctly. We can help do things. before we come out to do the audit. But if we do the audit and it's wrong, then it could be an internal control problem. There are three types of internal control issues that we would may or may not report to management or to the board. So an advisory comment is a minor internal control weakness that we would just probably report to management. And then there's a control deficiency, which is a little bit more of a weakness in the internal controls that would be reported to management and the board. And then a control deficiency that's a significant material weakness, which is basically defined that the control is so weak that it's more than likely that a material misstatement in the financial state would exist and go undetected. So obviously we would have to report that to management as well. I think that's it. Any questions? Just to make sure I understood,

You guys do not provide recommendations to improve internal controls. You just assess internal controls, and then to the extent that you find any type of material weakness or control deficiencies, you flag those, and we would hear about those. We might not hear about some of the lesser advisory things, but you don't make recommendations.

No, if there's a weakness in the internal control, it's basically reported that it's a four or five step process. It says this is the weakness that we found. This is our recommendation of how we would strengthen the internal control. And then this is management's response to that weakness and how they're going to correct it. And then the next one is who's responsible for it and what's the timeline for getting it implemented.

great that's great that's consistent with my understanding experience with auditors and in my outside life outside of the board and then you are doing reconciliations of financial and operating information through your expenditure testings and all of that type of thing and it sounds like you are monitoring compliance with industry standards and laws based on you know based on whatever the state requires are you investigating instances of any possible fraud that you find

So basically, as it relates to fraud, we're not required to develop audit procedures to look for fraud. But what we are required to do is have conversations with management and employees of the district as to do they have any knowledge of fraud? If they did, who would they report it to? And how would they report those things? And then at that point, we have to develop procedures to determine that there isn't any fraud. But if we go through or if we're doing a procedure, let's say it's a payroll test and we're like, well, there's something wrong here. And then we look at three more and they're like, well there's something wrong. We will then make sure that it's not fraud. We'll expand our tests to make sure that it is not. But we're just not required to develop tests to find it.

And the fraud questioning that they do, they normally pick different people. So it's not always the same people. Yeah,

we're required to pick different people within the district on that part of

it. And then these new standards that you put up at the end, are those at all related to like the 842 lease standards that we see in public?

That's the one that's coming up in 2022, and that thing's been delayed for years. They've been messing with that thing. Basically what it's going to do is get rid of operating leases. Everything's going to be a capital lease unless it's under 12 months is basically what's going to happen.

How are we treating leases today? The only lease we technically have is our certificates of participation. That's kind of considered a lease. But other than that, we don't have any leases. Oh, well, that's good. Yes.

The other thing I'd like to add, I kind of missed on, but when we're planning the audit, we are required to compute materiality levels. And so it kind of gets broken down in that this is clearly material. This is sort of the next level that if we have eight things underneath, like in there, we have to make sure that those eight don't all go in the same way and now we've got a material problem and stuff that is clearly immaterial.

We also, you also do it by fund and by district. So there's multiple materials.

Right. But the point I want to make is just from an auditing perspective WHEN YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT TAXPAYERS, $5,000, IF SOMEBODY STOLE $5,000 THAT'S A LOT OF MONEY. HOW COULD YOU NOT CATCH THAT? BUT $5,000 IS CLEARLY IMMATERIAL FROM AN AUDIT PERSPECTIVE. SO JUST SO EVERYBODY UNDERSTANDS THAT, THAT AUDITS ARE UP HERE, NOT GETTING INTO THE DIRTY DETAILS. LIKE A STATE AUDIT, THEY'LL LOOK AT EVERY TRANSACTION BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE TIME AND THAT'S JUST WHAT THEY DO. THEY'RE UNDER DIFFERENT STANDARDS THAN WE ARE. I think that's important for everybody to understand. And those materials, they're probably 100 grand or

something. You did mention earlier that if there's an error you don't, that's not what you're concerned with. That's the first thing I think you mentioned. If there's an accounting error, you won't necessarily point that out, right? Is that what you said?

Well, it depends. It depends on the significance of it and if it's an error. The thing that we have to look at from an internal control standpoint is you may have a weakness in the internal controls and your financial statements are still not materially misstated. They're still in accordance with GAAP. But from an audit perspective, we're just sort of like, well, did you just get lucky? Because the weakness is there that could allow for it. And we would still have to make you aware of that, even though it didn't change the financial statements at all. So for example, if you said, we need duplicate signatures on every check over $1,000, and we saw 10 of them that weren't, we'd probably be like, look, The PO existed. It was properly approved, but you had 10 checks that weren't dual signed like your documents said they should be, and we would make you aware of that.

I'll make sure I understood. Thanks.

I have just a quick question for you. First, thank you for being here tonight. Um, so my understanding of this is that, you know, we have all sorts of obligations, um, that are related to, um, we have to comply with all types of state and federal laws. Um, and I, I did look through your engagement letter. I'm wondering if anywhere in there that I know that there's certain state and federal laws and the code of the state code that five, uh, CSR 30 dash. for, I think it is, that you guys have to comply with as auditors. And I'm wondering if that's anywhere in your engagement letter that you guys conduct your audit and compliance with that? I'm not sure what that is. CSR

34. It's the

Code of State Regulations. It's just, I think it's actually referenced in the Missouri statute and it sets forth all of the audit policy requirements.

I'm sorry if I'm catching you off guard. Audit policies, we don't really audit policies. What we would audit is if you... No,

no, it's not policy. It's just like the requirements for when you're auditing a school district, it's the requirements that the auditors have to... COMPLY

WITH? WE ADHERE TO ANY REQUIREMENTS IMPOSED ON US BY THE GOVERNMENT ON THESE STANDARDS OR BY DESE. THAT'S WHY WE HAVE THESE EXTRA EXPENDITURES AS THEY RELATE TO ATTENDANCE AND TRANSPORTATION BECAUSE WE AUDIT SOME ILLINOIS SCHOOL DISTRICTS AND WE'RE NOT REQUIRED TO AUDIT THEIR ATTENDANTS AND TRANSPORTION BECAUSE IT'S NOT REQUIRE BY ISBE WHERE IT IS DESE. Um, but so like the budgetary requirements, as I relate to the budget, like you can't spend above your budget. You know, that's a budgetary thing that we make sure that you're in compliance with that. Um, so I'm, I'm not sure exactly what it all entails. I don't know

that. I could shoot it. I mean, I was surprised today. I was just, I don't, I, I came across it. So I was looking at the statute and then it, it, there's like four pages of requirements that the auditors have to comply with. So that's why I was like, oh, I didn't even know this existed. I mean,

it's probably everything that he said that they're following, you know, attestation standards and, you know, Gatsby and, and, um, you know, the new pronouncements and doing the things that we're supposed to be doing. And the single audit if we need it. Mary Jo, I'm going to send it to you right now. If

you look at the schedules, selected statistics, that's hard for me to say, but there's about 10 or 15 things in there that we have to, is there a bond for the treasurer? Professional

development funds.

Right. Are certain things spent the way they're supposed to be spent? You know, there's about 10 items. It's attendance, transportation. BUDGETARY, THERE'S SOME FINANCE QUESTIONS. THERE'S TWO OR THREE PAGES OF STUFF IN THERE AS IT RELATES TO THAT. I'M ASSUMING THAT'S WHAT THEY'RE MAKING REFERENCE TO.

I'M JUST GOING TO SEND IT TO MARY JO. WE CAN FOLLOW UP WITH YOU ON THAT.

I JUST DON'T KNOW THAT SPECIFIC REFERENCE. The board policy, I joke, is D-I-E, die. I think that's great for an audit. But it's not a super long policy. It's fairly short, actually.

That's how you feel when you're subjected to the audits?

I was an auditor. I always said, auditors are your friend. They're awesome. We love getting an audit. It's all the prep up to the audit. That's what we're doing now.

So I had a couple of questions relating to reporting and then sort of discretionary testing. So my understanding is that the audit, at least at a conceptual level, is a report to the board as opposed to reporting to management. Correct. Okay. So... As you were going through, and I understand in Clayton's we're in the fortunate position, on the revenue side, as you indicated, most of it is relatively easy to verify. On the expenditure side, I assume that there are, as you were outlining how you audit those, there's a kind of a range or a discretion in the, I don't know what you'd call it, the number of tests and the intensity of the tests that you make. I mean, it's a judgment call on your part. Is that... Well, not...

Not if we're testing internal controls. It's defined. Well, I'm

talking about as you're testing expenditures, for example, payroll. Is the process, because obviously a huge portion of our total expenditures are payroll. Is there discretion in how you go about... you know, testing the validity of those payroll numbers.

Yeah, I would say there's some professional judgment used. If we're going to look at – I may say we're going to 10 attributes. Another auditor could come along and say, I only need to look at five, if that's what you're asking. The attributes of the test is professional judgment. What do I think it's important? as an attribute to make sure that the internal controls are working versus what some other auditor might think?

Yes, that's what I guess I'm driving at.

