August 12, 2025 — Meeting Transcript

Luke, are we ready? Okay, thank you. Okay, good evening, everyone. And those of you that are joining us at home, I apologize that we're starting late. We just came from another meeting. So thank you for your patience as we get started here at our first meeting of the year. Happy New Year, everyone. Adequate notice has been given, so I'd like everyone to stand and join us in saying the pledge. Oh. Chris, would you read the motion to adopt the agenda, please?

I move that the board approve the agenda as posted.

Second.

All those in favor? Any opposed? Okay, motion passes. Do we have any public comments tonight, Gina? No? Okay. Moving on to agenda item. Well, actually, before I turn it over to Dr. Patel, since it's our first meeting back of the year, I'd just like to say a few words as well. First of all, hopefully everyone in the community received the email that we sent on behalf of the Board of Education. And the first thing we mentioned, which I just wanted to also mention here tonight, is that as the Board of Education for the School District of Clayton, strongly condemn the violent anti-Semitic act that occurred in our community last week. And we are, as a board and as a district, committed to doing our part to continuing anti-hate education training and community engagement. Dr. Patel had sent an email even before that in July referencing the plans for the district to do those things. We also, as a board, are going to be looking at policies that refer to that and taking some other actions as a board as well. We offer our support and solidarity with those that were impacted by this. I'd also like to mention at the end of last school year, we sadly lost a Clayton High School student, Nicholas Helmering. And I just wanted to take a minute to acknowledge that for his friends, for his family especially. I was at his funeral and I just wanted to say it was obvious by the number of students and teachers and community members there, the lives that he touched of classmates, teachers, coaches, the entire community. And it was a testament to what an incredible friend, classmate and student that Nicholas was. So our thoughts have been and continue to be with his family and friends during this difficult time. I would also like to share with everyone our board goals. As a Board of Education, we set goals for every school year and we have two that I would like to share with every one. Number one, which we also put in our email on Sunday, is that as a board, we will work with stakeholders to finalize an actionable long-range facilities plan, including consideration of a potential ballot measure, and implement this plan throughout the remainder of this academic year. Our second goal, number two, is we will elevate our board leadership by building on existing strengths through targeted professional development and ongoing education. And with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Patel for superintendents. update

great thank you welcome everyone it's nice to see everyone in the audience today happy new year i don't think there are many professions where we get to say happy new year twice in a year so it's always nice to be able to start off with that um you know when we think about summer in the education world a lot of people have this idea that, okay, it's kind of slows down a little and, you know, people are enjoying some vacation times and I hope they did. But learning does not stop for us. So one of the things I do want to highlight is over the summer under the leadership of our assistant superintendent of teaching and learning, Dr. Milena Garganigo, and our Director of Professional Learning, Professional Development and Assessment, we offer a lot of opportunities called Summer Institutes for our staff to continue to learn and grow over the summer. This year I believe we had over 115 sessions that we offered, variety of topics, and all of our staff signed up, well majority of our staff give up their summer to continue their learning opportunities. We had like over 70 facilitators working with our staff members in this new learning that was occurring. So a lot of potential outcomes that happened and a lot of staff that were very excited about this. We also do a survey at the end of the Summer Institute, and I believe over 200 responded to the survey, and 88% of them strongly agreed that this was a positive learning experience for them. So I just want to acknowledge and just tell our staff that we're grateful to them for continuing the learning even in the summer months. And then most recently as we started into the school year, We welcomed all of our new educators to the district. This year we have 24 new teachers, three administrators and three practicum students that are gonna be joining us. And we immersed them last week in a lot of learning as well, all around our strategic plan. And the goal being really understand us as a district as they come to us and what our values are, what our beliefs are, and what our long-term goals are. So they did a lot of work around equity and creating a sense of belonging for all of our students. They did a lot of around teaching and learning. And they did a lot work on what it means when we say in head and heart and the social emotional well-being of our students. A lot of exciting times and I thank you Stacy was there to welcome them as well as our student board rep Nina was there as well. So that was really good, and as a collective when you think about that group they're coming with about a little over 12 years of teaching experience and. I believe 87 percent of them have a master's degree or above. So very excited for this new group and every time they join us I always say not only are we going to not only are they going to learn with us but we're going to learn from them because they come with different perspectives so we're excited to have them on board. Then also over the summer we've spent a lot of time and I hope the community is staying engaged with the communications we've been doing around our facilities work. We already had one full day, and that was a full day that was packed with a lot of activities and discussion with our elementary groups. And it was a workshop that was led. And then most recently we had another half day with the elementary groups and the high school groups on what we want our facilities to look like and how we're gonna modernize them. And all of the conversations there is gonna help our architects team with the next steps BLDD has also joined us, and I know that we're mapping out the next workshop for all of our facilities in terms of athletics and activities. And the whole team is here. I see them in the audience. They're going to be doing a presentation just to give the board and the community an update on the work they've done and the upcoming work as well. And one of the things that I really hope that our community – is not only the work that we're doing in these workshops, but really what we want it to eventually be. When we think about the school district of Clayton, like what do our facilities mean? And if we really wanna be future ready, are our facilities matching what's happening in the teaching and learning? And one of the activities at the elementary workshops that Perkinsville facilitated was really about how innovative are we as a district? And they asked the teachers to rank themselves from zero to 10, 10 being really innovative. And all the teachers believe that teaching and learning, we're innovative. But when you think of our facilities, we're not. We're more on the Flintstones. I think the graphic was Flintstones or Jetsons. And where do you fall? And they believe the facilities are more in the Flintstones era. So they're doing the best they can, but imagine if they even had facilities to match that. So I hope that through our communication, e-news, the emails I send, the emails the board sends, the website, that the community continues to stay engaged in this very, very important work that we're doing. We will be having three community engagement forums coming up. One is on September 10th, the first one coming up, and then October 21st and one on November 18th. They'll all be at Clayton High School. And we hope to have a large crowd there where we can have the conversations and really get your input on what our progress is. We also will be doing a community survey so that we can get that input as well. But it's just an important part in our district, and I ask that everyone just stay engaged in the work that's happening. And I believe that is it for me. I'm gonna hand it over to Nina, our first student board update. Although

great thank you welcome everyone it's nice to see everyone in the audience today happy new year i don't think there are many professions where we get to say happy new year twice in a year so it's always nice to be able to start off with that um you know when we think about summer in the education world a lot of people have this idea that, okay, it's kind of slows down a little and, you know, people are enjoying some vacation times and I hope they did. But learning does not stop for us. So one of the things I do want to highlight is over the summer under the leadership of our assistant superintendent of teaching and learning, Dr. Garganego, and our Director of Professional Learning, Professional Development and Assessment, we offer a lot of opportunities called Summer Institutes for our staff to continue to learn and grow over the summer. This year I believe we had over 115 sessions that we offered, variety of topics, and all of our staff signed up, well majority of our staff give up their summer to continue their learning opportunities. We had like over 70 facilitators working with our staff members in this new learning that was occurring. So a lot of potential outcomes that happened and a lot of staff that were very excited about this. We also do a survey at the end of the Summer Institute, and I believe over 200 responded to the survey, and 88% of them strongly agreed that this was a positive learning experience for them. So I just want to acknowledge and just tell our staff that we're grateful to them for continuing the learning even in the summer months. And then most recently as we started into the school year, We welcomed all of our new educators to the district. This year we have 24 new teachers, three administrators and three practicum students that are gonna be joining us. And we immersed them last week in a lot of learning as well, all around our strategic plan. And the goal being really understand us as a district as they come to us and what our values are, what our beliefs are, and what our long-term goals are. So they did a lot of work around equity and creating a sense of belonging for all of our students. They did a lot of around teaching and learning. And they did a lot work on what it means when we say in head and heart and the social emotional well-being of our students. A lot of exciting times and I thank you Stacy was there to welcome them as well as our student board rep Nina was there as well. So that was really good, and as a collective when you think about that group they're coming with about a little over 12 years of teaching experience and. I believe 87 percent of them have a master's degree or above. So very excited for this new group and every time they join us I always say not only are we going to not only are they going to learn with us but we're going to learn from them because they come with different perspectives so we're excited to have them on board. Then also over the summer we've spent a lot of time and I hope the community is staying engaged with the communications we've been doing around our facilities work. We already had one full day, and that was a full day that was packed with a lot of activities and discussion with our elementary groups. And it was a workshop that was led. And then most recently we had another half day with the elementary groups and the high school groups on what we want our facilities to look like and how we're gonna modernize them. And all of the conversations there is gonna help our architects team with the next steps BLDD has also joined us, and I know that we're mapping out the next workshop for all of our facilities in terms of athletics and activities. And the whole team is here. I see them in the audience. They're going to be doing a presentation just to give the board and the community an update on the work they've done and the upcoming work as well. And one of the things that I really hope that our community – is not only the work that we're doing in these workshops, but really what we want it to eventually be. When we think about the school district of Clayton, like what do our facilities mean? And if we really wanna be future ready, are our facilities matching what's happening in the teaching and learning? And one of the activities at the elementary workshops that Perkinsville facilitated was really about how innovative are we as a district? And they asked the teachers to rank themselves from zero to 10, 10 being really innovative. And all the teachers believe that teaching and learning, we're innovative. But when you think of our facilities, we're not. We're more on the Flintstones. I think the graphic was Flintstones or Jetsons. And where do you fall? And they believe the facilities are more in the Flintstones era. So they're doing the best they can, but imagine if they even had facilities to match that. So I hope that through our communication, e-news, the emails I send, the emails the board sends, the website, that the community continues to stay engaged in this very, very important work that we're doing. We will be having three community engagement forums coming up. One is on September 10th, the first one coming up, and then October 21st and one on November 18th. They'll all be at Clayton High School. And we hope to have a large crowd there where we can have the conversations and really get your input on what our progress is. We also will be doing a community survey so that we can get that input as well. But it's just an important part in our district, and I ask that everyone just stay engaged in the work that's happening. And I believe that is it for me. I'm gonna hand it over to Nina, our first student board update. Although

we've had a break from school, Clayton students continue to do amazing things over the summer. Our girls soccer team won the Class 2 state championship on June 7th, and this success was extra special because the team also won the state championship just two years prior. Our speech and debate team at the high school also took two qualifiers to nationals, and rising junior Henry Dong placed top 24 in extemporaneous debate, which was pretty exciting. Additionally, rising junior Aspen Meyer won first place in a national speech competition that aims to cultivate a deeper understanding of Korean culture and history. So some very exciting things happening with students over the summer. And then here is kind of my plan for this year and how I'm going to play a role. Last Monday, I had the pleasure of welcoming Clayton's newest teachers to the district. I talked with teachers from all three elementary schools, the middle school, and the high school. I asked many of them what they were most excited for in the upcoming school year, and almost every single one of them said meeting the students and building a community, which I thought was a perfect representation of what Clayton stands for. It was so great to see how excited and welcomed they felt by the wonderful induction brunch, and I was so glad to be able to share a few words of encouragement with them. I'm currently in the process of setting up focus groups at each of the elementary schools and the middle school, as well as enhancing the high school's SBSA committee. Once these focus groups have been put together, I plan to meet with the elementary and middle schoolers every two months or so and the high schoolers biweekly to discuss their school experience and collect feedback that best represents the student body. I also plan on keeping students connected and in the loop by developing some sort of open form or survey that anyone can fill out with comments, suggestions, or questions. This will ensure that we're regularly gauging the opinion of students and are able to make our priorities list based on how uncommon or common an issue is. All in all, I am very excited to represent our student body, and I know it's going to be a great year.

