September 27, 2023 — Meeting Transcript

I'm going to go ahead and get started. Wow, this is loud tonight. It is September 27th, 2023. Thank you everybody for being here tonight. And we have our tax rate hearing. So we're going to go ahead We'll go ahead and, you already came up there. Thank you.

I have a few comments before we take public comment. This public hearing is in preparation for setting the 2023 tax rate. Notice of this hearing was posted back on September 18th in a timely manner. For 23, our assessed valuation has increased to 1.52 billion. It's up from last year at 1.39 billion, an increase of 126 million. 35 million of that was due to new construction. 94% of that new construction was in the commercial area. As you know, when assessed values rise, rates will fall in accordance with that. So while residential assessed valuations together rose about 7.8%, the residential rate will decrease a little about 5.1%, which is about 21 cents. Commercial increased 6.3%. The rate will go down 3.4%. Personal property actually went down three quarters of a percent and its rate will actually go up a little bit, 2.4%. Overall we'll expect new revenue of 1.5 million from new construction and 1.17 million from reassessment. In this process, it's turned out that we've had to lower our debt service levy, which has been steady at 62 cents for a number of years now. It's going down 11 cents to 51 cents. Overall, that will save taxpayers about $1.7 million. As you know, our debt... is about $46.1 million of general obligation bonds today, which is scheduled to pay off in March of 29, a little over five and a half years from now. We have enough money coming in from this valuation or this levy to keep pace with our requirements. Tax collections from our operating levy will be used to pay salaries, benefits, services, supplies, and make capital improvements in accordance with our budget that you adopted for the 23-24 year. And for residential properties, they saw assessed valuations increase 7.8%, but with the rate rollback, their taxes will increase on average about 2.3%. Individual experience will vary from that. That's what the average is. With that, I'm ready for public comment.

Is there any public comment? No? Okay. So we are going to approve this, don't we? We're going to approve it later. Okay. So is this where you want me to adjourn? OK, so we're going to go ahead and adjourn the tax rate hearing and commence the regular hearing. Thank you, John. So adequate notice has been given. And let's go ahead and say the Pledge of Allegiance now. Okay, so Gary, we're on 3.02. I

move that the Board of Education adopt the agenda as posted.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. And Doctor, we are now on 4.01. So Dr. Poole's gonna come up, and we're gonna talk about our amazing students.

All right. Good evening, everyone. So I have two students that we are going to recognize today. Our first student is Sari Gross. Sari is bringing a national philanthropic organization to St. Louis called Honeycomb, and it will be Honeycomb STL. So Sari is going to come up and kind of talk about the motivation behind that and the good work that she has begun doing.

Hi, everyone. I'm Sari, and I'm a sophomore at Clayton this year. And as Dr. Poole said, I am starting this local philanthropic teen thing, I guess you could say. So I wrote a little bit of speech, so I'll tell you guys about it. So Honeycomb STL is an organization with the goal to create generations of engaged, empowered, and experienced Jewish changemakers and givers. Honeycomb is building the future of Jewish philanthropy. At Honeycomb STL, members will learn what tzedakah, the Jewish ethical obligation to give, and philanthropy are by doing interactive activities and listening to prominent speakers from our community. We will work throughout the term to raise money and eventually donate it to one or more local organizations. We will also spend time visiting these organizations, volunteering, and learning why donations are crucial to them and how they will use that money. We recently had our first meeting this past month and heard from Maxine Clark, the founder of Build-A-Bear, speak about her life and philanthropic journey. Our next meeting is October 15th at the Del Mar Divine from 11 to 1. If you know any 9th through 12th graders from St. Louis who you think may be interested, you should definitely recommend them. The best way to learn more if you're interested is the Instagram honeycomastl to learn any information and specific details.

Thank you, Sari for your awesome work. If you'd like to take a picture with our superintendent and our president of the board, that would be awesome. We have a certificate for you. All right, our next student who we want to honor is Grace Wolf. Grace, if you want to come on up. Grace has published her own children's book entitled May I Sit at the Table. And I love the motivation and the story behind it. Even going back to Sari and what she's accomplished, just the level of the equity mindset and the activist mindset for advocating for others that they have is awesome. So I'm going to let Grace talk about her book.

Thank you so much. I'm so grateful to be here. So yes, I did write a children's book and I'm a senior at Clayton. And the inspiration for this book came from a culmination of my own experiences, those of my friends in the deaf community, and also my brother Sam. So my brother Sam is 16 years older than me and he has severe autism. He did the illustrations for the book and has been such a big part of my life. When he talks, he has a very robotic voice. And because of that, when I'm out in public with him and people kind of hear what he sounds like, they stare at him, laugh at him, et cetera, and in general are not very empathetic. And it's not because anyone has any malicious intent. It's really because of a lack of understanding of people who are different, act different, do different things. And in writing this book, I wanted to shed light on the deaf community and their experiences specifically in schools and how kids can be very cruel and mean. So about 75% of all bullying in schools happens in unstructured time. So that would be, for example, during lunch. And the response to this book has been overwhelmingly positive. I'm really excited to share it with everyone and hopefully see Clayton try to implement this inclusion and empathy in our own programs. So thank you so much.

Thank you, Grace. We will definitely look to get those books in our libraries. Definitely need it. Again, thank you, Sari and Grace for your awesome work and your commitment to helping others. And that will wrap up our recognizing our own portion for tonight. Thank you.

Okay. I think we are now at public comment. And I believe we have two. So we are going to start with Michelle Avanader. Come on up.

Okay, I want to personally thank Amy Rubin. for being authentically interested in the success of all students at Clayton School District. When my family and I first joined the district, let's see, seven years ago, she reached out and checked in on how my daughter with special needs was doing, and she probably hasn't had a chance to do that for everyone, but I really appreciated that. So thank you, Amy. Chris Win, thank you for attending all the meetings that have been happening since about May, evaluating the success of the collaboration between Special School District and Clayton. Cameron Poole as well, being extremely communicative this past spring with 20 or more emails back and forth and trying to catch up with each other in our intentions and goals. Robyn Wiens, Nisha Patel, all the other people in Special School District. All of the people who are trying their best to create authentic and clear collaboration. So my name is Michelle Abinader. I'm an educator, a wife, a mother of three boys who are 20, 18, and 16. And I have a fourth child, my beautiful extra 21st chromosome-carrying girl named Cricket, who is in sixth grade at White Island Middle School. We were drawn to the district by a former Clayton employee who was working with Cricket through first steps. Cricket was two and three years old. She was the physical therapist at the Family Center of Clayton Preschool, and we were smitten by that school, their Reggio Emilio culture, philosophy. And when we decided to send her there, Cricket thrived. We thought we might move into the Clayton School District, but we never were able to find a community that we had already established having three older children in our neighborhood in U City. So we continued to be a tuition-paying Clayton family and we plan to do so. I have intimate experience personally with five school districts with whom I have been directly involved, either as an employee in the classroom or as a volunteer parent. I will name these five in reverse order for my experience. Clayton School District, U City School District, Ledoux School District, Pattonville, and Rockwood. I also have intimate and direct experience with another district called Special School District. They do a lot of great things. Back when I was a classroom teacher, my understanding of SSD was vague. I didn't get much training at Mizzou nor in the district where I taught. I was sort of thrown in. I was told to read my students multiple page IEPs but I never really felt like they were my students anyway so I didn't really put in as much effort as I probably should have. Then I was put on the parent side of the fence the day my fourth child, Cricket, was born in June of 2011. And with our surprise Down syndrome diagnosis, I now knew I would have to read the IEPs. So from both sides of the fence, one being the teacher side and one being the parent side, I feel like I come to the table knowing a little bit more than the average parent. I have found consistent and frustrating inefficiencies. And I know everyone's hearts are in the right place, but I'm here to say, am I supposed to talk? Is that too long? Is there a time limit? Oh, shoot. I talk fast, but not fast enough. There are too many hearts. Too many hearts and can we talk about it more? Okay, see you tomorrow. I don't know what else to say. Should I keep going? Oh, okay. If there is any time where we can realize that change is inevitable, the time is now. If there's any district that can look closely at the inefficiencies of two different districts servicing one child, it's this district. If there's any educator who is in this field for anything but the child, then they shouldn't be here. And I have personally interacted with some employees of a special school district, not just in Clayton, more in other districts, but they are not there for the kids. And our children can't speak for themselves. They're constantly scrutinized by and expected to interact with many more individuals than the non-IEP students. IEP is the Individualized Education Plan. and they have insecurity in interacting with people anyway. So every year I personally make a point to connect with all of these people to try to make it easier on my daughter. I call these people the cricket crew. Moving from elementary to middle school this year, my email thread has almost doubled in people with whom my daughter interacts. Of course, because there's individual teachers per grade, I get that. I taught middle school. But there's this whole other set of teachers. And honestly, all of these teachers don't even know each other. So how can that really work for the child? And the one person who services the child the most and is the absolutely most critical to their success... in my experience, is the paraprofessional who is muffled and asked not to interact with the parents. And when they do interact with me, because that's the only way to create success for the child, they ask me not to share that with their supervisors because they're afraid they're going to get in trouble. So it's a system that needs evaluation and simplification. So to whom do these students belong? Clayton or SST? I can say Clayton School District is very unique in that they have this thing called the Family Center, the preschool where they hire their employees under their own umbrella of Clayton to service the kids with IEPs. They get to know the children. There's no attrition, there's no movement. I actually personally work there now. So my ask is this, can we take the family center model and try to recreate it in some fashion? Maybe start with one or two elementary schools or all of them. It totally works and I know they're now as a sub working there and last year as a paraprofessional, I really think we can figure out how we can educate these children better with diversity, equity and inclusion all day long. Thank you.

Okay, I want to personally thank Amy Rubin. for being authentically interested in the success of all students at Clayton School District. When my family and I first joined the district, let's see, seven years ago, she reached out and checked in on how my daughter with special needs was doing, and she probably hasn't had a chance to do that for everyone, but I really appreciated that. So thank you, Amy. Chris Wynn, thank you for attending all the meetings that have been happening since about May, evaluating the success of the collaboration between Special School District and Clayton. Cameron Poole as well, being extremely communicative this past spring with 20 or more emails back and forth and trying to catch up with each other in our intentions and goals. Robin Wiens, Nisha Patel, all the other people in Special School District. All of the people who are trying their best to create authentic and clear collaboration. So my name is Michelle Abinader. I'm an educator, a wife, a mother of three boys who are 20, 18, and 16. And I have a fourth child, my beautiful extra 21st chromosome-carrying girl named Cricket, who is in sixth grade at White Island Middle School. We were drawn to the district by a former Clayton employee who was working with Cricket through first steps. Cricket was two and three years old. She was the physical therapist at the Family Center of Clayton Preschool, and we were smitten by that school, their Reggio Emilio culture, philosophy. And when we decided to send her there, Cricket thrived. We thought we might move into the Clayton School District, but we never were able to find a community that we had already established having three older children in our neighborhood in U City. So we continued to be a tuition-paying Clayton family and we plan to do so. I have intimate experience personally with five school districts with whom I have been directly involved, either as an employee in the classroom or as a volunteer parent. I will name these five in reverse order for my experience. Clayton School District, U City School District, Ledoux School District, Pattonville, and Rockwood. I also have intimate and direct experience with another district called Special School District. They do a lot of great things. Back when I was a classroom teacher, my understanding of SSD was vague. I didn't get much training at Mizzou nor in the district where I taught. I was sort of thrown in. I was told to read my students multiple page IEPs but I never really felt like they were my students anyway so I didn't really put in as much effort as I probably should have. Then I was put on the parent side of the fence the day my fourth child, Cricket, was born in June of 2011. And with our surprise Down syndrome diagnosis, I now knew I would have to read the IEPs. So from both sides of the fence, one being the teacher side and one being the parent side, I feel like I come to the table knowing a little bit more than the average parent. I have found consistent and frustrating inefficiencies. And I know everyone's hearts are in the right place, but I'm here to say, am I supposed to talk? Is that too long? Is there a time limit? Oh, shoot. I talk fast, but not fast enough. There are too many hearts. Too many hearts and can we talk about it more? Okay, see you tomorrow. I don't know what else to say. Should I keep going? Oh, okay. If there is any time where we can realize that change is inevitable, the time is now. If there's any district that can look closely at the inefficiencies of two different districts servicing one child, it's this district. If there's any educator who is in this field for anything but the child, then they shouldn't be here. And I have personally interacted with some employees of a special school district, not just in Clayton, more in other districts, but they are not there for the kids. And our children can't speak for themselves. They're constantly scrutinized by and expected to interact with many more individuals than the non-IEP students. IEP is the Individualized Education Plan. and they have insecurity in interacting with people anyway. So every year I personally make a point to connect with all of these people to try to make it easier on my daughter. I call these people the cricket crew. Moving from elementary to middle school this year, my email thread has almost doubled in people with whom my daughter interacts. Of course, because there's individual teachers per grade, I get that. I taught middle school. But there's this whole other set of teachers. And honestly, all of these teachers don't even know each other. So how can that really work for the child? And the one person who services the child the most and is the absolutely most critical to their success... in my experience, is the paraprofessional who is muffled and asked not to interact with the parents. And when they do interact with me, because that's the only way to create success for the child, they ask me not to share that with their supervisors because they're afraid they're going to get in trouble. So it's a system that needs evaluation and simplification. So to whom do these students belong? Clayton or SST? I can say Clayton School District is very unique in that they have this thing called the Family Center, the preschool where they hire their employees under their own umbrella of Clayton to service the kids with IEPs. They get to know the children. There's no attrition, there's no movement. I actually personally work there now. So my ask is this, can we take the family center model and try to recreate it in some fashion? Maybe start with one or two elementary schools or all of them. It totally works and I know they're now as a sub working there and last year as a paraprofessional, I really think we can figure out how we can educate these children better with diversity, equity and inclusion all day long. Thank you.