So that is professional judgment. There's a lot of stuff too that we can confirm the retirement expense, for example. That's a third

party.

It's a third party, they tell us what we submitted and then we can also look at salaries of each certified, non-certified, determined from a reasonableness standpoint, does that make sense? Even though we also confirm the tax revenue, we will still compute and make sure it seems reasonable based on the assessed value that we have and the rate that we're using and the percentage of collectability that we have historically, and say, okay, well if we're collecting about 98% on the average, we think we should collect this. What did we collect? So we'll have a test where we develop our own expectation and compare it to what actually happened. And if it's significantly different, then we will reconcile why it's significantly different.

Well, I guess what I'm trying to understand is in this example we're using, if you said that maybe in your judgment you're looking at six variables and another auditor may say, well, no, we need to do 10 or whatever. Is there... Is there a way that we, the board, could be either part of or understand what the trade-off is? I'm not trying to take away your judgment. But I am concerned that, frankly, this, the audit, is the most important tool we as, frankly, as volunteers, have to make sure that the financial statements are what they say they are. And it seems like if someone in this example told us that, well, you know, we have a range of options. One option may cost a little bit more. but the trade-off would be, you know, a higher probability of, I don't know, finding discrepancies versus a lower probability. That would be something that I think the board should be engaged with. And so that really is my first kind of question. And I believe the board should be more involved in helping to kind of make those tradeoffs. And then I guess my second question really is relating to reporting. So you outlined these types of where you've identified sort of increasing levels of problems you know a small as jason was talking about small you know a posting error or something that you're not going to bring to our attention but the advisory and then a higher level do we get the reporting only when you do your final report? Or is there some sort of interim that say, hey, I discovered that example you just said. You know, we audited checks. A check over $1,000 is supposed to have two signatures. we discovered that half the checks over $1,000 have one signature. Is that something that we would... We, the board, would find out about... And so that's what I'm trying to understand and, you know, how it's going to be reported. If it's just, hey, you know, we get all the way in December and they hand us a nice report and it will be in there or do we get it? No, we found this out in September. and we need to know about it. So that's what I'm

doing. A couple things I would say is, in our opinion, we don't give absolute assurance that the financial statements are free of material misstatement, but we are required to develop procedures to bring that risk to a very low level so that it's not absolute because we don't do 100% transaction. So if I misinterpret my professional judgment didn't get that risk to a low level, that there's a material mistake, then we have a default audit. So I guess my point being is I may come up with 10 things and another auditor may come up with six, but I'll bet you five of them are the same, and those are the most important ones from an audit perspective. But

I'm not arguing that...

I'll answer a little bit about your question. So in the past, in my 20 years of being with the district, we've had... three instances of noncompliance. One, and they're all put in the audit, and none of them were to the point where it was considered like, they were material in the sense that they were put in, but they weren't material in the sense materially misstating the financial statements. So all of them were reported at the end of the audit during the audit committee meeting. Um, and like I said, they're also included in the audit as he mentioned with the five points. Um, and so, uh, you know, one of them that was about eight years ago, which was actually in the audit for about six, probably 10 years ago, it was in the audit for, about six years was we had a purchasing issue that we worked through. And then, you know, so it was a material like material, but it wasn't impacting the financial statements at all. And so and then we had just a communication and management last year that we're following up on this year. that was not reported in the audit because it wasn't considered material. So timing, if you had something that was really significant and would be materially misstating, you probably would bring it to our attention earlier. We just haven't had any of that. And so everything has been reported during the audit committee meeting before the board presentation. I think if

we thought it was significant enough, I shouldn't say if we thought, if it was significant enough we would make the board aware of it as soon as it happened. Yeah. wouldn't wait till the here's your audit and oh by the way here's this thing out of left field that you guys didn't know about i mean we would want everybody to know as soon as we possibly could let them know that

we would

reach out to the board president and have a conversation about what we found and um

i guess my concern is also is just um You know, we're talking about a material audit or just a financial audit versus what you call a controls audit, right? Because you're making sure all the controls are in place to mitigate risk, essentially, right? Risk for mistakes, risk for...

Yeah, so we are required to review and understand the internal controls as it relates to our audit to get our risk of a material misstatement down to a very low level. But we don't give an opinion on the internal controls. That's just outside the scope of an audit. And so you could have those audits, which is sort of what happened after the Enron thing, and I can't remember the stand because we don't do any public work, but Sarbanes-Oxley is basically what came about was you got to look at these controls now. So that's not what our audit is entailed to do, just by the standards we're performing it under.

Based on the Sarbanes-Oxley and the COSO standards, we have about a 28-page document that goes through all of our internal controls, ties it to our board policies, and then we have procedures that we have internally that we check, and then we add recommendations that we try to implement, and then they also get that. We call it our SAS control document that they get and they review.

Let me ask you this question. What's the cost of this?

I

mean, it

would, at that point, it really at that point becomes what we call an agreed upon procedures and basically you'd be saying look, these are the five, ten, fifteen hundred procedures we want you to do. Tell us what you did, tell us what you found and give us a recommendation and it could be I'm happy to share our

SAS document with any of you guys, with how we've audited our own internal controls.

It's more so just thinking about this is a big operation. This is a big operation and there's really no checks and balances outside of an audit and outside of you doing a great job of collecting the documents and making sure all the controls are in place and the data's in the right space. I'm just trying to, you know, it's just interesting. You know, it's, it's just, uh, just never know what could be.

We see our role as almost as an auditor. And, um, so, you know, we're constantly auditing everything that crosses, you know,

there's, there's really checks and balances and segregation of duties. Right. So one of the biggest internal control weaknesses would be somebody doing everything

in your department. Well,

no district wide, but there's

not an auditor every, at every,

No, but everything we do, we look at it through an audit lens.

It's just interesting to know that anything could happen, essentially, and you'd be on the hook for it. If

it was determined that our professional judgment was just... Not even good. It's hard to audit professional judgment, but there could be procedures that you're supposed to do in every audit that if they didn't get done, then sure, we could be on the hook for that. We go through peer review once every three years. We do internal inspections every year, which means we have an internal inspection within each office, looking at other offices' audits, looking for weaknesses. And then we have a peer review that comes in once every three years, and we are part of the government quality control department. What that means is there has to be a separate internal quality control related to our government audits to be in that program. And so they have to look at more hours of our government work to make sure that we're adhering to the governmental accounting standards and all of those things. So we get audited ourselves, and I can tell you It's changed. That peer review came about with Enron as well, and it's changing in that it used to be the norm was you would have a no comment letter, and then the AICPA started coming down on the peer reviewers saying, you're not doing your job, and the norm should really be you don't, every audit, every peer review should have a comment letter because nobody is perfect so to speak. And so that process is, I think, getting to where they wanted it to be when the Enron thing started. It used to be, in my opinion, it was sort of useless, you know, like because nobody wanted to be the bad guy. We're – I don't want to tell another CPA firm they're doing a horrible job. I mean, that's our own profession. But if

you were to compare the audit that you do here – sorry. Just got the signal from the – From the audience, thank you for the assist. If you were to compare the audit that we do here to using that analogy like the AICPA or the PCAOB audits, this is like a very kind type of AICPA audit, right? This is, I mean, does it even approximate an AICPA audit?

Through what do you mean by an AICPA? Through peek-a-boo or something?

Yeah.

No, but it's considered a high-risk engagement because of the federal funding that's related to it. And so that gets higher scrutiny within our office and higher scrutiny at the peer review level. It could also be reviewed by DESE as a desktop evaluation. We've also had other government entities audit or look at our work papers pretty regularly. in depth and came out with no findings on our part. So just to toot our own horn a little bit, we're celebrating our 90th anniversary this year. So not many CPA firms can say they can do that. And the reason is because you haven't gotten sued. So I think we're proud of the work that we do. And I don't think we, to be honest with you, I think we over audit as a firm. More than when I look at work papers of other auditors, I think we over-audit. We get into the woods way more than the standards probably need us to be. But that's just my opinion.

We know in the state there's auditors, they call them drive-by audits, and they're

there a day and they leave. Oh, sure. I mean, at the end of the day, aside from the objective testing, a lot of an auditor's work is art versus science, right? I mean, there's a fair amount of subjectivity in the interpretation of

What I would say now, it's really shifting to a risk-based approach. It's been going that way for a long time, but we just implemented, it's called Knowledge Coach, and the questionnaires that you have to fill out as it relates to each individual client, and it's not boilerplate anymore. they will tell you you spent where it used to be we'd spend, I don't know, a day planning. Now the bulk of your audit should be in planning now and determining where your risks are, developing your procedures, and it's really fine-tuning to where you think the risks are, and that's where you spend your time. Um, I would say we're still at 50, 50 between planning and, and audit because I do believe we probably spend more time in areas that we don't need to, but we just do because it makes us feel better. We can, I don't know. Um,

and you guys are, are you guys on site even during this COVID year for performing your audit work and putting together? Yeah, that's

sort of been at the client's discretion. We did interim last year

virtually, but final we did in person

and this year we've done in

person. Okay. And then is there an interim draft report kind of – or is there just a final that you guys put out?

