September 28, 2022 — Meeting Transcript

All

right, adequate notice has been given and we are going to go ahead and start. Thank you. Thank you. All right, let's go ahead and stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. All right, it's good to see everybody

tonight.

I think we are going to start with the approval of the September 28th agenda.

Yes. I move that the Board of Education approve the business meeting agenda for September 28, 2022. Second.

Moved and seconded. Questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great. Motion passes. And now we are on to recognizing our own. I'll turn that over to Dr.

Patel. Okay, and just a quick note, we don't have those individual mics still in, so our mics are right here for you to speak up a little when we're up here. So today we're very excited to recognize one of our very own superstar students. So if you could come up here, Felix, Mason, you can come up as well, and then the parents. We would love to recognize you. We've got two chairs

up here. So Felix, you can sit up there with Mason in one of those chairs. That would be amazing. So everyone, Felix,

and likes to go by Fifi, is actually a first grader at Captain Elementary School. And right before the pandemic, he decided to grow his hair. And it grew almost 12 inches, and then he cut it off and donated it to make wigs for anyone who needs those. And I think I heard he may start growing out his hair again. Felix, we wanted to have you here today and recognize you. And I'm so glad your older brother Mason is here as well. He's a third grader and captain. And I hear he's not as shy as Felix is sometimes. So we just wanted to let you know how proud we are of you. And I think we may even have, yep, we've got some pictures up there of Fifi. Felix, and all his hair. See how long it was? But we always talk about in our school district how we want our kids to leave us with these competencies, right? And one of the competencies is being self-actualized, which is truly knowing your purpose, being happy, being a humanitarian. And Felix, as a first grader, is modeling that for us and our students. So parents, we really want to thank you. for raising such amazing children. And Fifi, we wanna tell you how proud we are of you. So thank you and is there anything Mason or Fifi

what you would like to say? I know you like ice cream. Do you like ice cream? Did I hear you like ice cream,

does

he? He does. Anything you wanna say? I

like to read history books and I like to read about George Washington, and I've read about the Battle of Gettysburg and other battles.

Very good. See, that is so impressive.

At home he told me if he's being shy today, he has two things he wants to share. One is when he started to grow his hair and he found out like chip clips are really useful. He would cover his eyes and he was like oh I don't want those hairpins so we use this and if one doesn't And also he always bring this ruler which he brought today. It's like how long he has to grow to donate. So everyone if like longer than this, like there's opportunity to

donate. That's so cute. How did he decide to do that? Was there something he just wanted to? How did he get that idea?

We watched some video and there's our kids with cancer. So he asked a few questions like why they don't have hair. So we went through a little bit about chemotherapy and things like that. And he started like, oh, since we are, because there was lockdown during that time. And he was like, since we couldn't go to the salon, how about let's grow our hair? So he started it and I go with him and yeah. So he had his bus card that day, and he was like, Mom, why didn't you do a bus card with me? I expected I donated more, so maybe I will try bus card next year. Wow.

Well, thank you for being here, and thank you, Phoebe, for being a great role model for all of us. We really appreciate it. So proud of you.

Thank you. All right, and we are now on to superintendent communications.

So quite a few things now that school started back up that are going on that I do want to highlight. One of the things, and I do have, yeah, Christopher just forwarded it to the slides. One announcement we recently made was Clayton High School National Merit Semifinalists. So we had 15 students achieve this honor and less than 1% of students in the United States actually get this. So we have 15 at the high school, at the senior level do that and that represents about 7% of the graduating class. So we think that's a great honor and we'll be bringing them later on this semester at the board meeting to recognize each of them individually. So I wanted to make sure we highlight that. Another great thing that happened was the sixth grade camp occurred this year. It has not occurred since 2019, and it's a long-standing tradition. Sixth graders were excited. We had camp counselors there. I know when the buses came in and the kids got all loaded up, there was just this level of excitement, and they were so happy to be actually able to go and experience that. So they returned with lots and lots of stories and good times. That occurred, and then right now we have the food and essentials drive still occurring, so there's still time to donate. But that is sponsored by the Clayton Education Foundation, the PTO Council, and we partnered with the Clayton Police Department this year as well. So I believe over $5,800 have been raised in hundreds and hundreds of pounds of essentials. So please note that there's still time to donate. So we're going to keep that going for a few more weeks, I believe. And then a few other things that I wanted to highlight. Our Clayton High School swim team actually got together and they raised money for cancer awareness as well. And they raised over, I believe, over $3,000 for that. And they participated in the St. Louis Swim Across America event. Again, just showing, giving back to the community. And that's through our athletics team. We started a new series called the Clayton Experience. If you have not seen it, we released our first video and it was with Dr. Murdock. And basically, I've always said it's people, not programs, that make a school district great. So this is like a series where we're going to do a video once a month with community members, staff, students actually, and just talk about what it means to have the Clayton experience and just their story and their journey. So tune into that. And then finally, Erica... Whitfield just got recognized by a Titus II Foundation with an Educator Impact Award. Erica is a phenomenal teacher at Clayton High School. And she is truly, if you see her teaching and just how she interacts with the students and even how she leads some of the professional development. She works with Cameron closely, all the equity work, and she's just one of our rising superstars. So it was very nice to see that she was recognized for her excellence, like just her productivity and everything she does. So I just wanted to make sure we highlight her as well. And then today, just more news coming along. Niche released their rankings for the school districts, and the school district of Clayton last year was ranked 17th in the nation, and this year it is 13th. Moved up four spaces, four spots. We are also the best school district in the state, best place to teach with the best teachers. So here's a quick little video clip of just like some of the... That's not loaded. That cannot be loaded. So we will be sharing all that information with the community as well. But also our schools ranked out. We had the best middle school in the state, and then our elementary schools came in second, third, and fourth in the state as well. So just lots of great news. That's really good. Yep. And so with that, I want to hand it off to Carter.

All right, so last time I talked a little bit about the schedule. We have a little bit like now that we're deeper into the school year, we know a little bit more about that and teachers have started sort of like adapting to the schedule almost. So I feel like it's been a lot better in like those 85 minute classes have sort of felt a little bit more manageable now. But one thing that I've heard from a lot of students is that they don't really like the C-day thing. A lot of students and, like, teachers almost see it as, like, almost like a throwaway day almost because, like... I don't know, like, not necessarily, I wouldn't say a throwaway day, but, like, sort of just a day where you put, like, all the things, like, okay, this is, like, small things we need to get done. And we don't really take a lot of time to, like, go deep into content or, like, start anything new. And also, a lot of students are saying, like, those days can be pretty exhausting because it's, like... rapid-fire, like, go, go, go. So I just thought that was pretty interesting. Another thing that I heard from a lot of students was, like, a lot of questions about the Clayton High School library because, like, as we're getting deeper into the school year, it's, like, getting to the point where it's, like... certain clubs and, like, certain activities sort of, like, uniquely need, like, a library space. Like, I know I do speech and debate and, like... We've sort of been a little bit worried that maybe we won't have a library when we host a tournament, but I don't know. It's sort of out of our hands.

I can speak to that real quick. Just today, I actually went there to see what's the status. Based on the construction company, they're six weeks behind where they should be. So we've said Friday is the hard deadline. They need to get whatever they need to get done by Friday. And then Monday, like next week is homecoming events and activities at the school. So next week the librarians will try to put the library together because the furniture is all out there. We just need to assemble most of it and then the following Monday is when we want to let the students start

coming in. Good news.

So cross your

fingers. Another thing I've had recently, I've had a lot of people talk to me about Rosh Hashanah. A lot of students were like, a little bit irritated because, like, some teachers were having, like, big tests and, like, big labs and, like, other types of things that you can't really, like, do outside of the classroom. And so, like... I don't know. Some students were wondering if we could talk to teachers and be like, okay, we understand school, but maybe having school in such a way where it's easy for someone to get everything done from home. Because I don't know, it just doesn't really seem fair for some kids to fall behind because of their religion. So that was just something I've been hearing. And then... The last thing is sort of just a more general thing that I've, like, a trend that I've seen, like, across the board. It sort of seemed like students are sort of struggling a little bit to sort of get fully back into the swing of, like, real school. Because, like, if you think about it, like, really only the seniors have had, like, a real year of high school. And so, like... For my grade, especially, where it's like, okay, we're juniors now. We have all the hard aspects of junior year, but we're also sort of doing it for the first time. It just seemed pretty difficult. And I don't know. It's been a big adaptation for both students and teachers. So I just thought that was interesting and definitely want to see where that goes. But I just know that a lot of students are... Almost like, it's not even like they're overwhelmed with a bunch of work. It just seems difficult to keep up with everything, if that makes sense. So, yeah.

Those are good comments. All right. Well, thank you, Carter. And we're going to talk about our SSD partnership now.

good evening everyone I want to introduce several very important people who are coming to join us tonight from the special school district here with us this evening we have dr. Elizabeth Keenan who's the superintendent of schools for special school district we have dr. Tammy Yates who's the assistant executive director of partner districts and Melissa Logan who is our director of special education from SSD assigned to Clayton And tonight we're going to be talking to you about our partnership agreement. So I'll hand it over to the leadership team here.