Thank you, Nina. Great job on your first update. We're so happy you're here. Moving on to agenda item five, policy. We have several policies to review tonight, and some of them must be voted on and approved before the first day of school. So that's why we have more than normal tonight, because we need to make sure they're approved before school starts soon. So we are starting with 5.1 policy BBBA-1 board member qualifications. Chris, if you'll read the motion, please.

I move that the board adopt policy BBBA- 1 board member qualifications with proposed changes. Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Does anyone have any questions or comments on this policy at all?

Okay. The only thing that I would say is I think the addition to the policy is a good one. Yes, it is. It is a good one for the public's benefit. The addition was, you know, because there aren't a lot of qualifications, honestly, to run for school board. But the addition was that you you cannot run for school board if you have been convicted or have entered a guilty plea for the offense or of assault first or second degree. So, right. I think that's an excellent point.

I guess I say this for all of these. This is a change that's dictated by a Missouri

statute,

and so we're not having a lot of discussion because we've been told what to say.

Correct. Yes, that's a good point, Leo. Oftentimes, for the public to understand, oftentimes when it maybe appears that we're quickly approving something, Policy without much discussion. That's because it's been dictated by law and statute And so there's not much wiggle room for us at all. We have to approve it or will be We won't be following the law, okay All those in favor Any opposed? Okay motion passes 5.2 is policy eh ba student use of personal electronic devices I Will you read this

motion, please? Happily. I move that the board rescind policy EHBA. Second.

Okay. Any questions or comments about this motion which is rescinding an old policy of student use of personal electronic devices for instructional purposes? Any comments or questions? Okay. And it's being rescinded because it's being replaced, just so everyone understands.

It's the warm-up act.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? Okay. That motion passes. Thank you. 5.3 policy, JFCD, student use of personal communication devices.

Want me to go ahead? Yeah. I move that the board adopt policy JFCD, student use of personal communication devices to replace policy EHBA.

Second.

Okay.

Any questions or comments on this policy JFCD, which is replacing the one we just rescinded? Anyone? Go ahead, Leo. I just caught your eye.

Sure. Like the policy we talked about a moment ago, this policy is substantially dictated by a Missouri statute. And in this case, the organization that works on our policies called the Missouri School Board Association took a statute about cell phones and digested it into this policy that you see. And my understanding is that we're adopting that policy just as MSPA digested that statute. Is that correct? That is

correct. Yeah, that is correct.

We've had conversations a couple conversations here about Enforcement under the previous policy This policy imposes more restrictions than our existing policy does the policy itself can force itself So we're going to continue to have those conversations Because we have more restrictions in place now, those conversations are probably, if anything, harder. So what would you say to give someone some assurance that there's going to be enforcement under this new, stricter policy?

So, yeah. Hello, everyone. How are you this evening? Yeah, so that has been – there's been a lot of conversation around the enforcement. What does it look like? How is it different from last year? You know, I had some time – I know Pam's not here tonight, but I did get a chance to meet with Pam and talk with Pam a little bit. And this was one of the questions she had as well as far as, you know, what does enforcement really look like? Now, what I can say is that already you're seeing a different level of – I'm going to use the word intentionality already this year. We've already seen, I've been in the buildings the last couple of days. I've been in with the buildings as our staff is being talked to and directed in this work and how we're going to monitor it and enforce it. So number one, it's already ramping up in the fact that it's being much more communicated than I do believe that it probably has been in the past. That is going to continue into the first two weeks of school that the kids are also through class meetings and everything. There's going to be regular redirects for those first two weeks. Hey, remember, you know, things like watches seem like they become a very natural thing. I put mine on every morning. And so for the first couple of weeks, everyone is being instructed, hey, look, remember, this is the law. You cannot do this anymore. It needs to go away. It needs to be turned off. And so the conversation around it has shifted to be a lot more what I would say is intense, right? We this is this is what we are doing. This is how it's going to be enforced. So some clear communication. It's also a great thing, I think, with this is you're seeing all of this being unified across all buildings. So there are no one school does this, the other school does this. It is becoming uniform across the board. It makes enforcement much easier when one school doesn't say, well, they got to do it there or whatever the case may be. So that is also another level. One of the things that I've also said, now this comes from the tech director side, right? And so one of the things that i also see with this is some of the language and with the questions that I've been asked Um... Some of the language that I like to use in this is that it's going to be used sparingly because we have a lot of opportunity that when the educational components that we were using cell phones for in the past, I think we're having a huge intentionality to look at those situations and to provide alternatives. So it becomes less necessary to really have cell phones for educational use. And so we're really taking a look already in the last – two weeks I've had multiple conversations especially with CHS teachers that may have been using them for one reason but we're giving them an alternative to be able to use it and we're providing the resources to do so that is not what we did last year obviously we made those educational because they weren't they were needed but now we're really looking deeper into how do we really remove the need to even have them on you know on the person I guess. So, yeah, those are some of the ways that we do anticipate that this is going to be much different than it has been in the past.

And as you mentioned, Pam's not here tonight, and I know I think she would express to you, and I express it too, that we've already had one kind of year of not fully living up to expectation, and Some of what you're saying does seem new, but some of it seems like a continuation. And just to continue to push and also I think to think about if there's any new ideas that are different than just communicate harder, which is what you expressed. Do you think I captured the essence of Pam's point of view, Stacy? Do you have anything else you want

to add? I think so. And I apologize to Pam. I meant to say in the beginning she's not here because she's taking her oldest son to college today. So I just wanted everyone to understand why she's not here tonight. Yes, I think so. I think we saw it on our up what Pam wanted us to convey is that we saw in our update at the end of last school year there was data to kind of prove that it really especially at the high school a little less less so at Y down but still not great that the practices weren't being enforced. And now that this law applies to even you know like you said passing time mealtime lunchtime even more times during the day We just would like to be assured, of course, that it is enforced. It's a law now. It's not just our recommendation. And so if it wasn't being enforced as well as we would have liked last school year, how will we be reassured that it will be this school year? Which you kind of already answered, but I'm just reiterating the concern.

And to that point, I think there's a lot of strength in the fact that it is a law, right? And whether or not we like it or not, that being the case does carry weight. And so there is a lot more conversation around it. I think even amongst all of the staff that this is the law. And so there Would I love to say that policy is, you know, always taken as seriously as a law? Maybe not. Maybe in a lot of cases. But we do see some of that. One thing that I would add to and I think is important is as we move into our tech study moving forward, and I'll make this connection here because I think it is a valuable connection, is that, you know, We we also have had an influx of a lot of you know personal devices and things to accommodate for maybe what we think or maybe it'll depend on how the study rolls out on what is the most appropriate device for students and And so we do think that that is going to have some type of connection in obviously this work as well. It's another way that we could see obviously being able to diminish the need to have personal devices in any capacity if students have the right device in their hands. Now, could that be what they have now? Yes, we'll go through the study, maybe not, but there could be a direct connection moving forward and how that fits together with taking out the need to have any personal devices whatsoever.

And do you feel comfortable that, um, Dr. Kaczewski at the high school, for instance, has plans in place to address the use during passing times and meal times, which is different than being in a confined classroom with a supervising teacher to enforce it. Yeah.

And I do think there's there naturally there isn't going to be enforcement challenges. I mean, we know there is enforcement challenges with vaping and we know there's enforced. So there's always going to be, you know, some challenges ahead that we're going to have to probably, you know, and adapt to as we see them, as we put more of a light on the work. I will say that even Dr. Kaczewski, because we were just talking about it a moment ago, we've had now two days with the staff back, and on both days there has been work done on this where he has addressed the staff. So it is being taken, it's not being taken lightly, if I could say. So he has put emphasis on it, emphasis on being clear in how he moves forward.

I think that was

pretty much what Pam

wanted us to convey.

Yeah, and I guess I would say, I'm not Pam, I don't have exactly a way of saying it, but speaking in my own way, We have a policy. We expect it to be implemented and effective, and there's definitely an administrative domain, but if there's not effective implementation, I do think that can elevate things to the board level. It can't, so let's get it done. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.

Jason. Just one one one suggestion or comment then one question the suggestion and comment being I think the smartwatches is going to be what the big changes just across the entire district like this impacts the elementary school level more than you know the other the other stuff does and so just being overly communicative with parents and students about that big change. I think you talk about an ongoing enforcement challenge like that's my guess is that's what's going to be it for the next nine months. So good luck with that. My question is, and you've talked on this a little bit, Luke, but maybe we could be a little more specific. Whether it's Luke or Dr. Patel or whomever, how is the administration interpreting the Youth for Educational Purposes section and how is that being implemented?

So the implementation, and I can kind of speak to it because that's defined. It's going to be part of the procedures naturally, always the same. That is, number one, I love the word sparingly. It's being communicated as this is going to be a very sparingly given procedure. opportunity for somebody to use something that's outside of the norm. That being said, it will be something that has to be requested ahead of time to an administrator and that's not like day before. We're thinking this is going to be communicated well ahead of time so there's proper time to assess whether or not it's needed or like I had mentioned earlier Maybe there's a way that we can provide the opportunity to not have to have it be the case, right? So maybe there's another form of tech, an iPad, whatever, that we can be able to provide in lieu of that. If it still continues to need to go up to the next level, teaching and learning, technology, we'll get involved to be able to work that through with the administrator and the staff as well to just ultimately try and provide other pathways to have it to where it's not a necessary item. I just

thought it would be helpful for the public to hear. That is a material procedural change from last year, and I think it's just helpful for the public. Has anyone made a request yet? I have

not seen any requests. In fact, quite the opposite. Now we're already talking about what are some devices that we can bring into the classroom to accommodate this ahead of time.

I have the same question, Jason, about that it says a superintendent principal or designee may authorize the use. And I just wanted to make sure that that's being clearly communicated to the staff who they go to to authorize it. Like is it their building principal, I assume. But I had the similar. And similarly about the watches, we actually already heard from a parent with elementary students worried about the watches because the student needs the watch before and after school to communicate with home because they're walking on their own at a young age and worried about them then taking it off during the day at the age of nine, let's say, and having it be lost or stolen or forgotten. And so are you confident that elementary schools have some kind of system in place Yeah. Or the teachers maybe are working on that so that...

Well, they are, and the elementaries have been, because that is a change at the elementary schools completely. They have to be out of

sight for us to comply with the law, just so everyone

understands. The plan is to put them in backpacks. But young

kids are not as maybe responsible with things like that.

As long as

our classrooms have

a system. Yes, yes. I'm confident that they've been working on that work already, and having that conversation with the teachers. Good. Thank you.

So my only question is, and this is really more geared towards likely middle school and high school students, personal laptops are included here as personal communication devices. So does that mean that all middle school and high schools students that are using personal laptops or had been in the past would need to request an exemption to continue to use personal laptops for this coming school year?

So what we've done is we've actually given that as the exemption. So a laptop, a personal laptop will continue to be used for the upcoming year with hopes that, you know, the tech study, I think, some new conversation on what those devices look like so that they are not a necessity moving forward. In order to bring those back right now, the fear would be that we would not be ready to accommodate what have somewhat of some of what our students may or may not need in their courses. So that'll be left in place for the time being. So that exception is

automatically essentially granted? Yeah. Okay. That's not obvious reading this policy, so. Yeah, that's a good question.