Thank you, Michelle. Paul Crow? Hey, Paul.

Good evening. Thanks, everyone, for taking time. Thanks to the board for your efforts and service. It is much appreciated by parents of typical and my child alike, right? So again, my name is Paul Crowe. My daughter Maggie is a freshman at Clayton High School. And I want to take you through a brief journey of our experience and most specifically with the administration. While everything is good intended, we are falling flat as joint administrations between the School District of Clayton and Special School District. This is not a teacher issue. This is not day-to-day issue. This is a systemic issue at the next level of leadership. And overall, I think there's overall confidences in the process. I'll start with again my daughter Maggie's a freshman at Clayton High School and received significant services from SSD through the past few years COVID on really. We have challenged both the SS the school district of Clayton and special school district to elevate their service accordingly. And I haven't eaten dinner yet. Little shaky here but. They have really, truly, unfortunately failed at every mark. Last February, my wife Jenny and I endured a series of meetings with the special school district and Clayton admin alike to no avail in driving positive change. In August, we went on and experienced a series of listening sessions. Quickly, we figured out that this was a process that we were going to arduously have to go through. And what you have in front of you tonight is not representative of the advent of those meetings. Clearly not. So I asked the board that you can either table Section 8 tonight and vote at a later date when you're fully informed, of what needs to happen, or you can vote tonight uninformed. That's your choice, right? But I would highly recommend that you hear the full story from everyone involved in this. We asked for multiple reasons for a third party to host the listening sessions, right? That was not accommodated. We have one of the world-class facilitators right across Shaw Park and Chapman & Company. I'll pay for it. That's how serious I am. It needs to change. We need to be heard and it needs to be completely appropriate to drive positive change in this organization. So I highly recommend that you do that in this process so that we're heard and we hear the voices of our children with needs that don't have voices. So please, I implore you, table for two weeks. Be fully informed in the vote. We got the summary this morning. I canceled my afternoon of meetings to read it. I showed up tonight canceling a trip. Please do the same.

Okay, thank you. Paul? Michelle for your comments we appreciate it and we're gonna talk about this later on in our study session but for right now I'm gonna turn it over to dr. Patel for her Superintendent comments,

okay. Thank you Amy good evening everyone I want to continue before we get into the presentation portion of tonight I do want to continue with a little bit more of recognizing our own With one additional student and I want to highlight this person because we just got the news today earlier today about it We have a senior named Rachel Chung who was awarded a surprise scholarship today, four-year scholarship to the NROTC. It's a very competitive scholarship. Very few students in the area receive the scholarship. It is a four-year, basically, scholarship to attend this, and it's based on academics. So your SAT, ACT, it's based on your commitment to the military world. It's based on activities that you participate in. And her scholarship was for $200,000. So I think that's a huge, huge accomplishment on her end. So I just wanted to make sure we highlight her and be very proud of taking a different alternative route to post-secondary education. So I'm very proud of her. So moving on Obviously our presentation tonight is going to be around our partnership agreement with special school district. And I'm not sure how many of us in the audience know or people watching, but in 1957, St. Louis County voters through a referendum actually established special school district. So they voted for it. Special school district was established. And not only that, They also voted for a tax levy. So we as residents of St. Louis County fund Special School District, and they in turn give us services. So for us in the School District of Clayton, we have 287 students that are serviced by Special School District. That's roughly 11% of our population, including about, I want to say, 48% 49 staff members that are fully employed by the special school district through that tax levy that was approved. So each year we come to the table, we come to the board table and we go through this presentation where we share the partnership agreement which is the same template that's used in all 22 districts that's serviced by special school district. Today, you'll notice it is different. We have the template, but what we've added is 22 additional action steps to help address all of the concerns that have been brought to us by our parents. And absolutely, I will be the first one to say it, and we have said that at every community forum that we started. We have definitely areas that we need to improve on. I'm not denying that. None of us are trying to hide behind the fact. And the biggest two things for me that I heard from our parents in the last two community forums, one was we need a change in culture. The culture of no, we can't do this. Here's a barrier. Here's a barricade. Here's obstacles that they were facing. So we need to change our paradigm like mindset in terms of making it a culture of yes. And then the second thing was parent involvement. And what does that look like? Like input from our parents. Are we truly listening? And then are we making changes accordingly to that? We have 287 students that we service. And yes, we have to look at every single child and how we're approaching that, right? So one of the things that we put together tonight that we're going to present to you is a partnership agreement. We're not going to go each step into each of the 22 action steps, but we're going to give you an overview. We put it on board docs, and we shared it with the board on Friday, and it was on board docs from Monday for people to view. However, I also understand that not everybody can navigate board docs. So tonight we're hoping to go through each one of those steps and kind of give everyone an overview. And most importantly, really, to say how are we going to know a year from now if we made any progress? How are we gonna hold ourselves accountable? I truly believe that we do need to gain the trust from our parents. We've lost it, but we need to also be given an opportunity to gain it back. And for us, this is our first step. To say yes, we will deploy parent surveys. The parents can help create the survey. We'll deploy it each semester and you tell us how we're doing. Are we doing better or are we not? We'll come back to the board We'll do it tonight, but we'll come back at the end of the semester and next semester and give you an update. Here's where we're at. Here's what the parents are saying, that we're still falling short or we're doing great in these areas. So that the board is fully informed about that as well. Third party. From the minute, I think it was the last meeting that Mr. Crow actually did, he suggested, he's like, we need to get a third party in here. We need to have someone come facilitate it. The superintendent of SSD and I have been talking about that. In fact, just this afternoon, she and I had a phone conversation. Who do we need to get? How do we get that person to come in here? We didn't put it in the agreement because that doesn't need to be in an agreement. That's not part of this. This is something that we would fund Take care of and have what does this come? What does it look like? Who's the third party? Is it a company? is it someone that specializes that has knowledge in SSD services we need to find the right person and Absolutely, no one is against that idea bring them in. In fact help them facilitate it They can be they can give us their opinion based on everything They're hearing from you and based on what we're trying to do and I do think that's a great route So we will go that way We just need to find the right person to do that. Our next meeting is going to be on October 11th, I believe, or the 12th, October 12th for another community forum to say, okay, what are we doing now? Where are we headed? And maybe it's time to like now actually start creating the survey or the accountability tool in terms of parent feedback. So we do have a lot of things that we've got in place, but we need to start that as well. And tonight is just the first step of that. So with that, I am going to now hand it over to our student board rep who's going to also give an update because I know this came up as a topic from the student perspective as well. And then we're going to have the presentation.

Yeah, at the recent SPSA meeting, our discussion revolved around how to support fellow students with IEP plans or special needs. And what we found as a group is that we agreed that any challenges that were difficult for students who don't need extra support were especially hard for students who did. And so when we looked at regarding schedules and regarding just year-long plans in general when it came to the start of the year, we found that Students really needed help and it really needed some more support support than that what was given I And so in general, when we were looking at the Clayton culture of inclusivity of our students, we saw that it was ultimately really positive on the student side. Within educational aspects, to empathize with someone you must understand. And we found that with many of the students at Clayton High School, they were throughout elementary school, middle school, high school, were given the chance to either learn or were open to learn about others at their school. And so what we can see is that we have at Clayton a shared level of awareness and overall respect, which is really great to see. And so when we're thinking about maybe making more district-wide changes or changes within the classroom or outside the classroom, students who need that support are and will be taken into account by the student body around them. Everyone really cares and really wants to see and make a difference. And as a group, we couldn't even think of a single instance where we saw that another student treated another student who was, you know, like everyone is just really inclusive and great in the Clayton High School atmosphere at least. And so we also, at the SPSA meeting, talked a little bit about sixth grade camp. We all know it's coming next week. And we were thinking about whole level grade experiences and how in the Clayton School District that really unifies a class and makes them really excited to go to school and to learn with teachers they've been seeing all week and really creates those stepping stones for high school and eventual graduation. And one thing we did find, though, is that high schoolers who end up going back as counselors or even eighth graders who go back as CITs really struggle with workload when it comes to teachers, teachers not really recognizing the amount of time it takes at sixth grade camp to be working with these sixth graders. And so we were generally thinking and encouraging high school teachers to maybe attend a day of camp, see what's going on, see how important it is for the overall Clayton environment. And also just in general, you know, the high schoolers really make the sixth grade camp a great experience. So it'd be great to see more help put in place for those who happen to attend. And then finally, this recent Monday, we had a C-Day. And this was recently implemented because of student concerns. And what we saw was it overall worked out really well. The goal was to help our Jewish student population. And what we found was when we look at, for example, the profile of a Clayton graduate cultural competency, everyone the students and the teachers really took that in mind when planning their lesson plans and looking throughout the day. One thing that was really great is students were really aware of why the C-Day was happening, and I think that was very much the goal of making sure everyone sort of understood why we were taking a specific day off for a C-Day and how we should put that into our day to day when maybe wishing someone a happy holiday or just going to school. And so while most teachers did take into account the holiday into their syllabus, some teachers I heard still barreled through and just kept going with their assignments and what they were teaching in class. However, because of the C-day schedule with the 45 minutes per class, it really ended up not... Students missed less than they would have last year and so when we look at overall with Clayton students whether it comes to increasing accommodations or changing the schedule The students are really adaptable to changes made by the board And so we are in general really excited and open to any new changes made in the future Regarding any anything that comes that will help out the district

Thank you so much That's really good input. Does anybody have any questions? Okay, we appreciate it. Okay, SSD partnership.

Good evening, school board of Clayton. It's a privilege to be up here to give you an update on the partnership agreement between the special school district and the school district of Clayton. I want to introduce Melissa Logan, who's the special education director assigned to Clayton from the special school district.

And then we also have Dr. Elizabeth Keenan, our superintendent from special school district joining us too. Thank you for having us tonight. The first thing we wanted to go over was the overview. So IDEA requires states and districts to have in effect policies, procedures, programs that are consistent with the federal policies and procedures concerning the provision of special education. So within that, we have the Missouri state plan, local compliance plan, and then tonight we're going to drill down to our general assurance documents, district policies, and procedures. Okay. So we're gonna go into our partnership agreement and what the purpose of the partnership agreement across 22 districts that we have. Increased knowledge and awareness of expectations, the inclusive and collaborative approach, the tool it is to monitor our collaborative leadership, decision making and practices in seven categories. And it also guides our conversations with our districts. Within that, we have seven categories that we hit on within each one. So we have staffing, teaching, learning and accountability, the collaboration of our responsibilities and resources, student services, data and technology, transportation, and our CTE program, career and technical education.