Okay, so we wanted to go over the new revised partnership agreement with all of our partner districts. And it was revised to increase knowledge and awareness of our expectations. Some areas that we have focused on within our partnership agreement is staffing, teaching, learning, accountability, collaboration and resources, student services, data and technology, transportation, and our career technical education program. Within our partnership agreement since May 2022, we have added goals in the area of staffing that we'll go over. We reviewed our standards and indicators progress for teaching, learning, and accountability. Our collaboration of responsibilities and resources, we also added a component with the PACT team. Student services, we added providing equitable services throughout the county, and then data and technology, we looked at adding equitable processes for our tech services. So within the added components, we added where we've already met with Dr. Patel, but all directors and coordinators are meeting with the partner district superintendent annually to review our standards, also look at the indicators and artifacts for our administrator performance review, and that way they can have some ownership and feedback of our processes of our staff. Another added component is we will present at the start of each academic year to the SSD leadership team and our partner district with Dr. Wiens and Dr. Patel the goals that we're going to focus on, the areas of numeracy, literacy, and social-emotional, and then we will also have a focus area for engagement survey that our staff complete. So within that, we have the evidence of the special ed director and coordinator, also attendance of our PAC consoles where Dr. Reins and I have always been part of our PAC team. So that will continue. And the assessment and evaluation team tool will be completed by our liaison, which is Dr. Wings, and myself in the fall and spring where we go over our partnership agreement and see where we're falling and where areas of strength are and where we can improve. So tonight we're asking you guys to acknowledge our partnership agreement by endorsing our vision, our mission and our statements outlined in our partnership agreement, supporting that collaboration piece and shared responsibility and providing the equitable and seamless implementation of services for every student. We understand that the educational partnership agreement will guide us through the collaborative efforts to enable every child to achieve their fullest potential. We also want to commit to working cooperatively to implement the principles of our partnership agreement within St. Louis County and the districts. So we are asking for the signatures from our superintendent, Dr. Keenan, from Dr. Patel, from Amy Rubin, sorry, and then from our board president, Dr. Cuneo. So some of the action steps that we are working on this year is around literacy, math, social-emotional, and then our partnership agreement. We also have a goal area. So within reading, we want the students that get reading services, 40% of the students receiving that instruction in reading to meet their growth target of 60th percentile or higher or be at the 50th percentile or high on the national norm assessment from fall to spring. In the area of math, we're looking for the same growth, at least 40% of students making that growth percentile from 60th or remaining at the 50th percentile or higher. The area of social-emotional, we're really looking at our spring panorama survey and we want to increase 10% over baseline under the area of self-efficacy for students with IDPs. We also, Dr. Rings and I have focused on our professional development on the IEP process. So so far we have presented to three of the buildings to the staff on how they can be a partner with us through our IEP process and how they can really be a good team member for us and provide those accommodations and be thinking partners for the goals and things that the students need. And in October we'll have met with all the buildings. So the timeline that special school district is looking at for these is in June we completed our partnership agreement by finalizing it no later than this Friday. They want us to meet with all the partner districts to go over the new partnership agreement and then by October 31st they would like those signed agreements completed. So what does special education look like here in Clayton? We do have one director, myself. We have an instructional coach that does support all five of the buildings and new teachers and academy two and three teachers too. Within that we have 17 teachers across the district at the five schools, 20 paraprofessionals. We do have one vacancy currently. The district recently added registered behavior technicians, so we do have one vacancy in that area right now. We have five speech pathologists that work throughout one person at each building. We have a social worker that supports all five schools. We have one occupational therapist that also supports the five schools. We had two school psychologists and we recently added a school psychologist intern this year. And within our team too, we have other individuals that support the district, but they're also supporting other schools. A physical therapist, a music therapist, we have an ABA associate, a vision itinerant, hearing itinerant, and adaptive PE for services. And here is kind of the makeup of students with IEPs in the district. We serve 263 students. Currently, 112 are at Clayton High School, 57 at Widom, 21 at Compton, 33 at Glenridge and 40 at Merrimack. Within that, the disability areas are highest is other health impairment with 84 students That usually is the students with ADHD or ADD a lot of times. We have learning disability, 54 students, autism at 46, and speech at 40. Those are kind of our biggest areas that we are supporting students in those areas. Then within our service levels, as you can see, most of the students are in the general education setting at least 80% of the time. which is awesome. You don't see that in a lot of districts, so we're very proud of that. We have in the 40 to 79%, 39 students and less than 40% of the time in Gen Ed are six students. We also work closely with our PAC, our Parent Advisory Council, and Christina Blankenship is our president that we work closely with on a variety of activities and events to help support the families in the district. One that's coming up tomorrow is charting the life course at the high school where we'll be presenting on the process of after high school, what services and things we can do to help support students when they leave us. We're also looking at having SWEP come in, Teens in Motion, looking at My Disability Roadmap, a documentary with a panel discussion that happened October or November hopefully. And then she's looking at some family network socials like the Clayton Police and Firehouse and a yoga event potentially too with Make It and Take It. Any questions?

Questions? This isn't really about the partnership agreement, but the staffing. How are you handling those vacancies?

Currently we sub some out and then sometimes we're able to pull other staff to help out from other buildings to help support. And we have an individual that is pretty much trained with the registered behavior technician, so she's filling in on that position currently. Yeah, I was going to say,

because some of those are such specific training that you can't just move around your staff. Like, everyone has such a specific skill set. And I know, you know... Teaching shortages and staffing shortages are obviously not specific to Clayton, but I worry most, of course. I worry a lot about our IEP students. So when I got this last week and I saw the vacancies, I got worried that I was hoping kids weren't missing out on minutes or services or anything.

As a team, we're pulling together and helping out. So I'm filling in at some of the schools too by making sure all the students are getting what they need. Great. And supporting the teachers too. Thank you.

The one specialist, it was ABA something? I didn't know what that was.

So it's an applied behavior analysis and so he's the associate that kind of oversees any kind of, sometimes for students that have behavior intervention plans, he helps write them and helps us with any trouble behaviors that they may have. So he supports a few of the schools and the students. And then they also have what they call ABA services, applied behavior analysis. So it's now considered a related service. So he helps train and do the programs to implement those services.

And all of those positions are not necessarily full-time within the district, right? All the ones on the

top were full-time with the district and the bottom, they support other districts too.

So there might be different amounts at different times, kind of as needed? Yeah,

so the physical therapist is sometimes in our schools like twice a week depending on the services and needs. I think currently she's at like two of the schools that have that need for physical therapy.

Sorry, I just have a couple questions. Do you guys feel like you're adequately staffed and resourced just in general? And is 263 students about the average for the last five years? Do you see that number fluctuate up and down? How do you adjust your staffing for that? How does all of that work?

So, yeah, we're always looking at our staffing. I mean, whenever someone is out, it does cause problematics where we're trying to figure out how best to cover students because we don't always get subs to cover things. In terms of staffing, our numbers have fluctuated. We used to be higher. We used to closer to 300 students that we served, and then during the pandemic, we did go down, and now we're kind of getting back up to where we were were before at the high school we are higher with numbers now and so in the future we may be looking for additional staffing to help support those programs

and where did this where did the students who left our district during the pandemic go if they're

not returning some went to private schools and then this year we got about five to six of them did return back to us this school year so they were gone for just a year um some moved with another parent that lived outside of the district and went to that home school district and But I will say most of them did come back a couple moved out of state and now they're okay And if I

remember correctly and you guys correct me if I'm wrong I think your students were some of the first to come back to in school, right? I think they came back before elementary school. They came back with certainly before the middle school in the high school So hopefully

that helped as well Yeah, we looked at that population that was outside of the gen ed less than 40% of the time and really targeted those students to come back first. Okay, wonderful.

Thank you. We're going to be starting our process for our budgeting for next year. We started early so we can get out there and start to recruit and hire teachers over the springtime. So we know that if you don't have a teacher by June, you're not going to be able to fill those vacancies. So we are in the process of that right now. So we always make sure that we're looking at what the current student needs are What are they moving by grade levels to the elementary, middle school, high school? Who's graduating out and what's coming in the early childhood? So Melissa does a great job with working through that, but our board is very supportive to make sure that we are looking ahead to know exactly what those needs are so that they have the staffing that they need at that level. The national average right now for teacher retention is about 17% of our teachers leave year over year. SSD as special education, primarily we would see that higher in a lot of districts, but we're sitting at about 8% retention of staff leaving, but we're really working hard to make sure that when we hire staff that we can keep them longer. So we have a good track record with it, but we also know that we can do better. And also we're looking at a lot of different ways to make sure that with the paraprofessionals, that was probably the hardest group. And it's a large group. We have about 1,900 paraprofessionales across the county. But to be able to recoup that after the pandemic. So a lot of them, we lost about 2% more than we did in the years past. And so being able to bring them back, we're being more aggressive with our actual salary schedules. Also giving them opportunity to move through our system and have opportunity to go up into different positions. So you can start as a teaching assistant. Then you can go to a paraprofessional, which is a higher pay. And then you can go to the RVT, which is the Registered Behavior Technician. and you get certified, we pay for that, and then people can, we know that if we allow for that growth for them, that they're going to stay within our system longer. So we're trying to make sure that we bring people in and keep them.

That's great. And then, I mean, sorry, does anybody else want to? I really know very little about your area, so that's why I have all these questions. How does our special school district compare to, if you look at model special school districts other places, do you guys coordinate or collaborate in other parts of the state, in other parts of Is there any, because we all look at that as a board, right? We're the leader of the state. Yeah, that's what I figured. So where do you go for your professional development and learning? Where do you send your staff for that? Yeah,

there's many different levels. I will tell you, we are a model for many. I have had the fortunate opportunity to work for both special school districts and for a district out in St. Charles County where we don't have a dual district system. And so, I mean, there's pros and cons to both systems, but it's really giving us an opportunity. We do ask and reach out to those districts. There is a national and a state system. for administrators of special education. And so that national one is called CASE, the Council for Administrators of Special Education. And then there's a MO-CASE. And so we have a state board and we have what's called LACE groups which are local administrators of special education, we love our acronyms. And those are kind of placed throughout the state. And so those are resources for many of our administrators. We attend that MoCase conference, many of us. We just sent 32 of our administrators to that conference over the weekend. And so we do have a lot of opportunities for that collaboration. and that growth of our administrators. And then because we're set up how we are in such a great organization, we have a lot of resources that many districts across the state do not have. And so just tapping into those. So we have a lot in-house that we have to offer. That's great.

I've been to other districts. This is my fourth year here, but I was in Chicago Public Schools, and I was also in a large urban district in Minnesota. This is the best system ever. I mean, because St. Louis County back in 1957 voted to have this tax to be able to support special needs students that doesn't exist anywhere in the country. So typically what would happen is, you know, in my other districts that I was in, you receive your state tax. funding for special ed, you receive your federal funding for special ed. The rest of it was always having to be picked up by the general population of tax base within the general education of students. So 50% of the $9 million budget that we provide for Clayton would have to be picked up And so the way St. Louis County has distributed this is that because we're the entity that is able to provide the special ed programming, we can provide 100% fully funded, doesn't have to come out of the separate budget for Clayton. It's 100% funded. That doesn't exist anywhere else in the United States. That's awesome. Yeah. I did not know that. Yes. It is absolute gem. So when I had the opportunity to apply for this position, I didn't even know what it was because it doesn't exist anywhere and it's the forethought and it was the real intentional thought around how they built this special school district. We're the 10th largest employer in this region. We have over 6,000 employees. It's a large system, but it's also a small system to be able to support each individual district individually. So that's really how we want to make sure we individualize it at the level of each district, but also understanding the bigger pieces of it.

And that ballot measure that was put in place that allows for that funding, does that exist in perpetuity or is it ever at any point come up? It's a state statute. That's great.

Yep. So they not only brought it to the voters, but they brought it to a state statute level. 25 years before special education was required by law in public school

systems. Wow, there's hope for St. Louis politics. Exactly. It's like, what

is this place? It's a bright, shining star. Absolutely. And it's like people don't know about it. No. It's absolutely amazing. Yes.

