May 18, 2022 — Meeting Transcript

It is Wednesday, May 18th, and it's so great to see all of you guys here and the students. We're excited to have you. Thank you for coming. Let's get started with the Pledge of Allegiance, please. Okay, so as everybody knows, we are going to honor our National Merit Scholars tonight. I will hand it.

Actually, we're going to start with recognizing our nurses.

We're starting with recognizing our nurses? All right. Sorry, I made a mistake. We are going to do that, but first we're going to recognize our nurses because this is what we have scheduled first.

I'm first looking at this. All right. Some of our district nurses are here with us tonight, so I just invite you to stand right here so I can recognize all of you. So National Nurses Week is celebrated annually from May 6th to May 12th, and this week we recognize the incredible work of our district nurses. Heather Chrisman, our nurse coordinator, susan mason from merrimack gail falarski from captain amy dowdy from glenridge mary frances mccarty at widown lisa mcdade at clayton high school and jody tomchek our part-time nurse who services multiple campuses so our nurses play a variety of roles in our students daily school experience above and beyond just handing out band-aids and taking temperatures they are the friendly face for daily check-ins their voice of calming assurance when a family is working through illness and they're a steady hand when a student is hurt. I want to commend this team for all the ways they've supported our community in the last year, from working extra hours to support and coordinate our COVID vaccine clinics, running biometric stations for staff during our PD day, and more recently getting all the supplies ready for all the field trips I am truly grateful for the ways you've built relationships with our students and their families and your efforts to ensure our students and staff are safe and healthy. And this has all been possible through your teamwork and expertise. So thank you so much for everything you've done for us.

Thank you guys so much. We could not have gotten through this year without you. Seriously. Okay. Now we are going on to national merit finalists. And so I invite Dr. Kaczewski to come on up.

Thank

you.

Okay, good evening. It's my pleasure to introduce the Clayton High School National Merit finalists and commended students. What I'm going to do is I'm going to read the entire list. If you are here, if you would come up and join us. Are we doing individual pictures or no? No individual pictures just after? Okay. And then we will give you a certificate, and Ms. Rubin and Dr. Patel will shake hands. First. Jack Blaze, I'm sorry, on our list of National Merit Commended students, Jack Blaze, Vivian Chen, Aridara Dewan, Jibe Han. Congratulations. Sarah Heath, Pablo Kirschsteiner Soto. Also National Merit Commended are Kathleen Ko. Camilla Myers, Madison Miller, Naveed Nemi, Natalie Noonan, Heidi Marie Panzer, Jacob Strand, Sarah Taylor, Benjamin Torrio, Abigail Van Emden. For our list of National Merit finalists, first is Mark Anzalotti. Tudor Bielan. Maddie Brown. Miguel Butrago. Tom DePore. Thomas Gustafson. Kylie Kest. James Lenz. Jesse Lin. Gabriela Madriz. Isaac Millions. Alex Pompian, Zachary Wang, Yun Zhu, and Tobias Zeidman. How about one more round of applause for all of our students? And then in just a second, we are going to, the students are going to convene on these steps so we can get a group shot before everybody leaves. Congratulations again. Thank you so much for being here. It truly, truly means a lot to us. So way to go. Thank you.

I'm missing one thing. No? Okay.

Okay, we ready? Okay. Okay, so we are on Section 3, Superintendent Communications. I'll hand it over to Dr. Patel.

Okay. Thank you so much. Good evening, everyone. Nice to see everybody here today. It was great to have all of our students here. Always fills the room with excitement. So I love that. So it's been a few weeks, I would say, since we did a COVID update in our last board meeting. So I wanted to make sure that I kind of give you an update as far as our COVID positivity rate in the district. So if you look at the data dashboard as of today, Right now, we have six staff members that are positive and then we have 18 students that are positive with two that are in quarantine. So we have seen our positivity rates spike just a little bit. We are at a point seven eight percent right now. We still have our mitigation plans in place as we're holding true to whatever we can. but one of the things that we have said if you recall is that if a building goes above 1.5 percent we would then transition into mask required and the 1.5 percent would have to be like three days and then we'd go two weeks with masks and monitor that and then once it goes down three days below the threshold we'd go to mass recommended so as of today We have two. Obviously, the family center has remained mass required because they're not eligible for vaccination right now. But Clayton High School is mask required and they should be transitioning off of that on Monday. But at this point, we're also looking at Merrimack Elementary that may have to go to mask required, but we're still monitoring that. But I just wanted you to know that, that that is something we continue to look at. And then as we look into the fall, we really are just going to have to see where things are at that point. I think we've tried every different scenario possible with the pandemic and we've learned a lot. So we'll continue to monitor it. But I'm sure that we'll bring information forward to you, maybe even over the summer, where we talk about what the plan will be as we get closer to school. And we're going to continue with most of the same plan for the summer schools as well that we're going to be having. In other news, obviously we're ending the year pretty soon here on June 2nd, but this week has been very exciting at Clayton High School. We have senior week, a lot of activities happening. We recognized a lot of our seniors today, tonight, so that was exciting. There's a lot of AP testing going on and has been completed. I know our students were really stressed for a while there, but now I feel like they're kind of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. There's been a lot of senior activities. I think this was the first time I found out on Monday where seniors actually all joined at the gay field and they did watch the sunrise together at 545 a.m. Yes, so they were all there and they experienced that together. So that was a good thing for them. And they've just had different activities that they're excited about. We deployed a senior survey and then graduation is next week. So looking forward to celebrating our students and watching them cross the stage at Chaffetz again. So we'll be back to Chaffetz. So that's good news as well. Tonight you will be hearing the first, our budget draft that we'll be presenting to you. And remember it's a draft this time and then we'll be doing the formal adoption in June. And I wanna thank the business office and Mary Jo for all of their work in putting that together. I know that's a lot of work and a lot of time spent on it. So I really appreciate that. And I appreciate the community who's so supportive for everything that we do in our district and expects that academic excellence and expects high quality staff to be here so i wanted to thank the community as well for that and the budget is always it's always been our goal to create a budget that supports our strategic plan and our goals and i know that when you see that tonight you'll see that that's what we'll continue to do And then the other two information items that we'll have today are your math. We're going to be giving the math and science updates. And this is pretty much part of a curriculum review cycle where we bring the updates to the board. And this is after a two-year self-study. And I do want the board to recognize that during the two years, there's a lot of work that happens before they get to the board table here. There's a lot of literature review they do. They look at achievement data. They look at assessments. They talk to other districts, you know, see what the newest and best trends are out there. There's input from surveys from different stakeholders. There's a lot of work that happens in two years. They develop those long-term range goals that they're going to present to us today. So I do want to thank our coordinators and also Dr. Milena Garganigo for all of their work behind all of that. And we'll be hearing about that later today. And now I'll hand it off to Itana, our student rep.

Okay. Thank you so much. Good evening, everyone. Nice to see everybody here today. It was great to have all of our students here. Always fills the room with excitement. So I love that. So it's been a few weeks, I would say, since we did a COVID update in our last board meeting. So I wanted to make sure that I kind of give you an update as far as our COVID positivity rate in the district. So if you look at the data dashboard as of today, Right now, we have six staff members that are positive and then we have 18 students that are positive with two that are in quarantine. So we have seen our positivity rates spike just a little bit. We are at a point seven eight percent right now. We still have our mitigation plans in place as we're holding true to whatever we can. but one of the things that we have said if you recall is that if a building goes above 1.5 percent we would then transition into mask required and the 1.5 percent would have to be like three days and then we'd go two weeks with masks and monitor that and then once it goes down three days below the threshold we'd go to mass recommended so as of today We have two. Obviously, the family center has remained mass required because they're not eligible for vaccination right now. But Clayton High School is mask required and they should be transitioning off of that on Monday. But at this point, we're also looking at Merrimack Elementary that may have to go to mask required, but we're still monitoring that. But I just wanted you to know that, that that is something we continue to look at. And then as we look into the fall, we really are just going to have to see where things are at that point. I think we've tried every different scenario possible with the pandemic and we've learned a lot. So we'll continue to monitor it. But I'm sure that we'll bring information forward to you, maybe even over the summer, where we talk about what the plan will be as we get closer to school. And we're going to continue with most of the same plan for the summer schools as well that we're going to be having. In other news, obviously we're ending the year pretty soon here on June 2nd, but this week has been very exciting at Clayton High School. We have senior week, a lot of activities happening. We recognized a lot of our seniors today, tonight, so that was exciting. There's a lot of AP testing going on and has been completed. I know our students were really stressed for a while there, but now I feel like they're kind of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. There's been a lot of senior activities. I think this was the first time I found out on Monday where seniors actually all joined at the gay field and they did watch the sunrise together at 545 a.m. Yes, so they were all there and they experienced that together. So that was a good thing for them. And they've just had different activities that they're excited about. We deployed a senior survey and then graduation is next week. So looking forward to celebrating our students and watching them cross the stage at Chaffetz again. So we'll be back to Chaffetz. So that's good news as well. Tonight you will be hearing the first, our budget draft that we'll be presenting to you. And remember it's a draft this time and then we'll be doing the formal adoption in June. And I wanna thank the business office and Mary Jo for all of their work in putting that together. I know that's a lot of work and a lot of time spent on it. So I really appreciate that. And I appreciate the community who's so supportive for everything that we do in our district and expects that academic excellence and expects high quality staff to be here so i wanted to thank the community as well for that and the budget is always it's always been our goal to create a budget that supports our strategic plan and our goals and i know that when you see that tonight you'll see that that's what we'll continue to do And then the other two information items that we'll have today are your math. We're going to be giving the math and science updates. And this is pretty much part of a curriculum review cycle where we bring the updates to the board. And this is after a two-year self-study. And I do want the board to recognize that during the two years, there's a lot of work that happens before they get to the board table here. There's a lot of literature review they do. They look at achievement data. They look at assessments. They talk to other districts, you know, see what the newest and best trends are out there. There's input from surveys from different stakeholders. There's a lot of work that happens in two years. They develop those long-term range goals that they're going to present to us today. So I do want to thank our coordinators and also Dr. Garganego for all of their work behind all of that. And we'll be hearing about that later today. And now I'll hand it off to Itana, our student rep.

Thank you. So I just want to start off by saying I don't think we've had a board meeting in May, but it is Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month as well as Jewish Heritage Month. So I just wanted to commemorate that. So I'm going to start by talking about what we discussed at our last Captain Wydown District Advisory Council meetings of the year. So at Captain last week, The fifth graders were talking a lot about chocolate milk. I'm not really sure why, but I just... Yeah. I think that was just... They were talking about it in class, and so they were very passionate about exploring whether chocolate milk was good for you or bad for you. So I think it was just interesting to see how they were... exploring such topics. And then this is something that I've mentioned before, but they were, I think still a little frustrated with the amount of like technology that they're using in the classroom just because it was hard to like not use paper or to use paper beforehand. But while they were frustrated, they also mentioned that there was they were starting to use more paper. So they had been doing exit slips on their Chromebooks, but now they notice how they're starting to do those exit slips on paper more often. So I think that's something positive. And then at Ydown, we talked a little bit about math class mobility and just how easy it is to like, or how not easy it is, I guess I should say, to go from one math class, like a non-honors math class or a non-challenge math class to another. But I think we're going to hear more about that later, so I won't really touch on that for now. They also mentioned how they were still a little like disappointed with the food options. And that was actually something that I wanted to learn more about later. So I don't know if Dr. Patel, you might know this, but I think there's been a lot of rumors about what's going to happen with the Chartwell next year and if it's still going to be free or not. So a lot of students just aren't really aware of that. So I'm going to try and find that out for good and let everyone know so that there's no more confusion. And lastly, they also said that they were still not using lockers, which I think was originally implemented so that there was like social distancing in the hallways. But at this point, they're saying like it's not really going to happen anyway, the social distancing. So I think they were wishing to get like more opportunities to get lockers because I think their parents have to email for the students to get permission to use lockers. um and then this next slide i'm not really going to touch on today just because sorry could you thank you Yeah, this is something that is still in progress. But I did want to say that the selection for the new student rep has started. So we had applications sent out a bit ago. And then also district advisory council applications went out. And so those haven't been submitted yet. I think the due date is this Thursday. So that's something that's different from last year. And the years before that, we used to always do that at the beginning of the school year. But it took us a bit of time this year to really get that started. So we're just trying to make it a faster process by doing it at the end of the year. But the ninth graders or the rising ninth graders will apply at the beginning of the school year because we don't want to make the middle schoolers have to fill out the kind of intimidating application. And then our student leader of diversity, equity, inclusion in our elementary middle school communicators, they're going to stay the same. So it's going to be Zoe and Anisha next year too. And then on this last slide, just stuff that's been going around mostly at the high school. So we had a lot of clubs succeed lately, I should say. So DECA, which is our business club, went to internationals. I think they had about seven or eight people go. So yeah, that was pretty big. And then so the thrift club had like a pop-up shop in the commons where they – they went out and thrifted a bunch of clothes and then they sold it in the commons and then they're gonna donate that money to a charity i can't remember specifically what it was but i think it was something about like clothing um sustainability um and then yesterday i was actually able to go to captain to present uh to the fifth graders about food waste and i went um with katie and cha-cha and poppy who are all sophomores so the fifth graders kind of learned about food waste which is something that green club is trying to do throughout the district Rocket Tree also, I think they went to D.C. this past weekend to compete. Tennis got their district championship. Track is going to sectionals. There's over 20 athletes going to sectionals, which is, I think, the most it has been in a really long time. And then soccer districts and lacrosse districts have also been happening. And then lastly, like Dr. Patel mentioned, it's senior week. Tomorrow is the seniors' last day, which is a little sad, but they've been having a lot of fun. Today they were out there in the quad, and there was some shaving cream fights that I was a victim of. So that's all I have today. Thank you.