Us? Yeah. Yeah, it's just the final report that they prepare.

We prepare the statement. Okay. We do it all.

But,

you know, you're

getting – part of the financial reporting in the good old days – If one month was going to be right on your financial statements, it was the last month. But now we have to make sure that we'll look at financial statements throughout the year and make sure that they're accurate. So what you're getting is that because we're not making audit adjustments because that would be considered a material weakness as well. If there's an audit adjustment, that tells you you didn't put out GAAP financial statements and that's a material weakness. AND SO THE INFORMATION YOU'RE GETTING MONTHLY, YOU SHOULD CONSIDER RELIABLE BECAUSE AT THE END OF THE YEAR, WE'RE NOT... I MEAN, THERE COULD BE A MONTH THAT WAS WRONG AND WE DIDN'T CATCH IT BECAUSE WE PICKED A DIFFERENT MONTH. BUT ALSO KEEP IN MIND, THROUGH THE

YEAR, WERE CASH BASIS. SO I KIND OF JOKE, WE HAVE THREE SETS OF BOOKS, SO WE DO CASH BASES ALL YEAR. AND RIGHT NOW, WE'RE WORKING ON OUR FUND, WHICH IS MODIFIED, AND THEN OUR DISTRICT-WIDE, WHICH ARE FULL ACCRUAL. SO WE HAVE AN AUDIT SOFTWARE THAT WE DO TO CONVERT ALL THAT AND CREATE THE STATEMENTS.

And your budget to actual is cash basis. It's cash basis, yeah. So in your financial statements, you have three bases of accounting. We have

three bases of account. To make things the most complicated it could possibly be. And then there's reconciliations and all those.

You're the only district that we do that's like that.

What do other districts do? Well, they report to the state on the modified accrual, and I just told the state we're not doing it because everybody else is cash basis. So our comparison to, like, Ladoo, it's easier to compare. And part of the reason why we do the full accrual basis is because it's better for our bond rating. All of the AAA-rated bond districts in the state do a full accrual statement, and so it's... It gives S&P a better comparison. Just to

be honest with you, DESE would rather be on cash basis because if you submit your SBIR on modified accrual, you have to reconcile back to cash basis for them, your revenues. You have to show your ins and outs of your receivables and get them back to a cash basis anyway.

So all the other districts that do full accrual like we do, they report to DESE on modified and we don't.

And then they have to take care of all those error messages.

Right.

And get it back to cash basis. The state

can't handle it, so they give you all kinds of errors. So what Amy said I looked at, and actually it says, this publication and entire text material which is incorporated as a portion of this rule will be unduly cumbersome and expensive. So basically what it is, it's our policy boiled down into a small thing, but it basically states that They'll do the audit in accordance with either ACFO or GAP. That will get a single audit if we need to that will report on attendance, and it basically states all the things that he's doing. But it's more the DESE's requirement, and then if they do the desk audit, they're checking all of that. So that's why we don't really – that reference wasn't for us. It's DESE's general administrative rule. So yes, we do do it all.

Okay. Does anybody else have any questions? Go ahead, Steve.

Yeah, I did just want to say one more thing. I want to thank you for the presentation. I do like the idea of having, as I told you, sort of a dual, I'm sure you have other things you'd like to do other than come here twice. But I think that that is a part of our calendar that is valuable. The board is constantly changing. And I think it is really important that the board understand, you know, what the audit is. And then I think you've articulated well what it isn't. you know, what the kind of reporting would be if you found something and what it wouldn't be. I think that should be, you know, obviously it probably wouldn't be in September, but you know. It should be in the spring.

It should be the spring because your engagement's pretty short. You start November 1st and then you have your report ready by the December board meeting. It should be before

interim which is in

June or July. Yeah, but anyway I think that that is a valuable exercise for our board and to the extent that you that there is, as I indicated, choices that you make in that decision process. I'd like to hear what kind of the options are. It won't be me, but whoever is sitting here.

Never say never, Steve.

I can say that conclusively.

So we do have an audit committee that this is normally what we do with the audit committee. And so just so you know, the audit committee includes me and Nisha, also two board members, which typically was the president and the treasurer, but I think Amy allocated that to designated that authority to Steve. And then we have two staff from my office, the director of finance and the accountant internal auditor that we have. And then we do have a community member which serves on the financial advisory committee. And that has been historically Rick Bliss and he has taken on that role again for this year. And as Steve will find, he will take an hour and a half of our meeting asking Brian every question he possibly can. He is extremely thorough. So I think it's an effective audit committee. We do go through a lot of conversation during that meeting before we present to the board.

Thank you for coming.

Happy to be here. Come every month if you want me to.

We appreciate your time. And I think we are going to move on. to our information item for the evening, which is a place for everyone. Hey, Cameron.

Good evening. How are we doing?

We're good.

Perfect. Perfect. So, again, update is a place for everyone, especially in looking at our first strategic goal within our strategic plan. We will ensure all learners regardless of their identity feel safe and valued. So the report today will mirror that goal within our strategic planning and highlighting a lot of our professional learning as well as how we're, you know, changing our hiring practices, and also looking at how we allocate our resources. So those will kind of be the three main points that we'll look into. So we can go to the next slide. So I want to start off and kind of hinge from a profile of the graduate. And as you all remember from our strategic plan process from last year, developing the profile of a graduate and what we want to see in all of our graduates who come out of the district. And from that profile of a graduate, our strategic plan was born. And that also gave birth to our equity policy as well. And I want to reference all three of those documents because I think it really shows where we stand as a district and committed to creating an individualized learning experience for each and every student. On the slide, I have the district understands that there has been some national state and local opposition in this type of work that we're doing. and having an emphasis on equity and individualization of student experience. However, the School District of Clayton remains committed to truly creating a place for everyone. And I think that's super evident. And when we look at our bullet points under our profile of a graduate, if we want our students to be self-actualized or intellectually curious and culturally competent, that means studying all facets of our history. That means looking at things from multiple perspectives. And that also means that we need to create a level of empathy, you know, for one another and understanding each other through tough conversations and through updated individualized curriculum in a curriculum that is equitable and portrays everyone's experience for people to discuss and for people to understand to not only empower our learners but for our learners to, you know, learn about one another. So, you know, there's been a lot of talk about you know, critical race theory and what that looks like in Clayton and if it will have an impact on what we do. And I'm here to say, you know, through our profile of a graduate, our strategic plan and our equity policy, which are very concrete documents, I feel like it shows where we stand on that issue and how we're committed to giving each child an equitable education. So again, like I said, our report, as I go into that now and segue from that, our report is hinging on our number one goal within our strategic plan. And if you look at the sub points on the board, a place for all learners to thrive regardless of their identity. The diversity of Clayton's teaching staff reflects the racial diversity of our students. But then also committing to an equitable anti-bias and anti-racist learning community. And where we're going from a professional learning standpoint will be a big part of what we talk about today. So that's kind of where we're hinging from that. And I really love that goal because I think it really pivots well into our educational equity policy, which we passed last June right before we commenced for the summer. Up there are a few couple points that are super important in it. How we define educational equity, which is what we strive to reach as a district and then how we define equity literacy, which is pretty much our continuous quest to continue to build capacity so that we can create Um, a place for everyone. And then on the, uh, on the bottom of that slide, it kind of gives the preamble, um, of our equity policy as well in terms of where we stand as a district and w and where we hope to be. So I think pivoting from all that, I also liked that within our educational equity policy, there's a focus and accountability section. And pretty much these are the areas that we're going to continue to monitor and work toward in order to, you know, gauge where we are as a district and given us some level of direction. So in today's report, we're going to be looking at numbers three, four, and five hiring and staffing practices, professional learning and growth, as well as distribution of resources. So I'll be giving an update on where we are as the district in each of those categories. So a lot of what you'll see from a hiring and staff practice standpoint is a lot of what we talked about at the end of last semester before concluding for the summer. You know, Dr. Arnold did an awesome job in terms of creating learning opportunities for our staff in terms of interviewing and hiring practices, analyzing our current models and systems that we have in place to make sure that they're giving every applicant an equal opportunity to be a part of the district, and then developing an implementation of a state interview process. One of the big areas of hiring, especially within you know, trying to up our minority numbers is, you know, making sure that we retain all of our staff as well. So that was a huge emphasis as well that yielded some great results and gave us some great insight on how we can improve as a district. And then we also created a diversity hiring statement too, you know, kind of to put, you know, our actions into a concrete language so that it's something that we're held accountable for. So this is just a slide, just kind of talking about our retention of our diverse faculty. We retained all of our faculty from the past school year that had a diverse background. So that was something to be proud of as well as looking at the progression of our new faculty diverse hires. We were over 50% for our diversity hires in the district and I think that is something that's super awesome that I don't think a lot of districts can say that they're able to do that regardless of their demographic. So I know we talk about these things and why they're important, and a lot of studies have shown that, especially when students are able to have a teacher that looks like them and shares their background, that it does wonders in terms of where they look to accomplish academically and socially within the educational process. So having a teacher that looks likes you really gives you a higher likelihood of scoring and doing a lot better. So in looking at this situation and us bringing in more teachers, I sat down with a few of our students and had some conversations just in terms of what their thoughts were and how they feel when they have a teacher that looks like them. So on the next slide we'll have a video.