So I know there's a plan for looking at alternate devices, right, for student use. And there's been discussion around the effectiveness of the Chromebooks and hence the need for personal laptops in some cases. Given that sort of, you know, that's still on the kind of like in the discussion about what that might be, do we foresee there could be some scenarios where because we can no longer use phones Like, are we prepared for those devices to be inserted and be effective this coming school year?

Yeah. In fact, we've already had that conversation with our operations director today who does a lot of our technology. We've done some... We've done some prepping ahead of time, not knowing exactly how much we were going to need. And there may be some need to order some extra equipment at some point in time to be able to facilitate things we're not aware of or how much they're going to need. But our plan is to have inventory enough to be able to produce the need at the time if that's kind of the direction you're going. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just recall there were a couple of scenarios in which they were used. I think like digital photography was one. Right. So do we have an alternate device for that class, for example? Yeah,

we had planned to use iPads. So digital photography using the cameras on the iPhones will be comparable to the iPads. A little bit more cumbersome because they're a little larger to carry around. But at the same time, they do accommodate the need that we currently have.

So we have like classroom sets. Yeah,

and we'll be adding

classroom sets in certain classrooms. So with regard now, it just made me think of something that with the personal laptops, which are presumably connecting to the school Wi-Fi, right? So do those laptops receive the same kind of filter Yes. Internet filter policy treatment.

So part of this, too, is I think in the procedure aspect of it from the technical side, we do ask for the phones to be turned off during the day. Part of the reason is for this purpose because as long as a device is connected to our network, it is being filtered appropriately. we cannot control the data on devices that are outside of the district, right? And so if there is some type of tethering or pairing of those devices, they can use data and use things outside of our filtering. So explicitly put in procedure to be able to turn those devices off is going to be part of the challenge as we go through the year, but that is important.

I just thought of something else, too. So obviously we're talking about all school grounds, right? Right. Including athletic fields. Does that include the parking lots? I mean, I'm just thinking, have we thought through all this? You know, I mean, knowing... Knowing my own child, he might well find himself running out of the parking lot. So I'm just curious. I mean, it probably hasn't been fully flushed out yet, but I'm just curious if that's part of the thinking. Some of

that will happen here as we start to learn from what the behaviors are. Right, right. moving forward because this will be much more stringent in its rollout. There could be some things that we do have to react to as far as what the behaviors of the students are because of this push. So yes, we definitely have had those conversations, but what it looks like as we move into the year, we'll be ready to adapt. As that comes across. Yes,

but since obviously it's going to be a unfolding kind of scenario with I think fairly if we could get sort of regular updates on how it's going, you know, more often we might something like this. This is you might want to ask.

That was one of the things I was going to say, Ben, is how often are we going to hear back from you about how things are going and specifically how are we going to be collecting data around misuse and policy? I just wonder if it's going to be any different than last year in terms of your reporting to us and what you're reporting and who's gathering it and all of that.

Right, as far as, so some of the, obviously the things will remain the same as far as some of the data being collected. Surveys, obviously, and how it's going. Learning a little bit, I mean, what's interesting is I think a lot of what we learn is from the students, so surveying the students, not only just the staff, and being able to kind of get some of that data will be important. And so, yeah, we'll be collecting that as we move forward to inform you in those things.

Okay, so by the end of this first semester, would we be able to get some data on how many incidents of misuse there is in each of the buildings?

Yeah, we can talk with the principals and figure out a way to maybe come up with a good way to have some data at that point.

Okay,

thank

you. Okay, so going back to what we've all discussed earlier which is so critical, I think, is this paragraph in here about use for educational purposes. We all are very aware that we want that to be adhered to. And I need you, Luke, to give me not one but two examples of why a teacher would be able to say and get approved to use it, given everything you just said. A, given all the exceptions we already have, because we already know some students need it for X, Y, and Z things. all written in here very clearly, completely acceptable. I'm not talking about that, right? We already got that in there. We know that they can be used for those things. Give me examples of when you think that Dr. Kachewski would approve the use of a phone. The thing is, I just want us to feel like we've thought through all of this because I'm not positive. I'll just say that this even needs to be there. because of how much we've delineated out all the reasons why it can be used, the law truly is trying to say, and it doesn't get used for anything else. So tell me why that needs to be there. Give me two examples, different examples of why you would approve or Nisha or Dr. Kachewski would approve for a teacher to use a cell phone. For an

educational purpose? Correct. Why the lay... So... At this point, I would say most of the situations that I've been confronted with already at the beginning of the year, like I've said before, we are already making accommodations for. So that's important to kind of note. Do I know all the situations we may meet this year? Right off the top of my head, I'm not going to be able to give you two because I don't think I've come up with two that I couldn't come up with something for. And so there is some reality to the fact that we hope. that maybe that language isn't needed in the future. And I think there's some reality to that. At this point, I would hesitate to jump out too much in front and remove something, and then we go, oh, we didn't know that was going to be a need. And

so that's why we've put in into the procedure that If a teacher feels that they really need it for an educational purpose and we have not been able to meet the need They have to talk to the administrator Whoever evaluates them their departments, right? So it could be an assistant principal. It could be dr Gajewski and have that conversation ahead of time

Yeah,

and if he feels like yeah, I think you're right or even Jamie or whoever. Yeah, this could be a cell phone conversation That's why you loop in Milena and Luke and say, okay. hey guys, I have a situation. They really feel they need their cell phone. From a tech perspective, teaching and learning perspective, is there something else that we could do instead of that?

Right, and it sounds like you're being so proactive about that, which makes all the sense in the world. So I think we're all on the same page. If you guys haven't even come up with a single scenario besides the ones that are already delineated as needed for ADA, et cetera, et cetera, it doesn't seem to me, I would hope, Melina and you would be like, no, that's a no. That's a no. And that's a no, you know, maybe we'll start getting asked. Right. But I would I would like for us to understand and recognize that week there used to not be cell phones and teachers did just fine.

Yeah.

And I

think this will also be a great thing to report on next time we're having this conversation here. Yes, please. Was there any requests? Yes. And we would be happy to be able to share if there was any and how we accommodated them or didn't. Because I

can't think of anything we couldn't accommodate, right? I mean, Luke, you're already doing it. You're already accommodating in all these great ways.

And again, there could be something that we're not aware of at this point in time. And I think that's the reason probably to leave it in just to be –

And it's sort of the law. It's the

mere state law. That's why it's in

there. It's in there. This is exactly how MSBA wrote it. I get it. But I'm saying for our purposes as a district, I'm hoping that we – I mean, yes, there may be something, right? But I guess I'm saying that I think our hope is that we have so many other options available that there doesn't need – we don't need this to be utilized, this –

For now though, this policy does include laptops and we need it for that, right? Right, yes. So for now,

But I guess it's all about the perception from the staff point of view, too, about why that is there, too. We're saying, yeah, it's there. That's the law. But as a district, we would like for you to understand that, no, we're not hoping for you to come up and ask us to please let us use cell phones for XYZ thing. We're hoping nobody asks. And if they do, we don't really see a good reason for it to be used. There are just literally so many other things that could be used. So I'd like to see us as a district just draw a line and say we really don't have a need for this other than these very valid reasons.

Nina, do you have any questions or comments about this from a student's perspective?

So I think this is probably more applicable to the middle and high school because we have more of like in the elementary schools, everyone's in one place for lunch. And that's kind of how it is at the middle school. But how are you going to make sure that students, I mean, because there's really no way to be everywhere at once in the high school, which is obviously understandable. But how will this policy be enforced when there's not really a structured activity and when kids are just kind of around doing their own thing?

Right yeah and part of the procedure that you know is going to be taken I think it is mentioned as well that you know the campus supervisors and you know the teachers in the hallways and pretty much it's going to take all of us to make sure that this is this will be a team effort of monitoring because to your point there are unstructured times that we'll all have to be aware and and we'll all have be like hey remember and so yeah it's gonna take it's gonna take everybody in those in spaces that may or may not normally have had staff in it or things like that

good point good point even just across the street I think you know, it doesn't appear that any of us have any real issue with the policy language at all. I think it sounds like from what each of us expressed is really just the same questions basically we had in April, which is the enforcement of it, and it's even more extensive this year. So I realize, we all realize, this is a learning curve. I'm hoping because we started this work last year that we kind of have a head start, whereas other districts may not, but... It is the additional times that Nina's talking about that I mentioned earlier, the passing periods and lunchtimes that I wonder, yeah, at the high school, wonder who's supervising that to enforce the law as well. And I think about what Ben said about where does parking lots, you know, we do have an open campus, so kids are heading out to lunch. They're obviously allowed to be using their phone when they're, you know, at Straub's, so... When does that stop and start? Is it at the front doors or what? Yeah, go ahead Leo.

So just to follow up on the educational purposes one other way. You mentioned kind of a broad categorical exception that you're making at least this year for the laptops. Are there any other kind of categorical educational purposes exceptions that you guys have conceptualized? I think you said no, but I just wanted to ask in

a different way. Now, I'm going to say educational. Now, the law also does provide exceptions for other reasons, whether that's medical reasons or whether that's going to be... 504s or however it said there's going to be some other reasons but from an educational standpoint at this point

and there's also an emergency exception absolutely but there's no okay i've asked my question thanks that's all

okay okay we have the um it's been uh moved and seconded all those in favor of adopting this policy aye any opposed No, okay, motion passes. Thank you, Luke. Agenda item 5.4, policy JG which is student discipline. I

move that the board adopt policy JG, student discipline with proposed changes.

Second.

Okay.

Any comments or questions from anyone on student discipline for Dr. Poole? Anyone? No? Okay, this is the one that's just a one reading also. Nina, did you have any questions or comments on this one? Okay. Okay, all those in favor? Any opposed? No, okay, that motion, policy JG passes. We are onto 5.5, regulation JG-R1, student discipline.

I move that the board adopt regulation JG-R1, student discipline with proposed changes.

Second.

Okay, any questions or comments on this policy from anyone? I just want to say I appreciate that we changed the language from marijuana to cannabis because there were other policies we talked about last year and that way we just have common language across the board. And I think that is the common language in general, not just in our district these days. Any questions or comments? Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Oh, okay. That policy passes as well. And policy 5.6, policy GBCB staff conduct. There's not an answer. Okay, so read. I would just... But we usually... We usually read a motion. Yeah, yeah, read the same motion as the others. Okay, we don't. Sorry, we've had a long summer break. We're all confused. Okay, so policy GBCB is titled staff conduct. This is a first reading. This will have a second reading. So I'd like to open it up for questions, comments, discussion with Kelly. Who would like to go first? How about Ben? Just moving around the table.