Great job. Thank you, Itana. I think we also had baseball yesterday. Did we have a little baseball action? Districts? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much. Okay, we are on to our first study item of the evening, which is the budget.

Fun times. Always everybody's most exciting meeting, I know. All righty. So the adoption of the annual budget is part of the board's fiduciary responsibilities and the conservative and prudent approaches to planning by our boards of education have been a historical trademark of the district. These decisions have made the district fiscally stable and have placed the district in a strong financial position that allows us to be responsive to unforeseen circumstances. In January, I provided the board with a budget framework The variables used in that framework were based on an overall macro fiscal strategy regarding revenue projections and proposed expenditure plans within specific departments such as school buildings, facility maintenance, and categories such as salary and benefits. That information was used to finalize the micro budget document that is presented in draft form to the board tonight. So when we look at the overall budget summary, the proposed 22-23 total revenue is projected at $71.9 million and total expenditures at $72.6 million. This will result in a strategic spending down of reserves of approximately $700,700 and end the overall fund balance at $34.5 million. It's important to note that this fund balance does include debt service because this is a total budget. The debt service levy is not subject to the Hancock amendment, like the operating levy. And therefore due to the increases in assessed value that the district has seen the scheduled debts and the offsetting scheduled debt service payments, the debt service fund balance is anticipated to increase approximately $2 million, which is included in that 34.5 million. Um, so as I mentioned, although the debt service rate is not subject to Hancock amendment, it's also not allowed to build a fund balance higher than necessary to pay down debt in future years. So back in 2009, when Prop S was passed, the district told the taxpayers that the debt service rate would not go above 62.3 cents. And as a result, every year since 2009, we've honored that rate and rolled back our allowable debt service rate to 62.3 cents in 2021. The debt service rate calculator allowed the district to set a rate at 79.6 cents, which we then rolled back 17.3 cents to be the 62.3 cents And as the assessed value continues to rise with new construction, the fund balance will continue to increase. And this rate will no longer be rolled back to that 62.3 cents, but it will actually be set at a rate lower than that. So decisions at that point in time will have to be made regarding restructuring debt payments, issuing additional debt for capital improvements, or reducing the levy. Those are options that could be made. So because many of the revenue and expenditures included in the total budget are restricted for specific purposes, the operating budget more clearly reflects the district expenses and expected results of operations. So there are three types of expenditures that are excluded from the operating budget. The first type is the debt service, which we just talked about. And those for 22-23 school year will be $6.5 million. The second type of expenditures is business-type activities. Those are excluded because they're activities that are financed primarily through user charges and not taxes. So they're not part of our normal operations that require taxes to support them, and typically we budget them within their normal revenue stream. So KidZone, driver's ed, facility rental. And then the third type are some extraordinary items. And so these vary from year to year and basically are one offs that are not part of the regular operational activities. So these include things like capital financing for capital leases or several things that are occurring this year. COVID relief funds because of the pandemic. The district is expected to receive over approximately $1.6 million over three years in federal COVID relief funds through the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Securities Act, or the CARES Act, the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplement Appropriations Act, and the American Rescue Plan. These funds are meant to help safely reopen and sustain the safe operation of schools and address the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the nation's students. So the district has... planned to use these funds for several different things. One of them was the installation of the needlepoint bipolar ionization system that was part of our HVAC systems. That was done in the first year before we all returned back into the buildings. We've had a contact tracing investigator position for three years. Personal protective equipment, a lot of that, face masks, face shields, hand sanitizers, touchless paper towels, dispensers, so on. Lots of desperatitions and sign dividers. And then technology enhancements to approve and assist with online learning, lots of technology, and instructional support positions to help monitor students' progress. All of these expenses are offset by the federal relief funds and are one-time expenses occurred during the pandemic. Therefore, they've been excluded from the operating budget. Other extraordinary items that is excluded is a contribution to the from the district to the operating loss at the center of Clayton. Historically, the center has been able to support the operations through their membership fees, but because of the significant loss of membership due the center operations are for this coming year, which for them there are different fiscal year than us ends in September. Is approximately a $400,000 loss, which the district will be responsible for 50% of it and then the city is responsible for the other 50%. So although this operating loss is projected to continue for the next several years, it is projected to decline and return to only the annual capital contributions, which is included in operations for the district because it's our annual expense. So in addition, the center's board also approved making significant repairs to the roof over the competition pool this summer, which is a cost of $220,000, for which the district is responsible for $110,000 of that. But we do have a reserve fund set aside to cover expenses for this, so that doesn't necessarily impact operations at all anyway. There are also some other significant one-time capital purchases. During the technology self-study presented at the April 13th board meeting, it was discussed that the current level of capital funding for the technology improvement plan, or the TIP plan as we call it, That projection model would not be significant to accomplish the goals outlined in the self-study. So specifically, the objectives for Goal 3 related to cybersecurity data privacy and risk aid management will require additional funds. A one-time increase of $200,000 in the TIP budget is requested to continue the infrastructure inclusive funding model and in support of the goal areas presented to the Board in that presentation. It's expected that the requested TIP budget will return to the previous funding levels with an annual increase of 2% thereafter to help offset inflation and flexibility to needs of the district. And then further, every five years, the district replaces its fleet of copiers. In the past, we would enter in a lease purchase because it was around half a million dollars, but the cost for copiers has significantly decreased. So due to that, we found it more feasible to purchase them outright. And therefore, the budget includes a one-time purchase of $200,000 for the replacement of copiers. So finally, there are two capital projects that have been approved by the Board of Education. Phase 2 of safety and security improvements that were approved by the board on February 9th. With that project, there's approximately $2.5 million of proceeds from the sale of the Maryland building that's available to fund the project, with an additional $1.3 million in costs and excess of these designated funds that will come from fund balance to fully fund the $3.8 million project. And then, in addition, the board approved the renovation to the high school library on April 20th, and that $1.5 million cost to the library will be funded from fund balance reserves. So all of those items are excluded from the operating budget, which we'll talk about after revenues. So when we look at operating revenues, there are three significant fluctuations this year in revenue sources. Local taxes, federal revenue, and other revenue. State and county revenues are expected to remain consistent from the revised budget from last year. So I'm going to start this with according to what I knew last week, and we'll get into that in a minute. Local real estate taxes for 22-23 are expected to increase $2.5 million, or 4.23%. This is primarily due to new construction. We have the Clarendell coming on, which is a half a million dollars of new construction. And then reduced projected payback of protested taxes. This year we had about $1.5 million in protested taxes that we paid back. in operating taxes, and the ability to recoup a portion of prior year taxes that were paid back. So we are projecting some of that, and I'll talk a little bit more about that. So with regards to new construction, since that Clarendell is considered residential, now that it's full, you might have noticed that it's been finished for a while, but no one was living in it when it looked like it was finished. So since it's a residential property, someone has to be living in it. Commercial properties, once they're under roof, they call it, You can bring those online sooner. They'll bring them on in phases. So there are an additional five developments that I have in the projections for future years, but those are a few years out. So significant fluctuations in those protested taxes have been a challenge to budget for the past few years. So we are only projecting a payback of protested taxes at a normal average of about $600,000. But as I mentioned, this year it was $1.5 million that we paid back. So keep in mind, since we rolled back the levy 15 cents last year, that precludes us from being able to recoup. Once you roll back, you can't recoup anything. But we can waive that rollback. So since most of the protests that we're getting hit with are commercial, we can just waive the rollback for commercial and kind of recoup the funds that way, and then the residents are not impacted by that. So it's about $800,000 to waive the $0.15 rollback. And so I've included that in the projections actually for the next three years, assuming you're going to want to recoup. You're going to continue to get them. So that would recoup most all of the payback or protests for the next couple of years. So as I mentioned, I started this with according to what I knew last week. Monday this week, all of that changed. And I do have a last slide that I've adjusted, and I'll show that to you when we get to it. But basically we've been waiting on the county to release current year protested taxes. So that typically occurs in the month of May, and every February we receive a report that's posted on the county's website. that tells us how much they're holding in escrow for us. And then we file a friendly lawsuit and they release it. Typically, that's very representative of actual taxes that we receive. It's almost like right on. So we can also take that amount, total collections to date, and it projects out right to the budget. It's really accurate. A few years ago I had a conversation with the board where that number was short. Well, this year they overpaid us. So it's kind of interesting. Initially, back in February, we thought we would be about a half a million short. And that actually made sense when I researched it. We looked at the difference between assessed value when we set the levy in September to when they actually build. And there was a significant reduction in assessed value. I actually put it in the calculator, came right out to about half a million dollars. So that kind of made sense. So everything sounded normal, looked normal until we got our final payment of the release taxes on Monday. So the total taxes received, including debt service on Monday, were not $13.7 million, which was on the report. But instead, $16.2 million. Yes, it was quite a windfall of money. So $2.5 million more than we were expecting. I have talked to John about this. He got all the communications that I talked to with the county collector. I showed him all the calculations. We're not going to revise next year's budget. estimated taxes because, based on what we're seeing, we've been overpaid. And so, yeah. Well, the response, so if... I don't know. I don't know, I don't. Because all we get are totals, we don't have details. So I can't analyze what's the difference. And if you take the tax calculator that is approved by the state auditor and I send to the collector's office, it totals about $59 million. Well, they get to keep $1.5 million in fees, or 1.5%, I'm sorry, which is about $888-some thousand dollars. So it's 58 million or so, which is what we should have. We have 60 million. I don't understand why. So even the 60 million is more than what we should have, so I'm like... did you guys not collect your fees, like anything. I checked with several other districts. They all got what they expected, what was on the report. I don't know. So the county basically said, which is not an answer, the collector said, well, we haven't received... First he said, your April payment includes late... So if someone paid their taxes late, not in protest. And I said, I understand that, but... That like is you're talking, I mean it still adds up higher and that's talking about a commercial property who pays late which they very, we very seldom get late commercial payments. And so not at that level. And then the second thing he said was well we also haven't received all of our protested settlements to be paid out. Well that's not a current, that would be, that still doesn't impact the current payment. So neither one of the two reasons that he gave made sense and he didn't seem concerned that he overpaid us either. So for the current school year, even if they would decide they made a mistake and needed to pull some money back, they have never – they just show – so at the beginning of this school year was when we owed $2 million back to them for literally June. I welcomed Nisha with, hey, we owe the county $2 million. Welcome to Clayton. And so they don't collect their money until they start collecting taxes. So everything will wash out next year. So – John will deal with it with a budget revision, I'm guessing. So that's what I told him. I said, welcome to Clayton. It's all up in the air. So that is one change that we got in the last week. So there was another significant increase that we also received last Wednesday. Literally, I met with them on Wednesday, go back to my desk, we get the mail, and our assistant, she goes, wow, I wish I could have all this money. It was a $1.2 million check. that we budgeted half a million dollars for. So it was $700,000 more than expected in the financial institution taxes. And I've talked about the fluctuations we've had in that. So we never know what we're getting in there. Right. So, and just for historical purposes for like Jason and Chris, in 2018 we received 1.2 million. In 2019 we received 459,000. And then in 2020 we received 1.5 million. And then in last year we got 519,000. So I'm normally conservative around 500,000 budgeting. We happen to get 1.2 million, so. So that was another little bit. So altogether about $2.7 million of operating funds, not counting the debt service portion. So I've redone my projection model to show you guys at the end, and so you'll be able to see how that impacts us. So any other questions on the two fluctuations that happened in the last week? Okay, so federal grant revenues is the other decline, and as Atana mentioned, That difference is about a million dollars worth of free meals that we've had for our students, and that program does end next year, just so you know. We are going to be sending out information for parents to apply now, actually, just for this school year because that will get them started at the beginning of the school year. Normally there are current year roles, but since people haven't been filling out the applications, only direct certs will qualify. So we're going to start getting out communications to parents in order to make sure they're set up for next year. Okay? So with regard to other revenue, that includes our fee-based programs with significant fluctuations in revenue closer to pre-pandemic levels. The most significant variations in these programs include the Family Center, KidZone, student activities and facility rentals. And then that budget projects these activities at closer to pre- pandemic levels. Oh, shoot. Crap. Went the wrong way. Oh, no. I think I'm right. Okay. Operating expenditure budget is the next one. So that's projected to increase only 1.88%. And this is primarily due to fluctuation in salaries. So I'll talk a little bit more about salaries since that represents 61% of the operating budget. So 22-23 is the second year of a two-year salary agreement. And for the budget, we had a 1.7 overall budget impact that is included in the current projections per the salary agreement. This represents an average salary increase for teachers at 2.8%, which is allowable for staff turnover. So 2.8% average raise, but with turnover it's about a 1.7 budgetary impact. So staffing changes are based on enrollment projections and student needs, and those have been budgeted. So enrollment projections were provided to the board this spring and are continuing to trend down with declining enrollment in most categories. So resident enrollment is projected to continue to decline from its highest enrollment of 2,179 students in 19-20 down to 1,984 students in 22-23. to an estimated 1,900 students in 26-27. So voluntary transfer and statutory tuition student enrollments will continue to decline with the phase out of the program. And then because of all those things, though, you know, we're not losing revenue because of enrollment because ours is based on taxes mostly. However, we will continue to monitor enrollment trends and the impact of that in staffing. And as a result, this year we did reduce a full-time teacher at Glenridge as well as a full-time So other salary budgets, including administrative and classified staff budgets, were all increased in budget form at 2%. However, due to inflation and a tight labor market and significant increases to minimum starting salaries across St. Louis County, higher actual salary increases support staff classifications were given to ensure competitive starting salaries. So for example, we increased our starting custodian salary 7% from 16.03% to $16.03 to $17.15 an hour. So this, in turn, caused a compression of the salary schedule for these staff. And we were able to fix this compression for over 25 staff due to a large turnover that we've had of tenured classified staff. We had over 10 staff people with 20-some years of experience retire this year. So actually, between the end of the budget last year, which we still had them in there, and then in this year. So it just created a significant decrease to the classified budget. So therefore, we were able, which also caused an overall decrease to the budget that was part of our savings. So it was kind of a perfect timing of everything in order to make some significant salary adjustments in places where we needed to be competitive. So and then with that, retirement and benefits represent 19% of the operating budget or $11.3 million. 2020 and 2022 both ended the year with significant growth in our medical, are projecting for 2022 currently, in the self-insurance fund balance. However, because we still need to build the fund balance more so we can find some future savings and premiums, we're budgeting a 5% increase in that category. which is what we've had for the last three years. So school and department budgets represent $8 million or $5 million of the operating budget and are established through the zero-based approach. District leaders are always intentional at looking at our needs to ensure district resources are allocated to programs that support our vision and our goals. There was an inflationary increase included in the budget requests. The supply budget was approximately 7% due to inflation, and the purchase service budget was less at approximately 3% due to multiyear contractual agreements that we already have So our various capital plans... Yeah, I forgot about this one. So other expenses, this budget pretty much is a straight increase of about 2% every year. We haven't received anything with the exception to utilities that we're expecting any significant increases besides the 2%. So this does represent about $4.8 million of our operating budget, but they're contractual in nature and pretty much fixed. and so with the exception of utilities. So we've actually seen some saving in our liability insurance, so we're not projecting a significant increase in that, but we have had with utility prices. So that budget, I think, went up almost 5%. And I know I

ask this every year, but we don't have any deferred long-term maintenance, right?