It's always just been a positive reaction, just knowing going to a classroom and knowing that your teacher is black. It's like, oh, I'm seen. It's like a relief. You feel, you finally feel kind of at home, like you found like your safe place in the classroom. And also like it's a person for you to go talk to during lunch if you're having any issues or you just need someone to chat or have an adult perspective of what it's like to be here and claim to be black. It's really nice to talk to them.

It boosts my mood. It makes me feel more energized that I have somebody like me to teach me something, like somebody that's black and I can relate to. Yeah, I agree. It's more motivating. Yeah. To see somebody who looks like me, it's like we kind of, like, bond and stuff. Like, the art teacher, she's really nice, and she has, like, the same culture like me. It's, like, very welcoming to, like, their people or people who have the same skin color as them, and it's, like... Maybe they can relate more to the teachers and have more connections. And it's kind of like family a little bit, you know,

like home. It doesn't have to be specifically black teachers because I know the teachers that made the biggest impact were either Asian or Native American. And I think they made a huge impact knowing that there's also another minority teaching me. Not just that they may not look like me, but they understand where I'm coming from.

So we were able to have some good conversations, and I think on top of it being great for students to see someone in their own likeness, I also think it's awesome that we humanize other races of teachers. So when all of our kids see them, it's something that is normal to them. When we talk about these phenomenons or disproportionate numbers that exist, our kids can have an experience where that doesn't apply to them. So I think it's awesome, you know, for everybody. And, you know, it's been great so far this year and it's definitely seen a difference in mood and morale. So the next part we want to jump into is kind of the professional learning and growth. And I'm going to kind of start from the summer and kind of work our way up on where we're looking at really building structures and systems of professional learning, especially as it pertains to equity. So on this present slide, as you all know, we do our district summer institute, which are choice learning experiences for educators and teachers to take part in that are of interest to them in regard to them individually choosing something to help them grow within their practices. So on the first heading, we see those are all of the sessions we offered that had an equity focus so you can see kind of the wide range um of choices we had that uh you know that were pertaining to equity and kind of growing as a bar educator and then one thing i want to point out which was an awesome experience dr williams and i attended the equity exchange this summer and the equity exchange is a year-long cohort-based forum for public and private school leaders to advance their work in solidarity and community. So it's a bunch of advocates of equity within their districts or respective schools in which we came together, collaborated in some learning, and have kind of built a network. you know, with one another. I know just in terms of my jobs and my practices, I've built some relationships from the cohort and have been able to grow, you know, from others as well as hoping that others grow from me as well. So it's a good network. You know, and I've met some outstanding educators that could definitely help me grow and help us grow as a district as well. So then, and looking at professional learning, I think it's super important, you know, that from the top on down that we embody a culture of learning and growing in equity. I've been partnering and meeting with the Midwest collaborative for culturally proficient proficiency in schools. And we've been looking at professional learning on two levels. The first level is for our board of education and talking about what does professional learning look like in the realm of culturally proficient leadership. And we're, still kind of hashing out the details in terms of what learning looks like for the board and perhaps a year long asynchronous learning engagement, you know, with kind of a, kind of an online learning component as well as having individual check-ins with the leaders of the work, um, and possibly capping off with the retreat to see, you know, what this leadership look like, you know, from a culturally proficient lens, you know, form a board of education level. And then on top of that, our district leadership committee is going through, a year-long session of culturally proficient coaching. And why I think that's super important, me and Dr. Patel sat down and have had a number of conversations in terms of it's important that our leaders and our administrators are able to to coach and monitor and lead a building that is culturally proficient, which means that our cultural proficiency as leaders in the district should kind of have a pace that outpaces our teachers and educators so that we're able to be equity leaders for them and be the lead equity learners within our departments and within our buildings. So we'll be meeting monthly, having monthly sessions as a DLC committee you know, working with the Midwest Collaborative. And then also we actually kicked off our professional learning. You know, one event that has become a huge staple, you know, within our professional learning is our courageous conversations that our district has been hosting internally. And as a DLC committee, we went through culturally, I mean, we went through courageous conversations, part two. So we've developed a part two of that. And the goal was to kind of keep creating different parts so that we kind of take it to the next level, and that that learning and that growing never stops. So we're excited to get going with that, and there's a lot of excitement around that as well. Then on top of that, looking at our professional learning and growth through our strategic plan, our professional learning as a district is mirroring around the goals of our strategic plan. We had our first learning experience around those goals on September 3rd, which we started with goal two. So we're going a bit out of order. And then in January and April, we're hitting goal one and goal three, which are primarily having to do with equity and social-emotional learning. Today I met with our equity committee to start hashing out what those days look like. That includes, you know, using a big portion of our panorama data as well as engaging students and their experiences and letting that kind of be the guide of how we change and evolve our practices as educators. So I'm excited about some of the brainstorming and the work that we were able to do actually today at our meetings. And then on top of that, each building's goals in terms of their professional learning from a building level is a mirror for our strategic plan as well. So our strategic plan from a district, building, and POC level kind of has the same umbrella that it's all fallen under. Then one program that I'm super excited about, over the summer, well actually late last semester, I met and we created a, as a district, we created a partnership with McDaniel College in Maryland. And they offer a equity and excellence master's certificate to where it's a 15-hour program to where at the end of it you'll end up with a certificate in equity and excellence. And I chose this specific college because I think it offers a lot of, you know, a lot of great things that a lot of universities aren't able to offer. The first thing, it's a combination of synchronous and asynchronous learning. And the schedule was created by the members of the cohort. So it's very flexible in meeting the needs of teachers, especially with their busy schedules. Once we reach a certain number, we're able to cohort our learning. So the cohort only includes School District of Clayton educators. So there will be no other educators that are taking part in the cohort except School District of Claydon educators. In doing so, we'll be meeting with the instructors at each of the courses to specialize the instruction to have a Clayton lens. I like this particular college, especially one out of state, because especially on the East Coast and West Coast, equity work is something that has been going on for some years now. So this program is over 10 years old. So they have a lot of theories that have been tested and that they have data on that we can use in order to better our practices so we can learn from their mistakes and things that they've done. And like I said, it's a great user-friendly program just in terms of the planning and the flexibility of it. Right now we have eight educators signed up to start in October, and we're hoping that we can get another small cohort going either in January or next fall. And I think this will be awesome as well because now we will have certified equity practitioners in every building to continue working and lead that work within their respective buildings. So then the next portion of professional learning and growth is a system that we're building as a collective to really uh... create a system in a curriculum of what equity learning looks like so we're rolling out rolling this out this year uh... so if you come in if your first year teacher for example i'll walk through it if you're a first year teacher this year you'll have um... two professional learning uh... experiences each semester and the first year is more so kind of clayton equity 101 it's really looking at what equity looks like in clayton what are some of the issues that we're dealing with and working through? Also, um, what, uh, what's the language, you know, familiarizing ourselves with equity policy or strategic plan or profile of a graduate, um, and our equity language to kind of get in the groove of how we do things. Year two is going to have more of a strategies focus. So we're going to using specific strategies, um, that focus on social emotional learning and humanizing student experience. And then year three will be more so of a reflective experience in terms of creating frameworks and using those in order to gauge a student experience and taking that experience and letting that guide our educational moves and how we run our classrooms, how we run our systems with a student-centered focus. So I'm excited to get that going. So that's kind of year one through year three. Year four and year five is pretty traditional to what we've always done Um, but it will also have an equity and social emotional learning component linked to that as well. Um, and that will involve coaching, um, as well as, uh, different meetings and check-ins in order to reflect on practices. And then I'm excited about this one as well, um, for our goal implementation year two and career review teachers when their own cycle, they will have a three main opportunity, three main learning opportunities that they have to embark upon. So we'll start off kind of with an intro meeting in terms of what the learning will look like for a year. And then from October on through May, they have to engage in three learning opportunities. But kind of like I mentioned before, Courageous Conversations has been very beneficial and very effective with our staff. So we've come to the realization that it should be kind of mandated and within our curriculum for every employee to go through our Courageous Conversation part one and part two. So if an employee, for example, has not gone through Part 1, they'll go through Part 1. If they've gone through Part 1 they'll go through part 2. So that'll be one, they'll have to go to one of those and then also I've partnered with Safe Connections and we are creating a curriculum that revolves around LGBTQIA plus literacy. So there will be a class for that for them to take in terms of familiarizing our faculty with, you know, pronouns, experience, you know, proper usage and how to engage our students, you know, in understanding what their experience is like on a daily basis. And the awesome thing with these programs is that as everyone goes through them, we'll continue building upon them. So almost like, you know, we've gone through level 100, now we'll be at level 200 and 300. And so we wanted to kind of be a continuous effort to learn in those areas. And then the third option is they'll have a choice to choose from any of the options below, like the Equity Literacy Institute and EdWeb webinar series. There are tons of webinars that have been filmed, especially within the last year as they pertain to equity. So they can choose one of those webinars and host either a professional learning opportunity to share what they've learned or write a reflection and upload that to their frontline file for their evaluations. And they also have the opportunity to do the same thing with getting into book learning through belonging, through a culture of dignity. We got this as well, or two books that we've seen tremendous growth from, as well as we have our Equity Challenge website, so having an activity around that, as well as choosing your own adventure if a teacher sees something that's worthwhile that does not fall into this scope. So giving them the option on that as well. So on the next slide, I'm going to show a quick video as well. And I'm super excited to see this unfold. I think it's a perfect example through our theater department what individualized learning looks like, what having a student first lens looks like in lesson planning and choosing our curriculum, and kind of the empowering impact it has on our students when we think student first, when we're modeling our educational processes.