So as Dr. Patel mentioned earlier this evening, we won't necessarily be going through all the nuts and bolts of the template of the different categories as part of the partnership agreement. Instead, we're gonna use our time this evening to focus on some of the action steps that we hope to accomplish during this school year. So how did we create those action steps? Well, first of all, we have hosted two community engagement forums and invited all of our families of students with disabilities, not just students who are served by IEPs, but also we welcomed families whose students had 504s to join us as well. Our first forum, we had several listening stations set up with different facilitators from the school district of Clayton and special school district focused on gathering feedback on the student family experience. our communication, the partnership agreement itself, and then transitions between the various school buildings, particularly between fifth grade to sixth grade, and then eighth grade to ninth grade, and then 12th grade and beyond. We also held a second forum where we presented draft action steps that were created based on the feedback from the first forum and created opportunities for folks to give us feedback on that. In addition, before those forums and after those forums, families were given an opportunity to Meet individually. We had a lot of individual meetings with families who had reached out to us before we held the forums. in between the forums and then met with a couple more families after the forums. We also met with our principals as a large group and individually to get their feedback on the action steps that we had shared with families, and we also got feedback from our special education building leaders. So obviously we have special education staff sprinkle up throughout all of our buildings, and there are specific leads within each building that Melissa also works with directly, and we were able to get some of their input as well. So we wanted to highlight some of the action steps in several of the categories that are part of our partnership agreement. Again, as Dr. Patel said earlier, you can find a more detailed version of these action steps posted on BoardDocs. So the first category was focused on staffing and one of the things that we were able to glean from our family meetings as well as our forums was really the need to increase our transparency through more frequent and specific communication with our families. One of those areas where we can improve upon was our staffing and the communication about our staffing. And one of the other things that we heard related to that was understanding not just what our current staffing model was and how we got there, but also what the trends were over time with how we allocate the various staff members. In category two, related to teaching, learning, and accountability, again, a lot of the feedback that we heard was knowing, one, what the data was on the performance of our students with disabilities, both at a high level but also at an individual family level, and then also understanding how that data had changed over time. So what were the trends for a specific student and what were the trends who are currently receiving special education services. Another piece of that was making sure that we're communicating that information to our community in a variety of pathways. So thinking about how we share that with individual families about the progress of their own child, how do we share that with the building community and how do we share with both our teaching staff and our greater community in terms of all of our families whose students receive special services.

Category three was around that collaboration of responsibility and resources so things we have put in place and we've continued as a special education building leader has been identified and goes to all the building leader meetings and has that voice for special education and then goes back to the team to let them know of what's happening. and how we can make sure the students are supported and included in all activities. We've also had, I've had director or principal meetings one on ones monthly with the principals where we're also talking about the student needs, what's happening and what they need from me. We've also created a contact list so you know who to go to for things. The first contact is always that case manager teacher and then we've listed other people that they can go to if they have questions. We have an ongoing parent input through our communication engagement forums that we've created. And PAC-Ed, we've had two events already, the morning meetup at Glenridge and charting the life course event that we've also been part of. And within category four is student services. So this is where we are looking at our transitions from early childhood to kindergarten to fifth to sixth grade, eighth to ninth grade, and even post-secondary. How can we help smooth that transition and have everyone together part of the table to know what's available? Beginning of the year activities, we were part of the meet the teacher curriculum night. We even hosted for the ninth grade families an opportunity to meet their case manager. engaging with office of equity inclusion. We've pulled in Dr. Poole and Dr. Macklin from special school district to help us come up with some PD opportunities for the teachers, SEL data collection through the panorama. And then we're exploring some additional summer experiences for our students. Some takeaways from our community engagement and how we're going to track how we're doing. is really looking at that relationship and trust. So communication, we're really looking at that building to teacher, to families, to make sure they know what's happening within their school and what the opportunities are. We're also personalizing that communication to families too to let them know what to expect, what it will look like, such as the panorama. We let them know what was happening, how we were going to make sure visuals would be provided for some students and things like that. We're also looking for that stronger feedback loop from the parents to us at the school setting, too. And then we're going to be able to see how we're doing through the surveys that we've mentioned that we're going to create together, the student data, looking at that academic and social-emotional data, and the professional learning that we're providing to the teachers.

And before we open it up to questions, I also want to share with the board that as a participant in many of the family meetings that we've conducted individually as well as facilitator in the first two community engagement forums, I want to reiterate what Dr. Patel said earlier is that we absolutely know that we can improve in this area and that we are very committed to improving the quality of experience that our families of students with disabilities have had and we know that we need to Uh, put a lot of work into improving those relationships to reestablish the trust. And as the assistant superintendent of student services, I wanna let you know that I take full ownership of the missed opportunities, uh, where I could have led differently to, um, make this, uh, work be elevated much quicker. And so I assure all of you that I am very invested in making sure that, uh, I partner with, uh, Melissa Logan, as well as Dr. Keenan's team. to make sure that we are continuing to make decisions that are rooted in the data that we collect from our families and from our students and from our staff to make sure that moving forward, we're continuing to make progress and really improving the experience of our families overall.

And if I may, I'd like to make a comment too in terms of the listening sessions with our parents was very valuable in terms of really kind of from a firsthand accounts around the frustrations that they're feeling around a dual system. And being in a single district, being in a district where you had your special education, that has a tendency to happen there too. However, we are committed to making sure that this system does not create a dual system for students and that the parents don't feel that way. There's a commitment on both Clayton and SSD to make sure that we are cohesively working together around that student experience. Parents were really clear about communication separated out. How do we make sure when we have communications going out that we're specific about their students and their needs being met, and how do we make sure we're communicating that effectively? The inclusivity part of it is so important. We don't want to other our families, but we also want to make sure our students are taken care of and that they're recognized and that we're also making sure that we're really clear about what those needs are and that we're addressing them. The other part of it, too, was transitions were really clearly that we need to make sure that the transition that parents are informed, not only for kids going from elementary to middle school, but middle school to high school, well in advance, planning preparation. Parents want to prepare their students over the summer so they don't find out about the classes and their courses in August. They want to know prior to that, and we can do those. So the goal around this is this feedback that our parents are giving is to give us the time to continue to work with them, to build out the surveys, to build out, get feedback. We're not saying that we want you to adopt this without parent input. The timing is, we've always had this done between, we offer this, we go over this with our board in June, we have the boards adopt this in September and the final signing of it in October. So where we are saying is engaging with our families here in Clayton, the commitment to make sure that we are supporting them. We started that in August. We've done it in September. We have a long ways to go in terms of it. But the information they provided us, we need to continue to build these pieces out. It's not that we're waiting to advance on any of these action plans until we put it all into one plan. We're already implementing pieces of it. And we can be able to bring our parents together to be able to facilitate this and to say, how is this working and how do we improve this? One of the other biggest things that our parents really said was, and this really kind of spoke to me in terms of how do we support our students with special needs in Clayton. When they're experiencing going to college, unless you're going to Princeton, unless you're to Harvard, the parents of our special needs students don't really feel like they're having that experience to be able to say, What are options for my child? I want to go to college. What's worked through that? Outside of a sheltered workshop, we need to make sure that we're supporting our families and that we are giving them opportunities to think about starting in middle school, where is your child going to be after high school? And that was really clear that that has been a true missed opportunity to build in. One of the things that we do have and we will be offering, and we just had it, we had participation on, it's called Charting the Life Course. It is a great opportunity for our families to sit down and to map this out. And I think that the more we can include that and include counselors and include how do we get access to information for our families to better prepare them, that's ultimately what our families are asking for. We need to make sure that we're including inclusivity the communication, the supports and to be able to say how do we make sure we are individualizing this but also recognizing the areas that we need to improve upon to make sure that we are cohesively doing this so that every child coming through the system has that opportunity and that we have expectations for them no matter where their levels are at. The last part of it that they've talked about too is activities after school. And that is a big thing too. How do we have students to be able to participate and to be able to be supported in those participation, whether it's in sports or activity or clubs after school? We had a great meeting with the principals. They accepted, you know, like how do we plan for this to make sure that if a child has a support system to be successful in the school day, that we automatically start planning for that so that they are able to do the same thing after school. I don't want to go too much in this, but What our parents have said is we it is not falling on deaf ears. We are wanting to make sure we work through these things. This will help us all get better. We can do this. There's a willingness to do it and we want them to drive it. We want them to continue to feedback give us feedback to drive it and to say how we're doing. The recommendation that was at the last meeting at the very end like Dr. Patel said was to have an outside facilitator and that is actively being pursued, to be able to get that right person to be able to work through it, understand it, but really be able to give that freedom. What I also wanna say is what we all need to do is to be able to build that trust, but we have to be open to that trust and to be able to built that. So it's put the board in a strange situation where do you approve this, but whether we go forward, we're gonna go forward. This agreement's been put together. 22 districts do it. We've had other districts where we've had to keep working through it, and this just helps us really create, well, how do we make sure we're making this unique to Clayton? There's a template here, but we know that there's different needs that we want to establish here, and we're open to that, and just open to it, we will achieve that. And so we just need the time to be able to build that out and update the board and make sure by next year, even in the spring of the year that we know what this is gonna look like and it's customized for here and for Clayton. And it's driven by parents' input.

Okay, thank you for the presentation. I know we all have a lot of questions, so I'm going to go around the room and start with Jason to make sure that we all have a chance to talk tonight.

Great. First of all, I just want to say I appreciate all the comments that have been made about this agreement, and Robin, I just want especially your comment at the end about just taking ownership over the program for the district. I thought that was very well said, and I appreciate the accountability that you're taking for yourself and for all of us. So I just have a few questions, wanting to drill down and getting a little more specific about some of the good stuff that you guys were saying. This is all in the mindset of making sure that we have a culture of improvement, open communication, all that good stuff that we all want, right? And also just educating you a little bit. So can you guys talk to me a little bit about, I heard some of the activities that happened, but what does that actual parent feedback look like today? What is it going to look like under these action steps and how frequently does that loop happen?

It's going to take the shape of many things, but I'll outline a couple. So the first is that across both central office teams, we've met with quite a few families individually who either we've reached out to to get additional voices or to learn more about some of the thoughts and the feedback that they shared in those particular forums as a follow-up. And in addition to some of the other things that were shared already by folks who have spoken one of our ideas that we'd like to set off into motion is to improve the feedback loop after the IEP process. And so right now, families who have gone through the IEP meeting process when their student's final IEP is finalized in the online system, they do receive a survey automatically once it has been finalized. So one of the pieces of feedback that we got at the forum was that that survey is really long and then the time between when they have physically met with the case manager and the special ed team and general ed team and the time at which they receive the survey that there is some lag time. So one of the ideas that we'd like to work on is figuring out what is a more abbreviated version of a feedback loop so right when families finish their meeting process, we could share it with them to get really quick and fast feedback that's more immediate that can be shared back with the team as well as what Dr. Patel shared as well as co-creating a more family-facing survey that could be given twice a year So we can take the temperature basically in the middle of the year, make any mid-course corrections, and then give it again toward the end of the year. And one of the other pieces of feedback we got from our families was that when we do set these feedback mechanisms off into motion to make sure that we're being really transparent with the feedback that we're getting and making sure that we're sharing back out to the community of this is what our parents are telling us their IEP experience is like, and this is what our in the district is like as it relates to their child who has a disability. So we're going to be working on that and making sure that we are sharing that information back out, that it's not just being looked at by the administrative team here in Clayton and at SSD, but we're also sharing that information back to our families and letting them know what we're doing about it.

Okay, awesome. Thanks. Next question. I know you guys had the second meeting to get the feedback from parents who attended on the agreement. Can you give us maybe one or two examples of a place where you tweet in this year's action steps directly based on that feedback?