No, not right now, really. We've been able to get all the roofs and chillers and all that done. There's always maintenance, but nothing major. Yeah. All right, so then the capital plans. So our various capital plans represent 4% or $2.4 million of the operating budget. So as I previously mentioned, we're requesting the additional $200,000 in TIP funds to accomplish the goals outlined in the self-study related to cybersecurity, data privacy, and risk management. But it's expected that the TIP budget will return to the previous funding levels with an annual increase of 2%. So the normal TIP budget is $649,460. So we're adding $200,000 on top of that. And then we do have a $10,000 contingency in case a server breaks or something like that. So facilities capital improvement will be increased 2% for a CPI increase. It's not the real CPI, but what we're doing on there. And then for a budget of $958,360 along with an additional $35,000 for furniture for classrooms and 35 for contingency. And then the capital plan includes the annual payments for the certificate of participations that were issued to finance the improvements at the Center Clayton as well as other instructional needs. So I've already discussed these one-time capital expenses not included in the operating budget, and there are currently not any additional extraordinary items that I foresee in this coming school year. But as always, something could arise, and we would just present it as a budget request, as we do. Yes, which was approved by the board in the presentations. So, in summary, operating revenue is projected to increase 2.5 million or 4.23 percent from what I showed you, but in reality it would be flat because we're going to increase it about 2.5 million, which I'll show you in a minute. And then operating expenses are projected to increase approximately 1.8 due to fluctuations in staffing, salaries and benefits. And then those extraordinary expenses or one-time fluctuations have been excluded from those amounts. So operating revenues, will fall short of operating expenses and extraordinary items causing a strategic spend down of the fund balance of $2.8 million of the operating fund balance. So as I mentioned, the debt service is going up $2 million. So the operating fund balance then would be 40%. So that all includes business type activities and extraordinary items in the end, because they do all hit fund balance at some point in time. So they're not completely removed from all of that. However, there is a $520,000 that has been formally committed to the board for future capital expenditures related to the Center of Clayton that will end up spending $110,000 of that for next year for the roof. So after we pulled that out, because we just set that aside, that leaves a net operating fund balance of $2.6 million or 40% of budgeted operating expenditures, which exceeds the board's fund balance goal of 18%. So not only Jason, but I have been asked about the fund balance goal of 18% before. And this is set in policy at a lot of districts. However, prior to me being CFO, the board decided that they did not want to set the fund balance in policy because what happens if we drop below the fund balance level? And then we violated our own policy. So we've changed even when we change policies to service providers. The board was asked at the end that question about whether or not we wanted to retain that philosophy. And we basically have always had this goal of 18%, which was set back in 2004 when we passed the levy years ago. And we knew we could maintain that 18% goal for several years. And so based on the historical spending levels from June 30 through December 15, which is when we have a payroll due and it's right about the time we're running out of money and we need our first tax paycheck to be deposited, which normally occurs around the 2nd to the 4th of December. So as long as we get that, if we have a 24% fund balance, we can make it to the first paycheck that we are going to be tight on. And so I guess if you wanted to say what would be a nice sweet spot, it would be 24%. However, we had that conversation and the board, as well as the Long-Term Financial Advisory Committee before we did the last levy. also did not want to adjust that goal because it was determined that the district could operate at a lower fund balance by issuing tax anticipation notes if needed. So not to set an arbitrarily high fund balance when there's other options. So I guess it's not arbitrary. But so if, you know, I don't disagree with either scenario. Both are feasible. But they're both goals. They're not set in policy. So, you know, if you wanted to look at setting a different fund balance goal or setting a percentage in policy, you could definitely do that. It could be a great topic for a financial advisory committee or something like that. But it has been discussed several times. So, yeah. So on my final slide, this is a graphical representation of the projected revenue expenses and fund balances in the budget that was presented. I've included a dotted line for the infusion of revenues. So you can see the blue line at the top is the additional revenue that was included, and then the green line at the bottom is how the fund balance is impacted by that. So that adjusts the fund balance up to 44% for the 22-23 school year from 40%. So as I mentioned, although I presented the one-time expenses independent of the operating budget discussion, they still impact and are reflected in this chart. And that's where you see those spikes in the expenses is for those. So as I said at the beginning, the conservative approaches to planning by Clayton's board has been a historical trademark of the district. And these decisions has made us very stable with a strong financial position as depicted in the graph. So what questions do you have?

That was

intense. Sorry.

I mean, thank you, Mary Jo. As always, I mean, you put together a very comprehensive picture of, you know, where the district has performed in the last year or where we expect it to perform in the coming year. I just had a couple questions. I mean, you know, I did notice that you mentioned the reality of the inflationary environment that we're living in and everything is subject to change. I love the little, you know, preamble that's always in the front of these. You know, these things are subject to change. especially considering the changes that you've just received and the surprise amount of money we received from the county in the last week. But do you think that the 2% increase is a realistic increase based on what's going to happen and what is anticipated to happen in the next 12 to 18 months? You mean like in projections further out? Yes, in terms of costs and expenses and salary increases and that type of thing. Or do you think we need to take a harder look at that or that's something the long-term financial advisory committee should take into consideration?

I mean, it's easy to make changes in the projections and it... When you get out into the last year, you were at a 51% before the infusion, and then you're at about a 55% after that. So you're still at a really comfortable level. So whether or not you want to adjust the projections to show it, or whether or not you just want to wait until the time gets closer to make the decision, either way, it's not putting the district in a position where you have to make significant decisions on reductions. Because the other thing is, as much as you would potentially have some increases, there's potential for some reductions due to enrollment declining. So there's lots of variables in place. So I personally feel kind of keeping it steady. You know, you might have inflationary pressures above the 2%, but you should probably have some reductions that would get it back down.

Yeah, and speaking of the enrollment, it is a decline in overall enrollment, but I also see an enrollment shift from resident students to more board grant-funded students as well as the addition of tuition students. But it doesn't seem like we're attracting enough tuition students with the additional space to offset the loss in overall students. Yeah,

and we've had conversations about – we used to market it. So like marketing it more, putting it in newspapers. We were up to 65 students at one point in time.

Okay. So are we, I mean that's maybe something for the district to consider going into next year is some, you know, maybe it is time to start marketing the availability of.

And we did discuss that as well. Yes, for sure.

The highest, we had at one point when we started the program thought we could get up to 150 students and the highest we ever got was 65. So I would be cautious much higher than that. But yeah, we could definitely increase that area, which would then be a revenue increase. I think Jason's got a couple. Go for it.

All

right. So first of all, thank you for addressing my question about the 18 percent. So just so everyone knows, I sent a question in advance asking where the 18 percent number came from.

John actually asked that last week. Oh, okay.

Good. So I just want to make sure I understand the timeline right, just because I want to take as much institutional knowledge you have here. So this was set in 2004, and it went a little fast for me. Was there been a look back at that figure since that

time? Yeah. So in 2009, before we – at that point, they had some – there was like a committee, and – I wasn't involved with that, but they looked at it again to see whether or not they were going to put it in policy. I don't know whether there was a conversation about the amount, but I know there was a decision about whether or not to put it in a policy. And it was specifically decided not to be put in policy because they did not want to violate, because we did make a fund. There was a GASB 54 that was issued at that point in time that caused changes in how fund balances were set. Okay. And so they decided not – so we were required to change the fund balance policy, and then they just didn't want to put the fund balance in there. And I will say when we do S&P rating calls, they do question it because most districts have it set. And since we have such a strong fund balance, it's not a major knock. Yeah. But if we didn't, it might become a concern.

Right.

So –

And we haven't looked at that since 2009. Okay.

Well, then back right before we set the 2019 levy, the long-term financial planning, they didn't look at putting it in policy. That one was should we change it so that the projections would look different with a 24% fund balance versus the 18%. Okay. And so that was when they decided you can always borrow because it – Where you see the dip, that bottom line, that was the 24%. That was literally 24%. And when we got to

24%, we had $5,000 in the bank when we had to make payroll

on the 15th. It was very

tight. Oh,

believe me, I was very

nervous.

But most districts do have it as policy versus a practice. Yeah,

I don't know if everybody does, but they do have it in policy. And they can have other fund balance things and goals, like say you want to grow the fund balance 25% every year or something like that. So you could do, you know, or have a, that was the other thing we had talked about. Do we want to have a balanced budget? Because we had been, but that was where the caution was. So we had been spending reserves down for like four years. And if we have, you have to have a balanced And then you violate that policy. What are you going to do? What's the, you know, what's the implications of the board violating his own policy? All right. So

my only other question then I'll, and then we can move on is for the 200,000 tip, the one time tip, do we know how much time, how many years that gets us? I mean, does that, is it three years from now we're going to have another thing like this? Do we have,

I can come up, but that's how we did it before is to project as far out as we could so we're not coming back to the well. And that was six years ago. So now this is kind of the next plan that we hope to plan to get five to six years.

Okay, great. All right, thanks.

Okay, any other questions? All right, I think we're going to take a quick restroom break. We're

going to miss you, Mary Jo. Thank you.

We are going to miss you, Mary Jo. okay guys we're gonna get back to it um hi um we are moving on to our math curriculum update so welcome it's good to see you both

good evening everyone um i am joined with angela caracciolo who's our math uh coordinator k through 12. And similar to what we did a couple meetings ago with technology and CTE, the way that we're going to go through this is, first of all, within the report, we've given you a lot of information. What we will talk about at the table is a very high level of what was in the report. So as opposed to us reiterating everything that we wrote for you, we're going to highlight a couple pieces for you, specifically our goals, the connection to the profile of the graduate, And then how will we be better as a consequence of focusing on these goals moving forward? And then we'll provide an opportunity for you to ask questions. So tonight, math and science will look very similar. And when you looked in the reports, you'll probably see even some similar language within goals. That is intentional. If you remember back to when we had literacy come to the table, some of the wording in the goals is similar. So part of our work as a team is to be more focused and more sort of congruent within the group and focusing specifically on things that will help us move forward with our strategic plan. Uh, at a June at the June meeting then will be the time where you will approve all four content areas that have come through. So technology CTE, um, math, and then science. Um, so we felt like it made more sense to just approve all of that together as opposed to having it happen piece by piece. So I'm going to hand it over to Angie. Um, so she can share the work of her committee.