So first of all, I think there's a lot of really timely changes in here. So in reviewing this and thinking about it, I did a fair amount of looking at other districts and just seeing what other policies look like. And so it's interesting the differences in different states, different regions. So I did actually find some language that I would like to introduce for consideration as an addition to this. It may actually overlap a little, but if I may, I'll go ahead and read that now. So what I would propose is and again I should take full credit this is a bit lifted a little bit changed from another district but an employee's use of personal social media may not disrupt the work school environment impair their ability to perform their district duties effectively undermine supervisory authority and or compromise working relationships within district schools and offices. Any postings by employees will not reference, link, or contain statements that could be viewed as malicious, obscene, threatening, or intimidating, that disparage students, employees, parents, or community members, or that could be viewed harassment or bullying. To me, I feel like this really covers off on a lot of, you know, kind of the scenarios and use cases. And I just think, you know, actually one thing I also did was I looked at my own employer's policy around this, and I was like, wow, there's a lot there. We all have to be very careful in the world that we're in and should be careful and mindful of the things that we say and do, particularly online. So in my opinion, this would be language I think that just helps kind of sharpen the policy and give it a little bit more coverage, if you will. Don't expect anyone to respond to that necessarily right now, but we'd love for everyone to take a look before the next reading. And Ben, can you share

that with all of us? Yes. And with

Kelly so that we can see

it

in writing. I did share that earlier today and I actually just kind of snuck it in to the document that we have right now. My question would be as you're considering it, would we think that it replaces number 10, maybe even 11? Somewhere in there is where I think we have overlap. So... That would just be like, do we want that in addition? Do we want that to replace something?

Well, go ahead.

I was just going to say 10 and 11 are kind of general. They don't mention social media. Oh, they do mention it. It does. You're right in the middle of it. It feels like what Ben read is a lot more specific. which I think is why he shared it. There's definitely as I look at it some overlap

Yeah, there's definitely some overlap in the first two or three sentences of 10. I really liked actually that last piece of it where it highly suggests that these are my views and not those of the district. I think that's actually really good to have in there. So I think maybe a reworking of 10 with some of this language I think would make perfect sense. I think so too. Okay.

Rework 10 and the new one. I think I

want to point out the difference that we're talking about here. Let me try to articulate this. The one that we have here, it makes sure that we, in fact, it says encourage, which I'm wondering if it should say require. But it makes sure that the staff member knows that they are supposed to make sure they make everyone aware of what their personal view is versus, and it's not the district's view. But I think what yours does is a lot bigger because it actually encourages, it makes it so that it's not permissible for anything that is even their own view to be bullying behavior that would disrupt our students or other staff. And that's a huge difference and I think it needs to be. here and I don't it really isn't in a lot of ways in the way it is currently and maybe in a couple I would have to look through but I really like that that it adds that to that to this document

so I think one of the pieces of why it says views are my own and not those of the district is encouraged is because that's more specifically when you are acting in a capacity that somebody might confuse you as you as the person in your own social media versus if you're alluding to the fact that I'm a teacher in the school district of Clayton and they might take what I'm saying is that I'm acting in that capacity even though I'm acting as a private citizen. So that's where it gets a little bit tricky. I think Felicia had shared with you that there were a couple of these that the MSBA attorneys are looking at, too, because they are not sure if we are overstepping.

Yeah, we have to make sure that we are maintaining the line between professionalism, personal conduct, and First Amendment. Because also in this policy, which we definitely will not be able to renew and should not renew,

But that sentence was struck out. I was going to ask why.

So it's not – I separated number eight. Number eight. Yeah. Oh, it moved to the bottom of nine. We separated it in two parts. So, yeah, it's still there. Yes, okay. I saw it crossed out. I felt like the previous number eight that's in our current policy was two parts. So I divided them out. It's actually the same language. It's just split into two. Okay, thank you. I didn't see that. My

thought would be whether that sentence that Kim just read should be a part of not a numbered item, but a freestanding statement. Like almost like an opening. Because it applies to everything.

Like a prologue, like in the intro. Because we do not and cannot infringe on anyone's right to freedom of speech. We are a

public school. And so there are certain things that we can and cannot do that a private employer could do or a private school could do. Absolutely. Whatever we, this is our first reading. I think a lot of these suggestions are really great and I think what we're looking for is to maintain a school environment that's positive and maintain a community environment that's positive for everybody that is part of the school community. And conduct everything we're talking about, you know digital conduct verbal conduct all plays into that But at the end of the day free speech is protected by law Correct public school. Correct So that freestanding comment probably needs to be in there and then at the end of this whatever we put in needs to be reviewed by right by our attorneys which they

I would, that was a big point I was gonna make is just you're gonna get a lot of comments and you're gonna take them back and digest them. And what Ben wrote or what Ben proposed has a lot of good content in it. You're gonna go through and you're gonna reconcile it with what's in there. I don't think we should lose any of the ideas that are in there. I think that's what Ben was saying. And then you're gonna get, you're gonna come back with something that includes some of that input and everything else. Social media has obviously been an issue with education for a long time now for years There are people who I can think of Publicly lost their jobs over stupid things they did on social media and there are other stories that I guess maybe didn't become public that I know of I Wonder if there are more specific Guide what we said all is is very good and it's good stuff if there are more Specific rules around social media that are worth discussing and memorializing. I think many teachers, for example, would never have a follow or follow relationship with a student on social media. I don't know if that should be a rule or if that's just a common expectation. but that's something very specific that a policy can say. There may be other things like that that are kind of discreet and cut and dried that improve these situations, and while we're talking about social media, we should talk about, we should think about all of

those. Do you know, Kelly, if legally we, what Leo's mentioning, can there be a, can legally We tell our staff that they,

between students, teacher-students can't follow each other on social media. So where it shows up now is we have a student-to-staff relations policy. And in that, it says that they can communicate only by approved channels, basically. So they wouldn't be communicating with them on something like a social media platform. So I would assume that kind of would encompass that. We also had, during our new teacher induction program, communications came and talked with all of our new teachers about our communications guidelines. So while it's not explicitly stated in policy somewhere, I think that there are multiple places where if you had a student following you, you would be violating some boundaries that are set forth. I know we've talked a lot about, and Leo brought up, Getting it more specific on the guidelines which we definitely can and I captured that in my notes to continue to think over The only problem that I foresee is you guys all know we look at policies on a regular basis but like they're not all-encompassing because Technology is going to change so like if we explicitly say you can't have followers you guys know in a year from now It's not followers anymore. It's blah, you know, whatever the new the new term is and So I think we just have to be careful with that of you're not going to catch it all. That's why I think sometimes it's left purposefully like all encompassing so that we say like you need to have professional boundaries with your students. And, you know, we as a group get to decide what those boundaries are and when you have violated those because we're the ones that, you know, interpret the policy.

Well, you bring up a good point that I was going to mention. I don't know if you all caught this, but We last revised this policy in 2020. I mean, it's been a while. I think in the spring of 2020, so almost six years. So things change, and I think that's why actually Ben's point is so important that Even five years ago, of course, social media was around, but it wasn't being used as prevalently as it is today. So I do think that is a reason to make it a bigger focus. And we're

never going to be able to forbid everything that common sense would tell you is inappropriate conduct. No. So I think that's why the language in here is that education employees have to have you know, the highest level of conduct both inside the school and outside of the school. And we do that because that's how we maintain a culture of, like, trust and safety. And that's the purpose of a policy like this is to make sure people are, you know, making good choices so we maintain that culture of safety and trust.

I think the number 12 is very clear. Only district-approved platforms or accounts should be used for official communications. So are we saying that students and staff shouldn't even be commenting on each other's? It's one thing to follow. We've talked about following, whether or not we're going to delineate that. But there shouldn't even, right? There's already number 12 saying there shouldn't even be communication between the two on social

media. 12 is new. Yeah, so that 12 would be an addition. It's not something that's currently in the policy. That's a suggestion. Okay. Yeah, any of the ones that are highlighted. So our attorneys need to look at that.

Yeah. I like that. I mean, that's very clear. We're saying to the staff, you only communicate with students in these certain platforms, otherwise not at all. Right,

where we can access whatever that conversation might be if we needed to. There

you go.

I don't know if that prohibits everything we want. It says official communications. I'm not sure what's official. Yeah,

exactly. Maybe the word official doesn't need to be in there.

Can I ask a question? Of course. Okay. I don't even need a motion. Uh, my question is about, it's going to be a long year. My question is about number 11. Um, what is there? I don't know if I'm asking this the right way, but is there a line of demarcation where an employee needs to disclose, needs to state that their views are his, her, their own, uh, and not that of the district? Like, is it like, when does that need to be disclosed? And when, Do you not have to

disclose it? How do they clearly indicate that? Number 11 is currently in the policy. That's not a new one. I don't know that there is a line. It depends on who is interpreting that. We, as a team, have to determine when we believe a line was crossed or a policy was violated. In my opinion, it would be if someone could be confused if you're acting as a a private citizen versus a public school employee, you should be disclosing that the thoughts that you are sharing are yours as a private citizen and not yours as a public school employee. In one of the law reviews, a court case came up, and someone who was a government figure basically took down somebody's comments on a post that they had. which they couldn't do because they were acting as a public figure on this particular website. So, like, they were saying, like, that was protected speech and people could post on that. So, I mean, there are court cases where, you know, people have made decisions.

I would encourage us not to get into trying to analyze what the law is in this meeting. Well, I'm not... No, I just don't you ask whatever question you want. I just don't think we should try and lay out what the boundaries are There are boundaries there. They're complicated. We could analyze them. I just don t think we should Spend this meeting trying to spell all that out. That's my

It I guess okay, then then my comment would be the first amendment not

this policy Oh,

okay So I'm just going to ask my question and if Leo wants me to not talk about it, we can just not talk about it. I trust Leo. So I mean, let's say I write a letter to the Post-Dispatch. Jason Growe is an 11th grade American history teacher. Our history teacher writes a letter to the post-dispatch how hard it is to be an educator. It's in the public domain where I'm at Clayton High School, but I don't have to say that in the letter. Like, I guess there might need to be some clarity over at what point do we cross the line on that. Are you

okay So I'm just going to ask my question and if Leo wants me to not talk about it, we can just not talk about it. I trust Leo. So I mean, let's say I write a letter to the Post-Dispatch. Jason Groh is an 11th grade American history teacher. Our history teacher writes a letter to the post-dispatch how hard it is to be an educator. It's in the public domain where I'm at Clayton High School, but I don't have to say that in the letter. Like, I guess there might need to be some clarity over at what point do we cross the line on that. Are you

signing off your letter Jason Growe, public educator at Clayton School District? Or are you signing off the letter Jason Growe?

signing off your letter Jason Groh, public educator at Clayton School District? Or are you signing off the letter Jason Groh?

Jason Growe, I'm a teacher.

Jason Groh, I'm a teacher.

And that is your picture or something like that. I think that those would be judgment calls that we would have to make and we would call our attorney to decide if it was protected speech or not. And in those cases, even if we can't discipline, let's just say, for whatever that is, there are other conversations we can have just about how we can respect our community, our staff, our students, our evaluating administrator, whatever the case might be in that article that we wrote.

Okay, fair enough.

On number four, what's highlighted in pink, is that... Which draft is that?

Has

that been approved yet or not? Yeah,

that came from Pam actually earlier today. Okay, good. Because I

was going to say I was curious too how we define what professional and respectful manner is, and this gives more clarity to it. I was curious where it came from.

Yep, so Pam submitted that earlier today. That's number four, handling disagreements with colleagues in a professional manner. and respectful manner that was already in the policy as is now so the suggestion was that we consider this includes refraining from disparaging comments about colleagues or the district avoiding conduct that undermines the work of others and addressing concerns through appropriate internal channels good

i liked that i was curious where that came from so that's thank you pam because i do think that needed some more clarity it was so vague before nina do you have any questions or comments about this one Okay, probably smart. Yeah, she is. So again, this is just a first reading. Kelly will bring our suggestions to MSBA for approval so the legal team can make sure what we're suggesting. We will see it for a second reading and If she's incorporated everything we're suggesting and we're okay with it, we can approve it next time or have another reading if we feel like we need to. Are there any other questions or comments though on this before we move on? Okay, thank you everybody. Okay, moving to agenda item six, our action items. 6.1.