Yes. Thank you. I learned a ton. I also just want to, in general, thank you for your partnership. First of all, your work in this new agreement, but just your partnership in general based on everything you're just saying. But especially, I don't think I've seen you, Dr. Keenan, since COVID was over. I know he could say post-COVID, but anyway, I know that was especially challenging for you more so than... than us, because I know kids with IEPs legally are entitled to a certain number of minutes of services and I know that was a huge challenge so thank you. And thank you Melissa for making sure our students got what they needed. I appreciate

it. And I think to Melissa's credit, bringing the students back before anybody else brought them in. So, I mean, that was absolutely wonderful and it was so needed for those families that were ready for it.

Okay, two quick questions. Yeah. So first of all, do you guys contract out for any of these staff positions? We do

for nursing, some of those hard-to-fill positions. Nursing is one of our areas. We try to make sure that we contract internally as much as possible.

Sure. Yeah. Okay. And maybe just talk a little bit about how you make sure you maintain the quality with the staffing agency versus like a W-2 employee position.

Yes, we work with each one of those contracts, and we make sure that we are, like, the expectations around it. We have enough nurses. I think we have over 83 nurses that we have enough to be able to supervise and support those. They're not the primary ones when they come in as a contract one, but we want to make sure that the quality is equivalent to what we expect for all of our other nurses. All right.

And then just out of curiosity, the 60th growth percentile, figure like is there any magic behind that 60 number or is any rationale or

that's what special has always looked at that because then they're getting closer to shortening the gap so that's what we look for is that 60th growth percentile growth okay that's sort

of standard in the space and yeah great okay

yeah and clayton's you know students do really well um in special education And I don't want to say this in a demeaning way or anything, but I think that the special ed students are outperforming some of our gen ed students and some of our other districts. So it's just a testimony to the quality of the teaching staff, the staff that they're not only being exposed to supporting them in the special ed, but having them in the gen ed environment is so critical. And that is, you know, as Melissa talked about, that most districts, it's closer to 50% of the students are pulled out for the majority of the time. We're working with them to move it, but it is so important for those students to, no matter what, if you have a... Whatever your disability is, you should be able to participate in the gen ed environment and be exposed to what their peers are being exposed to. That's critical, and Clayton has that model, and it's just a really good model for our students.

What's the closest district when it comes to that measurement in St. Louis? Who would you compare us to? Who would you

You guys are one of the top ones. Obviously, because you have the award here in Missouri. Who's second though? The second one is Kirkwood. It's pretty high. Lindbergh.

Are they far behind us? I know it sounds funny, but I'm not being funny. I'm just trying to find out how you're saying our students are doing really well. and you're named Kirkwood. I'm just trying to find out what's the second and third district, and how far behind us are they?

I don't know that specifically right now, but we can pull that

in. You don't really have to. I'm just trying to find out. I'm always trying to think about is, you know, we're a wealthy district. We've got parents that have resources, a lot of resources. I'm trying to figure out how much of it is the fact that we have resources and we can get our kids after school stuff. And then, like, you're looking at, like, a school district with minimal resources. Parents have minimal resources, and they're struggling. So I'm just trying find out, like, it's kind of hard to, like, to brag. It's kind of like, eh.

Yeah, and I understand that. And what we try to do as a special school district is for those districts that when we look at the budgeting process, we do look at those districts that don't have as many resources as a Clayton would have. But we also make sure that we offset some of those to support them. We are legally obligated to make sure that we're taking care of the special ed part of it, but we also are engaging with conversations with how do we enhance some of these pieces so that we can help support some of your gen ed initiatives for interventions so students aren't identified at a higher rate in some districts, which happens. And so making sure that we're able to support them to provide interventions to help guide them with additional funds to be able to make sure that They can do as much as they can to keep their students in their gen ed environments.

So we have to be mindful about how we brag about how we're number one or something. When I know there's a disparity out there, it doesn't make me really feel good. We're number one. We're the richest. That's all I'm saying.

And I think I say that because it's good for you to know as a board that your students are performing well. And it's great to see that. And we want to make sure that we're always up to the expectations to support our students. And we look at every district. We've been meeting with every superintendent. across the 22 districts, and we make sure that we're identifying what are the needs in the schools. So we have a wide variety of scales of where our students are performing, but Clayton is definitely at the top.

Thank you.

I'll say a couple things, too.

Go ahead. First of all, hello to Dr. Keenan. We got to be in a breakout room together last week when I was at my first governing council meeting. It was wonderful, and I got to see this. I just want to give props to SSD because what you guys aren't bragging about is the fact that every four years you go through a review process. And their review process is rigorous. A group of 20-some folks met for an entire year to review what they do and what they can do better. And I think that shows in what you do and why this partnership is working so well, because you guys are so committed. So I want to say on behalf of all of our students, especially those that get your services that It's a wonderful thing to be partnered with you, so we really appreciate that. Secondly, I wanted to make sure that the board in general knows and hears that PAC is our parent group, as hopefully you all know. that really helps get the word out to our other district, not just the parents of kids that are involved in SSD, but to all of our other students and to all of our parents. And I'm just so proud that we have a really robust PAC and really want us as a district to continue to support that. I know that every e-news that goes out there is a section on there about PAC. But I think as a strategic plan, we really want to include everyone in our district in making sure that this PAC gets the support it needs and that all of our families really understand how important support and be involved in that pack, I think is a really wonderful thing that I want to continue to be just aware of and supportive of in general for us. Because again, gen ed is part of special ed, right? We want all of our students to be connected no matter what. So I just want to throw that piece out.

I have a quick question. So just out of curiosity, what do we do to make sure that all the students who need special help are getting it? Because it just sort of seems like some students and parents might not know if their kid needs special help.

So every school has kind of what they call a care team kind of process or problem-solving team where the teachers bring the students to that team to help problem-solve and decide what interventions we could try to help and then look at if we are suspecting a disability, what we would do for that evaluation. And parents also can bring... that to the school team too, to the counselors. They kind of start the process and then we help with the intervention ideas to help support and look at what the needs are.

So just as a follow-up to that, so if a parent comes and they, if a parent would like a child to be tested for SSD services, do we, will that child automatically get tested?

No, they would go through a review of existing data kind of information in a joint review meeting with the counselor and our school site to kind of determine what evidence do we have to suspect a disability or to not. And then we would let the family know if we're accepting the proposal to evaluate the student or if we don't suspect a disability, we would also give them notice that at this time we don't suspect

I struggle with that a little bit because I feel like there's situations where, you know, because parents that do have money they can get independent testing done and parents that don't have the resources can't necessarily have the independent testing done. And I know anecdotally there's families where we, you know, the school said no problem and then they take the child for independent testing and then those results come back and there is a problem. So I just worry that the families in Clayton that don't have the resources to then take their kids somewhere else. So we can

share that even if they do take them for independent testing, that doesn't mean they automatically qualify for an educational disability. So we're required by law to consider any information that's brought to us. But there are state criteria that we have to thoroughly go through. And so it doesn't matter where the testing would come from for that. The process is still very equitable in what we have to look at. Okay.

Any other questions? All right.

Wasn't there a flip side of that, though? People were taking their children for independent testing, getting the 504 or whatever it is, IEP, and then being able to sit outside and take the ACT test and then get into Harvard. You all remember that? I can't remember. But it was a thing. I thought it was a thing where people were like, get in there. These independent, I need extra time type things. Remember that?

In high school, a lot of times we will see that more families kind of look at that route or go to their physician to say that there's some attention issues or something to try to get you out that extended time and stuff. But you're not automatically... Right. We have to look at the school and see where they're functioning academically.

And there's different... qualifications for an IEP versus a 504. 504 isn't through your special school.

It's through

the gen

ed

program. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for your hard work. We appreciate it and are more than happy to sign that agreement. Thank you. OK, so we are now on our goal to update Empowered Learning. So Melaina's going to come talk to us.

Since Melaina gets settled in there, I just wanted to remind the board throughout the year we give these goal updates. But this one is for me, I think, In education, we're reaching a tipping point with what the future of education looks like. And we keep talking about how we have to be innovative and how we have to transformational. But when you just look at our students in the classroom, right? We have Gen Zs, which are 12th grade and above, and then we have Gen Alpha. Those are the two generations that we're really focused on and trying to make sure that we are creating a world for, giving them the skills to be ready for a world that does not even exist yet. They were saying that Gen Alpha, which is all our 12 year olds and younger, is going to be the largest generation in the history of the world. These are the kids who are used to the screen, right? Everything that exists is through this world. So if we continue to teach the way we've always taught, the traditional ways, the way we're used to, we're not preparing them for the real world and what it's going to look like. And so it's important, and Melaina and I talked about it, that that's why she's doing this presentation, is that we around this table need to understand what's happening in our classrooms and what our focus really is when we talk about empowered learning. An example of that was just today when Stacy and I were invited to a first grade classroom to be part of a panel, and we had three classes of first graders, so about 40, 50 kids, and they asked us questions about our role in the world, in the community, which tied into their social studies unit. So teaching and learning looks completely different, and it should look completely different. There was an article that came out that I was just like, I had to read that three times from the World Economic Forum, and it said in the 1980s when we taught our students skills, like transferable skills, the shelf life for that was three decades. Now, when we teach our students skills, the shelf-life is five years. three decades to five years. So when we talk about empowering our students and giving them choice, and voice, and pace, and path, and place, that's what we need to focus on. And then everything else which I'm not going to get on my soapbox, but the standardized test scores, that comes secondary if we really do this work well. So