Thank you. Good evening. It's a really honor to be here and representing the K-12 department and the teachers who are teaching mathematics and are mathematics learners. So I appreciate your time and your thoughtful questions tonight. I'm going to go ahead and can you click to me? Okay. So, thank you. Speaking of driving, a driving force of our self-study was really our core belief that everyone is a mathematician. And I think that was part of like our, really when we were studying and talking as a department and as teachers is that really this idea of rebranding what it means to be a mathematician because mathematics itself has went through a pretty big transformation just when you think of how we use math today versus how we used math 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago. And so the enduring understandings that you see here, we really think better capture our philosophy around mathematics teaching and learning, and also better keep with the district's profile of a graduate. in our efforts to make sure that our graduates are strategic thinkers, are collaborators, are creative, are problem solvers. And that they just do those things through the context of mathematics. So the proposed goals and the action steps which you've read in the report and which we'll highlight here have been designed to create systems and sustainable structures, so things that we can depend on and rely on from year to year, that help promote positive mathematical identities for our students ensure classroom experiences that are relevant to our students and their experiences. Goal one was really developed around a curriculum instruction to ensure that we have purposeful teaching and instruction in our classroom where students are expected to not only have mastered grade-level essentials, but have been also encouraged and promoted and grown to develop those skills necessary to be problem solvers. as I alluded to the characteristics that we expect of our graduates. We know to do so requires clear expectations and interpretation of our grade level standards, as well as the instructional practices that really are high impact, we would say, that would maximize student growth. A lot of this work happens in planning and collaboration at the grade level team meetings with our math specialist, with our instructional coordinators, with myself. But we recognize that we needed it to better warehouse it and better present it for our staff, particularly at the elementary level where they're responsible for so many different content areas. So with that being said, we have done a nice job, I believe, of articulating those expectations within Google folders, within our curriculum documents. But it was clear that it would be easier to lay out kind of a curriculum website for teachers to be more easily visible, also to make that more visible to our parents and to our stakeholders. So by kind of, instead of it being in folders where we have to share, to make that more visible to our public of what's happening in each grade level in what units of study and then having it to be able to drill down more deeper for teachers to get those details at the levels they need. Um, we also, um, through those conversations recognize that we have some measures, um, of that are some metrics that are measuring student progress towards content, which we'll kind of talk about a little bit. Um, but we hope to develop more measures, um, and not more tests, but more opportunities where students can start to really show off their skills, um, of being mathematicians. So those process standards, right? Um, our state tests, when we get those data results back, don't really necessarily tell us how creative our mathematics mathematicians are. or how collaborative our mathematicians are. So really working with our teams of teachers to say, we feel like we have pretty good measures of if students are meeting those content standards, but how are we better able to capture through portfolios, through innovative measures of metrics to prefer them to be able to tell who they are really as mathematicians and not just as calculators computers of math. The committee's proposed improvement strategies and action steps for Goal 2 are developed in response to our commitment to equitable access and high expectations for all of our students. In particular, we looked at our students where over about 60% of our students 6th through 12th grade are enrolled in what we would consider our college prep sequence. And currently that sequence, which you may have heard, does not necessarily sequentially align with our state standards. Meaning we'll teach all the state standards but they're not in the sequence with which the state has identified, with which the state actually tests. This misalignment complicates our ability to prepare students for those required state testing and transitioning students in and out of Clayton, so students who are coming into Clayton's programming or leaving Clayton and going to other programming, as well as transitioning between tracks. So students who are looking for opportunities to move into Honors or who are not appropriately engaged in their coursework. So as a result, the district committee is recommending that we redistribute the standards back to the courses they are intended for. So not eliminating any of them, just kind of putting them back in the buckets that the state is testing them in and that they were intended. This redistribution, we believe, will better prepare students for the state required testing as they'll be learning the material at the time with which the state tests are being given. It also actually increases access to a senior year calculus experience for students in the college prep sequence. Right now, the only way to access that is actually acceleration or skipping over one of our courses, which is primarily our statistics course. which is not really what we want people to skip over when we think about being data literate and being able to understand the information that's being given to us in this day and age. So with this redistribution, we have the opportunity for students to dual enroll their sophomore year in a geometry and an algebra two course or be able to take geometry over summer experiences. This would allow them to accelerate through the progression while still only being responsible for really one year of math within that course, within the course that they're designed to be in. Furthermore, on Monday, just I think everybody was getting news on Monday, it sounds like, the college board announced that there is going to be an AP pre-calculus experience for the 2023-24 school year. So that was not in the report because I didn't find out until Monday. But this creates actually a new college credit opportunity for our students who culminate their high school careers in pre-calculus, which is a lot of our students. College Board recognizes that if students are not dual enrolling or accelerating through curriculum, that they should still be afforded the opportunity to participate in a college credited program course. So we're excited to learn more about how that opportunity would integrate into our progression, and so you will definitely be hearing about a new course proposal from me in the future with that. We're really excited about that. Furthermore, we talked a little bit in the report about integrating the use of contextual learning within our sequence as well. So there are algebra programs out there that are really, this is our collaboration really with our practical arts, CTE department to say where can we kind of partner to think about algebra and its context to manufacturing processes, entrepreneurship, design. And then likewise in our geometry courses with some construction materials. And so really trying to put those things that students are learning in the math classroom right to work and see how that works big picture. So this also falls under our action steps for goal two. So while we feel confident that we are able to meet the diverse needs of our student populations in our math classrooms during our math periods, this goal really charges us to be prepared to meet the needs of all of our students where they're at and to ensure they continue to grow as mathematicians and that we are prepared to provide them with those things. So when we recognize students are performing significantly above or below their grade level peers, that we have systems and structures in place that we can be prepared for those students. While we still want to be able to be individualizing and personalizing instruction, we want to make sure that we have structures in place that can be fluid while also being intentional with the students in front of us. We also really want to be mindful of the potential social-emotional ramifications of structures that remove students from the classroom to provide interventions. So when I talk about those systems and structures in place, we're thinking about the personnel that we have available to us the schedules that occur in the building, and where we're able to really move into classrooms and provide the resources for kids that they need during their math classroom so that they don't need to lose instruction outside of their math classroom during their math period or have to be identified as leaving the classroom to receive what they need. We really want that to happen during math class with their peers. The key points on this slide really just capture some examples of the improvements to our programming as a consequence of this work. We're really excited to begin this work, particularly the collaboration that this work is going to allow us to have with our building principals, with our instructional leaders, and then with our other coordinator partners or other curriculum partners, particularly in our science and engineering department. So I guess...

What questions do you have?

Okay. Go ahead,

Stacy. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And like you, I'm really excited about the realignment and especially the offering of an AP pre-calc. I think that would benefit so many kids. Right. I really think that's really great news. So I had a question about those percentages from the student perception, like is their class, my current class is just right or too challenging. Are those percentages where you'd hope they'd be having this close to 80%, upper 70% be just right? And about 10% say it's too challenging?

Yeah, so it was funny when we dug more into where those percent categories came from. We were thinking that students were thinking that math was too challenging. We were like, well, where are those students actually? And what courses are they in? And I don't know if I identified that as articulately in here. But the students who were saying that the math was too challenging for them weren't necessarily all in the honor sequence or all in our general sequence. It was really kind of spread out. So although 10% of the population felt that, it wasn't as if one sequence or one progression made students feel that way. We also were mindful of when this was given. It was kind of given at the beginning of the year right when we returned from like virtual learning, right, when they're trying to get their note of their teachers. So like I said, while we weren't, you know, while we would like, you know, 100% of people to feel like their math was right where they were at, it felt more promising to us, I think, than it could have been. No, I mean, it actually

seemed pretty right on, like in my opinion, thinking, I mean, kids, we do want kids to feel challenged, right? We don't want, I mean, if everybody's saying it's too easy or it's just right, then... you know, their thinking's not being pushed. So I was just curious how you thought about those numbers. And then along those same lines, I was curious what you thought about the tutoring numbers. Yeah. Don't really surprise us. That, like, bother you that kids are saying they need outside tutoring and you feel like we should really be getting them all here? Or, like, when I dug deeper into that, some of the reasons really weren't because they felt like the instruction was lacking here. It was more to, like, push their thinking in different ways. So I'm just curious what you thought

Yeah, that was interesting to us as well. And I, that's part of like our conversation that I've had particularly with Dr. Jordan at Y down to say that when kids need help and at the high school, like how do they know where to get the help from? And so when we were going through the tutoring numbers, we were actually surprised to find out that kids weren't like, when they say like, I have a tutor, it was almost like, and I have a piano teacher and I have a violin teacher, right? Like I like to do math. And so I go to a tutor and we do more math versus like, I need a tutor to actually access the curriculum. And so what we found was that, for instance, it's more of I think a... Like I'm gonna sell something. It's more of me trying to sell to the children, or to promote. I'm going to promote the fact that help is available. So in the learning center at the high school, promote that during packed time, how can students start to use packed time to find help for math? During lunchtime, what does that look like? I think part of our student population right now, because we are in virtual learning and they're trying to navigate the schools that they're in, where we would have kids eating lunch with their teachers or in various places doing math, I think we saw less of that, which is where we were starting to then say, well, if they're feeling like they need to get help outside. But we were very happy to see the amount of students who were able to say, yes, I can get the help. My teacher is available for me to get the help I need. And so... we would like to kind of continue with the self-study to do some work around focus groups with some students in small settings to say, you know, hey guys, think about last year because this was kind of a full year. It was a little bit more normal. What did that feel like? Where did you feel like you could get the help? What structures are in place that you can do that? And work, I think, with the building principals and thinking about schedules, thinking about places that are already built in the school for them to get help.

I think it's also like part of, part of the goal three around intervention. Like I think oftentimes when we use the word intervention, it feels very formal to you. Um, to, to anyone, sometimes it feels formal to us. Um, but I think that's also a place for us to be able to, to really be thinking about those pieces. I, I think there are times where we have learned that when we can be more clear with our communication to children and to families. we benefit from it and the children end up benefiting from it. So like, what are the ways that we can be more clear about the ways that students can access different programming outside of like both within the formal programming, but then also outside of the formal programming? Like when are people available?

Yeah. Cause I, like, I remember Y down used to have like designated days that was like math drop in before or after school. And So it was very obvious to the kids that's when you could go get math help. Whereas it just seems, like you said, maybe just communicating it better would help. My

question was that. I want to piggyback on that because I don't have any questions at all. Can

I ask? Yeah,

go ahead. But from the tutoring perspective, It was kind of all over the place to me because it talked about like parents were asked a question of their children having tutoring. But then it's also intermingled with or commingled with like you're asking the children about tutoring and then the feedback. I didn't know what to gather from it. I didn't know what to get from that information, from that data. I just want to understand like what should we be gathering from that data about the tutoring section? Because to me this is a big deal, this information.

So upon reflection, I think one of the things the committee – like there was a perception of students saying we all have tutors. Everybody goes to a tutor. Everybody needs a tutor for math. We can't do math without a tutor. And so we were like, whoa, is that really true? Because if that's really true, right, then we need to do something significantly different. Are our students placed in the wrong classes? Are we having the wrong instructional practices? Are we using the wrong resources? Like what's going on? So when we put this out here and we said – okay, these numbers weren't, it wasn't 80% of the population isn't saying they need tutoring, right? Support. It was, this seemed like a manageable, okay, let's dig more into find out more what that means to them, right? Does that mean they need tutoring because they need help accessing? Does it mean they're using tutoring because they like to do math and they go do math with their tutor? Does it mean, and we asked, you know, we asked it from both parents and students because we were kind of not really sure what the, the feedback we were going to get for both populations, so we just put it out there. And I think parents and students answered pretty similarly. Like, I wasn't expecting the parents to say something and the students to say something. I just wanted the most accurate data I could get. So that's what it says. Most of the white-on students, 90% saying that they had a tutor also reported, though, that if they're having difficulties in their math class, they can get the help they need from their teacher. So that was really what I wanted to know is like, are you getting a tutor because you don't think you can get help from your math teacher? Because then that's something we need to deal with. But that didn't come up. That didn't surface to me as the main issue. So why working with students sometimes, well, I'm going to get a tutor just to help me organize my thinking. So I have a tutor in math, but actually it's not because I need math content practice. I need help just kind of organizing my thinking in math and helping study for math. Or yes, I have a tutor to kind of backfill some gaps. So people could be working with a tutor for a variety of reasons, right? Just as the way they come to math teachers for help for a variety of reason. So this was wanting to really trying to focus our thinking of you know, if everybody's saying it, is it true? And we needed kind of a clear reality of the situation so we knew how to respond. And when we got this, it was like, okay, obviously we need to keep doing what we're doing, but it's not, you know, our content is probably in the right place.

It's a little bit about challenging assumptions because I think a lot of people have an assumption that when a child and when a teacher hears, like, kids saying, I'll work on this with my math tutor, I have a math tutor, we start to worry that something's not happening instructionally within our classroom. So it was more about digging into why do people have tutors and understanding that piece to know, like going back to what Angie talked about as sort of the first enduring understanding of everybody being a mathematician. Well, part of that is that I have to have an identity as a mathematician. And if I have a tutor, is that in conflict with this idea of me being a mathematician? Or is it like Angie said, that it could be, I really like to do math. And so it's like my piano teacher.

Right. Yeah. So that makes sense. I would love to have seen this data dug into it. And then, like, kind of organize in some fashion. But I do also think that if you ask parents and ask kids questions like this about tutors, that people see it as a sign of weakness. They're not going to tell you what they want to tell you, right? They could. I mean, I don't know for sure. You all know more than I do about this, but I'm thinking that they could just be saying anything. Yeah, no, I'm just doing it because I just wanted to do more math. And then, like, how many kids really want to just do more math, right? Or, no, I'm doing it just to get some, you know, whatever. But the question is, like, really, what is this about? And I do think that teachers are open to helping out the kids. I'm sure kids feel like they can go to the teachers. But still, like, what is this data really saying? That's all I wanted to really delve into.

Yeah, thanks. I just had one more question. I was a little confused by this. So the redistribution of courses, but there's going to be no change to the honors sequence. Is

that right? Correct. Our honors sequence already follows that sequence, just at an accelerated pace.

Okay. But you won't, I guess, you wouldn't be able to, are we still not able to move from regular to jump to honors? No.

We are. So in this, I also talked about a little bit about our work with student services and Dr. Wiens has been really helpful in thinking about like when students, because we know students grow at different rates or they go way to, people go to math camps and learn a whole lot of math and come back and they're like, I know more math. Now where should I be? Or students who are coming into us. So we have structures and processes in place to continually to assess and reassess students where they're at. So if a student wants to move or feels like they have maxed out of kind of a program or a course, we work with them to kind of talk through what their data looks like, what the course means, if an accelerated and a compacted experience is really the right thing for them because that's faster work, more work, right? And kind of their end goal. And typically when we walk through the progression with them and we have the conversation of, You still have access to AP statistics. Now with this dual enrollment, you still have access to a AP calculus. If we're getting you to the same spot at the end as the honor sequence but we're doing it at this rate, what makes better sense for you as a learner? For me, I need to sit and grapple with it and think through it and work it forward and backwards. instead of flying through it. For some kids, they come to us with a lot of background knowledge in mathematics and maybe have done all of that outside of our progression, and we need to make sure that we're continuing to grow them too. So when the time comes, we do go through a content acceleration process, and based on the data, based on the decision of the content acceleration team, can put transition places in place. transition plans in place for a student to access that if need be. But we would expect mastery of those prerequisite skills before going. And I

also understand math is a little different from other course subjects in that way where you know, being in regular English. And then when you're taking honors English and when you're, you need a, there is a base knowledge you need in math in order to move forward. So I understand that.