Really, the decision to do The Miracle Worker was because of Holly. The Miracle Work is this pretty famous play about Helen Keller and her teacher, Ann Sullivan, two famous American women. The fact that we have a student who is blind, who does have the incredible ability to play the role, was the impetus for picking the play. I was so excited.

I just screamed. I was like, eee! I'm so excited. And I was just jumping around and I was thinking, I said I might do the breakfast scene. I'm going to do the breakfast scene, you know? It was very, very exciting. It was my first time playing a lead in Clayton High School. It's like my dream. My dream has finally come true. I always wanted to be Helen since I was in like third grade. When disabled people come and see The Miracle Worker, They will hear the description of what's going on and see the signs that they're interpreting. There will be an audio describer of the show and a sign language interpreter of the show. This show will be fully accessible no matter what. My goal is to spread awareness, acceptance, and inclusion for people with all types of disabilities, especially in the arts.

OK, we have this text now, but really like it doesn't really match kind of where you know where we are now in the 21st century, kind of how we work with and educate and teach our kids. So yeah, let's take this quote-unquote classic, but fit it to adapt to our students who are by far the most important part of this equation

of the storytelling. When we choose a play, we're looking at a couple different things. We're looking at what is the story that this play tells to the audience and to the students that are working on it. But there's also an aspect of... whose story is being told and how do our kids identify with the characters in the play?

So I thought that was an awesome example on what individualized learning looks like and creating opportunities for all of our students. You saw how excited Holly was in that. So for all of our systems to have that opportunity to feel empowered by the curriculum, by their teachers and you know, by, you know, just the way we, we educate. So I thought, I thought that was awesome. It was a great conversation. just in terms of the thought process, the learning experiences that the teachers went through to really view it through that lens. And then talking with Holly was a treat. Awesome. So I know the play will be... In the next two weeks, we'll be coming out. So there will be information out on that, and I think it will be an awesome experience just with the accessibility that it will offer to a lot of people that wouldn't normally get that accessibility to be able to see it. So really excited about that. So our next section is looking at distribution of resources. And that's just a recap from a technology standpoint of, of course, going to one-to-one with our devices distributed, especially at the onset of COVID, hotspots being available for request if it is needed. And the good thing about this is I know within technology, working together with our counselors and social workers to create a process to where gauging the need for technology is a part of their workload and being able to reach out to families and see what support options they need in terms of whether that's connectivity, whether that's accessibility, and whether that's just gauging how much the need is and how we need to go about that. Um, one thing that they implemented as well were the multiple customer service options in terms of phone, email, live chat, um, making sure that we meet, meet everyone where they are in order to meet their needs, um, in regard to technology. So, um, that's something that's been going fairly well, especially as we get more devices in. One thing I also want to touch on too is, um, You know, we found ourselves in a bind, especially at the beginning of the year in terms of transportation. As you all, you know, probably have read or heard on the news, there's a nationwide shortage in bus drivers. And that's really affected us from a standpoint of our VIX students to where we were having a hard time getting students to school on time. So, you know, between, you know, in student services, between Dr. Weems and Julie Englehardt, who's just been a rock star with everything that she's been able to do in terms of Vic having some issues in regard to the buses and us having the opportunity to take that on our own hands. So with parent-focused groups, And kind of brainstorming solutions as a team. Some of the solutions that we came up with were, as a district, we've taken over the Glen Ridge and Captain bus routes from the VIC program. And we're running that with our own bus drivers from facilities. Mary Jo has done an awesome job of rolling that out. you know, working with Vic and getting the bus routes. And, you know, we took a week for them to run through the bus routes to make sure that we can have the most efficient route as possible. Things have been running like clockwork since we've done that, which has been awesome. One thing that has happened for especially our middle school and high school routes is that, you know, again, with Julie Englehart applying pressure, you know, it just being awesome. We have solid, you know, in place drivers for those routes. So they've been on time as well. Um, as time progresses, we're monitoring, you know, what our bus drop off times look like. Um, and we're going to pivot when needed, but, um, you know, we've gotten to the point to where I think we have something solid in place. Um, and it's just been awesome of everybody working as a collective to make sure that, that everybody can get to school, um, on time. So again, that's something that we'll continue to monitor, um, as we keep, um, as So the next part, to just close it out, things to come. One thing that we're going to be rolling out is something that we're calling the Empowerment Initiative. And I think this kind of was born from a lot of the conversations that we had as a department in terms of what the experiences were like in the district. So we'll start primarily with our black families. We're sending out an email within the next week for a session and a night to come together. I think one of the big things, especially as our numbers are lower at the elementary levels, creating a network with all of our elementary black families across grade level and across the schools. Also, one of the main things that we talked about and that I continuously heard of were just communication on the processes in the district. What's the process for an IEP? What's the process of getting into the gifted program? What are the necessary assessments in terms of gauging whether a kid gets intervention or not? So really having nights to where we're giving information on those processes, so we're making sure that everyone has equal access to all of the information needed in order for their child to be successful. So that's something that we want to do. Another way we're launching it as well, I just met with our EL teachers in the district, myself and Dr. Wiens, in terms of brainstorming. What are some of the challenges that we can get better for our EL families and our immigrant families? And what are some things that we can do in order to make that process easier for them? So we had a great brainstorming session. The next step is to have a few focus groups with some families to really understand their experience and how it can be improved. And then the next steps would be to create programming to make sure that their process coming into the district is a smoother one than it has been in the past. So we're excited to get those two organizations off the ground and kind of using this initiative as we learn about certain processes that need improvement as it pertains to certain groups, being able to brainstorm what we can do in order to get better at that. Also, One thing that we'll touch on too at our next meeting with more update is kind of the expansion of our affinity groups as well. Here's a list of a lot of the affinity groups that we currently have, primarily at CHS and some of them overflow into Y down as well. So making sure that as there is a need for an affinity group that the students have a space to feel empowered in order to create that. I know one thing that we saw in our panorama data last year was you know, somewhat of a lower sense of belonging for our Asian students. And one big thing that has come out of that that Dr. Weins has piloted is, you know, again, getting the student focus group to understand what the needs are. And Asian Student Association has started on the campus this year. So I know that that's brought a lot of excitement and creates an affinity space, you know, for filling a need that we needed to address. So our next update in terms of a place for everyone with goal one of our strategic plan will be in March. And on that we'll focus on part one, part two and part six of our focus and accountability sections of our educational policy. That'll include updates with student community and family engagement, curriculum instruction and assessment and then institutional structures as well. Any thoughts?

Thank you, Cameron. And I'm going to just go around the room and call on people and see if they have any questions or follow-ups. Stacey?

Thank you so much, Cameron. Everything you're doing is so impressive and I could think of compliments on each page of this presentation. I really like how thorough you've been and I really like the forward thinking as far as like the yearly plans and the cohorts as the year one teachers and what they do when they move into year two and year three. And I think what's particularly special about that is how the teachers then become the leaders of their peers in the work. So I think that helps them feel empowered, and then there's more of you, you know, leaders to go around with the work, which is great. Thank you also, side note, all of you, for solving the VIC bus problem because when I heard about that, I was really upset. I mean, I can't imagine how those kids felt. getting to school late and you know to no fault of their own so I appreciate everyone's efforts on that too and I also when you listed the things to come I especially liked how you're engaging the parents at the elementary level because I started thinking imagine where those parents will be as their kids get older through our district and they too can become a source of support for the parents of younger kids coming through so I think that's a great idea to engage the parents and the kids, especially the parents at younger ages so that parents with younger kids come in and they have somebody to look to for help and support. So thanks for all the great work. Keep it up. And I really like the details and the thoroughness of the plan. And also that throughout the plan that you provide teachers with so many choices so they can pick kind of their own path through it is great too. So thanks.

Great, Jason.