our district strategic plan focuses in these three areas of a place for everyone to grow as learners in head and heart. And what we've grown to appreciate and really actually embrace about our strategic plan is the interconnectedness of these three goals. So really believing that we can't focus on one without focusing on the other two. And the thing that centers our work is our profile as a graduate. So what we want our graduates to be, good people, when they leave us. So while the interconnectedness of these three goals is important, tonight I'm going to amplify one of them. But I really can't talk about this idea of empowered learning and the idea of growing learners without also knowing that the idea of relationship, a sense of belonging is all really important to like we can't empower learners if they don't feel a sense of belonging and they don't feel like they're valued. So goal two was written like this for the strategic plan and I think I remember sitting in a meeting with Stacy at one point and saying the very first thing we're going to have to do is define all these terms and what these terms mean to us. And last year I came to you and I showed you this graphic, which was sort of my initial first stab at defining the terms. And it did not really define anything. So it became, I think it actually muddied the waters for things. But the one thing that I think was really important is the center of this pentagram. So the idea of our standards and our objectives, those things don't change. We know what we want students to learn. What changes is the approach. So the pedagogical approach, the way that we're approaching the work with students, the relationship that students have with content, the relationship that student and teachers have together to really explore those things. So I didn't love that graphic. So then we lifted it up about 10,000 feet and said instead of spending a lot of time focused on the idea of differentiation, personalization, Individualization and like spending time arguing about what those things might be and all of us might define those differently We said let's lift it up to this idea of empowered learning So we wanted it to be clear to everyone that the learner has a significant role in the teaching and learning environment so empowerment infers a certain level of ownership, so students having ownership of their learning and So in working with Chris, one of the things that he's encouraged me to think about is really like the story of our work. And how can we make what's clear to us as educators clear to those who aren't educators? And so my stab at sort of a tweet-sized description of empowered learning looks like this. So the idea of it being a pedagogical approach where learners' voices are heard, their perspectives are valued, their identity is celebrated, strengths and talents are acknowledged and supported within a learning environment. So that goes back to that idea of the interconnectedness of the goals. So a place for everyone, their identities are celebrated. in head and heart, a sense of belonging being the focus on a place where learners' voices are heard and their perspectives are valued. So one complex part of empowered learning is the importance of learners feeling that they're empowered and expressing that. It isn't just that we think as adults that we're empowering students. So John Spencer shared this graphic in a blog post as a part of a reflection on thinking that he was empowering students, but actually he was still making all the decisions. So he looked through, he was thinking through his practice and he was deciding the pace at which everyone worked. The destination was the same for every student. He was in control of the resources and farming them out to the students. And he called it being a tourist teacher. So showing kids empowering aspects but not letting them have any agency in the process. So as a district, when we started to talk about empowered learning, we identified sort of different areas that, as a teacher is planning their lessons, they could think through that lens as a way of empowering students. So pace meaning that the learners control the time needed to complete a task. Place meaning that they control the location that they learn. Path, that learners control how they demonstrate their learning. Voice. that learners are vocalizing their needs and wants, and choice, that learners are owning their learning experience and teachers are serving more in a role as facilitator. So to help with the story, I just have a few slides from classrooms last week. So I was in classrooms all last week walking through and I just want to walk you through sort of how these are sort of breadcrumbs of evidence of our work in working towards empowerment. So this is an example of a first grade classroom. Learners are beginning to learn the routines of altering pace. As they're some of our youngest learners, there's obvious scaffolds in place. They can't do that on their own without us providing some support to them. So the teacher has generated a list of options for students to engage with during a defined portion of the class time. It's important to note that this is not all day. And it's not all the time in a content area or something like that. It's a defined amount of time. it's not a rush to the finish line. So this isn't students in first grade saying, how quickly can I get through this? And that the teacher has maintained some control over what is a need to do. So you'll see it indicated with yellow dots here. So this student needs to do those two things and then has choice in the other things that they do. This is from a second grade classroom and it's an example of PATH. It does not replace teacher-led instruction. The teacher still teaches a lesson, but then the students have agency to revisit the lesson by watching a video if they need to or if they choose to. And they can do it at any time. So they might think that they're okay with the lesson after the teacher's taught it, start with some independent work or some partner work, and then think maybe I need to go back and revisit that video. Or the teacher might confer with them and say, let's go back and rewatch the video. So it provides opportunity for that. Student has choice with partner work and independent work as they see fit. And the teacher still influences the student's choice of path as they confer individually with students. So the students aren't just left to their own means to work. The teachers are walking around the room working with them, but students aren't waiting on other students to finish things before they can keep moving through their choices. This is an example of a seventh grade science class. You might have heard the term project-based learning, and that is an example of empowered learning which uses multiple aspects of our five areas that we talk about. Students are posed with or co-create a driving question, so questions that's big, complex. It addresses several learning standards for a particular unit. In this instance, students generated then their own questions related to the driving question, which can serve as a guide to the teacher on gauging interest and determining several paths of learning. So you'll see here the questions that were developed by the class and then the class representatives of the class then manipulated all of those post-it notes into categories, named the categories so it gives the teacher a good sense of like what are my students interested in with this topic? Where should I start to focus some of my mini lessons? The places where students might not be expressing interest, I might have to change my practice as a teacher, not to not teach it, but to teach it in a way that may be more engaging to students. So those questions are influencing the teacher's mini lessons throughout the work. And then in this instance, the students also had agency in their product and they use what's called a scrum board, which people who are in business might know more of what that is than what I know what it is. But the way it's described to me is this sense of like they're capturing like what are the tasks or what are the deliverables that we need to, in order to sort of complete this project, students have determined the deliverables, determined the pace at which they're gonna work and the different components, and then they move those across the board as they become more and more complete. but there has to be some kind of collaboration with students. So an individual student can't move something across the scrum board by themselves, there has to be conferring among students to be able to do that. So this seventh grade classroom has sort of a lot of aspects of what we're looking at with empowered learning. This is a senior English class. Students are given time and space to apply their newly acquired knowledge. using partnerships, small groups, individual time and time with their teacher to really dig into things. And to have some agency in how they approach the work that they're doing and how long that they want to stay with that. So the instance of the graffiti wall in the hallway, what I witnessed was some students there for a few minutes and some students there for lot longer. And it just was sort of what they needed and they had that agency to determine that. This is in a fourth grade classroom. In recent years, place has been a challenging aspect of learning. COVID mitigation really forced us to all learn away from one another on a virtual platform and then we came back to school and all of us were learning together with one another but we were all in the same space. Limited interaction, limited proximity to one another and this year we're really seeing students returning to that idea of student choice, of seating and location of their learning within the teaching and learning environment. Students can be seen making choices as frequently as several times a day. So some teachers, each time the students come back from specials, each time students are making new choices, or just as they come in at the beginning of the day. So those days of everyone having an assigned desk and staying there for the duration of the lesson has really changed a lot within our classroom settings. And then finally, an example with our youngest learners. The Family Center staff has developed these beautiful descriptors of the elements of empowered learning with images and stories. And if you're familiar with the work of our Family Center, they really do a really nice job of telling the story where students are not always able to tell the story themselves, so they put words there for the students. And I think these are shared on the walls of the classrooms as well as within the blogs that they share with parents. And I think what's interesting with this is the deliberate connection to the profile of the graduate. So we think of our youngest learners and we're starting to already talk about these competencies of the profile. So the profile continues to be our grounding tool, and it's the tool that centers our work and explains our why. The aspects of empowered learning are often seen as teacher-facing tools to influence lesson planning and instruction, and the profile serves as the measure of our determining success. Our theory of practice is that empowered lessons positively influence our students' attainment of the profile competencies. Some of the tools that we have developed to help teachers with this include a website devoted to the three goals of the strategic plan. This teacher-facing tool is intended to support teachers as they plan and work with students, considering what they want to get better at and providing them with ideas and resources to help with that. So our Goal 2 website, what you'll see across the top is that there's a page for each, pace, place, path, voice, and choice. And then there's a slide deck that's a crowd-sourced slide deck. So teachers submit ideas of ways that one can alter these things within the classroom and grade spans that they're appropriate for. So as a teacher's planning, they can come here and they can say, I really want to do something different with Path. I don't know what to do, so this gives them ideas. So we crowdsource it and once a month we update. So they submit on Google Forms and then we update it for them. So it's a living document. So those are some of the tools that we've been putting in place to help. Another measure of our work with students is a newly developed tool to provide feedback to students and ultimately to families on the competencies of the profile. We began with considering the competencies through the lens of each elementary key stage, and then we'll be adding middle school and high school through committee work this year. In addition to defining the competencies of the different levels, we've also developed a learning progression to better describe the path of a student in becoming proficient in the competencies. So this tool will help teachers with conferring with students Ultimately providing clear feedback then leading towards so this year We're using it within our classrooms with students and teachers and teachers were just introduced to this tool With an intent of leaning into parent-teacher conferences to start talking about those things ultimately to be on the report card as a way of providing feedback to families of how their students are doing towards achieving the competencies Our other measures of success and accountability that we've been working on include these things. So the PIT is our principal instructional talk through. So once a month Nisha and I work with the principals and we go into each building and the principal, the host principal asks us to go into classrooms and collect data for them and then we sit and process those data together to see what is the evidence that we see Relative to, generally speaking, it's been relative to empowered learning and competencies of the profile. So what are we seeing within the classrooms? The same is true with blast walkthroughs. It's the same concept. It's just teaching staff as opposed to administrative staff walking through classrooms. Same kind of idea, collecting evidence of what we see happening. I'm working with a group of teachers that we're calling the Empowered Learning Lab cohort, and it's one to two representative teachers from each building that I'm learning alongside them in their classrooms of ways that we can empower. So it's really based on where they want to go. So they have a lot of agency in deciding what they want to focus on. I'm their coach, but I want to be careful that you understand what our definition of coach in the district is, is that we're co-researchers. So I'm not omniscient. I'm not perfect with this, but I'm happy to be in the muck with them and learn alongside them, and that's what we're doing. Our live classroom teachers, we've talked before about that cohort of teachers, same kind of thing. A lot of them are studying empowered learning and studying this idea of empowerment within their classroom. As a cohort, then we come in, do observations, collect data for the teachers. So students often see us, they call us the people with the clipboards. And we come into classrooms, we collect the data and then sit and talk with the teacher about what are some ideas moving forward. And then portfolios, digital portfolios is really the place that we think is probably going to be our best way of capturing evidence of the competencies of a student's career within the district. So right now it's a little idiosyncratic. So different classrooms are trying things out with a goal of us looking at a universal digital portfolio for students. So when they leave us in the high school, they will have had all this evidence of them working towards these profile competencies. So the work's exciting, but it's messy. And I wanna remind you that it's messy and that we're working with people and that when we're talking about teaching and learning, it's a lot of like experimentation and seeing does it work and what progress can we make? So we're leaning into the mess, really trying to recapture our pre-COVID energy, but we're really excited about this work. So what questions do you have?

So obviously this is really cool, and I know a lot of kids are very excited about this vision for the future of having a lot more accountability over what they're learning. I guess my main question is moving forward into the future, how do we make these types of things more of a norm rather than an exception?

And so a lot of what it has been is planning out professional learning opportunities for teachers to learn. The side-by-side piece I think has been an important piece of, it's one thing to sit in with a group of 100 teachers and hear about this and then be like, I don't know where to go with it. It's another to sit with a thinking partner and really plan through a lesson or plan through a unit. And so right now, I feel like I'm starting small with this empowered learning cohort to figure out how do I scale it bigger for the whole district? And that's kind of my vision of that work is let me start small with a group and then try to scale big with the support of the principals And then we have a lot of other adults in the building, so we have a lot coaches in buildings to try to help support that, so it's not just dependent on me. Because if it's like me trying to get to 400 teachers, we're never gonna get there. So how do we sort of scale that in that way to support?