Yeah. But one of the things too, is that I think we want, we, this is kind of like the rebranding too of our program. And that's why I put in there that like the honors in it, in the extensions courses are really designed to be an intervention for some students who are coming to us with just this vast amount of math and who, who we need to kind of accelerate and we need to compact things because of what they have they come to us with. But in no way should the instruction, you know, we have teachers, you're not just an honors teacher or a college prep teacher, like the high quality instruction occurs in all of these math classes, right? And the access to those high quality tasks is happening in all of those classes. I think this opportunity, this realignment, so right now we have so much algebra in our geometry course, we can't really double up, right? But with this realignment, we're able to kind of say, Sure, geometry is a little bit more of a standalone course, which could happen at the same time of these things or over the summer. And then with the opportunity with that, the AP pre-calculus is just super exciting so that college board is starting to get on board with this idea of it's okay to not accelerate through math and still be really good at math.

And just one more thing. Speaking of the quality instruction, I have always appreciated that so many of our math teachers can teach the highest levels and the lowest levels simultaneously. So, you know, it's not, there's no perception that our high level, that the high level courses are getting the best quote unquote, you know, best teachers. Like I've always as a parent, you know, and a board member appreciated that because I just think it does, it helps the teachers too, right? Like to see where the kids are coming from. So yeah. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you.

Just one quick question. So first of all, thank you for all this and the report was really helpful and I appreciate all your comments on this. Um, just to real quickly, you know, you talk a lot about assessments using a variety of assessments. Maybe you can talk a little bit about how you assess and balancing out with the need of not over assessing. So we're not burning out our students and teachers.

Sure. So we actually just the past couple of years redesigned our elementary scope and sequences. For instance, um, the elementary tech series that we had adopted had like 12 chapters in some grade levels. And so we were getting 12 chapter tests and it was like, this is fantastic. This is really crazy, right? So we have reorganized those scope and sequences to think of major units. So for instance, instead of 12 chapters, you maybe have five major units at a grade level. And those major units would end with what we would call an essentials assessment. So when you think of the elementary experience, The teachers do a good job with their PLCs and with their math specialists in developing snapshots, I would say, like quick formative assessments, which could be a quick exit slip on your way out the door. It could be me as a teacher coming by just having a look-for for the day, so an informal kind of assessment opportunity. But we have a district... common summative assessments for each of those units, which is like I said is about six maybe per grade level. Those summative assessments are maybe 10 problems now because we've redesigned them to really just assess the essentials of that unit. So that's that point of like are our kids mastering those essential content standards at that grade level. We currently use NWA's measure of academic progress to measure growth over a year because we also think it's really important for students to recognize themselves and the growth they've made. So no, I may not be at the 98th percentile, but gosh, I made really good growth this year, right? And to celebrate that. And so that's really important to us. And that's really the only tool we have at this point to be able to measure growth over time. The state test is required of us at certain grade levels. But those are kind of like our essentials, right? So we are mindful of the amount of testing. I would say we also have in 2018-19, we did some professional development around assessment and really thinking of assessment more as a portfolio and what's in the portfolio that we're collecting on kids. Or actually a photo album, I should say. So the photo album and do we adequately capture all of the things our kids know throughout the year? And that's where I think we have some room to grow in this area of measuring and reporting out and students reflecting on those mathematical practices, right? Those kind of things that I put up there in our enduring understandings. You know, am I sticking with a problem for longer than two minutes? Or when I'm getting frustrated, do I have the skills in my toolbox to kind of work through that and come back to it? And so developing that grit and developing that perseverance. And I think that's where we really want to start to capitalize. I'm not going to believe that those are going to be paper pencil tasks to do that. But what would those metrics be so that we can have conversations around growing students not only in their content but also in their processes? I think

also at the next meeting, one of the things that I'll provide for you all to approve is the assessment plan for the school year. And so math is one component of a much larger picture of assessment. And so when we start to look at that, one of our concerns is always around testing fatigue for children. So both the number of instances within their career that they take a certain assessment and the number of times that they are assessed in a year across content areas. And so the coordinators and I will often sit down and have some conversation about realigning things. So is it necessary for us to do this twice a year? When is it necessary for use to do it so that a child is not being tested multiple times all at once? The spring is always the most difficult time. So because of the state test, because we're collecting end-of-year data, like locally collecting end-of year data around reading, around math, it feels heavy. And in fifth and eighth grade, it feels even more heavy because they also test in science. So we are aware of that and we try to spread it out as much as we can. And we did some things this year with really just sort of experimenting at the earlier grades with the map and moving it later in the year than we've ever done it. And really, like we feel like we liked that a lot, but it is a conversation that we'll have as a whole. And so when I come next month with that piece, it'll be an overall picture K through 12 of what that'll look like.

And I think Melina actually made a really good point when we were thinking about this upcoming testing season with our group of teachers that we were planning with, about that we really don't want students to ever go into a test and be surprised or feel defeated or feel... And so part of our preparation is really just so that those experiences for kids, when they're going into them, they feel empowered to go into them. So by no means am I... Would I encourage teaching to the test or preparing for the test? But the preparation that I have given you over the year as a student should make you feel empowered to walk in and not be like, I don't know. You know what I mean? Like, I've not seen any of this because now I've done a disservice to you. So I don't want testing to be a traumatic experience for kids. And part of that then is preparing them for those scenarios, right?

I do think this might be a good opportunity to highlight something that we talked about in the report about the EOC and the change in the state. Because I am, we are pretty concerned about what our data is going to look like next year because of the change. So what the state has said is, so historically, and in the assessment report I always tell you all this, that historically we give the, we're required, we're always required to give the Algebra 1 EOC. Historically, we have given it after the first semester of Algebra II because if you look at the chart that Angie had in the report of where Algebra I standards are divided. And so this is all about this realignment of courses, et cetera. The way that Algebra I standards distributed across the Clayton course sequence, it's not until college prep Algebra II that you've really completed all of your Algebra I standards. But the state has made a change. So it used to be the district made the decision about when to test the children. Starting next year, you have to test the children in the course at the end of the course with the name of the course. So that currently is our eighth grade course. which means that our challenge algebra students will have covered the algebra one standards. Our algebra eight children have only covered a small percentage of those standards, but next year we're not making this change until the following year. So next year's testing is going to have eighth graders taking a test on content that they haven't completed, but because of the way that the state has aligned things, we don't have a way around that. And They won't take then the eighth grade math, the map. But then that same group of children has to take a math EOC in high school. So they will have to take a second EOC in high which for us will probably be the algebra two. We can choose between algebra or geometry. We'll probably give the algebra two. um assessment but so that is going to be a change to what our data historically has looked like because we're and to angie's point that's going to be a teaching and learning piece that we're going to have to prepare these children for like we're we're about to put you through an experience where you haven't been exposed to all of the content because the state made this change So when I present the assessment report again that following year, like I'll remind you all of that. But it's a place that we're not like as educators, we are not comfortable with this. We've pushed back on the state, but there's not you know, there's nothing. I don't know that there's anything really that I can do about that. Other districts feel the same way. um about this but i'm not sure that every district has done what we've done in looking at like where the percentage of their standards are are falling so that is a concern for us moving forward we see it as a one-year concern And then because of the realignment of courses and the new progression, the students then in the college prep series will take the test then as freshmen in high school, which is where we've always given it in high school. So we've given it because of the standards and also because we've always believed that to be a high school assessment, not an eighth grade assessment. So I want to be clear, like I know we said it in the report and it feels really heavy to us as just as professionals and people who care about children that we recognize that like this is going to be something that we're going to have to lean into with the kids to sort of explain to them like here's what's happening without like freaking them out. But like we need to be clear, I think both with families and with the students about what like what that experience is probably going to feel like next year. Go

ahead, Chris.

Yeah, I just have a, as part of the self-study, did you guys look at the kind of philosophical change that's occurred kind of throughout the district in terms of the emphasis on homework versus assessment and the amount of weight that's been taken away from completing kind of homework in math and across the rest of courses and gotten student feedback and parent feedback on how that's impacted motivation for students within the classroom in some cases or assessments in general?

So I would say that we, not as a part of this study, I would say that the high, I'm assuming that you're talking about like the grading piece that the high school is looking at how they're... And the middle school too. And how they're focused on looking at grading differently. So I would say the buildings are doing some of that work now and there's been some talk with the teachers about this year, how this stuff felt. I think that they're talking to children about that piece also, but it was not a part of this. The work that we did as as a part of the self study.

Thank you so much for this report. It was great. I'm really happy to hear about this switch to having our students feel like they're all mathematicians, no matter how fast they're going through math, but that it is something that they will use and it has all these amazing... It builds so many skills and ways that they can use in their entire lives outside of mathematics in school, right? I want to ask a question just with an equity lens about... We've talked about tutors a lot, and it's, again, it's something that Clayton, it's around. People talk about how many tutors there are. Are we, again, sort of what Jason was saying in terms of looking at that piece of data, which is our first piece of data on that that I'm aware of, but I just wonder how much of it has been looked at in terms of, like you said, what class they're in, whether it's the honors or the sort of, you know, there's three levels, right? And I also think... we should look at it in terms of the students that have either 504s or IEPs. I think it's really important that our teachers are empowered to and have the resources and availability to help those students without the student having to come to them I think it makes, for those students who are struggling in whatever we're talking about math, for the teacher to have adequate ability time, et cetera, to say to that student, I see you're doing this, this, and this. Instead of sort of saying, well, you know, they didn't come to me. We want the teachers to go to them and sort of say, oh, let's look at this. Let's look at ways we can. I do think that some of that is being solved through tutors. And that's the right of the student and the parents to do. But what I'd like to know is how we empower our teachers to be proactive with those students that really aren't performing at the level that they potentially could.

I mean, from like a teacher perspective, right? And from my colleagues that are in myth. I mean, oftentimes it's, hey, I'm sending you an email. Can you come see me before school? Or can you come and check during lunch? Or we've also, though, implemented a co-taught model for some courses at the middle school and high school for that reason. So we have two certified math teachers in the classroom with the intention that the course operates at the same rate and the same speed as all the other sequence. And kids are... don't know if they're in the co-taught classroom because they need co-taught services or not. But the idea is that with those two teachers, I currently am teaching in a co-taught class room this year, that students who then we're aware of may need additional reteaching or practice that we can then timely and relevantly do that right during class. So while we can pull small groups, we can split up and do different mini lessons, we can have coaching cycles happening all during the math period. And so we found that that's a really successful structure because it's two people who know the content, who are planning together, who are working together, who know the kids together, instead of somebody who maybe doesn't know the math content coming in to help or someone who's just stopping by to support. So the COTOP model has been one so that we don't have to say like, hey, come see me during lunch, right? Because I'm the only teacher in the classroom and I need to sort with all these people. It's we can identify that need pretty quickly in that classroom and then I can pull a chair up and work next to the kid. We can say like, hey, can a few of you come back to the side of the board? We want to work through some problems together. Or, hey, if you need some help, and then kids start to self-identify themselves as like, yeah, I want to go over that. Yeah, I want to work on those problems together because it's a community of collaboration. So that's been something that's really been important to us at the middle and high school level. We actually stopped providing, like we used to have math support classes at the high school. So like an algebra support class or a geometry support class that kids could take in addition to their math class. But that felt like you can do that, you know, you need to come get math help, right? And so instead of trying to be more, being more mindful of like what that says to a kid or what that feels like to a kid to have to go to another math class, we're trying to do that during the math period with those two teachers, which is how we landed on the co-taught model. So that's one instance in which I think as teachers, we're feeling more empowered and more aware to get those students what they need without having to ask them to come in for help or advocate for

themselves or... So how many classrooms is that currently happening in? Is it happening at all three of the levels? So right now, our

general sequence has co-taught sections with the special school districts. So they do a lot of planning together to think about like study skills and how things can be modified, adapted, extended. In our college prep sequence, the co-taught sections happen at college prep algebra one and college prep geometry, so the first two years of math. And then at the middle school, I can't tell you first. I know they did a push-in model this year because of scheduling. Next year it's going to be more of a co-taught model, I believe, in sixth and seventh grade. So we're looking at those first two entry years.

Okay. And how much do you think your math teachers are? being proactive specifically with kids that have 504. Is that something that's discussed? Is that something that is a goal area for, again, for reaching out to students to help rather than having, you know, the teacher really being aware of these students are the students that, you know, may need help with XYZ thing. I'm going to watch. I'm going be the one that says, oh, Joe, you know, student, you haven't, it looks like you need some help in this. I'm sorry I'm making that question again, but I do want to point out that even with co-taught, there are certain students with whatever learning disabilities they have that are going to need the teacher to be really proactive with them. And I just want you guys to tell me if that's happening with kids with 504s and IEPs generally.

Yeah. I mean, I don't think that there's an, like, I can't say that there's an intentional effort just around students with 504s. I think when we look, it's just where the need is, right? Regardless of if you have a 504 or IEP or you're undiagnosed or, you know, all those different things. So as teachers, it's not necessarily. But I appreciate that kind of feedback. And I think it's something that as we look at our class list for next year and our class rosters, it's things that teachers can as we do data digs just about like who are the students coming into our classroom we can think more about the needs that present to us for sure

it's what oh thanks Jason we're going back to that

yeah real quick so in regards to equity right you know, do we know what students are, what level in terms of their math skills are using a tutor? And how does, so this is a three-part question, and then how does the tutoring affect the efficacy of the teaching that's happening in these classrooms. We don't know how good we're doing for a teacher if most of these kids or some of these kids are getting tutoring, right? And then like, maybe you thought of this and maybe you haven't, the last one would be what students can afford and can't afford who actually need that tutoring. Have you thought about that? So that's all I was kind of getting at. I mean, I thought this information, and I know I'll let you answer the question in a second, but I just want to say this small diatribe part, that I thought this information was really good. I just thought that if we had to be drilled down on it, delve deeper into it, we might have got some really good, fascinating information that they might benefit us in the long run on how we're going to, you know, really improve on our instruction process.