Yeah, that's a great question. So one example of the evolution of the action steps was after the initial forum, one of our action steps was about providing professional learning specifically around charting the life course for staff. After the second forum, we got additional feedback that there was a lot of interest in providing staff with more training through SSD around social-emotional behavioral support for students and using one of the SEB specialists from special to lead that training for Clayton staff. And then in a follow-up meeting after the second forum with an individual family that I met with, was talking more about our social-emotional learning survey tools and really digging deeper into a concern that was shared at the second forum that our panorama surveys are not the most suitable for our students who are nonverbal or have limited communication skills. And even with modifications in the administration of that, that the data that we're getting from that is not valuable in helping support those students. So I had a great meeting with an individual family about what it could look like and then getting pointed in the direction of some other resources. And then also it has given me some ideas of looking at some of the tools we currently have and how we might be able to alter them to get feedback, not just from a parent, but also from the teachers who are supporting a student who might be nonverbal. So in that professional learning action step, it is now more comprehensive than just charting the life course, but also focusing on social-emotional behavioral work, post-secondary opportunities in terms of educating counselors and other folks who help guide families through that process, and then executive functioning and then looking at social-emotional learning tools. So that's one example. There was another one you wanted to

add. Awesome, thanks. Can you talk about... someone's made a mention that just, you know, this action plan sort of indicating that this may be sort of like an ongoing evolving thing. Maybe talk to us a little bit about how, what happens to this action plan from here? How does it get, how does this plan get improved? How does this set up for future years and how do parents have, you know, their, their say in that or their input in

Part of it is Robin and I meet and kind of go over where are we and continue to look at our action steps, where have we improved, and where do we need to continue to grow in. And so we're always evaluating beginning of the year, we do it at the end of the year, and again at the beginning of this school year too, again, just to see, to wrap everything around and make sure we have everyone's voice too. And that's why we also gave it to our building leaders to get their feedback on areas.

So the way I, you know, we're envisioning this process is to make sure the initial first one was the four areas to get feedback on it. The parents are wanting to make sure that they have input into this agreement. So going into this October meeting is to be able to look at this action plan, but also the feedback that has been provided by one of the parents to us. to be able to kind of say, now let's make sure we can tweak this to make sure that this is part of building this in as a plan going forward. The other part of it, like Robin had said, we want to make sure that they're having input into designing the surveys that are going back for the feedback from an IEP meeting. And then being able to look at the process of when we're serving the students, what are those questions? The parents want to know those pieces so that we're preparing the students. So they're gonna be able to see those questions and to be able to participate in saying, how do we know when is this gonna happen so we can prepare them? Both documents and the feedback is really saying parents want voice. And being able to let them know about it, show them this, give feedback so that when things are rolled out, they're aware and that they're understanding and that they can prepare their students and they are prepared too equally. The goal is to be able to build this feedback into the plan, look at the action steps and to be able to say how are we measuring this? And really I want to dive a little bit more into what are those tangible markers to show success, to show improvement. And to be able to really involve the parents in the process and how we're communicating and getting feedback.

Just then just one more comment, then I'll stop but I was just happy to hear that. Dr. Macklin dr. Poor working together. I had a chance to see dr Macklin present last fall at MSBA and it seems like you guys are doing some really great work when it comes to DEI work so Happy to see that and hope it continues.

Yes

Thanks

So thanks for the presentation. I and the and the materials that you present, and I'm going to ask questions to coming from a much shallower base of knowledge and others that have been attending meetings. But when I see the action steps in the action plans that you're taking, what's difficult for me to ascertain is what the baseline is. I mean, how are you going to measure this unless you know where you're starting from? And so it's very difficult for me as a board member to know I mean, it seems like we are having a mea culpa as a district, as a collective special school district, but a mea culpa from where? Where are we failing? How badly are we failing? And how do you measure improvement if you don't have a baseline to start with? And I don't frankly see that reflected in any of the as evidence by when I go through the document. So I'm wondering, are you going to share that baseline? Is there a baseline? How have you been measuring yourself so far outside of the IEPs? And those are the questions that I have just kind of from an objective lens looking at this from the outside in. So maybe let's

start with that. I think it's a great question, too, because as you're reading it, it's like we have to start where are we at and then get more specific. So that's where we're going to start to drill down into pieces of this. Because you can see even with the feedback from the parents, it's like they're saying, well, how are we measuring that? And we have to build those targets. So do you not know where you're at? Well, there's a lot of information in there. So it's like there are pieces where we know we're at, and so how do we make sure we build that into where we're at currently and to be able to build that? So it's just saying, and if we don't have it, how do we make we start to make sure we are building what that's going to look like? So there are seven different areas in the partner agreement. There's information in the action steps, and then we have to be more specific. Build that in. We can build some of those pieces in, and when we don't have it, because we have the student data pieces, we have the parent survey stuff, we have those pieces that we just haven't incorporated into this actual document right now. What we're going to be doing is to start building that into it so that we can start to measure where the growth is at.

Okay,

so

again, that's... little bit difficult for me to ascertain how much of this you have and how much of this don't have let alone where the things you have might start at so is that information

available at all I mean yes we just have to put it in together into that to the document does

our district have that information

Yeah, so we would have baseline data around social emotional learning. We would have baseline data on- Which may

not be accurate based on parent feedback as far as the student's ability to actually participate in those surveys.

Yes, and then we would be introducing potentially as one of the action steps is wanting us to look at other tools that we could add into the mix as a measurement for students who would need an alternative survey tool for social emotional learning. Okay, let me maybe get

more specific. Let's just go to page three. Category one, staffing. As evidenced by teacher fill percentage, parafill percentage, SSD, blah, blah, blah. Surely you know the baseline of what your vacancy rate is for teachers, what your turnover rates are for paraprofessionals, what your target is for your paraprofessional ratio to students.

Why is it not here? And that's what we're saying is we have to build that into that to put those baseline pieces into it. But you're measuring it now or you're not yet measuring it today? We have all that information. We're 100% filled in the paras and all the staffing. There's zero vacancies. Okay.

And I mean, it's really, it's kind of as evidence by on every category, right? When I look through this and... Again, it's very difficult for me as a board member of this district. And I know that you serve 22 districts to know where we're starting at without seeing that objective. I mean, what gets measured gets done. So if you're not measuring it, it's not getting done. If you've started to measure it, that's great. There should be a baseline that you could share. I'd like to see it. I'm guessing other members of the board would like to see it, and then my last question, I guess, and then I'll pass it along so we can get around the table here is, you said that you're gonna implement this for our district. Why would you not implement it across all 22 districts? If it's good for our district and there are special need students in all districts that you're serving, why not through the other 21? Wouldn't it be easier even just from an accountability standpoint within the partnerships that you have if what's good for the goose is good for the gander?

Absolutely. And that's what we can do with this. Basically, when we're looking at this, with each part of this, we need to add in that data component where we're currently at and where is our goal for this year to improve. That's the specific information you're asking for. And it's absolutely, it's the right question to ask because what this is is more the generic pieces of it, but underneath it, build that template to say where are we currently at with the paras, with the teachers, the vacancies, all that stuff, and making sure that that's consistently added in so that is it. So your question around why wouldn't we do this, build this for this area, and we can implement it in other districts too. Okay, and I'm sorry.

I said I only had one more, but I have just one last one. So the request for a moderator, my guess is that is because there's a lack of a common language, perhaps, between the parents that are asking for this information and our school district, the special school district. Can you give me some insight into why we now think that a moderator is a good idea to help to arbitrate? I mean, I come from the corporate world, right? We use moderators and arbitrators all the time. And you usually bring them in when there is an inability to communicate directly across the table or there is a... there is an issue that's especially meaty where you come from two different sides and you can't find a common ground with which to start working on. Is that what we're talking about here, which is why there's a need for moderation, or is it something else?

I believe the request came from some of the parents because there's a lack of trust. So the parents don't feel that we are accommodating their voice and their needs as much as they would want to, and that was the request made.

Mm-hmm.

And so for us, coming in, we are saying we are willing to work. We are willing to do everything that you're requesting, but having an outside perspective, coming in unbiased, without any judgment, to listen to parent voice, listen to our voice, come to some sort of agreement with that. It's

kind of like our...

Okay. I have other questions, but I'll pass the mic. Thank you all for being here.

I think it's probably clear by now that we all have a lot of questions and want to engage in this in a way that responds to feedback that we've gotten, including tonight. I will admit that I have not been recently as engaged in this as... maybe I would like to have been, so I have a few questions around some of the timing that has come out. But before I get into that, I do want to say that I feel a very high degree of confidence both in our own district here in Clayton and the people that are responsible for all of this and implementing all the things that we're talking about here. I also feel a high degree of confidence in Special School District and Dr. Keenan and your staff and the people that have committed to that. I've been, I feel fortunate to have gotten to know that district and see how it works and see how the partnership and the collaboration works And I'm thankful for that. But those feelings of confidence are based largely on sort of direct and personal experience. And I don't know that that is something that all of our community and all of our parents can have, have the same perspective. And also, I know that people have very different personal and kind of individual experiences. So I think I just want to say that up front that I do believe in the way that we do this and the work and the professionals and I want to support that and asking questions about that does not in any way reflect a lack of confidence in that. But I do think that we need to to hear some of those questions and from people who don't have that same level of confidence. I'm a little bit confused about the timing And this may be again like maybe I have I mean it's an extremely hectic time in my life the last couple of weeks So I may have missed some of this but it sounds like there's both then some parent meetings But also some of this has just only recently particularly particularly the action steps based on feedback that we got today then seen by the parent groups and but yet we're talking about a process that we just normally do where we would approve this now. So I'm not sure even who that question is directed to, to be honest, but I think it would be good to clear that up, at least for me.

Well, I think going back, Dr. Patel and I met with two parents in the summer. I'm trying to think if it was July or June. I can't remember. I think it was more like July. And so when we met with them, and they've been participating in this, and it was clear that there was some frustration. And the parents have said that they have felt this frustration for the last couple years. And so acknowledging that and honoring that, when Dr. Patel and I asked, you know, we understand where they're at, so how do we start to engage in this conversation? When we, the special school district every year in May and June, kind of overlapping with this, we always have the partnership agreement. We go over that. We present it at our board meeting. We present it to governing council. So it's just a cycle that we normally do. The timing of this, which your question is a good question in terms of, well, the timing of the parent concerns came up and we recognizing it, hearing it at our level, wanting to do something, but this is kind of like coming in at the same time. We're just starting to engage in some of these deeper conversations to get into it. So two sessions we had. Both sessions were about two, two-and-a-half hours with our parents. And so we need some time to surface and get through this so that we can get into – How do we make sure that we're addressing and documenting and getting the right information into this document to show the growth? So those two things are coming in at the same time. The time is just not there for us right now. The time is we need more time to work with the parents to build this to build it at the same time we are actually not waiting to do some action items that we can still put these pieces and start making adjustments but to be able to say let's build this plan so that we keep continuing to follow it and that we keep continuing make ourselves accountable to this and improving it so that's where this is going you know overlapping of it if I the board says, you know, we need more information on it. You know, we can bring back Pete more of that. That's not going to give us enough time though with our parents. We're meeting with them on the 12th. We're still working for another two hours or with them two and a half hours. So it's going to give us some information, but it's not going to you're asking some great questions about how we can make this a better document in terms of the clarity of what's actually happening in each, in Clayton and other districts, that's appropriate so we can build that baseline. So the dilemma is we still have some work to do. We still have that trust piece to work through. We have to build that data, and we're building that ship right now where there's this on top of it. So the agreement approval does not have to be, it can be contingent on the ongoing work we're doing and to be able to say we're committed to that work, and that we'll get feedback and we'll give updates to the board. And then I ask that those updates are equally presented and supported with our parents to be able to have that voice too, so that you're hearing directly from them too.

Not only did we have the meeting in June or July with the two parents to kind of be the catalyst for the community engagement forums, But prior to that, we've had individual parents that have come up that have expressed concerns. They've met with Dr. Wiens. They've met Melissa. They've met Dr. Poole. So we had concerns that were coming from before too. But truly when Dr. Keenan and I sat down with that one family this summer, that's when we started saying, OK, we need to put structures in place and community forums in place in August to get voices in the room, more voices.