So, yeah, Cameron, I think you did a great job. That was awesome. Robin is a part of this too, right? So, Robin, excellent job as well. The first thing I want to say is that I'm inspired by Holly. That is super dope to see that type of inclusion, to know that we had a policy in place to make us recognize the importance of inclusion and giving our people opportunity. I haven't cried since Vietnam. Bad joke, forget it. But I'm just saying, I haven't come to tears in years. But that Holly was, her energy, her unbridledness, being raw like that is super cool. So thank you for showing us that video. Um, and, and yeah, you know, I was in the, um, the equity meeting earlier. So I saw a lot of this stuff earlier and I want to say, you know, your plan is super fresh. I like the fact that you haven't planned out for five years. Um, I like the fact everyone's engaged in the meeting, um, and you're just doing a hell of a job. So keep that up. But I have something else I want to say, though. And this is not a knock. I just want to understand a few things. How do we come up with a name, a place for everyone? Because I thought this was going to be called equity, equity meeting. Does anyone have an answer for that?

So when we said a place for everyone, this is an equity. A place for everyone was strategic goal one, and there are lots of different objectives under it. So equity was part of, it falls under the umbrella of a place for everyone.

Okay, gotcha. And just walk me through this real fast. So when we created this equity policy, what was the impetus? What was the origin of the policy? Why did we start the policy? That's not rhetorical, and I just really want to know the answer to that question. It sounded rhetorical. I sound like I'm speaking rhetorically, but I'm not.

No, it's a good question. You know, as we, you know, I think at the center of it, it's an accountability piece. You know, it holds us accountable, and I think it's important that in order to hold us accountable for the commitment that we've made toward equity, it gives our stakeholders a way to hold us accountable. And I think as we continue to really engage our parents on the policy, it's educating them on the policy as well. If we're not doing our job from an equity standpoint, this is a way for us to be held accountable and for us to do what we need to do as a collective in order to meet people where they are and create a place for everyone. You know, more so accountability. I think it adds that there. And I think that's the important piece of it.

Right. Because I've always thought that, you know, if you're... I think I even mentioned this in a meeting if we ever had to run the tape back. I think I mentioned in a meeting that if we focused on racial equity in particular dealing with the issue with black and white racism, right? that everything else, once you focus on that one thing, then everything else can be tapped into. My only concern is, and it's not really a concern, it's just to put it in front of our minds to make sure we don't forget these things that are important, is that we still have an issue with racism, right? And we still have an issues with the data from, that points to African American students not performing as well. So I just want to make sure that we continue to focus on those things too. Because that was kind of like the reason why we even decided to have an equity policy in the first place. Remember, that's what got the ball moving. And I just don't want to bury it with, you know, an ambivalence or, as you can imagine, I just don't Coming back full circle was super great. And no, man, keep it up. Keep it up for sure. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Thanks. Thanks. And I think to respond to that, I think one awesome thing about the policy is that a lot of its foundation, if you compare it to our ABAR presuppositions, it's a lot of the same language. So its origins and its foundations, you know, were created out of anti-bias and anti-racist, you know, presuppositions, you know, so that as we move in the future, that meat of that A-bar focus I think will always be there.

Right, I mean, yeah, right. I mean, just that type of mentality is just not... It's not conducive of our district and really it's not conducive for our young kids to grow and all those things. I did have one more question though before I give the mic to Joe. You mentioned that there's a master certificate for the 15 hours from the School of Maryland, right? What's the incentive for these teachers to get that besides just wanting to be better in terms of how to instruct from an equity lens?

That's a good question. I guess I can kind of, and a lot of this is contingent on some other things. My goal is to have kind of an equity champion group in each building, you know, to where they have a level of qualification and certification in order to be equity leaders in those buildings. Maybe one day, you know, fingers crossed, we can attach a stipend to that, to those teachers. Okay, yeah. So that whether it's professional development, whether it's day-to-day conflict resolution within the building, we have teachers that have a capacity to lead that work in the building. So it's something that essentially every building has their own equity hub and system and foundation that they operate from to ensure that each kid individually on a daily basis is getting what they need.

Right. Yeah, that's my first thought was, you know, we want everyone to be essentially, I mean, if I was the superintendent, I mandate this to happen, but that's not going to happen, right? So, but I think it's a great idea. And I think, you know, there being some kind of, you know, sniping on the backside, it's incentivizing these folks to get this type of training. It's going to benefit this district in general. And that becomes like the standard. When we hire, we're looking for, you know, do you have this certificate or not? Because 50%, 55%, 80% of our staff has this particular training. So I appreciate that. Good job, guys. Good job.

That's why Jason did that. We're trying to build capacity at all levels, you know, including, and Cameron mentioned that, including at the DLC level with our principals, administrators, making sure that they can have any type of conversations they need to in so it's not just with our teachers you know trying to make sure that at all levels

So I'll just echo, I think great data, great videos, great examples of creativity. I think you're doing a great job. I do have some questions, some of which you might predict. The first I've asked before, which is it's awesome to have professional development. But how are we measuring the effectiveness? How are we making sure it's got, you know what I mean? So it's not about quantity, right? It's about quality and what folks are doing it. And in the realm of professional learning, knowledge is the least and then skills and then behavior change, right, is the highest level. And so how are we making sure that all this great professional development is making a difference?

I think one thing to keep in mind is that it's a marathon, not a sprint. I think we're changing up entirely, you know, how we create an educational experience for a student using our panorama data in terms of, you know, sense of belonging, in terms of meeting social emotional needs, in terms of each kid feeling empowered within the classroom. You know, side by side with our academic data, our discipline data, or where we're scoring on standardized tests. So I think right now we're in kind of reset mode in terms of changing a mindset, in terms of what professional learning and growth looks like. I think, you know, in setting up these systems, like I said, it's a five-year system in terms of what that curriculum looks like, in terms of building capacities with, you know, our equity and excellence cohorts. I would say it's, you know, hard to gauge what that looks like after one semester. I think oftentimes we try to perform this work kind of in a microwave type of way. And I guess data that I've read and have kind of based how we're operating off of is that when we do it kind of in that quick fashion, there are no results. And again, I think in talking with a lot of universities in terms of what their curriculum looks like, especially the McDaniel College in Maryland, in terms of them having a 10-year program program running what some of their data has looked like over that time period so you know the goal is that as we continue those numbers progressively get better and looking at you know the start of what that curriculum looks like and what do five years you know through the curriculum looks like especially as more and more teachers get that professional learning And like I said, our learning is geared on student experience. Our panorama data, engaging students, humanizing their experience rather than just kind of trying things. So there's no real like, hey, this is what we're doing. It's like, hey, engage the kid. If this kid is saying this is their experience and this is how they learn, we're adapting to that. where usually we come in with strategies and hope, hey, this should work for most kids. So I think with the change of mindset, I think in terms of us having real data to really look at, it'll probably take a bit more time. But I think that by having kind of a low and slow approach, we're going to be a lot better at the end than if we – focus on numbers and focus on improving numbers we're taking away the humanistic aspect out of our students. So by really focusing on the students I think we create an environment to where we can see systemic change rather than

Right, so I'm glad you mentioned Panorama because that was one of my other questions. So are we gonna then do, because Panorama has equity scales, so in terms of the student experience around diversity, equity and inclusion, are we gonna then include those? Because then the students will reflect back to your point about student experience not just general sense of belonging, but more specific to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the various elements of it? Are we going to kind of incorporate those elements of it? Because Panorama just last year incorporated those scales.

We're on it. In our equity committee meeting today, we went through all of the equity questions to look at which ones we want to use, which ones we like, what free response questions we want to use. How do we put this within our panorama survey? Are these appropriate 6 through 12? Can we moderate this to be 3 through 5? So that's actually what we were doing today, and we're looking to incorporate those questions in the next round of our panorama surveys in the spring.

Good. That's awesome. My next – just two other questions real quick. One is, so I think it is amazing that our teaching staff is getting more diverse, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's more representative of our student population because, you know, if we have – 60% white population and 14% black population and 16% Asian population, et cetera, et cetera. But if we're hiring all Latinx staff, right, that's not necessarily representative of the... So is it getting more representative also of our student population? Because to your point, And I think you're absolutely right on. It's so important for a student to see somebody that represents them, whatever it is. So is our teaching population getting more representative of the student population as well as getting more diverse? Because those could be two different things.

Yeah, it definitely can be two different things. And I think it's a couple ways to view it. I think definitely we want, you know, if we could have complete proportionality across the board, that is the goal. And if we do have a teacher who isn't black that's Asian or Latino and they are able to meet a need, then we definitely want to bring them into, you know, our organization as well. I know last year, you know, we had a, you know, We didn't have as many teachers as we had this year, but I would say that last year we had a very diverse population in terms of multiple races that are in there. I think that, again, that's something that we'll continue to work on. That will be a process, and I also think it, in terms of seeing also where is the biggest need in terms of academic achievement, sense of belonging, things like that, and using that data to say if this is what sense of belonging looks like for a certain population of students, or this is what academic levels look like for a certain portion of students. Maybe there's a need more so to bring in this type of teacher versus another one. And not to say that all levels of teachers aren't wanted and needed, but I think it's a matter of kind of incorporating that strategically in terms of, again, when we look at those numbers academically or achievement-wise, where are we putting our focus? So I think it all kind of correlates and works together with that.