Yeah, we did dig into it more. I didn't include it all into the report, but we did have – within the district committee, I had a subcommittee do a whole dig on all the data. And actually – and what they found was that the numbers were not different at the different levels. So it wasn't like 25% of the honors kids had tutor and 5% of the college prep kids had tutor. It was pretty – the same all throughout those different levels. I did not ask for, like I didn't ask any student identifier marks within the survey, but that's where we were hoping to do some small group focus groups because we felt like kids would feel more comfortable in a small group focus group kind of setting to be able to share that information.

i also think just like in when you look at these data pieces to to like put into perspective like the numerators here they're all really small numbers right so like we're talking two students 25 students like those are not like huge numbers so so i i think it's important for us to put that piece into perspective too like in a building of 900 students 535 of the students like took the survey 34 of them are identifying as as having a tutor Like that to me feels like a different kind of like, so, so then how much do we dig into that? And how much do we unpack that? I think I would feel differently if I saw a numerator of like 200 students saying that then that it, I, it would feel, I would feel a different maybe. Um, and I don't know if this is a fair way to say it, but I would feel a difference sense of urgency. to think about that. And so I feel very comfortable with the group, with the team thinking about, okay, so from this information, like the level of urgency feels different to me. So let's take the time to engage in conversation with the children to sort of really unpack what that means. If it was so many students, then I think we would probably have to address the data in a different way.

We also have, like, so summer, and you talk about, like, access. So one of the things that we're also doing, and thank you, Dr. Means again, is that with summer programming with the middle school students, so incoming 6th, 7th, and 8th graders have the opportunity to participate in, we have, like, jump start to math or transition to math extension. So students who are going to be in 6th grade math next year can come. It's not like a remedial. It's not, like, a by-teacher recommendation. It's just open for anybody going into 6th grade math that wants to do math over the summer. Right. And so we're excited to have that this summer, and that's really kind of free access, free tutoring for students who want to just shore up on their math skills over the summer. So we're excited to be doing that at the middle school with our kids too.

I saw that. I thought that was a pretty cool little program you were in. I didn't include that before. I'm just saying, I hear what you're saying, Melina. I mean, Melina. Are we missing something here? Who are the students that took this, the survey, and that felt comfortable in this group to answer these questions? You know, and could you have, you know, could you have, I mean, and who are all the students answering the questions honestly, you know? Who wants to say they have a tutor? I know there are some kids who are like, I don't want to look weak. I don't want, like, I need some support. So I'm not going to say anything, you know? So, and then you also had a nice amount of students that said, like, well, I guess this isn't nice, but it was 10 out of 56, which isn't a large number, I guess, large sample size. But, like, I got a tutor, and it's too easy for me. So, I'm not going up into the next level because I'm cool where I am. And I'm busting an A in this. So, let me just stay right here. Like, what does that mean? You know, it's interesting. This information right here in this section is interesting.

So I think we think it's interesting too. And I think that's why we're thinking like how do we unpack it more with children? And I agree with your point about like data is only as good as how honest people are going to be. We don't know how honest they are. And so I think that's why once we have like thinking about this as sort of casting a really wide net of sort of very generalized kinds of things and then being able to take that information and say, where are the places that then we want to drill down more and be more specific? I don't know when we put people in a focus group, I don't know that they're going to be honest there either. Like, like there, you have to have some sense of community there also to, to be able to feel comfortable, to, to put that out there. So oftentimes when we run focus groups, we're very like, we work with Chris's office to think about that. Um, like if we're running a focus group about math, we're not going to have Angie in the room. Because that feels different to people, right? So thinking about those pieces. So Chris is really helpful to us in being able to figure out what's the best atmosphere to be able to get the most honest feedback. information for us to be

able to

respond to.

Which is why we didn't ask for those identifying features too because we wanted them to feel safe to say whatever.

So I'd love, so Itana when you were giving your presentation you started to talk about you had talked to the students about like I guess was it maybe the flexibility of being able to move in and out of maybe regular math to honors. Is that what you were getting at?

Yeah, and I think this is probably more specific to the middle school. Because here in the high school, you can kind of move around more easily. But at the middle school, I remember it being kind of hard to move from a not extensions class to an extensions class. In fact, I don't think I ever saw it happen. So and I guess maybe with these summer courses that might be able to happen more now. So I was wondering, is there more possibility for that? Because then I feel like there could be some students who potentially could be in extensions courses who just aren't because it's harder to move there. So then instead of being able to go on the honors class to be prepared for AP Calc, instead they do the whole skipping FST thing. And then they might feel like they didn't get the whole experience. So is it more possible now to do the whole? Skipping around. Yeah, I think

with implementation of some of the summer programming, that allows kind of that boost experience, that transition experience to take place for the students who are identifying there. The teachers actually also do, like, when we do placement, we identify, like, who are those students who we think we're not stretching enough, that are sitting there getting this pretty easily, right, that we need to actually reach out to. So sometimes it's a parent inquiry, sometimes it's a student inquiry. But more oftentimes than not, especially this year, it's been teacher inquiry. Like, hey, I have this kid in class. It seems to be going really easy for them. Let's explore what it would take. Let me see if the family is interested. Let me see the kids interested in kind of doing a little bit of extra summer work or summer experience to move up. And then it becomes a personal choice. But I want to kind of give credit to some of our teachers who are really looking to do that when possible. Because we want kids to feel appropriately challenged, right? And so like Jason said, some people will be like, oh, I'm cool. And so it's going to take the teacher to be like, but I think I can make you work harder. And so that's going to be a teacher. That's not going to be a kid going to ever advocate for themselves. But there are some kids. who are like, I want more challenge, I want more challenges. And we can give them the challenge they need in the class too. So I think it's also important to know that regardless of the sequence you're in, teachers are still differentiating, right? It's not like a one size fits all. Like, nope, I can't stretch you. This is as far as I go here, right? But if you're really getting it and I can stretch you because, and that's kind of the beauty that Stacy talked about, is that our teachers teaching multiple levels, that they have access to all of that curriculum. So if I see a kiddo in my class that I'm like, wow, you're really rocking this. Let me pull something from this course here and kind of support you to do that. So I would definitely just talk with the kids about advocating for themselves and talking to themselves, but really thinking about not identifying yourself as not good at math just because I'm not in extensions either. What it means to be good at math is that I'm a problem solver, is that I'm creative, is that I think things through in different ways, is that I can understand how you came up with the idea. And you can understand how I came up with the idea, right? And so we want students to feel good about themselves as mathematicians and not use a class title to define that for them.

I think also with the change in the progression at the college prep sequence, it allows like a different kind of access to what you were identifying as like an end point that feels important to people, like being in Calc. So maybe it's not B.C., Maybe it's AB calc, but that's still an AP experience. It's still a college experience. But by removing FST and redistributing that, that provides that opportunity in a different way than maybe has historically been a part of that. So sometimes thinking about like the end point of the sequence as opposed to just like the name of the course.

So with the removing FST thing, where is the place where you would skip to a different class if you were on the college prep course?

Yeah, so up at the top, the bottom one would be the new progression. So you can see instead of your freshman year of Algebra 1, Geometry would be sophomore year, but you could take Geometry and Algebra 2 your sophomore year. take pre-calculus your junior year and then end in calculus. You can also take AP statistics your junior year along with the college prep, which is what we really encourage a lot of kids to do. We're excited. We have lots of AP statistics classes next year. So we're really excited about the increase of students accessing AP statistics. If there's a class we want you guys to take, it's that one before you leave because of all of the statistics you'll learn after you leave.

So I just have one very quick question. Thank you for the presentation. It was great, as usual. And so we talk about, or I know that your goals are kind of to have this flexibility and fluidity so that kids can move. I wonder, so if we put a kid, if a kid's in the regular math class in elementary school, do we have any data on percentages that actually end up in, you know, if you get tracked at, you know, okay, this kid's in third grade and he's in regular math. Like what percentage of kids at some point actually then move up to extensions?

So first, so that you know the progression K through 12, everybody's in the same math class until sixth grade. So sixth grade is the first. Oh, they don't have the,

they don't do that?

No. Okay. So sixth grade. Oh, that's good. Is the first place that we bifurcate. Got it. And so at that point, like that's the first, so like that is the first time that we start to make recommendations for courses. Got it. So that fifth grade to sixth grade transition. So

even, that's even better then. Yeah. So like if you have a kid in the sixth grade, they're in the regular, Do we have any data on then, okay, well, how many actually then move out of that regular math? Because ultimately, yeah, I mean, so how many percentages or data on who moves out of that regular mass and into a different level?

So I don't have the numbers for you now. I can get those for you. But what we've looked at is more actually retention, like if we're placing kids in an extension sequence initially, we want to be intentional to not have kids fall out, actually. You know what I mean? Like first of all, I want you to not feel like you're defeated and now you've got to change. So that intentionality that happens like fifth to sixth grade of like where – is this a student who's going to be successful in an accelerated, compacted, you know, kind of faster pace? Is that the kind of learner they are? To make sure that I set that person up for success because I want them to not feel like I can't do it anymore. Now I'm in over my head and now I'm not a good mathematician. And so all the social emotional goes into evolving that. And we found that most of our students are staying. If they're placed in extensions in the sixth grade, most of them are staying throughout. If they're not, there's various reasons that they've come out. But that percentage of students staying in extension usually stays the same. The students who move from our college prep sequence up into our honors sequence, I would say because we deal with that from a content acceleration perspective, I usually work with about 10 to 20 families over the summer who explore that option of going from a college prep sequence to the honors sequence. So whether it's from college prep geometry to honors algebra to trig, whether it's from sixth grade math to seventh grade extensions, probably about 10 to 20 parents or families throughout the school year over the summer, we sit down, we look at data, we do maybe additional testing, classroom observation to decide is that the right move and some students will CHOOSE TO PARTICIPATE IN ADDITIONAL SELF-STUDY, SOME WILL DO THE SUMMER PROGRAMMING, AND THEN BASED ON KIND OF THEIR PERFORMANCE AND THEIR KNOWLEDGE, OKAY, IS THIS THE RIGHT PLACE TO GO? BECAUSE WE REALLY WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT WE'RE ALSO NOT CREATING GAPS IN STUDENTS' UNDERSTANDING AND KNOWLEDGE, AND WE WANT TO MAKES SURE THAT THAT FOUNDATION THAT WE'RE BUILDING IS SOLID, RIGHT, MOVING FORWARD. AND SO I THINK PART OF THE CONVERSATION IS, TOO, LIKE I SAID, We have a pretty unique population of students here at Clayton that have come to us with a lot of content knowledge. And so while we want to keep them with their same age peers and not kind of skip multiple grades at elementary school and skip multiple courses at the high school, that honors and extensions progression is really designed to kind of keep them engaged and at that pace without just saying, oh, welcome to freshman year, start in calculus because you've done all this math, right? So I want to also make sure that I'm giving them an experience that's super rich and challenging too. And so I think it goes back to like your point, and I can find out more It's like the why behind it, and I think to Melinda's point, the why has often been because I want to be able to access calculus or to be able to be able to acess AP. And so that's why I'm really excited about these things because it's like you can still access those things but at the pace that you were designed and developed to learn it. And that's an okay pace and that's a good pace for you too.

So it kind of doesn't sound like the children, the students have a lot of autonomy, right? In some ways. Because it sounds like there's a lot of control by the teacher, right? The teacher's going to say, I'm going to push this child. I see this child. I'm going to put this child in. I'm going push you into the next level. And we don't want you to slip out, so we're going to support you in this space of staying in, what's it called again? Math extensions. But what if the child was like, I'm getting a B in the regular, I don't want to call it regular. What's it called?

College prep.

College prep. All right. College prep. Getting a B in college prep. Just because I'm just like chilling. But then if you put me, if I say, you know, I want to go and try honors for example. Because this kid, this child says when I'm in a competition, in a more challenging space, I actually go harder. Like I strive off being in a challenging space. And it seems like if a child wanted just to go from 6th grade college prep to math extensions, that can't happen. There is a a bottleneck that the child has to go through. And then there's someone who's saying on the other side, you haven't demonstrated anywhere along the line in your math learning that you're ready for this. Preventing that child from wanting to try and fail or try and succeed. So my question is, how is that allowing the kid to be independent, to be an autonomous person in the space of education?

I do think with it, we have had students who so students have come to our teachers and said exactly what you said. I want to do this. And then the Angie with her team then explores that with the child. So so anyone who comes forward asking for like a content acceleration piece, whether it's the parent, the teacher or the student. Angie's going to have a conversation with them. And she's going to start looking at sort of the initial piece of data looking is like that very sort of standardized testing data that we have. That's the initial piece. But to your point, we have some kids who are like, all right, but if you put me in there, I'll rise to the occasion. So then that starts to be a different kind of data collection piece. So it's more of like an interview, like let me hear more about what you're talking about. in order to move within the sequence because the honor sequence is an accelerated pace, If I'm not in there in sixth grade, but I want to go in there in seventh grade, I have to, as a student commit to something. So I have to say, yes, I'm going to do this additional work in order to get there because otherwise there's a gap in my learning. And we know that that's not a good idea either. So that's another opportunity for the child to present, to say, yeah, I'm really into this. So yes, I'm gonna commit to doing this additional work. And then, so like she has a really good process built in for, for being able to have those conversations and to be able to do that. it doesn't always work um it but it is like i i think it's important to know that like angie's not making determinations based solely on an nwa score or solely on a grade that is a component of it so like when looking at a data profile it is very formalized data but then there's an opportunity for her to engage with the child for her to engage With the family also to find more out. But I would say that that's not always, you know, a kid may indicate that or a parent may indicate that. Like a parent may say, my kid wants to do dot, dot, dot. And then we sit down and we talk and we work through it and what does this mean? Like what's the commitment? And then they're like, sometimes they're like, no, I'm good.