So I'm hearing a lot of, I think, good things. And this is a good conversation to understand this better. I'm hearing that we want parents to drive this, that we need their engagement in order to have this process be improved not just when we approve this but throughout a longer term process. I guess the question, you know, this is also, I mean, as an agreement, this is really, you know, it's a partnership agreement. It's very much, it's a little different than some of the agreements that we look at all the time. It's not one party will do this and the other. Like everything in here is SSD and partner district will do, you know, and that's the whole thing. So in terms of the timing of when it's formally approved or things like that, It's not as if we're waiting to start doing things You know until this gets approved those things are happening now We're improving on the way those things happening now as it goes. I think that's all I think I'm representing accurately so I guess my question a Bit of a round around about the way run about way to get to that is in light of that If what we really need is for the parents, including the ones we've heard from, to be more a part of and feel a trust with you that this is happening, does some amount of time before we say to you, yes, we're all good and we're signed off on this, Does that help your ability and everyone's ability to work together to continue to improve this? That was a very long question. I don't know if I even ever asked a question, actually. But is some delay in making a formal statement about this helpful to you in building the confidence that you need to get the partnership, to let the parents drive it, as you said?

Yeah. And Dr. Patel? Yes, the answer to this is yes, we can vote on it on October, when's our next meeting? 11th. 12th, October 12th. But what I will say to you is between now and October 12th, we'll get a few more emails, which we've already received two on things that we could change, right? So just because you've approved this does not mean that we're not going to go back and change it or adjust it accordingly. To me, we've said our strategic plan is an evergreen model So is this, right? So we had a parent who was emailed saying a lot, gave us a lot of feedback on terms of like, and I have her draft here as a matter of fact. And one of the things is like under as evidenced by, give us like parent survey results with 360 degree performance standards, which is already included in the action step in the back where we're saying we're creating a survey from parents that's gonna be developed by parents. We're gonna deploy it once a semester. So I think there's just like verbiage things that we need to clean

up.

So I appreciate the presentation. I don't have a problem necessarily with the agreement per se. I think it's lacking a couple important components for me as an attorney that I would want in there. And some of this is like anecdotally what I've heard from parents, but what I'm hearing is one of the things that's one of the major frustrations is some of the staffing that is being sent to the district from SSD, that there's a disconnect between the parents and the people. And that they're, you know, parents aren't feeling heard. They're not able to connect with the person. The person isn't, you know, there's a lot of raw emotions, I think. And there's a lot you know, parents with special needs children, I think there's there's a lot going on. I think it takes a special personality probably to be able to connect with the parents and that we want as a district, want to make sure that we have the right person there. Um, and so I think, you know, what I see lacking in here is our ability to say, okay, you know, we're, we, we want to be collaborative, but if it's not working, then We have the ability to request a change in staffing at our sole and absolute discretion, and that gets promptly accommodated. And then also our ability to amend the agreement. I mean, I would vote on it tonight or on the 12th, and just our general ability to amend this agreement on an as, you know, we'll collaborate in the ability to have it amended on an as-needed basis. So those would be my two comments. And I don't know if that's like SSD needs to take that back to legal or... I would like to see those two things added to the agreement.

And I think the amendment pieces, that's just going to enhance the document.

Sure.

So that as we start to continue to work with our parents and as things come out of our meetings we can add that in there and we can update that to the board and that that will be that continuation um as you were saying dr patel in terms of we don't have to wait and build it all in there right until the end of the year we can build it and say we've got this is the survey here's the results on the staffing pieces and get more data so that we can update that um and that the board will be getting that if anything through this piece of it, this is going to make everybody much more aware of how we all work together. And I think that is truly the spirit of this document. Our parents are just saying we need to live that on a daily basis. And that the more we do that, and then when we show this in this document, the more it keeps everybody accountable for those for this agreement.

But if it's not working, I mean, we as the district don't want to have to wait a year before we get a new person.

Exactly. We need it to happen

promptly. Right? Well, let Stacy go and then you go because I just want to make sure that, is that okay?

Okay.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sorry.

I don't know. I mean, I think that what Dr. Patel is saying that is that we've, circulated this. I think we asked for parent feedback. A few parents gave us feedback. I don't know that it's like totally critical. I mean, if I'm saying something wrong. Critical to

vote on it tonight. To

vote on it tonight, but I do think we want to have it voted on soon so we have the agreement in place.

Because I feel like him. I feel like Gary. This is like out of the blue for me. You know, it's incomplete. It's missing data.

Is this circulated? I'm

sorry. Yeah, you're cool. I mean, we... I'm sorry, I don't mean to overdo it. You're not. It's on the same line. I'll be quiet. I'll skip my turn if I need to. No, no, no.

We don't want that.

But I'm just saying, when we read this, it's like...

So some of the things I think that we're talking about, I don't think necessarily, Gary, you could chime in, are necessarily... things that we would incorporate into the agreement per se. I think they're more, um, they might be, um, action steps or additional, um, I don't know that they're there, they would get incorporated into the agreement, but I do think that it's important that as a board, we have an understanding of what, what, what they are. Um, and that's why I say, that's why I went back to that we have the ability to amend it, so that way if we're not seeing the data that we want to see, then we can always amend the agreement. Not to necessarily incorporate it, but to require something

additional. Where is that? Where's evidence that it can be amended?

Well, that's why I just said that there was two things that in my brain were lacking from the agreement. One was the ability to you know, to amend it. If the district feels like it needs to be amended to include additional terms because something isn't working, that we can amend it. And then the staffing issue

that we can... What about, just one last question. So... If we vote on it tonight, what's the incentive of people rushing to get this stuff done fast enough and get everything we need to make a complete document? If I vote on it tonight we can scratch this out until December.

Well no because they would be in breach of the contract if we weren't happy with some of the terms and they weren't willing. No, provided there was – there needs to be a clause in there that – I mean, I don't know that we have to – right, that's what I'm saying. We voted on it at the 12th. There's a few more clauses that get incorporated into it.

I mean, I just

– I don't know legally, you know, without something – it's almost like an MOU or an – Yeah, it's not

by MOU agreement is what I read it as.

Yeah, I stopped at a Holiday Inn last night. I'm saying the same thing they're saying, that this is what that is. And so I just want to make sure that if we were to vote on this tonight, that things get done. Because when I read this document, I was like, yeah, go ahead, go for it. And now I'm here, I'm like, shit, there's a lot going on here. I had no idea. Anyone else is cool with it, but I'm not cool with it. Well, it

has been, and there have, I think Dr. Patel's in all of her Friday memos. She's been updating us every week on what's going on. I

need an email. I can't just get a very Friday dump like this. But she emails it on Fridays. Send me an email, man. This is what we're going on. Keep me updated. I just feel like I see the memos, and it's cool to read them, and sometimes I have to say, man, I might not catch that one until like the next week. Between

everyone, though. Has everybody else? I don't know. Yes.

This is pretty severe. This is pretty sever. I should probably get an email about this all the

time. But I can assure you to your question about what if we vote tonight and things aren't going to get done until December, right? Like to that point, I can assure you that we have full commitment in making this work. Whether we put it in the document or not, we are going to get this done. As a superintendent of the school district of Clayton, I am telling you, we are committed to getting it done. I believe you. We need to put action steps in place. We have put actions, 22 different things that we are going to be doing.

I believe you, but I also know that we got this document and I was reading it and I was a little, to me, it was a little incomplete.

Right.

And I don't know how severe it is until... I'm sorry. today. And maybe I'm out the loop. Maybe I don't hang around Stacy enough. I need to go to her house and hang out with her more often, but I don't. So I'm not getting these phone calls and conversations. I have no idea.

There's no phone calls. I'm just saying I'm not

getting anything. I'm just say I'm not getting any dialogue. So to me, I'm disconnected, and I have no idea, and it's catching me off guard. So all I'm saying is, what's the incentive if we sign tonight? Why would you rush to get it done outside of your commitment, the commitment? I want to make sure it gets done. And we need to add a lot of things in there. There's nothing wrong with waiting a couple of days to get everything we talk about in this document so that when you come back and make one, when you vote next time, we're ready to roll. Everyone feels comfortable. I think parents will feel comfortable. If that makes sense.

And at the last board meeting during my superintendent's comment, I talked about the fact that we're having the community engagement forums. We have a lack of trust with our community, you know? And we need to build on that. She did. And so I will make sure that we continue to build that trust because that's what it boils down to, right? The community trusting us that we're going to do what we're saying

we're going to. So I want to give Stacey and Chris a turn, and then I want everybody to be heard, and then we'll circle back. Okay. Thank

you. First of all, I just want to say to the parents that are here or watching or whatever, I empathize with you. I truly do. I do not like to, as a board member talk about my own children here, but I have three kids, two on a 504 and one with an IEP. And I also taught in a partner district for several years. So personally and professionally, like I hear you, I feel your pain and frustration. And I appreciate all the work on both sides here that we're doing to hear our parents and their needs and support them. I really do. And I thought, like Kim said, I actually made a note, this is the start of great work, that we should be a model for all the other partner districts when we finish this. We truly should. We like to be leaders in all ways here in Clayton, and this is a really great area that we really could make a change throughout the entire region, truly. When I saw the statistic earlier that 11.4%, I think you said, of our students are serviced by SSD, that struck me because that is large and larger than most other subgroups we look at when we look at data and things. And I would argue that the number's really even larger because we have kids that don't qualify for one reason or another or parents don't even know they should be trying to qualify them for services. So I do think this work, is important for all of our students, even beyond those 11.4%, which is why one of the questions I had, which you addressed, and I'm glad, is I think the PD piece is so important for all staff because it will make all of our students – all of our teachers better to serve all of our students truly. And so I would – I mean, I don't know – I know – are things that would be optional or whatever, but I actually think it's important enough to be like mandatory sessions in August or whenever, or throughout the year, whatever. But I don't know if you could talk a little bit about that professional development you have in mind around this work.

Yeah, so we're approaching it from a couple different sides. So one component is the work that Dr. Poole does with the various cohorts of teachers focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. And based on their years in the district, Every group has kind of their own learning pathway, and so one of the pathways this year is going to be focused on the needs of students with disabilities. And so Melissa, Kate, and I will be working with Dr. Poole in order to plan that particular professional learning. Also as part of student services, having the connections to the social workers and the counselors, finding opportunities throughout the year to get them connected with things like charting the life course, which we hosted for our families and for multiple districts last week. as well as looking at some of the professional development days that we have coming up later in the school year and figuring out where some of these pieces plug in, uh, in the best way, as well as looking our summer Institute offerings. So, uh, so in that respect, some of it absolutely would be assured learning for particular groups of students and others would be an opt-in. Um, obviously we have kind of developed our list of the types of trainings that we would want to prioritize in the coming year. And so I'll be working with Dr. Poole and Dr. Garganigo to figure out where those pieces best fit. Okay,

good. I appreciate that because I think like what our parents said earlier, you know, you don't learn in college. You know, so much of this you're not taught. And even if you were, for some of our teachers that was 20 years ago or 30 years ago or whatever, and I'm sure there are current best practices that we all need to be updated on as about, you know, how best – to be handling the social-emotional needs of these students, especially, and other things as well. OK, a lot of my questions were actually already asked by everybody else. So I think we've had a good amount. I would say, as far as the agreement itself goes, I appreciate the action steps. I agree. I think we need some baseline data. Although Dr. Patel said it's in the appendix maybe or something. Is that what she was referring to? No. Or what was she referring to was in the appendix? What were you saying, Dr. Patel, was in the... The action steps. The action steps. Yeah. But not the data around it. Okay. So I appreciate hearing that this agreement is not necessarily set in stone that can't be changed. If knowing that, I would... feel okay approving it. If you feel there is data we should be including and can include before our next meeting in October, I'd prefer to wait until October to make sure it's in there. I do though, I don't look at this agreement as limiting our work. I do think and hope and have confidence in all of you that in a few months or in January or in March, we see that these action steps aren't working or they aren't producing the results we want, that we as a Clayton School District can take action to change that and improve that. So knowing that it is maybe changeable or an evergreen document, I feel better approving it whenever we approve it because I just wanna make sure that that option is open. And I would say that I attended the second forum a month ago. For me, the biggest takeaway was just the parent input in all of our work, like the surveys, the IEP follow-up. I mean, so much, like our kids' involvement in extracurriculars or whatever it may be, staffing. And so I would hope that we continue to, where appropriate, involve our parents because I think as opposed to most other groups of students. I especially think our students with special needs, the parents are crucial to their success, truly. I mean, all parents know their kids best, but I think in this case it's even more crucial that we involve parents in all of these structures we're putting in place to just make sure those kids are successful. So I appreciate your openness to involving them. I hope we continue to do that in all ways. And that's a thank you. These guys had great questions and took most of mine. So anyway, thank you for your work. I appreciate it. And I would say one more thing about the agreement itself. It is, I think you said, a template, right, that all the partners districts use. So it's probably the same one that we approved a year ago. It was updated

last year, and it was the same one. And now we've included action steps is the big difference that worked. But it's clear that you guys, and it makes sense too, that everything that we're bringing in, bring in that data. Absolutely, if that, getting that information to you for the next one, that absolutely, because as board members, You need to make sure that you are looking at that information and the data before you're approving it. And to be able to include that in here, absolutely. So before we, you know, if we just hold on it and then do it for the next one, but get that information in there. And I do agree that this is highlighting how we can absolutely partner, and we're only thinking about Clayton right now, but this will help. in informing and better informing our other 21 districts. So that building this template, including the data pieces of it, and it's not that there's not a lack of trust, but it's like we just need to make sure that people are clear about what the expectations are and how we're doing and where are we at.