I move that the board approve the resolution authorizing the cooperation agreement between the St. Louis County Board of Elections Commission and the School District of Clayton for the 2026 municipal elections.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any questions or comments on this one? This is basically, we just did this for the first time last year, letting those who wish to file to run for the Board of Education to file at the Board of Elections versus in our office, just so everyone understands. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. OK, that motion passes. That was the only action item. So on to our consent agenda. 7.1. Oh yeah, consent should just be one. Just read that first one. It says 7.2 through 7.1.

I move that the board approve consent agenda items 7.2 through 7.12.

Second.

Good, okay.

Any questions or comments on consent

agenda items? The only question that I have is whether, is it the first year that we're, that Catalyst students are receiving credit from Missouri State University?

They've received it from UMSL before. Has it been Missouri State before? Missouri State. Melaina Singh, yes. Dr. Garganino-Singh. It is not the first year. It's not the first year, okay. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, consent agenda passes. Okay, moving on to our presentation, architect introductions and progress updates from John Brazile.

Good evening. In June of this year we selected architects for multiple projects and tonight we want to introduce them to you and give you a progress update on the work that's occurred over the summertime. The first set of projects was awarded to the collaboration between Paragon Architecture and Perkins and Will. and they'll be working on our elementary school buildings as well as the academic wing for the high school. So at this time I'd like to introduce that team to you.

Good evening. It's great to be back here and good to see you all again. This is an exciting moment to carry forth all the work that we did together last year related to long-range facility master plan and carrying that forward. I'm going to skip ahead one slide here, so there we go. Yeah, last year I had a senior daughter. And here exactly a year later, I'm going to have a college daughter next week. So it's been a fun year to be. You've got to see me through the whole thing. So I have Mike Younglove with me as well. Mike has been part of the project all through last year. He's going to be one of our main representatives during the project, especially from the day-to-day project management. The difference that you see there is Steve and Amy, as we were going through this process last year, you guys really challenged us in a lot of good ways. And a lot of the conversations we had or related to the future of education. And Steve and I have developed a relationship over the years looking for the right opportunity to partner together on some projects. And in the back of my mind, I was saying if we get the opportunity to bring Steve and Amy into this, they're the team that we have to be partnered with to launch. And so I'll leave it up to Steve and Amy to talk a little bit

Hi good to see all of you again or many of you who we've met. Amy Ackman I am a principal and architect at Perkins and Will and have been working on K through 12 schools for the past 26 years at Perkins and will. It's been my lifelong love and great place that you know we we love to work with our K-12 clients so thanks for having us.

And I'm Steve Terks principal with Perkins and Will. Brad thanks for the gracious words. It's a pleasure to be here. As Amy mentioned, several of you have been active in our workshop so far that we're going to share a little bit more information with you tonight. Like Amy, I have focused my career on mostly public K-12 education. That work has literally taken us across the country and around the world, so we are really, really delighted to be here. here with you in St. Louis. We've got several other clients here in the St. Louis area, in Lindbergh and Ladue. So we're happy to add Clayton to that mix. Delighted to be here. So we're going to jump into it. We are just finished last week workshop. We're talking about the elementaries and the high school. Just last week finished workshop number two with the elementary schools and our first meeting with the high school. So let me talk about the elementary schools first. So the big picture is on the screen for you. We're going to share a little bit more information about each one of these, but these workshops are really geared toward Working with the educators, community members, several board members that are in the room, around the future of what your elementary schools are going to look like, the kind of education that you foresee happening not just today but in the future in these buildings and how the facilities can best support that. So really that, in a nutshell, is what the workshops are about. As we go through this series of workshops, we start with talking about the big picture, the vision, and by the time we get through the third one, we will have space programs, we'll have conceptualized diagrams for each of the buildings, and working with the CM, some cost numbers to share with those The last week, we had great half-day workshops with each of the elementary schools where we started looking at the space programs and had the folks edit those. So we're going to describe that to you here. At the very first workshop, we asked folks to come prepared with what we called an aspirational object. Jason, I think you're in the picture there. Sure. We have different trousers on, it looks like, so you're good there. Keep it simple, that's always good. We asked folks to show up with what we call an aspirational object, and this is an object that represents your vision around the future of the elementary schools. And it's really a vision piece of it, not so much the object but the vision piece of it that was the important part of it. So we asked people to introduce themselves and explain why they brought the object that they did. So it's a bit of an icebreaker, But it's also really helps us begin to understand sort of the you know where folks minds are relative to their vision. So we took a lot of the words and we created this wordle and as you I'm sure I've seen these before this words that show up the biggest and the most often are the things I got talked about the most so. What's really nice about the image on the screen is the word that shows up the biggest there is students. And so there was a huge focus on students, which is always a nice thing to hear. And students show up in a number of different forms. The word student shows up. The word kid shows up. But so does community. So do families. spaces, and it's good from an architecture standpoint. It's good that people were talking about spaces, creativity, flexibility. So those kinds of things really speak to us in terms of what sort of people's mindset when they were walking in the room that morning. We did a series of exercises. One of those that we did was we broke folks into the committee into small groups and had them think about and talk with each other about what are some principles that really should drive this work? And we call these guiding principles for that reason. There were eight major sort of themes that came out of this, and there's lots of words. I understand these are printed in that the board members have these, so we're happy to answer any questions about these. But we did show these back to the committee members last week when we met with them and asked for their input on these. But big themes around learner-centered environments, around spaces that are flexible and future ready, about the integration of community. The community, after all, is a big part of these buildings. around safety, wellness, around sustainability and environmental stewardship and so on. And so the idea with these though is as we begin to bring forth solutions and vet solutions with the committee and the community that these are things we're constantly looking back at. Are we living up to these guiding principles? Are we honoring these guiding principles? So they're important in that regard.

So we kept you all very busy for the last couple of workshops and continued on our build of information to understand space needs and how those guiding principles would start to relate to that. So we looked at the activities that you do on your day-to-day now and in the future as well, and talked about a few things that were mentioned in the guiding principles like outdoor learning, small group work, collaboration, et cetera. Out of that, we came back in the next workshop with the program trees. So this is the captain example, but we had one for each elementary. These are representing each space in the potential new or renovated facility. and they're relatively sized to each other just so we're not looking at spreadsheets all the time. This is another way of doing it. And we asked the small groups in the workshop to look at what they thought was missing, what didn't we hear right, what do they think is too much or could be removed? Maybe we didn't name something correctly or they wanted to rethink it. And what could be combined or shared or put together so that it could be a really efficient use of space. We like to say make space work hard, that something's not sitting idle during the day, that you're really not just building a one time a day type of space. So they got together in their small groups and reviewed those, and we've got that coming out of that second workshop. We also reviewed in the second workshop what the options might look like when we come back. And there are several that came about during the master plan that are moving forward, and this is not one or two. It's a combination. It could be any combination. for each of the elementaries, renovation to different levels and additions is option one for all the elementaries. And then the possibility of new schools for Captain that would be the same site or potentially a different site and the same site for Glenridge or Merrimack. So those are what we will be coming back with conceptual options for our third workshop. This is what our work looked like just last week. Turning everybody into architects was a lot of fun, and this is what the outcomes were for each of the groups. So we asked to take those spaces and tell us how you want them to fit together, what's important to you from an adjacency How do you want the teaching and learning spaces to be arranged? And so these are a few diagram examples of what that looks like. And believe it or not, these will be turned into architecture. And I'll turn it over to Brad.

Amy covered a lot of the work that we did at the elementary school when we met with the high school last week our scope of work is a little bit more focused over there so we really had kind of centered on two different areas of the high school one is over on the performing arts side and the second is over on the west side of the building just over here so the conversation really was about on the auditorium specifically and the staff brought up a lot of good points about the accessibility to the stage for students, potentially a light renovation of the lobby area to make it more functional. Looking at some light refreshes to like for example the restrooms Is there potential for new seats and then just taking care of some minor acoustic and HVAC needs back in the classrooms? And pulling back, this was just a diagram that we used within the master plan but really focusing in on that red area of the project to make it more functional on an everyday use as best as we can to kind of get some of that low hanging fruit. Not really involve any of the other level one or level two type things that we talked about elsewhere on the building. Then, when we move over to the West side again, these are diagrams that we had in the master plan with just some slight adjustments. With a lot of that focus on the geometry and construction program, which is the new program the robotics so it's providing them some ample space for daily use. bringing the AMPT program and the school store together, had a lot of good conversations about where that store might be located. Then the Catalyst program, bringing that on campus and how to be able to integrate students from other high schools, other school districts into the building and still provide the safety and security. And then as we're doing that work, is there some opportunity for improvements of other classrooms? So especially in that area, we have a lot of math classrooms. Several of those classrooms don't have access to daylight. And so as we're looking at that areas, looking at ways to improving those classrooms and maybe others. And then again, restrooms were a big part of the conversation related to bringing those facilities up. And so while we're doing the work over in that areas, there are some opportunity to improve those restrooms as well. And there's a lot of good relationships there with some of the existing programs that exist on the west side of the building, so really capitalizing on the success of those facilities. We talked a little bit about the site and how to protect the driveway, the drive lanes, access to the shop, not negatively impacting Adzick Field. We understand there's going to be some utilities over there. We just have to figure out where they are and how to reroute them or avoid them. But a lot of really good interaction. I think we had about 15 or more staff members there for that meeting, and it was a really good conversation. So this is the slide that you already saw, but really wanted to put this into perspective of where we're going down the line. So this is kind of the real immediate detail that we're working around. And then this is really the plan that we're working around right now. And so the area within that orange box is kind of that current future. And I just wanted to highlight, we're really looking at this very similar to what we did with the master plan where every meeting every week is very planned out and very intentional. I'll skip ahead because Realistically we're kind of keeping the end in mind right so in January at the board meeting you need to if you choose to move forward with a with a bond ballot that language has to be approved at the January 21st board meeting. which really means that the December 10th meeting, we need to have really hard decisions in place because you need that time to work on that ballot language. So backing up from there is essentially we're trying to get you a ton of information October 8th for that board meeting because between October 8th and December 10th, there's a lot of work that we have to do on our side. So we can go into a little bit more of those details with you specifically, but we're really kind of working backwards, working forwards, backwards, forwards, and working within the board meeting dates and the board retreat dates to be able to provide you with that information needed to make the decision. So in between there, as Dr. Patel mentioned before, we'll have some surveys, we'll have community engagement, but it's going to be very intentional, very deliberate, and we are literally planning out meetings three months in advance, and we're week by week. Our team is meeting weekly with John and Dr. Patel, making sure that we're staying on track, and then looking at those opportunities to engage you in addition to all of the different workshops and all the different engagement pieces that we have with faculty students staff in the Community, so this is just this is kind of it's constantly a work in progress we're looking at this on a weekly basis. and making revisions to make sure very similar to what we did with the master plan that should new information come up we've got a plan in place and some flexibility, we can adjust. We also know that we have to provide you with information in a timely manner to give you that opportunity for. for feedback loop, for questions, for discussions to be able to process that information. And we think we've built that in. But again, December 10th is when we'll probably need to have those decisions. We've got that December 2nd board retreat that will help process that work together to process that information and we're gonna be providing you with a lot of information on October 8th because we're going to be looking for some feedback at that point so that we can have those 60 days to really put a lot of information together. It's not the only time that we're going to talk, but that 60-day period, there's going to be a lot of work on our plate to be able to set the district up for success in the spring. That was it. We thank you and appreciate the opportunity to be here with you through this next phase.