Well, let me ask you this question. So what's the harm in, because the child's like, man, I don't feel like going through all these extra steps to get into seventh grade extensions. Man, I'm not trying to do all that. I know I can do it. Just let me in. And if I fail, if I'm struggling, then I'll bounce out. I'll get back into college prep. What's the harm in allowing that child to just try that out as opposed to

I think part of it has to do with the accelerated pace. So I'm going to use sort of a generic phrase that is not exactly what it is, but if you look at sixth grade extensions as the sixth grade curriculum and half of the seventh grade curriculum. It's not really half of the seventh great curriculum, but for the sake of argument, sixth grade and half of seventh grade. If at the end of sixth grade, a child says to us, I want to go into seventh grade extensions. They've missed like a half a year of content. So something has to happen to help them with that content. Like, so to help them access that content before they go in. Otherwise we feel like we're doing like educational malpractice by putting them into a space that they haven't done a significant amount of learning that the other children have and that the teachers are still like, do you see,

I see what you're saying. There are steps and levels to get from

A to Z. It's not intended to be a preventative thing. It's intended to be a we need to help and support you. When you look at the honors sequence, I think some of it is the goal shouldn't be to get into honors. The goal should be to have access to what makes the most sense for you as far as far as a learner. And we really look at the honor sequence in some ways as an intervention because it's an accelerated pace and that's what those children need.

No, I mean, you make a lot of sense. And I don't want to belabor this point, but this is more of a broader conversation around getting into these higher, these more challenging classes. But I'm just saying in general, like, there are limitations and we don't allow the child to really want to be independent thinkers. Like, we are saying that you missed a certain amount of math that we think you need to be successful in this next level. And sometimes it's just a matter of some kids, some people just need to try something different. They just need to be in a different space. They need to just try a more challenging, you know, level of math or whatever, social studies, whatever the case may be. I'm just saying it just seems like we're kind of, like we have this idea of... wanting to give these kids the independence right learning independence but then again we kind of don't really want to do that because we don't think you're ready

but do you think there is a learning independence by saying like when we're providing these summer opportunities to say so like if if that is an interest of yours and you you're feeling like you want to do it we're actually providing the structure for you to be able to do it we are saying to you okay do this summer boost That is a level of independence, I think, for a child to say, I want to do this. Okay, I'm going to commit to this additional learning that I know that I need to do in order to be successful. I think we have plenty of information based on thousands of children that we've worked with to know to really sort of have a sense of, like, what can constitute success in a course.

Right.

So it's, like, we're not saying, like, we've compacted it within a summer experience. But

have we ever tried it this other way? Because I understand the malpractice is there, right? You're thinking, well, I don't want to put this kid in harm's way, right? Right. But I'm saying, have we ever tried a sample group of kids who felt like they were ready to try a different level of math or whatever, right? Science, English, whatever, right? And let's just see what they do. Maybe they might prove us wrong. Maybe there's something we don't know. Maybe our data that we collected based on whatever is off.

I think we're pretty thorough with the interview because in order to engage in a math class where you're with students who've had a half a year more of content than you, there's actually certain things to know and be able to do. So it's not like, can I engage more deeply or can I think more critically? It's actually content knowledge that you're missing. I think to the point, this is silly, but my daughter really wants to swim. She can't just jump in the water if I don't teach her how to swim. She wants to swim, but she's four, so I have to teach her and we have to learn. It's not that she can't swim. You want to be out there in the Olympics? Cool. But you might never get to the Olympics, but I can give you the practice and I can get you the tools and I can get the resources you need. But there are certain skills, there are certain proficiency that you have to demonstrate and have to be able to access the table. I think math is different than other content areas than if the way that we can define rigor or define, I think you should feel challenged and have high quality tasks and be competitive in a college prep sequence. That shouldn't be unique to an honors class. those characteristics of engagement and justifying, critiquing and reasoning of each other's shouldn't be unique to an honors class. It's not like you get a better experience. It's truly accelerated, compacted. You want to do more work, you want to do more homework because you like to do it because you can't get enough math and I'm providing that experience. And I think that's why I'm excited about this junior and senior opportunity of like, You can be in the college prep sequence and take AP statistics and leave with AP on your transcript. You can be in a college prep sequence and leave with AP calc on your sequence if that's what you want. So the access is there, and we're doing it in a way that is like humane and empowering to you to say, I can do this, and my teachers are supporting me. So we're going to continue to make sure that kids feel like they can advocate. We're going to continue advocate for kids. But the truth of the content matter which we deal with is that there are a checklist of skills and standards that every year There's more puzzle pieces and more things to do. There's not a lot of overlap and repeat. When you look at other content areas, there can be overlaps and adverbs and adjectives added to standards as they get progressively harder. And math, it's a brand-new chapter, right? I get

you. I got you.

Yeah, but I appreciate you kind of stretching our thinking there, Jason.

I do want to make sure you understand. I do understand that there are levels and things and steps and things you learn in math. We don't

want anybody to drown.

Right, right. Got you. Thank you. I appreciate your work.

We'll put you on that class, Jason. We'll get you on that class. All right, that was awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Appreciate it. And we are going to move on to science. Okay. Wait, does anybody need a break? Is everybody okay?

Okay. Let's go. Let's go All right. As Chuck comes to the table, this is Chuck Collis. He is our K through 12 science coordinator. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Chuck. He is retiring at the end of this year. So this is his last hurrah at the board table. I just want to say publicly that I've really appreciated working with you side by side, learning from you and working with you. Chuck is our new curriculum coordinator for science is going to be Caitlin Mooney. who's one of our science teachers at the middle school. And so Chuck and Caitlin have already been working together to help with the transition. So I appreciate all of that and all of your work and dedication and leadership that you've had with the science department over the last several years.

Thank you, Melina. It's been a pleasure working with you as well.

Thank you. So like I said before, this will feel very similar. It even is in the same format as the math presentation. So Chuck will go through, talk a little bit about each of the goals. He's going to give you a little bit of a grounding piece to begin with because of this sense of the focus within our goals for science around the next generation, science standards. So a little bit of grounding with that because the science standards are some very interesting very complex standards. And then he'll talk about his two goals, and then again we'll have an opportunity for questions.

Hi everyone. Thanks for your time tonight. I'm excited to be here and tell you about what we're doing in science and what our plans are going forward for the next several years. Do you want me to drive? Yeah, you can drive. I want to start off by talking about the next generation science standards. This is something that was proposed or came to fruition in approximately 2013. And it was a big nationwide push to kind of recreate science as a kind of integrated approach, something that is less about content and not that content isn't important, but something that is less focused on the content and more focused on behaviors that scientists do to accomplish their work and about that none of the different domains of science, physical science, life science, earth and space science in particular, none of those exist as a silo. Each one of those has crossovers with other domains of science and there are practices and concepts that are common to every science domain. The big thing that I want to point out about the Next Generation Science Standards while we're here tonight is this idea of what is called three-dimensional learning. Three-dimensional learning is divided into, you guessed it, three different pushes. One of them is disciplinary core ideas. We've got cross-cutting concepts and science and engineering practices. I'm going to tell you a little bit about each one of those so that hopefully you can understand what our three-dimensional teaching and learning and eventually assessment approach is going to come to look like. Disciplinary core ideas, they focus the content that we're going to be learning about when we are investigating whichever particular science domain happens to be the course or the unit that we're working in. The disciplinary core ideas are picked out or are shaped by of being broad importance across domains of science. They are key tools for understanding and investigating complex ideas. They are also chosen to relate to student interests and societal concerns. They are teachable and they are learnable over multiple grades at increasing depth and sophistication as they go. So that's kind of a vertical alignment part of the next generation science standards. Cross-cutting concepts are understandings that have applications across all science domains. They involve things like cause and effect, scale and proportion, the modeling of systems. And they keep the different domains from behaving as intellectual silos that don't have anything to do with each other. And then we have science and engineering practices. And those are the behaviors that scientists engage in as they investigate and model the natural world, and or develop and refine technological solutions to encountered problems. Examples of the practices include planning and conducting investigations, analyzing and interpreting data, and engaging in argument from evidence, oftentimes in the format of a claim evidence reasoning process. And when we put all of this together along with an impetus to explore what we're learning in science through engaging in minds around an important and interesting phenomenon that we're trying to grapple with, there is an equity piece that's to this as well. It approaches the learning of science, well, it has transformed the learning of science from an information deficit model to one that is about a shared experience that students have together. And then they collaborate together to conduct investigations in order to solve or to understand the phenomenon or to solve a problem. All right. Go on to the next one, yeah. So our first goal is about curriculum and instruction. Components of our first goal include vertical alignment. As I mentioned, the structure of the Next Generation Science Standards lend to this in that we have the same themes and concepts and practices that go in kind of a spiraling pattern as students progress from kindergarten through 12th grade. And as I mentioned before, they do come with increasing complexity and sophistication. There is horizontal alignment in that we are partnering with math, starting this summer doing some summer curriculum writing between our sixth and seventh grade math teachers and sixth and seventh grade science teachers. to consider the order in which we teach our concepts and our units and our lessons. And we're going to be modifying the curricula as the students, I'm sorry, as the teachers collaborate together to see how they can fit the math and science together so that they support each other as best as possible. And this is also going to meet the needs of our students in several ways. A three-dimensional approach to science instruction is an integrated and it's a skill-based approach to science. Phenomena-based investigations equalize opportunities for students to learn. They build on prior student interests, they are focused on local and or community issues whenever possible, and they involve cooperative investigation to gain understanding and to solve problems. This has a lot of elements that are shared in common with culturally responsive teaching. We are going to also build the way that we assess students to be increasingly about assessing them along each of the three dimensions of science teaching. So I don't know if I want to say like a decreased emphasis on content, because that, of course, is still important. But that on the assessments that we have, cross-cutting concepts and science and engineering practices are baked in as part of assessment experiences as well. This serves our profile of the graduate as far as challenging students to be intellectually curious so that they go beyond the memorization of facts and they get to where they understand the conceptual frameworks that underlie and connect science domains. It's gonna help them be creative thinkers as they focus on solving interesting problems and testing their ideas, and it's going to get them to be collaborators because that's built into the three-dimensional model. And our second goal is focused on equity. And it comes in two main parts. The first part is that we want to disrupt the narrative of science being a white, male-centered profession. Ways in which we can begin tackling this is that we can embed representations of a variety of identities of scientists, multiple ethnicities and genders who are practicing and contributing to the process of science. This needs to be done in a visual way, meaning representations that we have in our hallways and our classrooms. And this also needs to be within our curricula, focusing on the contributions of people from a wide variety of backgrounds instead of ones that are centered on old white dead Europeans. The other thing, or the second thrust of this is that we want to work towards proportional representation of identity groups in our honors and AP science classes. Some of our steps towards this is that in our elementary science experiences and middle school science experiences, we want to set these experiences up so that it makes honors and AP courses at Clayton High School a natural next step. As you've seen in the data, perhaps if you read through the report, the ethnicity that we really need to pay attention to bringing up our proportional representation with as our black students. So we are increasing our efforts to find black students who show readiness for honors and AP level classes that we may have missed with our recommendation processes before. And then we are making invitations to them to register for these courses. And we are committing ourselves to having in-depth conversations with our black students and with their families to address their hopes, and their questions, and their concerns about attempting honors in AP level science courses. This serves our profile of the graduate portion of being culturally competent. We want students to understand that all genders and ethnicities have made great contributions to science and that everyone has a place in science. Our next steps are to update our curriculum website, particularly our curriculum map for elementary schools as we have moved away from previous curricula that we were using to curricula that are offered by MySci. Our curricular resources are going to be expanded with the intentional use of phenomenon-based learning, greater representations of multiple identities, and more explicit use of cross-cutting concepts, science and engineering practices, and 3D assessments. Our teacher practices are going to mirror the same things that I've talked about in our curriculum resources. Teachers will be trained in this. This has to do with the professional development part. that is up there. And then we are also going to be collaborating, as I mentioned, with math for horizontal alignment between math and science courses.

Okay,

thank you. Questions? Stacy, go ahead.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that report. And I especially appreciate the importance and diligence prioritization you're putting in that goal two, equity and science, and that there's so many action steps related to it. I did have a question though about One of them was about modifying the recommendation process for identifying, recommending our black students for honors in AP sciences, which I think we've been talking, we have been doing in all of our classes for the last few years. So I guess what struck me was that the percentage of black students in honors freshman physics actually decreased this year from last year. So I'm wondering what you attribute that to and what you attribute that

The numbers bounce around from year to year, some. And we're talking about a relatively small number of students. We wanted to recommend a lot of students. At the same time, we don't want to set anyone on course to have an unsuccessful science experience as they are starting their work at Clayton High School. I wish I wanted them to be higher.

Good. Thank you. That's all.

Anyone else? Itana? You're good? All right. Oh, sorry, Kim.

Go ahead. I just have a... There we go. Do you see an increase in the participation in honors between freshman and sophomore year in high school, between students that maybe either declined the opportunity to go into honors physics because of the perception of the difficulty of that particular course, and then choose an honors science track their sophomore year forward?

We have quite a lot of movement from students who are taking kind of like the general level science course in a previous year to the honors level course the next year. I don't have specific data to answer the specificity of your question where a child may have passed it up because they didn't want the rigor associated with honors freshman physics and then took it for chemistry. But we wind up by the junior year, I think we've got more than half of our students taking either an honors level biology or AP biology.

Yeah, and that was the reason for my question is as we're looking statistically at some of the... either the breakdown and underrepresented groups or trying to get representation of groups. If it's better maybe to look not at the incoming freshman class that's taking honors physics, but by the senior year maybe or by junior or senior year of high school, what's the proportion of that same student body that is in an honor science class? Because I think unlike the discussion that we just had about math, where there's certain conceptual building blocks that are necessary before you can go to the next level, That's also true in science, which is why you guys are coordinating horizontally across the science and math curriculum. But it's less true in terms of the movement I think that we do see in students that maybe do not opt to take honors physics but then opt to take the rest of honors classes in science through the rest of high school. don't know I just think that would be an interesting thing for you guys to look at because there is this perception which is probably somewhat rooted in reality that you know if you could survive honors physics your freshman year in high school you can survive any class in high school so just food for thought

I just want to piggyback on to that since Kim brought it up it I'll just be brief I mean, I don't know what's up with that honors physics in the freshman year, but it's like a lot of anxiety and tears and stress, I think. And so I'm just bringing it up since we are thinking about social-emotional health of the kids that I don't know. What's going on in there? But I do know anecdotally that there is a lot of something going on.