So it would just be great to see the change over time of the representative staff mapped out, to your point, correlated to student population. So how that's moving too. Okay, for sure. I think that would just be nice to see. And then my final question is just more of a comment. I think it's awesome that you're also taking it to the board. I think that's awesome. And I think you should just take into consideration Whatever you do with a board, you may want to take into account, and I'm sure you're already thinking about this, but the April turnover. If you have a year long from now, we're going to get to April and you could lose a couple board members. And so thinking through how do you have that continuity? If you had six months of training and then you got two new folks as an example up to speed, that kind of thing, because there's always that turnover in April.

yeah and i think that's where you know when we talk about kind of tearing it so as everyone gets to a certain level continuing to progress and if someone's coming at a different level meeting them where they are i guess the same way if we had you know turnover in one of our principal or assistant principal spots you know still ensuring that they get that foundation you know the same way year one teacher would get a year one administrator has that same type of system in place too so um yeah it's keeping that in place so as we do have turnover we we are meeting that need

Good. I appreciate it. Great update. Thank you.

Yeah, I actually have a really quick question. So these conversations that we're having with teachers, is it, and this might be unrelated, is this like something that we're also going to be having with students? Because I think there's a lot of times when this is also like a conversation that needs to be had with students because, for example, like with the gender neutral bathrooms, there's a lot people who don't understand that like this is a safe space for a lot of their peers which kind of causes some sort of disrespect between them. which I think could be solved by having a lot of these conversations, especially maybe at early ages so that they understand. And so yeah, I guess I'm just asking are we going to be able to have these conversations with students too or is it just aimed towards teachers?

No, we want to do it as a collective. I think including students in the process is probably the most important thing. you know, in terms of learning those experiences and knowing what's happening, you know, on the ground level. I think especially as we continue to dive into our panorama data in terms of, I mean, it's the students filling it out. So, you know, having those courageous and tough conversations amongst our students in terms of, you know, what is happening. And I think the big process, you know, with especially a trickle down from our teachers as well as, This is the data that we have. We can break it down by student, by different subgroups. Now it's time to go engage those students and see exactly where the needs are. And I think developing that level of communication is super important. So yes, that is happening.

Great. Kim?

Yeah, thank you for the presentation. I mean, a lot's been said already. I do agree with Isanna that the more we can engage students earlier, the better. And I'm not, I guess I'm not sold that we, I think the panorama is it. I know we need the panorama data. It's not that I'm not sold we need that. We need it and we need to activate those modules that are more somewhat objectively or that in combination with whatever data Marilyn is using, because that seems to be the model for best practice, how they measure their success. But what I'm not convinced of is that we need to wait for Panoramica data to start having those discussions with students. If we can have courageous conversations with adults the earlier that we start having those, the better. And if we're waiting to train staff to be able to facilitate those conversations, then I understand Because I think that it will, that capacity building that you're talking about happens in the student body as well. So that the issues that you have seen at the high school with the bathrooms, and there have been issues, don't occur five years from now when we're looking at the five-year window. So I'd love to try to accelerate things around this.

That's fair. That's fair, for sure. I mean, anything that's student-first is where we want to go.

Okay, great. Steve?

Well, first I wanted to tell you I went to my first equity meeting today and I greatly enjoyed it. Our group had a really interesting, at least for me, very interesting conversation about the which leads me to my second, it's really not a question but sort of a comment and I, you know, my comment is where the hell were you 15 years ago when my kids could have enjoyed the benefits of the changes you're making? You know, we have been, we Clayton, have been addressing this topic for a very long time, not very successfully. And so I was really pleased to see the things I saw. So anyway, I wanted to make a slightly averse comment to what Joe was talking about on the hiring. Clayton is a really peculiar community. But our kids go all over the country. I think it's really irrelevant to me what the ratio of black students, Asian students in our little community. What is important is our kids are going to be out in America. You know, look at what our – I think our teachers should represent what America represents as opposed to, you know, what the ratio is within our little Clayton School District because, you know, they're going to be gone soon and they won't be necessarily – many of them come back but hanging around in Clayton. So – And then also a tie into Joe's comment. You made a comment, and I'm sure they were powerful, about these courageous conversations that these, among some other things, were very effective. And I'm just wondering, was that sort of the people who were in it, their feedback? I guess how do you know I mean, I'm listening to your comment that I understand that, quote, progress in the overall issue is not going to happen in a semester. But what is, in the interim, what do you, you know, how do you decide that this is a great, you know, this is a good program? No, that wasn't so good. Let's not do that one again. Do you follow what I'm saying?

Yeah, so following every professional learning experience, we give a survey. to our teachers or educators and asking them about their experience, if they felt they grew from it, what the important aspects of it, of what occurred within the learning experience and ways to get better. So we had overwhelmingly You had

positive feedback from the teachers on

that. In terms of how it stretched their learning, their thinking, and really forced them to think in a way they hadn't had to think about, especially as it pertains to their profession. One thing that we're intentional on doing, especially as we get a lot of things off the ground, Me personally, if I see a negative response to something that I've led, I'll go engage that teacher one-on-one. I mean, the goal is to reach every learner. So as we're having that conversation, you know, the question is what could we have done better as a collective for you to have, you know, a valuable learning experience? And we've had some awesome conversations. with a lot of our educators and asking those questions. And I'm appreciating, you know, that, and I feel like that's a perfect opportunity to model the behavior we want to see with our, our students. If a student isn't performing or having a favorable experience, let's engage it head on. So I think, you know, gives us a good opportunity as well, and able to use that feedback from the person who had the most negative experience and, and apply that to, to future planning. Great. Thanks.

Thanks, Cameron. On the busing changes that we were talking about, can you just remind us, the VIC buses, how is that transportation paid for or allocated to us when it's working the way it has worked before this year? Do you know that? I'm just thinking about how that affects the cost and where those things come from.

Mary Jo, do you have details on that?

I hate asking a question that's...

Right now we're just paying our...

Also referring to prior to us taking over one of the roads.

Yeah, I was just kind of trying to put it in context on how the funding for that normally works and how it's being impacted now.

The routes that are in place prior to the one that we just took over are all funded through the VIC program. And then separate from the VIC program, any students who are in transition that cost in collaboration with whatever the other district is that the student's coming from or going. But we are currently still working with VIC to determine what the financial relationship will look like for the route that we just took over. But for right now, we...

Okay. So it's not something that sort of before this had to happen, that cost wasn't specifically allocated. It's just something that's a part of the VIC program. And so... I'm sorry, that was kind of an awkward way of asking that question. So obviously it has some financial impact on us and we'll determine if that's adjusted with Vic or whatever. Setting that aside, is it something that you think, Cameron, and I don't know if you have an opinion about this or anyone else, but Would that be something that we would think about even if we weren't in this current situation of the shortage of bus drivers and things like that? Would that be something we might suggest we take on in a permanent role regardless of that, and we think about putting that in the budget? Or is this truly like a temporary thing in this moment? Does that make sense?

So we don't have the number of buses

I'm sorry, I hate asking questions. The person speaking can answer.

So I mean, I have some caution in this. So I mean, it's great that we can support the program, but currently we only have one additional bus. And so when you're driving buses on a regular routine route, which we only have one, you need backup buses. We could be on an athletic run in the evening and then we could get it back home, you know, back to the school and we wouldn't be able to use it in the morning. So you need at least one or two backup buses. So I think, and I'm not quite sure do they have three or four buses on our route normally

um let's see we've

got i did not mean to do this i'm sorry

for our elementary routes we have the cap glen combined route which we cover we also have um one separate A VIC bus that covers Merrimack as well as a cab that is run through VIC for some students who are a little bit out of the range of where the other students are. And then we have three that service the secondary schools.

So the number of buses that we would have to purchase and then also consider that the program is declining. So we will, Vic is even trying to figure out how in the future they will deal with consolidating the bus routes for the decline and the students participating in this program because I think, is this the last year of accepting students? Two more years. Two

more years. Yeah, but

the numbers are going down. So that's the caution. So, I mean, if we wanted to do it, you know, it would be probably purchasing at least five more buses for the district, hiring drivers because all of – we don't actually have bus drivers. We have grounds guys with bus licenses because we just only do afternoon routes. So it would be a – I mean, we can consider it, but it would be an investment for the district. Okay. Okay.

But Gary, I appreciate you asking that because that is an excellent example of equity in action. We have kids that go to our district that are not getting to school on time. So are we willing to have that conversation about how do we make that happen? So I really appreciate you asking that question. And in my opinion, we can make it happen. We just have to figure out how.

And while this current example is maybe an exacerbation of that, it's not actually an entirely new situation. So that's why I would consider it.

I have a question. You mentioned the reduction of Vic students, right? Because the program is being closed down. My question though is how many black students right now are in First grade in the district. You know?