And I also, I'll piggyback on that. I also think part of that is structures quarter. So for example, like I know the block schedule was really a byproduct of COVID, but giving teachers 85 minutes to actually dig into lessons like that, as opposed to your C day that you had today, that was just like sit and get, let's go sit and get, right? So having block scheduling at the time to actually

have a lesson this way. One of the other things I think we're trying to work with the teachers on is, Nisha and I both say this, that you can't eat an elephant in one bite. So what's the one place that you can start? What's the one small change that you can make today that would make a difference for your students tomorrow? Start there. So as a student, you might not see this right away, but I could make one small change. So I could offer a choice board. in your class, and now I'm not getting 25 of the same papers. I'm getting different things, but I still as a teacher have control over what I feel like is acceptable evidence of learning, but you now have choice of poor things instead of I tell you what you're doing.

Are you seeing any evidence of this in the high school today?

I guess when you sort of break it down like that, you can sort of see it happening a little bit more. I would say in general, most kids' experience isn't super like I'm guiding what I do. But I guess when you like sort of break it and think of all the little things, you can definitely see that people are trying. But I mean, obviously we aren't to the point yet where it's like this is a norm and people are deciding what they learn yet.

What's that gap between it being a norm and where we are? Does that make sense? You mean

like what's a timeline? I

don't even know what I mean. Because I think Carter's saying, yeah, okay, I can see some things, but where does it become... How far are we from where he doesn't even have to ask that question? It's a philosophical question.

I think Carter's assessment is a fair assessment at the high school. I think the younger our learners are, the more likely we are to see this right now. within their day. I think the older our students are getting, and there's a little bit of a tension there, right? Like when I think of high school people, I often think of like there's a lot of content to cover. And I come in from this like, you know, I'm not a content expert in every area, but like I will focus on pedagogy. And sometimes there's attention there, right? And so I think that's the piece that we're sort of working through right now. And I think the ways that we're trying to do that is through these different programs that I have listed here. of like each time we impact someone and there's some change, they're gonna talk to someone. So they may talk to their office mate or something like that. And then we also cycle through different people. And the more that we can have the principals on board to provide feedback on this, so like some of our work with the principals this year through our meetings is around really understanding this and how to coach it. So providing the support to the principals to be able to have those coaching conversations, to be able to influence. I think there's also a piece of when you provide feedback through evaluation or whatever, when we go in to do observations of classrooms, being able to say, to put an empowered learning graphic in front of them and say, so where are you with this? What's one thing you can try next week that's going to make a difference? The more we can infuse it into our conversations, I think the faster we're going to get there. Change in education is slow usually. And I think we're trying to accelerate it But the truth right now is that we're seeing it more with the younger students than with the older.

So you talked about a crowdsourcing tool for teachers. What about at the high school, crowdsourcing from the students? Would that be a way to accelerate the feedback that you get in terms of... you know, what they're experiencing that they love and what they're experiencing they can't stand. And is there some area of interest that is not covered by, I know we have tons of electives at the high school, but, you know, is there something that, you know, something you wish the high school had that it doesn't provide now? I mean, would that be another way to get feedback? Especially since you've seen less of it with the older kids?

I think another thing that I've sort of noticed is, like, especially when you get up into the high school, it's, like, for a lot of kids, they feel almost, like, pushed into, like, certain classes, certain buckets. Like, you know, a lot of kids are, like, wanting to take honors and AP classes. And what I've noticed is that a lot of the times in those classes, it's a lot more, like, structured. Like, this is the content. This is what we're going to do. And so... I feel like that also makes it a little bit more difficult for the students who want to, like, learn a lot and, like, I don't know, are very intellectually curious to really branch off and, like, do it on their own. Something I know that, like, other schools do is they have, like... very, like, open classes. Like, I think there's, like, an AP research class or something where they can basically just take an AP class and do whatever they want and, like, dig really deep into something. So, I don't know. I thought that... Like

a senior project kind of deal? Yeah. And then

they get, like, I don't

It's a question that was similar to what Carrie was asking. So if I heard you right, we're working on something that you want to have ready then to scale throughout the district. Did I hear that? So the

scaling part was when I was talking about the Empowered Learning Lab. It's a small cohort right now that I'm working on. Okay, so just let me do that. Right. So it's like one aspect of this with a lot of our professional development this year, like in our year long plan across the district is focused in this work. So thinking through like the coordinators are thinking through from their content lens, the buildings are thinking through from from their building lens. So it's we're not. We're not waiting for me to scale that small group to be focused on this work. Okay.

So I guess I'm, like, is there... I see these measures of success. These are these striking, like, activities that we're doing that will lead to measures. So what are... Are there, like, three key measures that you said, like, these are the three ways five years from now that we know that we're doing better at this or whatever? Is that...

It's hard

because this is a very qualitative

thing. The piece that I had with the elementary report card, so the teacher-facing, so this is a little bit of what ultimately some component of this is going to be parent-facing also. The teacher-facing part of this is a continuum of being able to look at where students are now and how I can continue to grow students within these competencies. So we've done this work at the elementary. Now we need to do the middle school and the high school to be able to say, so what does it mean when we say a student coming out of our school district is self-actualized? What are the things that we will see? And how will that be reflected academically as well as just within the ways that they approach things?

Right. So will there be any sort of roll-up of these report cards so you can identify... grade levels, individual teachers, whomever that might need additional professional development moving forward to this?

Yeah, I think ultimately what will... So ultimately what happens with this is the ways that the principals support the teachers with these tools once we have these tools in place. So once we have them developed and we have started to think about how to use them, then it's the principal's role to provide feedback to people to continue to help them grow with those practices. what they're seeing students okay

got it thank you and just as a side note I love this report card and the fact that we're gonna bring it up in parent-teacher conferences and just make it more and more part of the culture I think is really important just that's really evident what I've seen you know so my walkthroughs with dr. Patel and you know this it's just you know I think that's awesome

yes well I love it I love this also this is The presentation was great. I had all the questions they asked, I had questions in my office. We'll go reverse next time. No, no, it's cool. But I asked you unique questions also. So the application, is there resistance at all? for some of these teachers? This is kind of transformative, obviously. This is like kind of anti-conventional learning, the way we teach now. Like totally the opposite side of the fence here. Is there resistance of any of these teachers that might not be interested in really learning this new way of individualized, personalized learning?

I don't know if I would describe it as resistance. I think there are people who think, I have done things the way that I've done things and it's worked. Why are you asking me to change? And so sitting down and having those conversations to talk about why is this good for students. The idea of moving from a sense of helping people to understand that you may have a lot of content knowledge and you may stand up in front of a class and talk a lot, but that doesn't mean that the kids are learning. So we need evidence of learning, in which case we have to give students more ownership and more agency of what's going on. So having those conversations, I think, anytime we can find sort of small wins, so that idea of like let's just try one thing. Like what's the one thing that feels the most comfortable for you to try? We'll try it, let's see what the outcome of it is and then build off of that. I haven't had anybody who says no way. But it's also like there's some component of like it's hard. It's you know I said at the end like this work is messy It is messy, and it's hard sometimes to lean into the mess. And coming out of COVID, it's even harder to lean into the mass because there's this sense of like, I just want to get back to normal, whatever normal is. And so I think there's that. But I would say we have a lot of conversation about it with people. But normally if I can convince somebody to try something small and they see something different, like you can tell from kids whether they're like with ya or they're like no I'm done. And like that's what we're looking for is that piece because I feel like that's more rewarding as a teacher when the kids are like right there with you and they want to dig into it, then they're just sitting there like,

all right. Because it sounds like that's kind of what explains the slow rollout. Like how many teachers are actually involved in this now? Would you say? How many teachers are actually?

Well, all of our staff is having some kind of professional learning related to it. It's the depth of it. Application and implementation.

Yeah. How many students are actually implementing this right now?

maybe a third on, like, on a pretty consistent basis, maybe. And I would say that's a lot more, like I said before, it's a lot more evidence with our youngest learning.

How popular is this amongst the parents? Like, how... How do we advertise this to our homes?

And that's the thing that we've talked about, that we're doing all this work with our staff, right? We're doing all the work with our administrators. What we really also need to focus on is obviously the students, but the parents is the piece that we're really trying this year to like really educate them. So we've been working with our principals, like in their newsletters if they're sending out, are they referencing back to Empowered Learning and how our North Star is the profile. Are we talking about it in our communication, on our social media? How are we engaging our parents? And that's really been a focus this year with our administrators to really put that out with the parents. Even during parent-teacher conferences, when you come in, are we having these conversations? This is the shift that we're making with teaching and learning. I think a little bit

also is like we, like our theory of practice there is like our teachers have to be a little bit ahead of what we're communicating with our parents so that our teachers feel comfortable to respond. Because parents aren't going to come to me and ask me questions. They're going to go to the classroom teacher and ask the classroom teacher questions. So that's part of like our rollout with this is a little slower with it. the report card piece is not going to happen on this report card. The report card piece will happen in the January of 23 report card, but our conversations with parents can start before that.

Okay, yeah. And these are the questions that I had. In theory, this is an incredible plan that we have, strategic plan, right? And when reading this, you know, I am optimistic, but I'm also saying this is tough because we're talking about culture. So I kept thinking about, you know, you use the language you use, which is that teachers are not resistant, which is good language. But, I mean, I'm just trying to figure out, like, How do you get around that? Because that is the impediment, and that's going to dictate the speed in which you're able to roll it out. And if you wanted to put together like a plan, like a two-, three-, five-year plan where you plan to be at this level of application and efficacy rates of this should be seen, we can't, you know, how do you do that? Like how do you put that together? Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, how do we create that? Is that something we even should do? Should we have a five-year plan, say, or have a date, fictitious date down the line saying we should be here at this time? You know, at 90% implementation. And then how do you measure how effective we are at this? Like, you know, you know what i'm saying?

Yeah.

Is that something we should be doing? I mean, would that help drive the ball faster? Because, you know, I asked Amy earlier, I was like, YOU KNOW, WE DON'T REALLY ADVERTISE THIS, AND THIS HAS BEEN HAPPENING. THIS ISN'T NEW TO US. LIKE, THIS ISN'T LIKE WE CREATED THIS LAST YEAR. WHEN DID WE COME UP WITH THE STRATEGIC PLAN? YEAH, DR. DORNY WAS HERE, RIGHT? DR. DORTY WAS HERE, RIGHT. LAST

YEAR WAS THE TRUE FIRST YEAR. LAST YEA

WAS THE FIRST YEAR, YEAH. AND THIS IS OBVIOUSLY DURING COVID, RIGHT? SO I DID TAKE THAT IN CONSIDERATION AS WELL, BUT I'M JUST SAYING, LIKE...