Thank you. Thank you all for being here. I just have a quick question. On October 8th, you just said you're going to give us a lot of information. Will that include cost estimates or are those not coming until the December 10th?

We plan on having the preliminary costs actually in September. Great. Okay. It

wasn't listed until the –

Correct. I don't see

costs until December 10th, so I just wanted to make

sure. So, yeah, so I'll back up one slide here. So that workshop number three where we get back in front of the – it will be very similar information that we present at the workshops, and that will be at the community engagement session as well. And it will be high-level costs because – have about less than a month to work with us to put that through. And then based on the feedback that we get at those meetings, we'll further define the approach, the design. They'll further define the pricing and we'll continue to work through those iterations and evolutions.

I just wanted to say too for the rest of the board Chris and I were at the workshops last week with these guys and I was so impressed by how well they understand education truly like you guys use all the right language that we do internally in the district. And it was so helpful I think for the staff to have you really understand how schools work and how they need to work in the future. I thought the exercises were so great, and everyone was so engaged, and it was a great diverse group of stakeholders. It wasn't only teachers, and even within the group of teachers, there's an SSD teacher, and there's a librarian. Everyone was represented. There were a couple parents in each of the meetings as well, administrative assistants, a custodial staff, a nurse, a counselor, so it was a great group of perspectives on how spaces are used, and and how they're used differently in each of the three elementary schools was also really interesting for me to

listen to. I appreciate, Nisha, you mentioning what you did. I want to say that I really loved that you helped the staff and all of us, us included, look at how innovative we are in our teaching and learning and yet how far behind we are in our facilities. You used that Jetsons versus Flintstones and it's just exciting. I could tell, you know, the energy in those rooms and those workshops. I mean, they are so excited to finally have space that really reflects the kind of innovative things they're doing. And

we heard that during the master plan process a lot is that they felt like the facilities were starting to hold them back.

Yes.

And that if they had just a little bit of help from the facilities, how much more they could do. Yeah.

And they said that in the workshops last week, like, We think our thinking is towards the Jetsons, but we are hindered by these buildings. And that was very clear. Thank you all very much. Anyone else have any questions or comments on the presentation?

So I just have one question along that same thread. So sometimes individuals aren't that great at self-assessment, and you guys have the benefit of having been in schools, as you said, here locally, whether it's Lindbergh or Ladue or even internationally. And so in your assessment, where do you think our school's facilities are on the spectrum of Flintstones to Jetsons? If Jetsons are a 10 and Flintstones are a zero? You

know, it's interesting. The era in which your, you know, Glenridge and Merrimack were built, we're talking now, what, nearly 100 years ago. But there was actually some, you know, a modicum of flexibility built into those buildings. Captain is a very different building, obviously. And it's, it was designed with these sort of, you know, almost open plans, grade-level areas. And so... It is indicative of the era in which it was built. The 1970s was, you know, the late 60s and early 70s, that was kind of the open plan era, and it's interesting that they remain open, actually. Many of those schools' partitions went up at some point to close them back in, and that's partly due to the teaching that was trying to be done in those was still... the type of teaching that was in Merrimack or Glenridge. I'm used to being in my own room type of thing. So I think your facilities, there's some mix there in terms of what you've got. But there's a long way that you can go at the same time, right? So I think that's where it's going to be interesting to see how do we take all these ideas from the workshops that we've had so far and now overlay that on top of those existing buildings and see how could we start to transform them to push them in the direction that the teachers like to take them.

And, by and large, in the in the workshops, I think there was a lot of forward thinking and those diagrams about how they wanted their ideal. You know core academic spaces to be arranged how they wanted to work as a team that was clear across all the elementary is that there was. you know, this team approach to teaching at their grade level. So some common things and some that are a little bit different at each school. I agree with what Steve said.

Yeah, Amy talked about a slide that was up on the screen that was called activity mapping. And this is always a telltale for me. And that is how they talk about, the gist of that is talk to us about the day in the life of or the week in the life of a student. What kind of work should they actively be doing? And if the answer comes back, well, sitting in lectures all day, then that tells you something, right? That's not what happens here. And I think you probably all know that, but there's a little bit of together time and then it's what they call the launch. You're now working on individual things, projects, group work. That was very instructive for us, I think, to be able to say, okay, they're trying, they're really working toward that sort of future ready side on the teaching and learning perspective, but you can tell from their conversations at the facilities that they could do so many more things if the facilities didn't get in their way.

Yeah, I think they mentioned at all three of the schools really that they really would love to do more collaborative work and have shared spaces among the grade levels Glenridge and Merrimack certainly don't have that ability at all, but that community feeling and wanting the three classrooms in a grade to have some shared space that they can collaborate, co-teach, teach together. I

heard that a lot. I did too, and what's neat about this is the idea that not only will our faculty and our students and everybody now have this large group space, but we're going to have Because of the plans and because of what we need, there's going to be all these little tiny rooms. So in addition to having the big places where we all get to come together, there's going Right now we have kids doing that in the hallway, right? And so we're trying to give them the education that this individualized one or two people need, but it has to happen in the hallway. Now that won't be the case. Now that we are planning out these places where smaller groups can really get this really powerful instruction, I just think it's going to make a huge difference.

Thank you. And thank you in advance for what's to come. Thank you. Appreciate you being here. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We will move on now to 8.2, which is our construction manager at risk. Actually, we have one more presentation from BLDD.

Oh. We have one more presentation. Oh, I

apologize. I

jumped

ahead. The

other architect we selected was BLDD Architects. Their package of work relates to our outdoor athletic facilities. And so I'd like to have them introduce themselves and give you an update as well.

Thank you. Sorry, I jumped ahead. Wrong page.

Good evening, and thanks for letting us come tonight. I recognize a few faces, but it's a pleasure meeting the rest of you. So what we'd like to do is just give a brief history overview of BLD Architects. We'll get into some introductions, a little project spotlights, and then get into the schedule a little bit, and then a broad kind of overview of the scope of the athletic projects. They're intentionally broad because our workshops start on Monday, the committee workshop meetings. So we'll get into more depth over the next coming months. So BLDD was started in 1929 in Decatur, Illinois. So we're coming up on 100 years. We've got 65 employees spread across our different offices. 80% of our work is K-12 work. That's what we know, that's what we're good at, and that's why we're here today. My name's Justin Plasek, principal in charge of this project. I manage our St. Louis office. Both my parents were high school teachers. Both of them were also high school coaches. I think I've spent half my life in schools. It's what I know, it's what I do. I'm also with me today, Laura Wunderlich. She's a senior associate, one of our best project managers out of our St. Louis office. And then I've got Nelson Musioka. He's a project team member. He's going to do a lot of the lion's share of the production as we get into these projects. Two people that will be instrumental. They couldn't be here tonight, but you'll see them in the future. I think you've met them, or a few of you have met them in the past. But one is John Whitlock. He's our president. He's also our athletic facility specialist. And then Todd Cyrillic, he's also principal and our education design director. So you will see plenty of them in the future. Like I said, we've been in business since 1929. We've done a lot of athletic facility projects for our various clients. These are just some background numbers for you all. Couple project spotlights. Again, top left, full stadium replacement for Springfield Landfear. That's a football field with soccer as well as the track and bleacher, press box, et cetera. Williamsville, another highlighted project on the top right and bottom right. Again, full stadium replacement from that school district. Then we've also done bleacher replacement and press box for Kirkwood School District. Laura will get into the project schedule and then we'll get into a little bit of kind of what we've been up to so far.

project schedule as you can see on the dates up on the screen our project kickoff was july 29th so we've got some work ahead of us but we're super excited about um learning about all the needs for the district and the community we got a lot of information from our scope meeting which was just on august 5th learned a lot about the collaboration between the district and the city of Clayton. So we have our first two committee workshops scheduled, one the first in the week of August 18th, and then one will be the week of September 1st. We want to get those two workshops in before our community meeting on September 10th. And then after that community meeting, we'll schedule our third workshop. Basically, we've invested in learning about the school district and the city of Clayton and the community wants. And there's a lot of information and a lot of wants and needs and not a lot of space to make all those wishes come true. So that's our challenge ahead of us. And I think our next slide is maybe Nels can talk about why down.

Correct, yeah. Nelson's going to get in a little bit of Y down. We'll get into improvements at Adzick Field and then really the other high school improvements both at Gatefield site as well as our current site here at Shaw Park.

Right. Hi. So for a wide on middle school with going for thinking about the update of the turf grass areas with a more resilient solution as well as adding a walking track of three lanes and then moving forward would do an improvement of safety and security as well as enhancing the learning environment and competition quality the

So during the interview process as well as meeting with AD Steve Hudson and Christine, Real to really understand some of the challenges with this white on middle school site certainly are well aware of the Parking structure underneath half of that and some of the challenges that the district has had to maintain that field for full use I think even meet with Christine there's 90 students every 90 minutes on that So just trying to maintain that a very safe environment And very durable. That's something we'll really get into in the future and provide it to few different options for the district to explore as well as the community to provide input on and High school scope, the first one is really Adzick Field, the baseball field. It's really completing that field up to the Clayton School District standards. So what we're really talking about is replacing those dugouts with brick dugouts that kind of gives that Clayton pride to this whole area, as well as that press box, making sure that brick goes along with it. I think there's probably opportunities to improve that with a few small restrooms down there, possibly concessions as we get into the project. The big thing, and this is something that we'll work through in the next couple of workshops, the community engagement, but it's really what is going to happen at either the Gayfield site with the existing stadium and the upgrades that are needed there. And possibly the last line item, which is probably the most important and probably the largest opportunity and the most exciting is exploring shared opportunities with the city of Clayton and how this can affect the school district of Clayton. I think what's important for, I guess, the challenges that we've been tasked to solve, it's really improving the outdoor PE and program support space for these athletic facilities, improving the safety and security of all these spaces, improve the competition environment, as well as all the facilities, either the Gayfield site, ADZIC, the Shaw Park area, as well as White Island. allow for program growth, and through these solutions, really reducing practice scheduling issues, game scheduling issues throughout both the fall and the spring. And as I mentioned, the biggest thing is just exploring the shared opportunities with Shaw Park. So that's where we stand right now. Next week is when we get there at the exciting moment to meet with the workshop committees, gather a lot of information, a lot of collaboration, hands-on activities, and then bring this forward to you guys at the next board meeting. So that's all we have for you tonight. We're excited to be here.

Thank you so much. I'm curious, when you say safety and security, what you're referring to. Is that traffic flow or actual security gates? Some

of it could be traffic flow. With Gayfield being a quarter mile away, it's how are we monitoring that site if that's where we're doing renovations. There are certain issues that... the public of using these facilities, even though I know you guys try not to let them or at least schedule it. So challenges with students or school personnel showing up and just outside users already there and trying to get the space back, right? So I would say just challenges with safety and security during the school day as well as after hours.

Thank

you.

Any other questions or comments for VLDD, anyone?