We are aware of the perception of the honors freshman physics class, and we have had some deliberate conversation within the department about how that feels to children coming in and thinking like what are some changes that we can make to that piece? The teachers who are currently teaching it have really started to think very deliberately about that. And I think what sort of anecdotally we're hearing is a different kind of narrative coming out of the students in that class this year than in previous years. So I think we are making progress in that sense, but we are well aware of the feeling related to that course. And I think as we continue to make those changes, I think that's gonna help it to feel more accessible to students in general.

So speaking to what Kim was talking about with the math, or whatever it was, I think it was with math, when we look at enrollment in these AP and honors classes, or even going to a college prep level, right? There's different levels you can go, right? There are three different levels. So I wonder how much that's going to be impacted by our decreased emphasis on homework as being part of a grade. Have you thought about that? Are you going to look at that going forward? I really feel strongly that kids' efforts should be rewarded. There's many reasons why it was chosen to look at this differently and the way we're doing it now, but I want us to look forward and see how that potentially plays out and has a role that impacts enrollment in these types of classes because I do think Test-taking is one thing. I also think effort and diligence in study is another thing, and they're both very important. And I don't want, one, this idea that homework is not weighted to impact enrollment in grades and then therefore enrollment in these classes. Okay.

I think we're done here with this part, and we are going to move on to student discipline. Thank you both. Thank you so much. Congratulations

on your

retirement. Yes. Thank you.

All right, good evening everybody. Okay, so this evening I am bringing forward a set of three related policies. Policy JG, policy JGGA and policy JGA which all kind of sound the same. Um, so I just kind of want to talk to about all three of them sort of together, and then we can, I'll go back through in the order that they are presented in your agendas today to field any questions. Um, so, uh, I want to start with policy JGGA, just in terms of the background, um, which is a policy about seclusion and restraint. And that policy was revised to meet the requirements of house bill 432. And so a lot of the language in that particular policy is lifted directly from state statute and all the school districts are required to update their current seclusion and restraint policies to meet the requirements of this House bill by July 1st of this year. So JG and JGA are actually just being updated to avoid duplication of language that could potentially be confusing and to just kind of clean up and update that information so it lines up with the new language in JGGA. So that's why all three of them are being presented together. So I will start with policy JG. This one is basically the foundation of the student discipline policies. This one was revised to remove the references to secluding students, particularly as a punishment. or a consequence for behavior. It removes it all from this particular policy, and then it has also added a little bit more language related to equity and discipline for off-campus misconduct. Our legal counsel has had a chance to review the suggested changes by MSBA and is also recommending that we adopt the changes as presented. Any questions about JG? I

think so. Oh, go ahead, Jason.

All right.

Ladies first. Thank you. This is just quick, and I apologize it's not directly related to this policy, but because it did bring up the equity piece, when will we – I know we've been keeping that type of discipline data lately as, you know, with different subgroups of our student population. When will we next get a report on it?

So I can work with Dr. Patel to pull that information for you. Um, and I can present it in a weekend update to summarize that. And that also gave, I mean, cause it's

got me

thinking, yeah, no, that totally makes sense how we're doing there. Yeah. And I also think, um, when I have been looking at the data really because of COVID and just how it impacted our format of our educational programs, um, I've really been looking at comparison comparing our last kind of quote-unquote traditional or pre-COVID fall semester to this fall semester because there were so many fluctuations and so I'll be doing like a look back almost pre-COVID to see what some of those things looked like and trying to work on identifying those patterns. But yes, I can definitely work on that.

And Stacey, I'm really glad you brought that up because that is one of those things that is an area of improvement for us in terms of in order to present the data, we actually have to have the data. And so developing clear structures, especially particularly at the elementary level, It's something we've worked on this year and actually I want to thank Cameron and Robin because they're working on creating the system that we're going to meet with the elementary principals and expect next year to have that in place so that we can report accurate data regarding that.

And since the last time I talked about student discipline a little bit at the board table, I've already implemented some changes and improvements around data collection particularly at the high school, to eliminate some redundancies, make things a little bit more streamlined and consistent so it's easier to collect and analyze the data.

Look for those inequities?

Yeah.

Okay. Great. Thanks.

My question is about the word used in here, which probably can't even really be edited, but it was the word citizenship.

Was that on, I feel like, is that in the opening paragraph? Yeah, it's

kind of glaring because it talks about, let's see.

Is it the number two, acquire the values and attitudes necessary for responsible citizenship?

Yeah. So maybe, you know, I didn't ask my wife this. She would have helped me out with this, but I didn't understand what that meant in that context. So if you can kind of explain that to me, like what does that mean, citizenship exactly in that?

Well, this one is part of our current policy that's in place. And my interpretation of the definition of that is like responsible membership of said teaching and learning community.

Okay, that's cool. It just caught me off guard. Okay. In a quick read. Citizenship. All right, cool. Thanks. Appreciate it.

No problem. Any other questions? Okay. All right, so now we're going to move on to JGGA, which is a policy about seclusion and restraint. And again, this language was lifted directly from the updated state statute. There are just a few points I want to highlight for the board, if I can find them. There's quite a few strikethroughs in the first six pages. So let me get to... Okay. So I think it's important for the board to know, for example, on page nine that seclusion and restraint is never something that would ever be used as a form of punishment or convenience for district personnel. I also want to highlight that it would require all of us to make sure that our district personnel who would be responsible for engaging in any seclusion or restraint are properly trained. And that is something that we especially now that things are our ways of being together with COVID risk mitigation has changed over the last 18 months that we do plan on bringing in trainers this summer to help everyone get their certifications updated or train a few new people. And all of that, including some of our after school staff. Um, I also think it's important to highlight that, um, you know, seclusion and restraint is always the very last resort. Um, and that there are many other measures that one can take before even having to engage in this type of strategy. to keep a student safe or staff safe. And then the last part that's very critical to policy JGGA is the updated notifications to families, but also the monitoring and reporting to DESE about the frequency of the times that we do have to engage in seclusion and restraint. So, um, right now we are, we do not, we are not required to report that. And now we are re uh, required to report it on a very specific timeline. So I've already been working with the technology department to come up with a technology based solution that would tie this into our student information system because the records are required to become part of a student's record. So if a parent were to request their educational record for their child, that this would also be included in that. So we've already started putting that into motion.

Any questions? Go ahead, Jason.

In the parent, and so I apologize, my computer died. That's okay. So I still have it right in front of me. But in the section talking about notifying a parent or guardian, I didn't see anything about documenting that conversation, right? So if you email it, there's a document of that. But if you call someone, you know, is there any in the monitoring and reporting section, and maybe this is, that section might be related to DESE, but is there a way to say we got a document that we had the conversation? How do we capture that?

Um, we, sorry, I'm just quickly reviewing all the different components that were required. Um, let's see. Okay. Um, well, our current practice is that the principal or the school administrator who's involved lets me know that they have followed up with the parents. So right now, um, we, and we also provide a copy of it after the phone call. We also provide the parent with a hard copy of the communication that summarizes it. So, um, and if we are able to incorporate into our student information system, we can make a note to include that as well.

Okay.

Anyone else? All right. And then the last one is policy JGA on corporal punishment. We don't do it. No questions? Okay. Thank you, everybody.

Thanks, Robin.

Yeah.

in accordance with the law prior to July 1st, 2022. So with this, basically the district will be required to provide a minimum of three opportunities during the school day to accommodate express investment across being a child, accommodations for at least one year after the birth of the child, Employees, thank you for non-exempt employees. However, the new law is more detailed. A lot of specifics requiring the three breaks and then all the requirements that the room must have. So what we have done to be proactive so we're prepared for July 1st deadline, we've been working with each building. We have a plan for every building. Many of the buildings had rooms that met these requirements. But through what we're doing is developing a plan to ensure that we have all of our spaces adequately prepared through either minor construction or purchasing furniture or some slight ventilation adjustments that we need to do to make sure we're good to go by July 1st.

Questions? Nothing? Okay, thank you for that. Thank you. So we are going to move on to the consent agenda. Before we do that I would like to recognize Scott and Amy Wilson for their very generous donation to the robotics program, and Charles Gilpin also for his very generous donation to The Robotics Program. So thank you. And with that, Stacey, will you read a motion?

I move that the board approve all consent agenda items 8.02 through 8.06. Second.

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

I do have a question.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry, this might be directed at Milena, but maybe Nisha can answer. So the MOU with Truman creating the St. Louis Virtual Academy, I just had a couple questions about that. Is that replacing Launch and MoCap or just another option? Are we gonna have all of our Clayton students, if they're virtual, they will use this and no more Launch for us?

It's going to take us a long time to get to that point. I thought I heard you say something about Truman. It's not with Truman. Oh, why did

you say that? Oh, it says it on the top.

On the top, it said Truman State University. It's the wrong MOU. Yeah. Sorry. That's a different MOU. So I might have sent you the wrong MOUs.

Okay. I was just

reading the title. So the St. Louis Virtual Campus is the – I think I talked to you at one point about this, that there's a group of school districts within St. Louis County – that are looking to partner to offer a virtual experience for children to meet the law. Right now, we're starting next year, so Parkway is the fiscal agent because they have the most students that are virtual next year. In signing the MOU, we are becoming a member district of St. Louis Virtual Campus, similar to what we did when we became a member district with LAUNCH. Next year, the program is only an elementary program. The following year, we're starting a high school program, but it's few courses. And so we're going to build this over time. Ultimately, our goal would be to replace Launch. So the purpose of this consortium is to keep local dollars in the St. Louis County region to be able to partner with special school districts. So what happens right now with Launch is that children who have an IEP don't necessarily get serviced in the same way through Springfield Public Schools just because of the nature of what that partnership looks like. Um, so special school district is a part of the consortium that we're working with. So over time, but I'm thinking that's like very, like several years, um, down the line because the, um, the high school courses that we've identified, um, to start in 23, 24, it's, um, about seven courses. Um, and so we have to build those, um, and, um, and start to staff that and everything. And then we'll continue to build courses. So the way that we chose the courses that we were gonna build are the highest, sort of highest need in the region right now. So Calc 3, Accounting 1 and 2, Chinese because other school districts don't have Chinese. Those are the, so a full sequence of Chinese. Those are courses right now. AP Physics 3. So that's also there.

we're writing the curriculum, like it's ours. It's not Springfield.

So correct. So the member districts will hire the teachers to write the curriculum. So we have more local control over what's being taught, how it's being taught, I will say. that the, that the plan is still for the high school courses to be asynchronous courses. So similar to what launches, um, it will not be a synchronous, um, experience for children, but that allows what the reason we decided to go that way is because it allows more flexibility for children within their schedules. Um, so we, we figure that the children who are going to access this are probably not always going to be full-time virtual students, but students who, because of some reason can't put something into their schedule. that we would access it through this. So we would change the wording on our website over time to say that this is our district preferred provider, which right now we say Launch is our district preferred Provider.

Which I guess brings up, ties into my second part of my question is, would this be courses that are CoLab students would be taking or that is still a completely

Over time, it could be. It's not right now. So what we use for students who currently are in collaborative school, we use another provider. So we don't use Launch. We could use the St. Louis virtual ones, but I still think that's going to be pretty far down the line. So right now, we use Odysseyware to support those children. I was just

wondering if the grand plan was maybe that those collaborative school students would also be accessing our curriculum through the same manner.

It could be over time. I envision that this, before this is fully functional, it could be 10 years from now before it's fully functional. But it'll also depend on the need within the region. So when we started the elementary program, like I said today, we had a meeting and I said to them, I'm having our board sign an MOU and we're sending zero students because I don't have any identified students at the elementary level that are looking for this for next year. But I do think the high school piece is going to be sort of a game changer for us.

Well, we always have a pretty significant number of high school students taking launch courses over the summer or whatever. So I do think

that will help. We also did, like, this might be a good time to say this also, that our summer, this summer, we are offering our own virtual courses. So for government, for personal finance, health, and P.E., So as opposed to sending students out to lunch, that's still an option for students to go out to lunch, but our own teachers have written the curriculum and are teaching those courses. So that's a difference for us this year also. So we really are trying to embrace this idea of virtual education in a way where we have more control over it.

Okay,

thank you for that. That's great. Go ahead, Kim.

So are we the first of nine schools to adopt the agreement or are we the last? Okay, and have there been any changes to the agreement by the other schools that have already adopted it? Because it looks pretty boilerplate right now. There's not a term or anything. You can get out of it at any time. It's only going to meet once a year in the middle of the summer as the governing board comes together.

I actually sit on the governing board and the governing board currently meets a lot because we like each other. So we meet twice a month. And I think our plan is to continue to do that so that we know that as we're building this, and I think it's important for us as a district to be really involved in this piece, even though right now we're not sending children so that we continue to have a voice in the, in the control. And our lawyers

wrote the actual agreement.

So we, all the districts that are sitting on the governing board share the lawyer. And so, so the, so that law firm wrote it for us. Okay, great.

I really appreciate special school district being in on it too. That's key.

Yeah. And she, their curriculum person sits on the governing board also. So that was really important to us also. Great.

Okay, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. So we... Yep, the financials.

I move that the Board of Education approve payment of current expenditures and investments for April 2022 as detailed below. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any questions? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. And do we have public? No public participation tonight. So we are on board communications. Does anyone have any updates?

Not at

10 o'clock.

What, Gary? Not at 10. Nobody wants to update it? Okay. We could do that next meeting. I'll come back to y'all. Okay. Stacey, can we get a motion to adjourn?

I move that the Board of Education adjourn. Second.

Okay. All in favor? Aye. Motion

passes.