I would say that Nisha and I have had a lot of conversation and vision of this. Both of us are very like, let's go, let's go. And then something happens that we're like, oh wait, we need to slow down a little bit. We were ready to go, go, go, and then got some feedback that this is going to take a little bit more professional development than what we thought it was going to take. So the pace needed to slow a little. I was ready to roll the report card out sooner than everybody else was ready to roll their report card, right? So I need to be, like, recalibrated in that way to say, okay, in order for us to really do this effectively, our teachers have to have the right tools in place and the right sort of comfort level. But at the same time, like, that's a little dicey too because I can't wait until everybody's, like, 100% comfortable because otherwise they will always be waiting. So there's some piece of, like, where's the right, like... part of the precipice where we're jumping

off. So what's an example of when you all were like, let's go, and then all of a sudden something

happens? Well, I think this is a good example. I think the report card is a good example, we finished the work in a committee, so it was a small committee, we hadn't rolled it out to the whole elementary staff yet, we were ready to put it on this year's report card, Um, not having rolled it out to the whole staff. When we rolled it out to all staff, it was like, well, hold on a minute. We need to do some work with this before we're really, really good because the profile is not, I mean, in some ways it's relatively new to the staff. It's relatively new to all of us. at the same time that we were trying to shift up the ways that we were teaching because of a pandemic and everything like that. So there's a little bit of trying to put that into context that I would say I'm not always great at, because I'm like, let's go. So I need other people to sort of help calibrate me in that way. Are

all the principals on board?

Would you tell us if they were? Good question.

Well, does it change? Jason's question asked in a different fashion. Does it change how you look at new candidates for hiring open positions or positions of attrition? When I think about what you said, Nisha, about how we're at this kind of inflection point in education, we have historically valued teachers with a long teaching history of experience. But if previous experience, while still incredibly valuable and can't be discounted in terms of the amount of content, to use your words, Milena, that they know that they can try to impart to their students. But if that needs to be balanced against these other intangible, in some ways, skill sets that are needed in order to reach Carter and my kids and all of us who have kids, does that change how we think about hiring candidates in the future? I think

it could. I think one of the things that we and part of our interview process is deliberately focused on this of like there are certain things that we can teach. So we can, and our onboarding process is a really thorough onboarding process. But within the interview process, one of the things we look for is your level of coachability. Can we coach you? So we have you teach a lesson And then we sit down and we coach you. And part of that whole thing is to unpack not just how well you taught the lesson, but how well do you respond to feedback and growth? How open are you to growth? If somebody is open to those things, I think we can work with them through our onboarding process to help the same way we're doing our professional learning with this now. So what I did with the principals two weeks ago was I... ran the professional learning as an empowered learning lesson so i modeled what we would want it to look like within our classrooms but the content was what we were doing with the professional learning we can do that in in our onboarding process with teachers but if you're not responsive to feedback it's much harder for us to you know and you're set in your ways yeah that's like that's hard to work with so

what do we do in this situation So I am thinking about attrition. Think about current? Yeah, I mean, just in general. So there's got to be a timeline. I'm just saying, in business, there's a timeline in which you get people to get on board. Or they've got to ride out. Early retirement packages. Right, right. We're offering you an early retirement package. So I'm saying... Now, listen. I'll take the heat for that, so I don't mind. I'm saying this, so... But that's not how you all, I'm probably not saying this, there's some nice old language in what I'm saying. So how do you manage that situation? And if I'm thinking correctly, intuitively, is there also a pool of candidates that we're trying to rack up on to start dealing with the nutrition process? If you give people like a date, This is the day in which you need to be ready to roll. If you're not ready to roll, we're thinking about getting you out of here and we have this pool of candidates we're looking at. And I know that sounds crazy, but I'll take the heat for that. The good thing is I'm not an educator. So one thing that I would

say about that is that's part of the reason why we have the evaluation process built in the way that we do, to provide feedback to do that. So we're a little out of my wheelhouse in that part. The providing feedback I can do. But the other part, we're a little out of my wheelhouse. The piece about like pool of candidates, you know, we have this partnership with Truman where we bring in the interns. And one of the things that Truman, within that partnership, one of the things has been really cool is that the professor spends a lot of time here with us. and knows our district very well, knows what we're working on. So then is going back to Truman in her courses and teaching things related to like, in Clayton, here's what they're talking about. So if you're going to interview in Clayton, you need to know what this is. And you need to know how to teach in that way. So if we can find partnerships like that to help us with pre-teaching candidates, And then thinking about, like my colleagues in other districts are talking about similar things. So it's not, you know, I'm on panels and courses and that kind of stuff with other colleagues who are at the same position as me and we're all sort of talking about the same thing. I would say we're a little bit further ahead in our thinking and like the development of our tools than some of our neighboring districts might be but we're all talking about the same stuff. So I think it's gonna start to be more of this sort of trend in education that I think Nisha's talking about versus the content piece. The other thing I wanted to say about the content piece from the high school perspective, I had an interesting conversation with an AP teacher, AP is kind of an interesting thing to me. So people who teach AP, I feel like there's always, it's very content-driven oftentimes. And they're preparing children for a test. So this teacher, their approach to teaching at the high school this year is a project-based learning approach. So a very empowered approach. driving questions, very deep things. And I said, so how are you dealing with this tension related to the test? And I thought their response was a really interesting response. Their pedagogy is this problem-based learning approach. When they get to the end of the unit, their assessment actually looks relatively traditional. But one of the exercises that they have the students do is all these things that we've learned, how would College Board turn that into a test question? And I think that's a really interesting way to work with the system of AP and the test as opposed to continuing to fight against, like, I'm preparing the kids for this test. So those kinds of stories, if we can start to think about those in different ways and start to think about, the goal isn't really about the test, but the goal sometimes kind of is about the test, right? But so we can start to thing differently about how we're teaching than we're teaching beyond just what they're doing for that test.

I just wanted to say too, I really like the website where the teachers can go on to share ideas and get ideas for how to do some of this. I think that is key to getting this done. And I think even bigger picture than that, I mean as you know when teachers can collaborate like that and even online in that way it helps them feel supported and encouraged and a sense of belonging from the teachers. But I love that you keep this living document where they can go for ideas or share ideas. I think that'll help the whole process, for sure. Because if anyone's stuck, they've got somewhere to go. So that's great.

Last question. Is there a consultant that does this type of work somewhere that we tapped into it in? What would be the cost to do like a massive like...

Yeah, when we brought George Kuros in last year, that was sort of our kickoff to this, was his sort of approach to thinking about education. He's very involved with the portfolio piece and everything like that. He's not cheap. And to come in and work with us for an extended period of time, it'll probably price its way out of what we can do. So we capitalize on our local resources

But he's training you all, like folk, and then you all go down and administer what you learn. Yeah,

so Nisha and I met with him initially and had some initial conversation. He then did something for our entire staff to sort of... More than anything, I think his approach was sort of this mindset approach of thinking differently about how we approach learning and thinking differently about how collect evidence. The other person that the district, that we've worked with within the district is Joanna McKechn, who's actually in New Zealand. So we only work with her virtually. But I've shared some things with you all before of hers. She had a book about measuring human potential that gave us some of the ideas of our continua for the profile pieces. And we had her look at some of that work. So a lot of her work is very... similar to our work around the profile and the ways to approach teaching. The other place that we've gone to to look at sort of the pedagogical piece is the Stanford D School. So we've sent some people out there to observe how they approach teaching and learning. So the middle school sent a team out there right before COVID. And we've looked at a lot of their materials as ways to provide some support professional learning-wise. So there's a couple different sort of organizations or schools or people. The Stanford Day School is probably the most... From my perspective of what I know about schools, probably the most empowering school site for students and seems like a pretty awesome place. So we feel like anything we can learn from them will help.

Thank you.

And, Jason, I just want to say I do appreciate you always bringing in that accountability factor. You know, I've always said, yes, we could say we just said it earlier, right? We need Shrek. This is the best places to teach. We have the best teachers. But we all have improvement, right? We need to grow and we need to be like, okay, be reflective. And one of the things like you asked that question and I was thinking about it. So as a principal, I used to always start off like I always had this scale, right? You start off by giving feedback and you coach that person, you help them, you get them to think about things differently. And then you have them reflect. You don't see any change. Then you start giving them more constructive feedback on, hey, this is what I'm noticing. This is what we need to work on. And then finally you get to the point where you're giving them direct feedback. And that direct feedback could be part of an improvement plan that we have in the process that we put in place. But eventually then you just have to have that conversation. And that's empowering our principals to have that. Giving them all the tools to make sure that our teachers are supported and successful, and we want them to be successful, right? Because they're the ones that are going to make an impact on our students, hands down. And we have phenomenal teachers, but we all have places we can grow.

Sure. Thank you for that.

I think another sort of thing I can say about this issue of accountability is just based off of my own experiences. This method of teaching is pretty infectious among teachers. My main experience with this was in eighth grade, which is when my science teacher, Mr. Crook, he took this and really ran with it. He brought 20 kids in to design our curriculum, and then we were doing projects the whole year. And something that I noticed over the years is, like, as it progressed, like, all of a sudden my English teacher and, like, my social studies teachers are starting to do these exact same things and, like, working with the science teacher. So I think in general, like, once we start doing it and once it starts working, like, teachers are going to get on board with it. And, like, obviously there will be exceptions. But, like, in general, based off of my experiences, it seems like it works pretty well.

Is there any chance Mr. Crook is on your committee, subcommittee?

On my learning cohort? No. So the people that I chose – so like he's like on a path with this. So the people I asked were like let's – like they're in varying places on a path. So

Carter, just so you know, Mr. Crook is the only teacher where one of my boys has said, I would like to be the one out of using my own allowance money to buy the end-of-year teacher gift. Because he's my favorite teacher that I've ever had anywhere. He's a

really good

teacher. That's said often. It was said by my childhood.