And that will probably become a little bit more important as we explore the opportunities with the City of Clayton and what can and cannot go at Shaw Park, right? Now we're going to be introducing more facilities around the larger community at times.

Well, thank you so much for that presentation. It's exciting. Appreciate you being here. Thank you. Thanks for the time. We're excited. Thank you. Does anyone need a bio break before we get into these interviews? Everyone good? What?

All

right, let's go. Okay. 8.2 is the construction manager at risk services for facility projects.

As we build our team on these facility developments, the next team member to be added is the construction manager. In earlier conversations this year, we decided to go down that path of construction manager at risk. We've received RFQs for this proposal. We had three companies submit. I've laid that out in the narrative to you. We also solicited RFPs from them for cost structures and contract provisions. The next step in this process is an interview before this body Policy and statute require that it be an open session We've provided you some suggested Questions, you're free to ask any question you want. We have two firms to be interviewed tonight The first one will be SM Wilson And you can proceed through your interview process and then after that ESI constructors will be the second interview the third party we did not request they are nothing Nothing to besmirch them at all. They're an up-and-coming firm We just didn't believe they had the bonding capacity and financial capacity to handle our projects So I'm gonna ask the firm that's not being interviewed We'll put them in a side room out of professional courtesy to let the other firm be interviewed The first one again is SM Wilson and I think Patrick Aylsworth is their lead partner.

Thank you So just as a Just to clarify the procedure here for the board There are six of us here tonight. You'll see we have 12 questions. So we're each gonna ask two We will go around the table Like John said, though, if any of us have any additional or follow up questions, please feel free to ask them. Everyone should have a sheet in front of them with the interview questions. Feel free to take notes so that we can make an informed decision later. Thank you so much. Okay. I wanna make sure everyone's settled. Okay, so like John said, this is SM Wilson here presenting to us first. Your microphones need to be turned on green when you're speaking just as a reminder

All right, thank you very much everyone good evening and we appreciate the opportunity to be here Real quick before we get into our presentation. We just want to introduce ourselves I'm Mark Cochran. I'm the chief operating officer for SM Wilson. I

I'm Nicole Vonderhaar, project director. My role is be the day-to-day project contact for you through construction to oversee the construction management team.

Patrick Aylesworth, market executive for SM Wilson. My role is to basically make sure our projects are a success for the district and to align our resources with your needs and your goals.

Mike Ashley my role in this project would be general superintendent I do the day-to-day with the teams in the field to make sure that quality control is being followed

Hi, I'm Omita Barnert, the Chief Marketing Officer. And with you in your packet, you have a skilled program, and I run the skilled program for us at Molson. It's our way for us to engage the student body throughout construction and turn it into an interactive learning experience. I'll also give you warning, the little booklets in your things play a video automatically, so I would save that for later.

So as we go through this tonight, we're going to really share a lot of our unique qualifications and items we bring to the table to you as the district. And we will use a custom website that we've designed specifically for Clayton Schools. This is something for our presentation tonight, but it's also something that we will use in the future in the project, and Nicole will cover some of those things. I will encourage you, we will not get through all the content that's on that. There are some great videos of our team members that aren't here today talking about this project and their excitement about it. There is a QR code on your placemat. Feel free to take a look at that in the future. So saying all that, we've spent the last two months really digging into this project, studying the demographics study, the community engagement process, the long-term master facilities plan. It really drove... the team we assembled, and you'll hear more about that, and our proposal we put together. So we're really excited about that, and listening to the discussions earlier today, it reinforces our belief that we understand that schools and building these buildings, there's a lot more than that. The building is just a very small part of this, and really the deep impact that schools have on the livelihood of communities and the future of communities. Just sharing Annabelle's story, this past weekend I stuck my two daughters into a middle school that we're renovating With BLDD and just watching, it's a 100-year-old building, watching their eyes light up and having that go, Dad, this is amazing. And they're sending pictures to their friends. And, you know, it just makes me think about it's more than just pouring concrete at the end of the day. So that's really how we approach a lot of the work we do. And you'll see that as we go through here. Our processes, programs, we've created efficiencies with our vast experiences with school districts throughout both Missouri and Illinois, including your districts. when we built White Island Middle School and worked at the high school previously. So all those things being said, our promise to you is we're going to execute this program through the lens of you, the students, the community, the parents, the staff. That's our promise to you, and we'll put them first over everything else as we go through this. Recognize that we're a much smaller part of your overall vision at the end of the day. We're going to build a building that's a lot more for us at the end of the day. We want to ensure your vision of educating, inspiring, empowering is communicated, and we uphold that ability for you with these new facilities as we move forward. So as we go through the rest of the presentation, you'll hear some of those unique attributes and solutions and values we'll bring in, and the team will jump into that. Patrick?

Thanks, Mark. I want to highlight some of the keys to success for Clayton is really the pre-bond planning services. And so this is a significant differentiator for SM Wilson. We have a wealth of experience doing the pre-bonds planning services for over 20 successful pre-bond projects, including two here at Clayton for Y down in your high school. At SM Wilson, our process is really specifically designed around public K-12 work And please remember, there's six of us here tonight for presentation. There's many team members back at home office that are chomping at the bit to get involved. Stepping back, we understand the critical dates ahead of us. We understand that September, October, you obviously want to get your community involved. That's really important. At the end of December for your board meeting, the bond language needs to be finalized with that funding to support these projects. And finally, next April, for the vote to go to ballot. So we're gonna work with that in mind and hit these milestones and make sure that the projects are successful, set up for those milestones. I also wanna highlight our collaboration with your design firms. We've delivered eight education building programs with your design firms collecting a total of $270 million. And really step one here is aligning scope and budget. And so all these projects are important, whether we're talking about the high school, your athletic upgrades and your elementary schools. We're gonna help drive the priorities to establish some confidence when it comes to the budget and the schedule. Paragon already has some great work here that we can look at for the master facility plan, but specifically with your elementary schools, doing some feasibility studies and some cost models to give your board the information they need to make some decisions and get your community involved there. with a North Star being your budget. As the RFP says, maybe $100 million. We'll use that as our guiding light and make sure we're a good steward of the district funds. This will be a transparent process. We make recommendations to the board and we'll also work to keep the team on track. We're ready to roll up our sleeves and get involved in this process. Getting with design firms, programming sketches to develop some pricing on these projects and really set up these collaboration meetings to get going. Some examples of projects that SM Wilson's completed that are very similar to Clayton include Ladue, Pattonville, Northwest, Jeff City and Columbia. To highlight some wins that we bring from Ladue for instance is really getting creative and working on temporary classrooms inside their buildings to help move the students around to help unlock areas for renovations. This saved the district millions of dollars avoiding temporary trailers. The other piece is the phasing was critical for those projects, so we worked with Perkins & Will to get that memorialized into the bidding documents. Switching gears to Northwest, the win there was target value delivery and working with Paragon to maximize the amount of projects we could build for Northwest. And again, all these projects I mentioned are on track to be on schedule and under budget. With that, I'll hand it to our team lead, Nicole.

Hi. Thank you, Patrick. I'm Nicole Vonderhaar, project director. My role as the project director is to be your main project contact for the project. I would be overseeing the project team on a day-to-day basis all the way from pre-construction through completion to provide you with a consistent team and a consistent delivery. throughout the project we will have this custom website that will house a financial dashboard similar to what we see there kind of give you an update financial status at any point you can go on there and get enough data where we are in the project it'll also house project photo updates and weekly project updates this is a great tool that we could use at board meetings giving updates on where we are with each of the projects As well as it just could be used for the community, sharing updates. I'm sure they'll be interested in knowing what's going on. If there's an area of the school that has to be closed down for renovation, it could help with that communication for parents picking up, dropping off. Pretty much an open communication platform to help with that construction process, because we know sometimes that can be confusing through the chaos. But trying to make that easy and making that an open collaborative process. Honestly, through this, our goal for you is to give this an efficient and the most collaborative approach that we can so you can oversee and manage these projects with us. To share some of my recent experience, I am currently wrapping up a school project with Columbia Public Schools. It was a $66 million project on their three campuses. First one was a brand new elementary school. We built that from the ground up A two-story, 76,000 square foot new building. It's beautiful. Turning it over for school. Second one is an addition onto an elementary school, adding on a storm shelter. And the third one is an addition and renovation onto their career area technical school. Our team that we've put together has an amazing experience working with school districts, and we have so much experience working with multiple project locations such as yours as well as occupied campuses. I'll pass it over to Mike Ashley to talk about his general superintendent role.

Thanks, Nicole. Evening, everyone. What I'm going to bring to the table is basically oversight of the project. I've spent the majority of my career doing schoolwork. My last two jobs have been with the Ladue School District. I've done both of those bond projects. I did the high school, and most recently I did the three schools in their system over there that we did during COVID, which was a challenge in itself, but we brought all those on. time some of the things that I typically do and that we have all our guys do is get involved with the neighbors there's been times where I do one instance over there was you know I worked as a crossing guard one couple weekends or tried to help some of the students go across but one of the things I want to emphasize is safety it's very set up in such a way to where with the experience that we bring to it is that I make sure that our guys are isolated from your staff and your students. We try to act as if it's a totally isolated area and that works well. You know, we all know what goes on in schools nowadays with some of the things and so we're very conscious of that. We try to enforce it to make sure that I don't have students under me, but I have a lot of construction workers that they need a lot of guidance. And so that's what we do is we try to make sure that they understand that these are the policies that we have in place. I get involved in the very beginning. I get involved the design part of it. We do the pre-construction. I also get involved I take it personally, I do live next to a school, so I bring that in and I try to consider that the neighbors are a big part of living around a school. The other thing that communication is key, and one of the ways that I kind of instituted over at Ladue, which worked really well, was that Our superintendents will send out a daily email to your staff members, and typically it's the principal and then maybe some of your maintenance guys, directors, to let them know what we're anticipating that day. I also like feedback from... District because we're a team What you've got going on and where I'm gonna go with that is is that we've had a couple instances where you guys are bad Grandparents day. Well, guess what? There's probably twice as many cars there that day and it impacts us So it's great to have communication both ways which works out really well but the other thing is is I establish a lot of relationships with a lot of your staff and I've gone back to Ladue High School recently doing a couple things over there that we had some security upgrades and principal came up to me Brad knew me from a job that we did basically seven years ago you know we're on a first name basis we worked very well together so that's what we're going to be looking for is the same type of relationship with you guys that's basically what I'm going to do and I'll turn it over to Patrick

Thanks, Mike. SM Wilson is committed to go beyond the build for Clayton. This is not a standard project team. We have handpicked our team members to best fit Clayton's needs, and they've all helped deliver future focused learning environments. We're not going to just estimate these projects. We're going to proactively establish the budgets to bring solutions to the table. We're not just going to build safely. We're also going to knock on doors with your community and so your neighbors are aware of our construction operations. This commitment is from the top down, from our president, Mike Yazbek, all the way through our home office and team members that will work for you. We're committed to your community with our skilled program, website, building tours, videos, and social media, just to name a few, to get in touch with your kids and your community. Over the next six months, S.M. Wilson will partner with the administration, the board and the staff, your design firms, to help solidify a program that delivers future-ready learning spaces, meeting the needs of your community, and setting a stage for a successful bond issue. That concludes our presentation. Thank you so much. And open for questions or clarifications?