And I think I would add to my other big takeaway from the forum was the lack of communication. And so I appreciate the attention you're giving that. And I think it's important that we focus on not just bettering communication individually with families, with how their student is progressing and doing throughout the year, but just as a district to the community. I'm looking at Luke because I'm thinking of like our website, like we publish data for all kinds of things. We should be putting this out there also. to hold so that the community is aware of what we're doing and also just to share what we're doing well. Just I think part of it is, you know, some of these things maybe we've already been doing and nobody knew it. And I think we need to do a better job of just letting everyone know the work. I did want to just quickly also one more thing, comment on what Amy was saying about like staffing for instance. I think part of the communication that might be necessary is it's hard for everyone to understand where Clayton ends and special begins or vice versa as far as hiring staff or training staff or whatever, as an example. And so I wanna make sure we're clear on like what is our responsibility as a Clayton school board and a Clayton school district in this agreement and in this role? Like what are, you know, I just think maybe that needs to be clarified. It is hard to have a dual, what do you call it? I don't know, the partnership. It's hard to kind of know who's, our staff works for you yet they're working with our students. Clarifying that, I think, would help everybody, too.

Well, and it was interesting. Before coming tonight, I was meeting with two teachers. One was in Rockwood, and one was from Kirkcord. And they described that dual system. But ultimately, when the teachers are showing up, they work for Clayton. They don't want to be known as, yes, they're SSD, but they don't want to feel like othered. They want to be a part of Clayton. They like working here. They love the children. And the same thing goes with the students because sometimes the students are referred to as SSD. That's just another way to remove. And when we talk about DEIA and Dr. Macklin and the way we're trying to approach this with the special school district is who has access and who's automatically informed and who's not? And how do we make sure that dual systems... These are teachers who are walking in and they're teaching and working with our students. These are paras who are supporting the students, and the students are coming in and they are here for Clayton. And so what I feel like what our parents are saying is just that's where we need to. We need to be cohesive, we need to be together, and we need to make sure that parents who are the most vulnerable students in our system are supported, and they're knowledgeable, and they're included, and that they're not forgotten. And that's really ultimately where I hear from our parents what they're saying. And it's like this is an acknowledgement that this is where we need to work together. And I really think that that's what the partnership agreement is about. I think it was like originated 10, 15 years ago where it was like more like partners be like what was SSD responsible for but it's merged into because our parents are saying it's a dual system but it shouldn't our kids shouldn't feel that way our children should not feel that they're othered as an SSD and that they're not as important and how do we make sure we don't do that either because when we open this up we want to make sure that we are a that SSD doesn't get in the way of that either Right. There's an equal ownership on that part too.

Thank you. I also wanted to just add on to what Dr. Keenan said, you know, in my role, I feel like at the end of the day, they're all our students. And so I think all of these courageous conversations that we've been having effectively since January have really transformed my thinking about things that we do at the system level. So I just wanted to share an example of how my leadership practices evolved over time as a result of the parent feedback that we've gotten. So you spoke a little bit earlier about communication. And so one of the things based on feedback I had gotten from parents was about communication within a single building, like not specific to any building, but just in general communication that happens between special education staff and our administrators and our general education staff as it happens for things like field trips. So if there's a grade level field trip and the building sends out an email about said grade level field trip, if I'm a parent with a student with a disability and I get that email, I don't know what that means for my child's experience. So at the system level, One of the changes we've made behind the scenes is that when folks are submitting field trip request forms for approval by their principal and also by me, is now there is a space where you, where folks are asked and expected to list who are the special education staff and case managers that they have consulted with and notified about said field trip regardless of its size in order to ensure that we are thinking more inclusive in our planning. We're thinking more inclusive and strategic and intentional about the communication that needs to happen to all of our families across that building who are impacted by that particular student life experience. And that in itself has been a professional learning opportunity, not a formal one on the calendar, but I have had a number of conversations since school has started and we have implemented that at the systems level. Again, that's behind the scenes, but it's again, one of those systemic changes that is now shifting that conversation, shifting the culture and shifting people's mindsets of how we serve all the students in our buildings. Another piece that I wanted to reiterate to the board is that these parent engagement forums have been very transformative me and for the team in terms of thinking about our work differently how we can elevate and improve what we're doing but i also think it's important to acknowledge that earlier dr patel showed some of the statistics that we have over 280 students who are currently receiving special education students or services excuse me and we are not having 280 families at our community engagement forums and i have um i know i'm committed to making sure that moving forward that in between the formal events and in between the conversations that we have with our building principals, the emails we receive, that I am also actively reaching out to parents in the coming weeks and throughout this school year to make sure that I am reaching out to the voices who aren't at the table, who aren't at those forums because I think that their perspectives are also really important in shaping the quality of our action steps and the work that we do with our principals who are supporting our staff. So that is another example of how this whole process, you know, going back 10 or 12 months has really influenced my thinking in student services of how we interact with our parents and get their feedback.

Thank you for that that field trip set up. I appreciate that example very much and I would just end by saying to the administrators if there's ever any additional asks you need from us like approval for additional resources that you let us know as soon as you identify the need so that we can be supportive in that way. Thank you.

I just want to clarify to the board because I don't know if everybody knows this. So at the last agenda planning with Dr. Patel and Dr. Wiens, we talked about the, and I don't know what these steps are, but we had a conversation that very likely the district was going to be taking certain action steps independently of SSD that might not necessarily be part of the agreement per se. For example, that third party mediator arbitrator that we've been talking about like that. I don't know that that would be part of the With SSD, that would be something that we would just do. So some of these things, I mean, that we're talking about, we can't legally put stuff in the agreement that the district is going to be doing independently outside above and beyond our agreement with SSD, just so everybody understands that component when we're talking about what the final document is going to look like. I don't want people to think, oh, They didn't put that arbitrator in there. They're not doing it. No, that doesn't mean that we're not doing it, it means that that's just not part of our formal agreement with them. We've committed as a district to do it and pay for it out of our own resources, but SSD might not have necessarily agreed to it. So I just want to make sure that everybody is on the same page there.

Can I just further comment? We do agree to that. OK.

OK. I didn't know.

OK. Absolutely.

The cost of that and all the good stuff right at the cost of a media

Jason

yeah, I don't have much really much to say I think Anyone's kind of already said a lot of what and then I kind of like chimed in when you were talking Stacy I do appreciate what the work that you're doing and But I also want to make sure that we do put a complete plan together. And it's transparent, and people can see it and understand it. And then there needs to be metrics and measurements along the way. So we're not getting off into March, because these are our kids we're talking about. And every day counts. Every day counts. Every week counts. So we need to be very fast on being able to measure where we are, what the changes are, what the impacts have been, and what do we need to do to improve those things. But I still want to make sure I understand if we don't sign it tonight, what's the impact of this? And what is the impact of this and what happens? All things fall apart. We lose money. No,

no.

The services stop tomorrow.

No, no, no, no.

So we good.

We're good.

So then, all right, well, I think we should...

Wait.

Yeah. Kim said it best. I think we should wait, get all the information we can possibly get from you guys, all the data, so that we can kind of match it up, and then make an informed decision. Yeah. That's my point. Okay,

well let's hear what Chris has to say and then I'd like to hear from the rest of you if you guys all want to wait then.

Okay, this is tricky and hard in so many ways for all of us in this room, most especially for these parents. I too am a parent of kids with special needs I had a kid with an IEP, I have a kid currently with a 504. I have a kid that couldn't be served at this district and had to go to a different district because of her learning disability. I really feel your pain. And I'm sitting here today partly because I felt that pain. So I will start my statement by saying that. The next thing I'm going to say to that is you guys are doing exactly what you need to do. We're here talking about this Nisha and Robin are so serious about this because of you. So this is the start of a big movement that's going to help our kids, period. It just is. As a parent, it's hard to trust that in many ways. It's hard to know all the background things that are going on with our administrators. But you've got administrators and board members, all of us, who are going to see this through How it all pans out, it may not be exactly what every parent wants, right? But nothing ever can be, right? We are going to do the very best we can. And I'm here to say I'm going to see to it. So thank you for your voices because it's what drives the change. It has to happen. Parents are the ones on the on the ground that no. And the fact that your voices weren't in this already is a shame on us, really. Now we know. Now things will be different. This agreement is gonna be evergreen for this year. Next year it's gonna be evergreen. Clearly we've changed our perspective on this now. And we now are going to go forward in a much different way. And I love that. I mean, we are growth mindset on everything. And now looking at this, we're like, well, why aren't we on this? Right. So that feels really good to me. And I hope that feels good to the parents. The idea that we can get updates on this throughout this year. I think that's going to help a lot because here's the thing. As a parent, you're like, but just change it. My kid needs it tomorrow. By the way, last week. It's frustrating. I was in your shoes. I felt very frustrated for a long time. I did feel heard, and I hope that we are really doing a good job of that because I know that that's the first step. But it is frustrating because education and probably a lot of things in life go slowly. And it feels critical, and it is, because every month for these kids is a month of more learning that they're either getting or not getting. And I get that. So I feel both sides of the difficulty and the time constraints. Because as a parent you needed it yesterday, as an administration and as a district It can't happen right away. It is so tough. It is so, so tough. I think the one thing I can give you and to tell you that I have seen this administration make very fast changes in lots of areas. The fact that Robin talked about my sixth grade camp student, the form said, What does your child with disabilities need? I mean, that happened like that. So there are certain things that are going to happen like that. We've seen it. And there are other things that are just going to take more time. They just are. And it's really too bad for everyone. But the hope I'll give, I'll say about that, I guess, the silver lining is that our students in maybe not our particular kids right now, they'll see some great changes possibly. But just think down the line of those students in the future We'll have an even better system in place because of your voices, because we will eventually have these longer-term things in place. So a couple things that I want to address. Just wanted to start out with that general statement. Okay, so the listening, the moderator, Kim, that idea, I believe... I can't speak for Paul exactly, but I believe I was at both of the town halls. And so I heard the feedback from all the parents there. So in the first one, it was the four listening sessions about the four different topics. And I think Paul's point, again, I'm going to say it from my point of view because I don't want to speak for Paul, but I think what the idea is if If we just have either SSD staff or Clayton staffers being the listeners, then there's some bias there. There just is. And I think what the idea would be – I didn't take it as a moderator type of situation. I took it more as who can we have come in and listen and have expertise around this area that can listen unbiasedly, can be someone there that – you know comes from an objective point of view. So that's how I took that and I can totally understand why parents wanted that. It always helps to have a third party objective point of view and certainly when there are such needs and there are so many emotions around this great that could be really great thing for us to do. So thank you for already saying that that's something that you guys would like to do. That's amazing. And again. Frustrating because it can't happen tomorrow because we've got to find the right person to do it. So now we're learning and we're going forward. We have learned what we can learn up to this point. We didn't, you know, you can only know what you, you can't know what you don't know. Although, you know, I could see why that's your point. I certainly can. But we can't say we don't know it anymore. So here we go. You know, that's how I look at that. Okay, so let me see what else is on my list. To that

point,

Chris, I think it was

important for the first two community engagement forums for us to be there.