Gary? I just have one question. I know we've talked about this a lot, but I just wanted to make one point. And I don't exactly know how to say it, and it risks sounding like giving us too much credit for this. I don't mean it to be that way. But I really appreciate the fact that these words that we spent a long time putting together in the strategic plan, both the short version, you know, of the, you know, a place for everyone to grow has learned its head and heart, it's like 12 words or whatever. But also the goals, too. I mean, I can't tell you when we wrote these words and when we talked about these words. We'll commit to the educational growth of our learners through an equitable, personalized individual learning experience. I don't know how I was going to tell you whether you did that or not. But I really appreciate the fact that there's a process here of trying to define what that means and to take what we helped to come up with, take it back and as professionals and experts give it life and give it some things to actually see if it works or not. And I just, I was very excited watching this because, and this is the part where it starts to maybe sound a little too self-congratulatory, I felt like what we did actually made a difference in what you're showing us you're doing in the classroom. And that's how we're supposed to help, is set sort of a big-picture vision and then let you all run with it. So it felt really good to me. I mean, I'm hearing everything about, let's go faster, let's get it to more. I want that too. But this feels like... evidence that we're actually really trying to do this in a professional and a thoughtful way. So I just appreciate that. Thank you. I have some things. Go

ahead. Okay, several things. The pace part of this, I think our district is already doing in several areas. And in some areas it's easier than others. In math, for example. I think in science it can be really something that we do. So just offering different classes. Okay, so... I know that this is happening so well at the family center. I know that it's all these things, PACE, all of them are happening so well in the elementaries. It's harder as we get to the secondary level. And I'm just wondering if more classes like math, like physics, there are several, biology, so many classes that can really give kids the choice of PACE are out there. And maybe we also have classes that you don't have that option for PACE and it's more traditional But what if there is a physics class or a this class that are really each individual student goes at their own pace? You know, like you do this physics lab whenever you think you're able to do that physics lab. And if you pass it, great. You move on to the next one. And it really is all about autonomy. And again, this is easier with pace than it is with path. But I do think there are some cool ways that we can add classes into our high school that really develop all of these skills But they aren't maybe required, and then maybe one day all of them will have pieces of it, right? Like you said, it's a slow process. But it's exciting to think about. And I also just want to say that, like I said, in the Family Center, they do this. I saw the Family Center really teach the elementary schools this amazing philosophy based in their research, what they've done with learning with these youngest learners and what's worked. They did tons of outside research, and they came into the elementary schools, those teachers who were experts now, and really taught. And that's why I think we're seeing a lot of this in elementary schools. And I think we can just keep, it makes sense to keep doing that. Take what the teachers that have experienced and have learned, and continue to teach them that, you know, go to the middle school, go to the high school, and sort of pass on the knowledge that they've learned with our youngest learners, which tend to be, you know, their newest learners. So they're really moldable, you know what I mean? And So now it's like, okay, well, how do we take this into these students that haven't done this ever and learn from those students the great success we've had in the younger students? And then the last thing I'll say is education is slow. Totally fine. There are lots of slow things in this world. If we're going to talk about empowered learning and we want to talk about one thing we can do tomorrow, I'm going to throw out there that we could get rid of cell phones in classes. That Y-Down has a new policy that I think does a great job of helping with empowered learning. They are not allowed to have their cell phones in their classes. It's new this year, and I truly believe in it. And I think some classes in high school have this policy too, but it's teacher-driven. But I think we have every reason in the world, and of course I'm always focused on social-emotional health, to do... have a policy at the high school that would really eliminate the idea of a screen being anywhere near the student during the class so that they can have these empowered learning situations that are just, they have no other option. They can't look at the screen. They have to communicate with others. They have to think about what they want, their pace, their... I just want to throw that out there because I do think as much as we say all these things... These kids grew up with screens, and in order to empower them, I think part of that has to be taking them away in order to learn in a way that is traditional and that is collaborative, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm just throwing out that one step. Maybe that one thing we could do tomorrow could also help you with this goal, too, of empowering learning.

I think, in theory, it makes sense. I think it would be hard to get students on board with it, though. And I feel like unless they're committed to it and understand why, I don't know if it would have the exact same effect.

There's a pouch at the front of the room. Schools like Burroughs and stuff are doing this, and they're seeing great things. I'm sure you know that, Melina. Yeah. Talk to Ydown about how this year goes, but it becomes a norm. It becomes a norm. We are expected to communicate with each other through verbal and visual cues. We are expected use this rather than something telling us what we should or shouldn't do or giving us ideas. I think resistance will exist anytime there's change. But can you imagine the student that realizes how much more they're getting from a class because they spent the 85 minutes thinking and talking versus someone that spent half of it possibly on the phone? That's empowered learning when they realize, okay, this was, I got a lot. This was, I actually, I feel the content of this now. I digested it in a way that I hadn't when I had this

distraction. There has been significant conversation about cell phones. I know. At the secondary level. Yes. And I've had several conversations recently with individual teachers that one of the things that they have asked me when I go into classrooms to observe is, like, can you observe that? Good. Like, what's happening with students to see, like, they're teaching. They don't always notice what's going on in a child's life or something like that. And so I do think that that is a part of the conversation right now within our culture. The increase in conversation came right after students were learning virtually and coming back into school. There were just sort of different practices that students had coming back into school when they were in our space versus when they were in their own space learning. And so that has been sort of a... part of the consequence of why I think we've seen an increase in conversation about how we handle devices. There's also like, you know, there's the pendulum swings a lot of different ways when you talk about devices. So like there's been Times in education where we've said let's not fight it, let's use it. Like let's use it as a learning tool instead of trying to fight it. That's also met sometimes with mixed results. Because there's a lot of different ways to go 18 different places. Like I go down a rabbit hole very quickly on my phone, right? So I understand why students would also... So I think that's part of that. The other thing I wanted to say about the part that you were talking about, about like the influence of teachers from other levels and working with teachers. Our professional development experiences, like our most recent professional development experiences that have gotten the best feedback from staff have been when we've designed them in a way that's empowering. and we've provided choice and we've asked staff from across the district pre-k through 12 to lead breakout sessions so like smaller sessions of interest of like how does this look in your classroom how could this look in a math classroom how could this looking whatever and people learning from one another those are the times where people feel like they gain the most because they're allowed that choice to go so it's the same thing that we're trying to model with the students is like So we're modeling our professional development this way for a reason, so that you can see that it's empowering to you as a teacher. I'm not saying all 500 of us sit in one space and learn in the same way. We're giving you 52 options. You don't have to give students 52 options. You can give them four.

Or you can talk to Jason, and he'll take care of it.

All right, this was a great conversation. I appreciate everybody's feedback. Does anybody else have anything? Thank you. Thank you, Elena. You're welcome. Thank you,

Jason. All right, so we're going to talk about our...

professional staff recruiting and hiring, Jason.

All right, good evening. So the policy to be reviewed tonight for first reading is policy GCI, professional staff reassignments and transfers. This is an updated policy to clarify that a reassignment of an employee that changes compensation benefits or contract of the employee must be approved by the board. This change is not result of the law but it's based on concerns that were shared with MSBA that sometimes districts may be having these reassignments may be used to bypass the board's legal role in hiring. MSBA has also revised some terminology in the policy to better reflect current usage. This really is not a change in our current practice. We already have this practice in place, so we're just following MSBA's recommendation for the policy. Any questions?

All right. Next.

All right, great. The next one that we have is policy GCD, professional staff recruiting and hiring. So some of this does go in conjunction with the previous policy. This is an amended policy to reflect changes brought about by House Bill 604. That's the one, if you recall, where we are now required to request information related to the applicant before we offer them the job to the most previous employer in the state of Missouri if they work for a school district. MSBA has also updated this policy to clarify that employee transfers or reassignments that change the compensation benefits and contracts of an employee must be approved by the board. this change like i said in the previous policy is not based on law but based on those concerns that were shared with msba with the board's legal role in hiring also some language was removed that was very specific language around hiring retirees because there have been different exceptions made so that's on the school the higher the hr department and the applicant to make sure that we're following the rules around psrs and peers with retirees Any other questions? I

did have a question about that. Sure. So the language about the retirees, it just said, I forgot, but as permitted by law, did the law change recently? I feel like during COVID it did,

right? They keep modifying to make exceptions for like national teacher shortage with COVID. Some of that was to aid with our substitute shortage as well. So right now they have lifted the restrictions around the 550 hours limit for retired teachers in PSRS as long as they are serving in the classroom or serving as a substitute in the classroom. I wasn't

sure if that changed just during COVID was temporary or if that was still... It's

temporary, but they've extended it. They've kind of changed a little bit. That's why they're trying to make this a little bit broader to not have it so pinned down to specific skills. Any questions? Any other questions?

I think you just need a date change on the bottom since it still reflects 2017 in the revision. That's it. First one. Page six. You have for some reason the semicolons highlighted with the date. Maybe that's the former revision, but your other policy has 2022, today's date. This policy still has a date from five years ago. Okay.

We'll look at that. Thank you. That

was the former revision. Yeah. Is it on the last page? Yeah, that's the last time it was revised.

And now the school board vacancies.

Okay, that's for policy BBE for school board vacancies and basically all this is is MSBA has updated the policy that like all new board members will do 18.5 hours of training which is an additional 2.5 hours of to what there used to be. And everybody here will do like a one hour refresher training. So that doesn't, instead of the 2.5 you just have to do the one hour training. And then there's just very general language about the school board vacancy. It's just to clean it up a little bit. But mostly it's the policy changes to expand the training to 18.5 hours.

Thank you. Same thing on the date there?

Yeah. They're always showing you the last date that it was revised. Got it. So when we adopt this, then it will change. Got it.

Okay, action items. Stacey, we need to approve that CRSWC budget.

Yes. I move that the Board of Education approve the fiscal year 2023 CRSWC Budget as submitted. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Questions or

comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. And our consent agenda.

I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda items 9.02 through 9.18. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Questions? I don't have a question, but I just want to make a comment. Yeah. I just wanted to thank robin for all of these partnerships i mean this is like a huge consent agenda but but they're all such great i just i'm sure it was a lot of work because these are all separate organizations but i just want to thank you for your work and doing it because it's a it's a win-win really i mean it's a huge win for us and our students but um I just think anytime we can create partnerships with outside resources is just so helpful and great. So thank you for your time putting it all together. I second that. I third that.

It looks like there's new ones now. It seems like, I don't know, I didn't recognize some of the ones, like Safe Connections?

Safe Connections is one that we have had before. I would say we're trying to really augment our relationship with them. They do some co-teaching and coming to do guest lessons as part of the curriculum experience in certain grade levels. And then we are also partnering with them to have a therapist come on site and work with individually with students and so they'll be carrying a small caseload for us. So we're really excited about that. We're also excited that they are able to do more things in person now this year as well.

Beautiful. This might be the largest consent agenda we've had. I may have set a personal

record. Go on, go. It's like an

omnibus bill. Go through a letter, read some of this stuff. Are they passing this? Okay.