I can tell you how many are in kindergarten.

Or kindergarten, go with that.

One at Glen Ridge, three at Merrimack, five at Captain.

That's not

just

black students. Just black

students, yes. So only one black kid is in kindergarten? kindergarten and Glenridge? Correct. And then one class?

Correct.

Tight. That's tough. So, yeah, so that stands out to me. That's tough because, you know, it's always tough being the only black kid. And I'll look at all your eyes, make sure you all know what I'm saying. It's always tough being an only black kid in the room. That's tough And it's five at Captain, you said? And like three at Merrimack or whatever. Yeah, it's tough. That's something we need to consider because there's a lot of emotional play happening in those. I mean, I have no idea. I don't know that kid. But I just know historically it's always tough being an only black kid, especially in a district like this. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that's why, Jason, remember we talked a few weeks ago and I said, you and I were on the phone, that I think it's important for us to start having that conversation this year about what is the board, what are our collective views on the VIC program is being phased out. That's our reality. We talked a little bit about maybe having the conversation with the city too. I don't know if they're willing to or not willing to, but I do think it's an important conversation for us to have this year. Let me

just put it in perspective. You're right. We did have this conversation on the phone, but I didn't know the numbers. That I did not know. The second thing, though, is like... you know, what can you do? I mean, you know, we're kind of, our hands are kind of tied, right? I mean, at this juncture. I mean, we don't have to have this conversation now. I don't want to get off.

Yeah, no, I mean, I like envision us having a retreat and talking about it and that format. You know, unfortunately, it's, you know, a way bigger conversation deserves a lot more time than what we have tonight. But I can promise that we will be having it this year.

Yeah, cool.

Sure.

It's a combination of resident, you know, district employee children, and then Vic students as well.

So the workforce is pretty small.

And like I said, those numbers get a bit smaller in terms of admittance each year. And I know multiple kids are in-district employee children too.

Okay. If there's no further questions or comments, Cameron, thank you so much. I appreciate the presentation. Is everybody okay, or do you guys need a break, or do you want to power through? Keep going? Okay. We're close.

Okay.

All right, Jason. The timer's on. Okay, so we're going to move on to – where are we? We are on number 12, which is I think the second reading. We need to approve our hazardous materials policy.

Item 12.01, I move that the Board of Education approve policy DK payment process presented in the report provided to the board.

Second.

Okay. It's been moved and seconded. Any questions? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes.

Item 12.02. Hold on a

second. Do you need to recuse yourself here? Not yet. Oh, okay. Oh, I'm ahead of my time. Sorry. I was jumping ahead. Go ahead, Stacy. Sorry.

Item 12.02, I move that the Board of Education approve policy EBAB, hazardous materials, as presented in the report provided to the board.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any comments? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Now Joe's leaving.

Okay. Item 13, no,

sorry.

12.03. 12.03, I move that the Board of Education approve the PTTE for Sarah Miller.

Second.

Been

moved and seconded. Comments?

It's not really a comment. Is it just pure coincidence? I mean, I've only been to two board meetings, and we have the same thing. They're separated out.

Right. Am I right about that? We separate her out because of...

No, no, I understand that part, but it seemed... Oh, I see. So normally, because Joe's on the board, it would have been a consent item? Yes. Okay, thank you.

Okay, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Yeah. Okay, well, oh, we need Joe back.

All right, go for it, Stacy. Okay. Item 13.01, I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda items 13.02 through 13.09. Second.

It's

been moved and seconded. Any comments? I do have one. Yes. I know we don't often discuss consent agenda items, but I just wanted to thank you, Dr. Arnold, for your work on the – early resignation plan because I'm sure that took a lot of work. And I think that, um, it will be so beneficial to the district for many reasons. One of which is the hiring practices that we talked about earlier with Cameron, because it just allows us more time to hire more diverse staff. So I just wanted to, um, thank you for your, your work on that. Thanks. All

right. All in favor? Don't vote with us. All in favor. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Okay. Financials.

Item 14.01, I move that the Board of Education approve the payment of current expenditures and investments for July 2021 as detailed below.

Second.

Been

moved and seconded. Are there any comments? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Motion passes. So that brings us to public comment. Do we have any? None. Oh, nobody wants to talk to us tonight? Okay. What about board communications? Go ahead, Stacy.

Okay, I attended the first PTO council meeting of the year over Zoom. And it was great to hear, and Dr. Patel was there as well. I would say it was great to here that all of our schools are finding ways to get the communities back together again. Like for example, I know Merrimack had a movie night outdoors last Friday night which I think was really well attended. And, um, each of the schools are finding, finding different ways to get back together. And it looks like, it sounds like everybody's looking forward to that. Of course, after such a long break from activities, um, the Clayton education, Sandy was there from the Clayton education foundation and she gave us an update on what they've been doing and, um, about the, um, book donations in honor of Dr. Doherty's retirement. Um, We heard from the All In Coalition, and it was also nice to hear about the district-wide food drive that the PTO Council is organizing in conjunction with the Clayton Education Foundation. And I just also wanted to say it's really nice. I was so happy to see Sandy from the Clayton Education At the PTO council meeting, because I do remember a couple years ago that they were kind of overlapping or duplicating fundraising initiatives. And so it's so nice to see them collaborating together and not stepping on each other's toes. So anyway, it was great to be back with that group. And then I also went to the special school district governing council meeting for Gary, who was unable to attend. Um, Christina Blankenship, who's our PAC ed president is now the recording secretary of the governing council. So she'll be attending all those meetings, which is great to have her, um, as well as Tiffany has two representatives from Clayton that attend those meetings. Of course, Tiffany's on the board, special school district board of education. Um, and we received an update on, um, the new partnership updates that a committee, um, um, put together and we're going to be getting an update that update on those partnership agreements. Um, shortly, I think as a, as a district too. So, oh, and then just, I also wanted to mention that, um, I should say I attended in quotes. I watched the high school curriculum night and, um, it was virtual again this year. And I actually had mentioned to Dr. Patel. I just, I actually think it's great being virtual and I would, probably assume that there's even better attendance because everyone can kind of watch it on their own time and don't even have to watch it live. I wasn't able to watch it live, and so I think it's a great way of teachers presenting their information, and they also can share their screens and share lots of materials that way that's much easier, and like I said, parents can watch it on their time. So I thought the teachers did a great job with that. with that too, and I guess all the schools probably did it that way, but the high school was the only one I saw and it was great. Thank you.

Anybody else?

Amy. Yes. So thank you, Stacey, for attending that meeting for me. It was at the same time as the Parks and Rec meeting, which I was able to attend. A couple of things that they're really focusing on right now, one is the community survey that Clayton just did, and they kind of reported back on aspects of that. that affected Parks and Recreation. They're also getting ready to go through a master planning process for the Parks and Rec facilities, so we talked a lot about that. But one of the things that I thought was really a great takeaway for me with that committee and that Patty was reminding us about is that our Y-down students, our seventh and eighth grade students are right now able to use once again the facilities that we have at the center. And we've put a lot into investing in that and supporting that, and I think it's something that I had actually forgotten about. and hadn't realized what was happening. And I think it's just a good reminder of the partnership between the district and the city that we need to remember that it's something that affects all of our students. We think of it as part of the high school, and it's an important facility for the high school. But continuing, that happened because this board pushed for it. So I'm glad to see that they're able to do that again now as they've opened back up. But yeah, that was about it. Thank you.

Thank you. Anything else? Wellness committee?

No? I couldn't go.

Did you go,

Jason, to the wellness

committee? Wellness committee?

I

didn't make that one.

All right. You guys don't get gold stars for that one. Okay. It's really late, Itana. I'm sorry. Do you have homework? Okay. Um, Stacy, let's adjourn. You sure you want to? Oh yeah. So I'm sorry,

Steve.

Yeah. So Nisha and I talked about it earlier today and I think kind of where we are is that, um, Given where we are with COVID, with the state of things, we're going to, I mean, I think Nisha is going to go. But the plans for the whole board to go as a group, I think we'll wait until maybe next year. If anybody really wants to go, you're welcome to go. Nisha and I also talked about actually instead of that, THIS YEAR MAYBE GOING OUT TO THE NATIONAL SCHOOL BOARD CONFERENCE, WHICH IS IN APRIL. AND THAT WAY WE WOULD HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN FROM SOME NATIONAL DISTRICTS. SO WE THOUGHT THAT WAS SOMETHING THAT WE STARTED TALKING ABOUT THIS MORNING, AND DR. PATEL SENT ME SOME INFORMATION ON THAT. SO WE'RE GOING TO TALK MORE ABOUT THAT. SO IF ANYBODY WANTS TO GO TO KANSAS CITY STILL, LET US KNOW. Just with COVID and where the world is today, we're going to let it go. Gary, do you want to go?

All

right. I move that the Board of Education adjourn.

Second.

Okay. All in favor? Aye.

Okay. Motion passes. Thanks, everyone.