Exactly.

Because we needed to listen to it.

Thank you.

And for the board members who attended, for you to listen to it, and I think for me it was important for us to be at the first two to lead that work.

That makes perfect sense. Okay, so if I may have misrepresented what I was saying, of course you guys were supposed to. But

moving forward.

Yes, but moving forward. And we wouldn't have to have that every time, right? Someone, a third party. But yes, these first two were absolutely, the way it happened I think was exactly right. Now we know going forward what we need that's different from what already happened. So yeah, thank you for making that point. Okay. Okay, a couple of other things. I do want to have us speak about, it doesn't have to be a giant conversation, but I want to address Michelle's question about have we as a district considered the idea of doing this without a partnership with SSD the way we do it at the Family Center? Have we considered it? If we have, why aren't we doing it? I know that this is a big question. But just can you give us just a little bit so that our parents can understand just sort of the framework around how you've thought about that and whether or not you have and what that brings up for the district? Because I know there's a lot there.

Yes, and I will share with you what my current understanding is, and I'm sure there are other administrators in this space who would probably need to add on. So based on my interpretation of the Missouri revised statutes, there is a clause in there that does allow the creation of overlay districts to deliver special education services if the voters in the component districts decide that through a referendum that is what they want to do. And so that is, again, kind of what Dr. Patel mentioned earlier in 1957. St. Louis County voters through a referendum approved it. The way the current state law is written and based on my interpretation and consultation with our legal counsel is that there's not currently an opt-out provision for that. That is about the extent of my knowledge at this point in time. If the board would like us to learn more, I'm happy to engage in that, but that's my current understanding. Yeah,

the tax levy is with special school district. Right. And so it's not specific to Clayton. Right. Special school district supports the 22 districts. And I think that in terms of being outside a special school district prior to coming here, and I don't know how many people have had experiences outside, this is the only district in the nation that has 100% funding for special ed. If you're outside in Fox, in St. Charles, O'Fallon, You are having to pay whatever you need, say $12 million for your special ed. That's not fully funded by the state nor the federal government. The federal government and the state will cover about, on a good day, 50%. So out of that $12 million, you would have to take out of your general fund $6 million to pay for all of those services. The other part of it, you're a smaller district. You can't afford to have a full-time OT, PT, all these, because you don't have enough students that actually have those services. You would have to extend out to a co-op. Yes. So you'd have to pay out there. You would be missing out on that $6 million that special school district pays. That is why I came here. When I was proposed to interview down here in I had to like, what is this district? It is so unique. It does not exist. There's one district down in the Boothill that also has this provision. It's very small. But we are the largest district in the state of Missouri. We provide 6,000 staff across the county. The ABA services are unmatched. If you go outside, you will never get ABA services for our students with autism. You wouldn't have the unmatched services that we have with our social emotional learning, the other pieces that we can draw on with the expertise. So it's not just the staffing that you're tapping into, it's the other supports and experts that are coming in through your MTSS, through your, if you need additional supports for your registered behavior technicians, those positions don't exist in other places because staffing and schools just cannot afford it. And so special school district really is here to make sure we are supporting that. Now going back to that model, you don't have to have that model without special school district. Build that model here. Exactly. What I'm hearing is it's the culture, it's the environment. We need to make sure that we're building that environment and figure out why is it that in the early childhood center that you can exist in this way, but once you go into kindergarten and it becomes SSD, you become separated out. So I made that comment. We have to own that piece of it. Let's work through that together to make it so cohesive that it is a supportive system. And what additional pieces are necessary to make that happen? So the pieces of, you know, moving away is really about how do you just improve? And how do you make it better? And how do we do that? And to your point, Chris, that you were saying, you know, this is bringing this up so that we can do better and that a board is now more informed about what's lacking in this agreement. And we are informed in that too, from a parent perspective. So that's where we can just get better. It's not perfect when you're in a single district with special ed because I've been a special ed director in a single district and I've been othered as a director of special ed and my staff was othered because when there's difficult times and there's difficult situations, and they're saying that's a special ed kid or that's an ODLSS kid or that's a SSD kid. So that quickly turns into that. And what this agreement is trying to say, how do we make sure we build this together? Our staff, like I said, come here to work for Clayton. The only thing is we're the hiring agency for that. Let's make sure we can build that and what do we need to do with the professional development, with the culture, With the principal's interactions, the principals feel like they have the ability to say, I need you to do these things. We need to own that.

OK. Thank you for giving that background on why the partnership with SSD is very valuable for us and for letting me know that there is no opt out at this point. I hope that's helpful for Michelle. Okay next I will say something that came about when I was at the we've talked a lot about what came out Stacey you did an awesome job of talking about the two forms. One of the things I also want to add that I really appreciated about what we're doing is that Cameron has become more involved in helping to advocate for these students and these families these parents who are having difficulty I wasn't even aware, but it makes perfect sense that Cameron with DEI inclusivity is really thinking about these pieces in ways that we haven't previously as a district. So I'm so appreciative of the fact that Cameron even said Oh, yay. Good. Yay. Yeah. I mean, all the parents there were like, oh, wonderful. This feels so good to know that we have an advocate, that we have a person who really is going to take, be able to take steps systematically and on a family level to really make families feel like we are, all of our students are included in everything that we do as a district. So that's a huge step that the district has taken that I feel is going to continue to make things better, just to have that extra person involved. So thank you to Cameron for all the work you've done with that. Thank you to you guys for making sure that we are following our strategic goals and our plans to be inclusive. I feel these things are real examples of us doing that. So much appreciated. Let's see. make sure I get everything here. I am okay with voting yes. I'm also great with waiting. Just to put that out there. The reason I would be okay with voting yes is because of this document being it's very foundational in my opinion and it's truly not what is actually happening. Because a lot of what is actually happening isn't necessarily in this for it's just historically not been in it as far as I know. And in the future, it can be. Whatever we want it to be, it can be, but I do want to say that I know that the district is doing above and beyond, just like Amy said, what's in here. And we do have data. And yeah, the data's not in here, but we do have it. So if now we want to integrate these things into the future, yeah, this can look a lot different. But I think, I feel very clear that you guys have a feeling of where we're at and where we're going. And because it's not in here doesn't make, it still feels authentic to me to sign this knowing that there are gonna be other ways of us having data to show where we were and where we're coming in other forms other than disagreement. especially because I'll say that by October 12th, this agreement could look different. But again, it's still not going to capture all the things that we're going to do in terms of changes this year. It's just not because there's just not enough time. But now that we're looking at, okay, well, maybe in the spring is when we should start talking or even earlier about next year's agreement. So we're looking at how to change the timeline, sort of like you were saying, Gary, so that we can make sure that all the voices that are needing to be heard are heard And it isn't a rush to, oh, wait, we haven't – we've got to plan it out better, I think. And so that's already been talked about, and I think that'll be really helpful. I think that's it. I really appreciate all the work that you're doing. I know how important this is to you guys. It's very clear to me. So that makes me feel really confident in that we'll see some great changes. So – Again, parents, keep up your good work too because we appreciate you so much and want to hear, continue to hear. That's it. Thank

you. Gary, do you want to say something?

Can we go to the first page of this? So, yeah, I guess second page. I want to make sure I understand what this means and I think it might illustrate where this document lives. So tell me if I'm wrong about this. I mean, I think the intent of this chart, I don't know what the right term is, is to show kind of the levels of... legal and regulatory and contractual things that govern the way we deliver services. So it kind of goes from the broadest to the more narrow. This document is under the additional resources on the right, right? Partnerships, that's what that is. So that is one of the, on the innermost circle, it's one of the things on the innermest circle that is only between special school district and the component district. There's a lot of other things that apply to everybody from the federal, state, statute stuff. So this is one of the things that drills down into how we do this. There are a lot of other things there not listed, I think, and tell me if I'm wrong about this, not listed as additional resources, but I think what would be included are the other things that we, the other actual agreements that we enter into and that we approve. The things for the ECSE services, substitute services, things like that, that would also be kind of detailed in that innermost circle. Is that right? Yeah, that would

be at the top part of that. of that square. So the early childhood and all that, that would be at the top part. The additional resources is the, that is a creation of being a part of the partner districts or SSD.

But so what, so things like, um, the agreement between districts for does he see SE services and substitute services and stuff like that is that more parallel to this or is that

those are actually when you look at those are actually the legal documents that have to be approved in terms of to go forward

which as opposed to this which is exactly what I was getting to and I was

Yes.

Trying to get to that point. Because

there's a couple of them on the duck and the consent agenda. Yes,

which we have on our consent agenda tonight. And those are more the type of agreements that those of us who look at agreements all the time are used to seeing as opposed to this document, which just as a point going forward, I probably wouldn't even call this an agreement if that was – I mean, a better way to talk about it. And it might make us a little more comfortable with approving and not approving or coming back or whatever. I mean, so that's just an observation. All of that said, I think that our, going back to my question about the timeline, and I know I'm getting way more time than I usually want anyone to take, but I think our parents would be more comfortable if we paused our timeline because of the way this was presented to them. And I think out of respect for them, if nothing else, this can also still be approved, we should do that. So that's my view on that. So thank you for helping me and all of us, I think, understand that. I think we need to remember that when we're talking about this.

Okay, so I think that I just want to kind of bring this full circle that... I don't, you know, I personally, I don't have a problem with not voting tonight. I do want to remind the board that, you know, our responsibility of the board is to keep this high level. And I think we can all agree that, you know our vision is that our kids, um, that receive SSD services, that they're getting stellar, a stellar education. Um, and so that's, you know, what we're, that's our, that's what we're telling Dr. Patel and Dr. Wiens and Dr. Poole and SSD, and that's what our high-level vision is. I think we need to be careful not to micromanage that and to let them do their thing and give them time and space to do it. And I can assure you that – well, I know this board knows that. The parents probably don't know it as much as I know it, that when – The three of them say they're going to do something, they do it. And they do it good. And I've never seen them fail. So I have full faith in them that they are going to do this and do this right. And I think we need to give them space and space to do it and to let them execute on their plan. But if you guys want to wait to vote, let's wait till the 12th. Gary, you want to wait?

I mean, that's my

preference. We would all make a

motion. So would we, I mean, I think the motion that we would actually make is, well, we actually don't have a motion on here. No, because it

was embedded in the motion. We're meeting on the 12th.

We don't actually need to amend that. I don't mind waiting two weeks, right? It

doesn't upset the Apple part too much. Like it's whatever. That's fine. It's not really clear to me what we're expecting to have. Right. I agree. And I don't know that it's

necessarily, I mean, Kim, you asked for something. I don't know. Like, again, like, Let's keep this high level. We've told them what our expectations are, and I think that we need to give them a chance to follow through and to do it. If there's something that you need to see or something you want incorporated into the agreement,

Well, if someone could reconcile what we're asking for.

Yeah, yeah. Reconcile it so that we

have deliverables, so that when we come back, this is not a performative stall.

Right, exactly. I'm not

performing the

stall.

I'm just saying we want to make sure that we're...

What do you all want to see?

Yeah, want to come back with some... I wanted to

see a couple provisions added to the agreement. We talked about that.

Everyone's writing this down? You guys got this?

Do you all feel like you have some idea of what to come back with, I think is what we're asking. Kim, you

wanted data on baseline data.