ALL RIGHT, IS EVERYBODY IN FAVOR OF IT THEN? YEAH. AYE. AYE. MOTION PASSES. AND LET'S SEE, ARE WE GOING TO APPROVE OUR FINANCIALS SOMEWHERE? YES. OKAY. YEAH, I'M TRYING TO GET THAT. ALL RIGHT, STACEY. The first one is for information

only. Right. The first one's for information only. Does someone need to present it? No, okay. So I can read the motion for the second? Yes. I move that the Board of Education approve July 2022 and August 2022 disbursements in the combined sum of $3,684,753.98. Second. It's been moved and seconded.

Questions? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Commission passes. And public participation? Nothing? Let's see. Committee report or calendar committee. Education Foundation. Did Gary and Jason have a meeting? Jason attended

the meeting. We

did, yes, and I was able to make it. You know, they're off to a strong start for the year. They were really active in the food and essentials drive that Dr. Patel talked about, mentioned earlier. Her report, you know, just anecdotally, I know a lot of families, at least in my neck of the woods, participated in that, so that was good to see, and it sounds like they're getting geared up for homecoming, so they'll have the alumni barbecue i think sugar fire donated a lot of food so it should be a good time

great um equity and inclusion yeah i had we had our first meeting um we're going to meet every month um it was great the plan for this year is to look at data and be able to really take that data from all the surveys, all the feedback that the district has been gathering, which has been really great, and make recommendations to various organizations, teachers, buildings, et cetera, based on that data that we're going to really dive into deep during the entirety of the year. So we actually took the first meeting to really talk about how to look at data and what biases you bring in, and how to be more effective in using the data that we're going to look into, as well as then giving ideas and sort of stating what areas we think we want to look at. Because you can't look at all the data from all the things that we have, but we are going to try and focus in on a few areas, look at that data, and then see what we come up with in terms of recommendations for resources, et cetera, by the end of the year. So that's exciting stuff. And then I also talked, I went to the Governing Council meeting for SSD and heard all about our partnership agreement, which was great, and the many focus areas that they determined based on this review that they did. Yeah, that was a great meeting as well. And last but not least, I will just plug that the All In Coalition is, we have a new project coordinator this year, She's currently working, her big campaign is on getting some yard signs out for homecoming. It's one of the biggest things that I think she, the organization can do is to really promote safe, are you pointing? There we go.

If anybody

wants. I love that. Did you bring that? Robin did. Robin, thank you. It's Robin's show tonight. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So anyway, every parent in the district has had the opportunity to sign up to get one of these. But it's just such an easy thing. And I don't know how many have. It doesn't look like a lot. But it's an easy thing to do for them to click on something. The coalition comes. They give it to your door. You put it out. Then they collect. I mean, it's a great... way to really get that message out in terms of safety around homecoming, obviously throughout the year as well. But I just made sure that Lily knew to reach out to all of us either tonight or tomorrow so that if any of you guys haven't gotten one that you have the opportunity to, because I just think it's important as a board that we really focus on safety around this time when we know that kids... um are going out and being social so that's all i'll say so

feel free to take one when

you

leave yeah and if you need more maybe we

should put it up all year round you know oh

yeah

not just homecoming but like all year round because kids are drinking and like you know they're

doing some great stuff this you know they are trying to promote it all year round they're exactly right but these yard sites are kind of the most visible right now But there's stickers in businesses now. It's a slow start, but they are really trying to make sure that the community is focused on the safety of our students when they are out being social.

I like it.

ETO Council? Yes, I was at the first PTO Council meeting of the year, which they call their Jump Start meeting. It's the first time they met in person in a long time, which was great and it was a great turn out and everyone was so happy to be there in person. Some other good news was that each of the PTO presidents said they've definitely had way more parents this year volunteer to help with stuff. The last few years, they were begging parents to take jobs, and now they have lots of volunteers, which is great. They talked about how some of these parents of second graders hadn't even been in the building yet ever, that kind of thing. Or eighth grade parents haven't been in Y-Done yet. So everyone's excited to be back in school and helping with stuff, which is great. Other than that, it was kind of a general get-to-know-you introduction type meeting. They're cleaning up their budgeting. They've got a great treasurer who's got everything in line. And Lily from All In Coalition was there as well and talked about the food and essentials drive. And I think it's great that they've partnered with the Clayton Police Department this year too because I just think it's great to have a community-wide effort. That's it. That's it from me.

Parks and Rec.

I was trying to remember if we had that meeting before or after our last meeting. I guess maybe it was right after. Obviously, we just got the update from our meeting with the Board of Aldermen. about a lot of Santa Queen stuff. And the other Parks and Rec things they're talking a lot about is their big master plan that's coming up, and also what they're going to do with the ice rink project. That's the topic. So where are they going right now?

Oh my god.

They're still trying to raise a lot of money if you've got $40 or $50 million. I don't

understand where the money went. What happened to the money that they raised? I

thought they

were pickleball courts. Have you seen it?

There's a lot of pickleball talk. It is pickleball. But no,

they

had

the money,

I thought, already raised. I know. I thought so too. I don't know what happened. They even got, I thought, sent in to do the roof.

Yes. There was money raised.

Where is the money that was raised?

Well, some of the money was raised based on whether that... Oh, it was contingent upon build, so they

would...

So if that doesn't want to build... Are they going to

tear down the building no matter what, or are they just leaving

it? The building... Because I

thought that was coming down. Yeah, the building is coming down. I

don't know when, but there's... It has to come down to do anything new there. But I mean, even if

they don't build anything new, I thought they were tearing it

down. To do anything new on the site. So, yeah, so a lot of... A lot of strong feelings about that and whether the city, just their finances and what money can be used for that and what can't. So there's a lot of stress there for sure. And there are some deadlines in terms of some of the fund raising and stuff like that. I mean, there was a

contract. There were plans approved and a contractor hired and everything. It's so creepy. Because I was on Park Street right then, four years ago. And it was like they were starting. Well, there are

hockey organizations that are now approaching the mayor and the city to say, would you be interested in partnering to build a rink with us if we raise part of the funding? Our own mayor and Clayton should be having some of those same discussions, and I'm not sure she's participating with. Well, her son used to be the Clayton High School hockey coach. So I would think she'd be interested. But I know the Rockets are talking to Mayor Jones and... I mean our high school, that was our high school homework

too. I grabbed this from our high school team. And locker rooms too. We lost. So that's a lot. Thanks for the report. We're like jumping on you. So what did so what this thought them? I thought I thought at one time it was actually ready to roll.

What happened? What's Yes. Costs have gone up, no doubt about it. COVID and the shortage of resources, that's real. But it sounds like they're starting from scratch almost. Pickleball

also got very popular during this time. The courts are being used for pickleball. That area is being used for pickleballs. We're a

school board. We have students who play hockey. And last year during the hockey season for high school students, I think the JV hockey team practiced once in a month. Because we didn't have a home where I could practice it. So,

now we practice at 10 o'clock on Sunday nights in Kirkwood. Yeah, because that's the only thing.

So, anyway. Pickleball,

schmuckleball. How about social-emotional wellness? We learn fast. Jason and I were both there.

Do

you want

to? I don't remember everything. We talked a lot about the homecoming coming up and signs that were needed to remind children, and adults really, also adults, that was the emphasis, to not provide their children

alcohol.

What else was there?

Along those lines, that I think would be of interest to everybody is Lily from All In. She looks at data, like survey data of high school students about alcohol use. And she came from Rockwood, I think. And she also looks at data from them and other neighboring districts. And the data shows that Clayton students are drinking at a much higher rate than other schools around here. Behind. Where is that data coming from? Student surveys.

Ah,

Carter? Is it

accurate?

Carter?

Carter's like, I don't know what you're talking about. No, I don't want to

put Carter. But anyway, yeah, it's basically student survey data. So a few of the things I made notes on that we talked about were, you know, lunches aren't free anymore this year. That free lunch program stopped. But Chartwell's... talked about how, and Robin too, that they're really on top of it and they've accounted for every kid that may need a free and reduced lunch now that didn't receive it before COVID. And so they feel like all of the students that are needing that are taken care of. We talked about the no cell phone policy at White Out, even at lunch. And that, let me see what other notes I took. Is that the policy in White Out now? Yes. And that, oh, Robin announced that SSM will be providing a mammography day for Clayton employees and dependents coming up on October 14th at St. Mary's, which is great. And she said they've been great to partner with. Oh, and one other thing that came up was that, you know, we give free memberships to the Center of Clayton to seventh graders, but a lot of the equipment and access there, you have to be over 14 to use. So the Center of Clayson representative questioned, I wasn't on the board when this happened, however long ago, why didn't we come up with seventh grade to get the pre-membership when they're not even old enough to use a lot of the stuff? And the problem is that it's supervision. When those kids are there, they don't know. They're using stuff they shouldn't. Well, like high school, even freshmen are 14, right? And they're going over there at lunch and they're not supposed to be using some of the stuff and they're using it anyway and they're using improperly and they can get hurt and they don't have enough staff to teach and supervise in that free time. And so she kind of posed the question to us about why did we decide that it was okay to give, I don't know, free memberships to, I guess it's two separate things. Free memberships to seventh graders when they're not old enough to use everything there. And second of all, maybe just talking about supervision there at lunchtime for our high school students that's gotten a little out of hand. I guess that's two separate things. But part of the supervision thing with our high school students is that some of them are 14 and can't do everything there anyway when they're there. So I don't remember why it was seventh graders, that was before my time, that we gave free memberships to, but she said, she just wondered because they don't have full access at the center anyway. That's a good question. Yeah, and I don't know the history there. So those were my committees, but I also wanted to... Dr. Patel mentioned this earlier, but I did want to mention today, Dr. Patel and I were invited to Glenridge to speak to the first grade classes, like she mentioned, about leadership in our school community and the different roles of our jobs. And we sat on a panel also with Dr. Murdoch, the principal at Glenridge, and one of the other first grade teachers, and it was fantastic. So fun and so cute. And these kids had awesome questions for us, like who decides when there's a snow day? That was the funniest question. Who decides when there's snow day? Or who made the decision that we can't eat candy at school? Who picks the lunch menus? Who picks what we do on field day? They're first graders, but it was really cute and really fun. Actually one of the kids, Carter, asked Why do we have to go to school on Jewish holidays? And it reminded me because you brought that up earlier about homework. So even the first graders are thinking about that. But it was great, and I was happy to be there. Anyway, it was fun to represent the board there and talk to the kids about things. That's it.

That's great. That's all. All right. Anybody else have anything to report? I move

that the Board of Education adjourn. Second. Please.