I mean, listen, if we approve through the consent agenda tonight the legally required things in order for services to continue for students and for the funding to occur for the services, however good or poor they may be received by now, that now to continue to happen. So, to me, that's a separate thing, okay? But as a board, if we're going to review this partnership agreement every year, and today's the first year that we're actively looking into this based on the concerns that parents have raised over the course of the last six months, then we ought to approve the best agreement that we can from the start. And so, waiting a couple weeks to have some of that baseline data inserted so we know where it is we're starting from. And if it doesn't exist, you can put, it doesn't exist but we're going to get it by the start of next year. I didn't count the number of sub-bullets in the as evidenced by, but there's probably 60 of them in there. Do you have 10? Do you have five? Show us what you have. And I think we're all committed together, and the parents obviously are the most committed to working together to find the missing data that doesn't exist and improve the data where we need to see improvement. But without that...

I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying. Are you asking for... Because typically in a contract you wouldn't see... data it's

not a contract

this is it is a contract ultimately

um no

yeah it's an agreement it's an agreement i think it's an agreement that sets forth the expectations that's not a contract the two parties So, I mean, there

are all different kinds of agreements. There are MOUs, there are letters of intent, there are partnerships agreements which are binding and not binding. Are you asking

for the data to be attached as an exhibit to the agreement?

I'm asking for, there's already information in here. There's not a need to create a separate exhibit. I don't understand

what

she's

asking. Yes. And then do you want it in there that, okay, that the two school districts agree? I just want to make sure they understand what their charging orders are, that they're agreeing that the baseline data is going to improve by X amount each year?

No, I'm not even asking for that. I'm asking for what do we have, what do we not have. Where we have something, show us what it is.

Kim is asking the measurement currently Right? And where we're going with this new data, with this new information.

But the measurement of...

It sounds like they need time to figure out where it's gonna go, but I need to know where it starts. That's all I'm asking for. Go ahead, you go. I'm

done. Go ahead.

Okay, so are we going to vote on this then? We're going to wait to get that data. We're going to make a few more edits to the agreement, and then we're going to vote on it on October the 11th.

We don't actually have a posted motion. I mean, it was... No, it's not even. It's

embedded in the presentation. I asked that earlier too.

Well, 801, I mean, it's recommended that the School District of Clayton approve the SSD partnership, but no one has made that motion. I don't think... respectfully. I don't think we need to amend anything because we did have the presentation. We didn't post

that we were voting on it, I guess. I agree with Gary.

Just blame me if it's wrong. A lot of legal stuff going on tonight. This is really not what anybody wants to

see. Before

we walk away from this, just do we know our deliverables or not?

I think we do.

Robin, can you reconcile that with what we have here, what we're asking for?

Yes, my takeaways are two things. One, that we need to work directly with Amy to get some of the language around some of the provisions. Or legal, yes. Of what... could be added to the partnership agreement. And the second thing, to Kim's point, was any baseline data that we have for any of the indicators that we included in the partnership agreement to add those in in some way, shape, or form so the board knows where we're starting from. Yes.

And maybe if we can get that baseline data in our, do you think we could have it on our Friday, in one of the Friday memos? Yeah, I'll email it. Before, so we all have a chance to look at it before the meeting.

And by the next meeting, is this doable to get that stuff into the document?

Yes. All

right.

We'll make sure if we needed more time, we can carve out some more time.

Well, and then as part of the improved communication with parents, should that not also be shared with parents at the same time so that they have an opportunity to comment on it before the 12th or the 11th of October?

Not change their travel plans.

Yeah.

They'll be on board decks, won't they? Yeah. What

about the legal stuff we talked about, amendments and all that stuff? Is that in there?

She said.

Oh, you said that? All right, cool. All

right,

do you guys want to talk some more? I

have five or six more

questions. Go right ahead, Jason. Have at it.

Can we argue about whether it's a contract a little bit longer? Yeah, we can go back there. That's super interesting. Sorry, we're getting a little punchy now.

Okay, so let's... Let's wrap this up. Okay, so we thank you to everybody for being here. And let's, I think we're going... And

Dr. Keenan has other staff here too. Thank you all for being here.

Yes. Chiquita Moore is the Chief Officer for the Partner Districts, so she's directly supporting and works directly with Robin. And then Dr. Michael Macklin, he is our Executive Director of DEIA, and he works very closely with Dr. Poole, so...

Thank you guys for being here. We appreciate it. Okay.

And I just want to make a comment. I thank you for all the thoughtfulness. I appreciate the parents and their comments too. And I agree, it was valuable to be at those first two meetings to really hear from our parents and then being able to bring in a moderator to kind of facilitate it. But it was very valuable to hear it firsthand. and understanding it too, so that's important. And we will bring this information back to you, get our notes, and we'll be back here on October 11th. Well,

it'll be just as long, too. I

just live across the park, so I'm good. All right, thank you,

ladies. Okay, Jason, where'd he go? Okay, so I think we're gonna just take a few minutes Just

like three

minutes.

Okay, 9.01. I move that the Board of Education approve the 2023 property tax rates as follows. $3.872 per 100 assessed valuation for residential real estate, $4.6025 per 100 assessed valuation per commercial real estate, $4447 per $100 assessed valuation for personal property. Move that the Board of Education approved the insurance providers the plan designs benefit summaries premium rates and district contributions for 2024 as Presented and authorized district administration to execute contracts to facilitate these employee benefits

second Yeah, John how often do we review employee benefits is it annually I Okay, and are these increases that we're seeing, I mean, I know that there's increases kind of across the benefits specter everywhere, but how do these increases compare to a year ago?

A year ago in the health coverage, we had no increase. So this 6% increase is really spread over two years. It looks pretty good. We had no increase in dental coverage a year ago. This year it's 15% spread over two years that still doesn't look too bad. This is actually the two prior years on dental coverage that did not have an increase. No other coverage is increasing this year.

Okay it's just yeah the only one that stuck out to me was the fam family premium subsidy which more than doubled.

Yes and that's kind of a structural change as Our premium rates before now did not totally reflect risk. So I'm trying to trend premium rates to risk. And as I do that, to minimize the impact on staff, I'm putting that money into that subsidy versus putting it all into the employee rate.

And you think that on a aggregate basis, that minimizes the overall district liability and employee liability as a whole?

And cost.

Okay. Okay. I'm good.

Because if I put it into the employee rate, it comes with additional costs because it's subject to pension contributions.

Yeah, and then it makes it harder for us when we go to negotiate with employees the following year too. So I get the movement. I just wanted to make sure that at a net aggregate that we're not disadvantaged, and it sounds like the answer is not, as it is we're not, and in fact it's better for us overall.

Cost-wise, it's much more efficient.

Okay. Fun. Benefits. That's

it. Thank you.

Okay. Aye. Aye. Okay. Any opposed? 9.03.

I move that the Board of Education approve the fiscal year 2024 CRSWC budget as submitted.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Are there any questions or comments? Okay, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, it

passes. And with that, I just, I do want to say we'll continue to have like meetings so we can continue to monitor that and not wait till really late. So I'll have a meeting set up soon.

Okay.

Let's see, 9.04.

I move that the Board of Education approve policies IGAB, IGC, IKE, IL, and IND as presented.

It's been moved and seconded. Are there any questions or comments? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Good. Motion passes. Consent agenda.

10.01, I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda items 10.02 through 10.14. Okay. Somebody second?

Second. It's been moved and seconded.

Are there any questions? I just would point out that some of these things that we've been talking about in terms of actually implementing the agreements with or the services with special school districts are what we're approving here.

All in favor? Aye. Okay, board communications. Let's see, what do we have? Parks and Rec.

We had a great parks and rec meeting three and a half weeks ago. Lots of

really

good updates

that I

don't remember. I remember them nothing that is significant to share or update the board on.

Okay. Clayton Education Foundation. I

missed that one.

I was Two years in a row.

Let it

go. Clayton Education Foundation had a good meeting a couple weeks ago. We revamped the mission statement, or they revamped the mission. So that was, I think, a good step forward in terms of thinking about their own strategic direction. I will say there does seem to be a good group of people, sort of a nucleus that's developing of people who... you know, want to push the organization forward and do some good things for our kids. So that's good to see. It's not going to pop up, but it is worth mentioning that for the center, one of the commissioners, in case anyone knows, Alex Bornstein passed away last Friday. It's worth mentioning. He was sick for most of the year. Anyway, I didn't know him very well, but he was a Yeah, he was a good commissioner. He contributed to meetings well, and he took the role seriously. So we'll be refilling his role, but it'll be big shoes to fill.

Yeah, and we're on behalf of the board. Sorry to hear that news.

On a more positive note, for that CEF, even though I wasn't there, one of the members was kind of a local celebrity this month in Ben's Shakespeare play. I went to see it. Yeah, we did too. Oh, you did too?

Wasn't it great?

Yeah, I thought it was really good. The Shakespeare in the Park, or Shakespeare in the Streets presentation at the City Soccer Stadium. Ben Hageman, who's an

alum and CEO.

And he talked in one interview I saw about writing a play in high school here, so it's cool to see that

highlighted. Chris, social-emotional wellness.

Yeah, we had our first meeting. It was great. What I'm excited about with our social emotional learning and wellness committee, the fact that we have both of those in the title is extremely important. So I want to point that out and I appreciate that. Is that now we had our wellness coordinator as part of this meeting. And so again, I feel like things are really working together well. In terms of, you know, we've had this committee for many years, but when we had this committee prior to this, we didn't have a wellness coordinator. So now all of this is just going to be working together even better. We'll be getting more things done for our students, serving our students in more ways. So it's going to be great. Jessica was fantastic and has so many amazing ideas. She's just off on a really good start, I will just assure you. Our wellness coordinator. Jennifer? Jennifer. Jessica is, you know, nobody. But Jennifer is the wellness coordinator and she is doing an amazing job. I'm sorry, Jennifer, if you're listening. Jessica's the consultant, that's why. That's why. Thank you. Jessica's the consult. I knew there was a Jessica. Anyway, they're working together really closely, Jessica and Jennifer. And Jessica's amazing and Jennifer's learning everything and it's, I'm feeling really great about it. You want me to do my other committee right now too or wait?

SSD. Okay.

So I am on the SSD governing board. We just had a meeting on Monday was our first meeting. Um, I just want to say that SSD, um, you know, they are an incredible organization. They have a lot of, they do a lot of good work in around the state. Um, there, they, there's a lot of, um, bureaucracy that goes along with what they do, which makes everything they do harder. But, um, I feel good about our relationship with SSD. I feel like SSD is doing a good job of making changes and having really honest conversations about all the way down to the level of parents' concerns and challenges. So it's not just our district that is getting to hear about these concerns and having these concerns. SSD is being as responsive as they can be and you know, the governing council does a really good job of helping make sure that the SSD board itself is functioning, you know, the way it should and making sure students' needs are being met. So that's all I can say. There's more meetings to be had, obviously, but I can... I feel things are going smoothly in terms... What am I trying to say? I can assure you that... the SSD is doing a good job of trying to better itself.

I just wanted to add that Nisha and I attended a meeting of the St. Louis, the organizing committee, I guess you would call us, of the St. Lewis School Boards, PLC, which I think you put in the weekend update. And those legislative advocacy meetings that we used to have once a month when we were in session, we have kind of transformed into including the whole region, St. Louis County, St. Charles County, Jefferson County, and the city All districts there are invited. Nisha offered Clayton's services, with the help of Luke, to kind of, first of all, create a website for the St. Louis School Board's PLC where you can go view past meeting information and other information, and you all got calendar invites to what has now taken over that, the monthly Zoom meetings on legislative advocacy. So they're in your calendars Friday mornings at 8 a.m. If you can attend, it'd be great. And We also started brainstorming about the next in-person event, which is Saturday, December 2nd from 9 to noon. I know some of you have been to those before. I always leave them feeling very motivated and energized to collaborate with other districts and do some great work. And we felt like, especially around legislation, especially now, it's really important that we collaborate together because there's strength in numbers. And so many of us were kind of duplicating the exact same Things or lack thereof really so and a lot of districts are have been doing some really great work around it So we're hoping to kind of broaden that to the region. So hopefully you can attend the zoom meetings when you can or the in-person event Joe Miller's still kind of heading that all up and he's doing a great job through you city The next event in December is going to be in Ferguson Florissant school district at their steam Academy

Thank you for that update Okay, so I think we can adjourn.

Moved that the Board of Education adjourn. Second.

All right. All in favor? Aye. So I didn't sign these, I guess.