Thank you so much, that was great. I appreciate it. Appreciate so many of you being here. As I mentioned earlier, we've prepared 12 questions. There are six of us board members here so I think we'll go around twice so that we each ask two and I would just again to the board if you have follow-up questions, clarifying questions, additional questions please feel free to ask those as well but I thought we could start with the ones that we've prepared and we'll just go around. We haven't pre-assigned them or anything. So I'll just start with Jason. And question number one. I'm just going clockwise, that's all.

Such an honor. No, thank you guys. That was a really great presentation. Appreciate the information. My question, my first question is, what costs are included in the guaranteed maximum price and what costs are explicitly excluded?

So when we think about that, there's a discussion when we think about a guaranteed maximum price. Within the contract terms, you typically define cost of work. And really, that is what is required to physically build that space. There are a lot of times instance they have a third party inspection for structural steel as an example that we are not allowed legally for building code to carry the cost that would be a cost that would be outside of that but we as a cm will track a total program budget and that's something that we basically have a responsibility chart that we outline at the beginning of the project and we'll have a column that is for We'll have a corner that's for architect cost. And we'll sit down and talk about those and outline what those are well before we ever get into a discussion about numbers. And then at the end, it's not a situation where, hey, here's a GMP. Oh yeah, that should have been in your bucket. That is clearly identified in that responsibility matrix for the GMP.

Thanks. Turn on your mic. Turn on your

if the project costs exceed the GMP due to unforeseen circumstances. I'm sure that happens actually all the time. Patrick,

do you want to? Yeah. So in a lot of ways, we have great discussions with our K-12 clients essentially to establish maybe a contingency, construction contingency, to basically absorb your point there is that sometimes there are unforeseen soil stabilization, moisture mitigation of the floor, hot, cold weather allowances. Those are discussions that we would love to have, again, mutually agreeable to understand where those risks lie and to get those line items in there. And this is a fully transparent process where we will show you exactly what those line items are and make sure that it's agreeable, again, to both parties.

Just to add to that, I think there are also, to Patrick's point, if we run into an abandoned fuel tank underground that was not on any reports or anything, that's an unforeseen condition. There would be a discussion about that. If the project is running two months behind schedule for no reason besides our management of that and it cost us $200,000 in cost, that's coming out of our fee at the end of the day, or if our fee is gone, it's coming out of out pocket. So there's definitely situations like that. it's determining and defining what an unforeseen condition is sorry

can i ask a follow-up question yeah maybe and and we don't need to know district names or anything but maybe you can summarize like a live example of when this has happened and how you guys partnered with your client to resolve the issue sure i mean i think uh because like i get it like we're all going to sit down we're going to talk about it that's great but like okay so then then what right so how

schedule where we had a subcontractor who went out of business at the end of the day and we had to find, that's our liability because it's underneath our contract, we had to find a replacement subcontractor and deal with the schedule impacts of that and the financial impacts of that. And we, S.M. Wilson, ended up paying a lot of money out of our pocket associated with that. That's a situation that wasn't in control or unforeseen. It was a risk we took Here at Construction Management Risk, it's SM Wilson that's at risk for that. That's an example where we took that risk. Another example is we have- How about an

example where it would have turned out bad for us? You know what I mean? Like you found something underground. Now you've got to say like, hey guys, let's sit down and talk about this, right? That's what we're going for

here. Like the fuel tank example. We had a client out in central Missouri that Patrick and I worked on there. They knew there was a school that had been torn down, as an example, in this area where they were going to add an addition. The school wanted us to take the unforeseen conditions route and own that risk. And we were fine with that, but also one of the things we suggested is let's go spend $2,000 and do some exploratory holes and dig up and see if the soil was compacted and did some other things. So that's part of our job is to partner with you up front and really dig into these details and try to capture all of the potential issues that we have with this job, but not be so conservative that, you know, Yeah, we can't do that. We gotta align that program and that cost at the end of the day, what Patrick talked about in the target value. Okay, all right.

So it sounds like in a lot of those cases you guys are trying to kind of delineate between what is within your sphere of control and what is outside your sphere of control. And a lot of that's going to have to do with how much due diligence is done on these sites ahead of time, whether there's a phase one or phase two environmental assessment, those types of things. Because if that had been done, you would have known there was a tank underneath, right? It wouldn't have been an issue to begin with. And so as part of your process as we go into this, not knowing exactly are we building non-existing sites? Are we going to new sites? There's so much uncertainty around the design uncertainty with respect to geography and the design with where we are in the project right now that how much advice or counsel are you guys giving up front before we get into that so that we can avoid even having to have those discussions?

That's our role. We come on board and essentially we're helping to push that due diligence from that consultant in terms of what they can do with a phase one, phase two. We also deploy, as Mark mentioned, a couple thousand dollars to scan, GPR scan that site and really understand we knew there was old footings there. We knew something was there. Let's find out exactly what it is. Then let's talk as a team. How do we define that risk and eliminate that risk essentially for the project?

It looks different. So a new build on a new site, you're focused on what's underground. Once we get out of the ground, the risk discussions go away somewhat. But on the remodel discussions or additions, we're going to be diving into looking at as-built drawings from 100 years ago, looking back at the pencil drawings on that stuff. We're going to go in and we're going to pop in ceilings. We're going talk to you about cutting holes in some hard ceilings to take a look at some things. So that's where that feasibility of additions or remodels That helps us price that stuff up.

And you think you guys are going to be able to do a lot of that work prior to some of the timelines that we saw get put up, so between now and middle of September? Yep.

As Patrick said, we got a slew of people ready to

go. Yeah, we are ready to join the team. The interior scans is another way that we use to help with the renovation work, right? So again, we can do that. We can get these 3D point clouds and essentially help push those to Paragon, Perkins of Will. They can drop those in their model. They have the existing conditions. That's not to say it'll cover all of what unforeseen may be when you open up the walls and we uncover some of those. But again, we're doing the efforts on the front end to your point to help mitigate some of those risks.

We'll be doing it this time of night, too.

OK.

Leo, number three.

I'm actually going to follow up a little bit, too. And this is just partly my trying to wrap my head around and understand the construction manager at risk. So the big advantage of this for our district is, you know, for any of this, I guess, is kind of the certainty that it's not going to go above a certain price. So is that... Is that an unlimited risk that you guys are taking on? I mean, what's the scope of that? I mean, it could go.

Yeah, it's defined on those drawings and specs. And that's why you're hiring a CMAR is we're going to get on board now in the very early programming SDD, DCD. We are helping evolve that design. So we're going to flush out a lot of these issues on paper. Yeah,

no, I understand that.

But then the GMP will be based on that set of documents, and a lot of times we will bookend those with the phase one. Maybe it's the high school. I'm just throwing out ideas. Then the next piece may be the elementary schools. The next piece would be the athletics. But they're based on those specific drawings and specs for guaranteed max. Those are presented to the board. We go through to make sure you understand those exhibits properly.

No, it can't be an unlimited risk that we assume. There's a business assumption that we're all in here. So our job is really to look at the total risk, but then it's a discussion of allocation of where those risks are. So for the unforeseen underground conditions discussion, we're going to talk about what that risk may be and quantify that risk and identify it and include it with the budget discussion, but contractually.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, John, I may have a follow-up question for you. Anyway, what happens with cost savings if the project comes in under the guaranteed minimum price?

That's a clause in the contract we're willing to negotiate. Obviously, there's different percentages on what shared savings could be. We have clients that do 70-30, 80-20. Again, the incentive there is for us as a CM to help save those dollars, right? We get a little, you know, whatever that percentage is at SMOs and savings, the rest of it comes back to the district. We also have other districts that want zero savings there, and absolutely all the funding would then come back to Clayton. But again, just thinking about the mechanism there and what Incentive may be for your CEO our firm essentially to help save every little dollar along the way I mean overall we're gonna be stewards of the district finances period but

How are change orders managed and priced under the GMP I

Yeah, so change orders would be reviewed by myself. So we would submit that, whatever the changes, design change, unforeseen, would go out to the subcontractors. They would review it, send their pricing in to me. I would collect that, review it, make sure it is within prized materials, labor looks reasonable, and submit that to the architect team to review. And then it would come to the owner to take a look at, discuss it at the board, and decide if that's a change that you would like to proceed with or not.

follow-up question so are the change orders usually initiated by by let's say us or the school district or are there other things that factor into change orders and how they kind of come about

majority of the change orders i would say is it's a design change maybe something that changes along the way something you initially planned to do and didn't exactly turn out exactly how you were wanting it so you might want to make a design change along the way um or we could say something like those unforeseen changes which maybe something we had an allowance in the budget for. If we had an allowance for, like we talked about the fuel tank, we said hey, we knew that was there, we put X amount of dollars set aside for that, that could be an owner allowance and once we find out what that specific value is, we would submit that towards that allowance and you say yes, you can use X amount of dollars from that allowance to use towards that issue.

Sorry, I have a follow-up specific to that. So do you typically – is it best practice that it's a – is it a dollar one change order request or is there a minimum dollar threshold? Where do you guys find that from a project management standpoint in order to not sacrifice speed for efficiency and everything else, like – I know it's size of the project and everything else, but is it $0, $1, under $5,000, under $500? At what point does that change order trigger the involvement of has to come to the board, has to go to the next level committee in your process?

Yeah, so explaining a $0 change to what Nicole's saying If there's a contingency allowance all agreed upon and the dollars are coming from there, it's a zero dollar. We're just changing from one bucket to another. It's going from an allowance to the subcontractor. Everyone's agreeing upon that. To answer your question, we are not going to come in here with $1, $2, $50. No. These are substantial changes, and we have to, again, prove entitlement if those are going above what's already established budget on that line item. smaller things. SM Wilson, again, we take care of a lot of these items to your point. Schedule needs to happen. Milestones we need to hit. We are going to absorb a lot of those costs and be able to move the project forward. By the way, in that construction contingency, we're going to track those items so you can see essentially what those dollars amount might be. But they don't necessarily come as a change order to the board level, if that makes

sense. Typically, we see most districts handling any of those. CFO in that role of that capacity that Unless it's some major, you know, it's adding an addition 10,000 square foot addition to you know a building that wasn't planned for because most of our again our job is to plan for the program cost of that and manage that within Within that typically we don't see that coming, you know a $2,000 change or coming to board for approval. I

How do you recover and get back on schedule when construction has fallen behind schedule?

Mike can speak to this, but look, we're always looking for efficiencies in the field. Phasing is a big part of that and overlapping trades and unlocking areas. We can cane a lot of efficiencies there. And so we will build realistic schedules. We want to work to your end dates, obviously school. You know, we want to turn over in June because we know August is going to be the start of school. So we're going to build in that time for owner move-in, getting you ready for that next year. But yeah, there's a lot of efficiences. Mike's done a lot throughout the years to get creative on that. I've

worked a lot of weekends. So that's one way we do it The big thing is to manage it as we're going don't let it get behind Trying you know and especially as a cost-saving thing We make sure that we're assessing it early the reason is because the later it gets your skilled trades they call themselves, but your mechanical guys, your electricians, those guys, those are a lot more expensive than the general trades that we typically have. So you want to

get...

Anything over an eight or nine hour day, they want more. That's why we try to manage that up front and get that back on track. We typically do a three week schedule, sometimes four or five that we're doing in the field. It's more realistic. You guys will have access to that and see where we're at with stuff. Here again, next Monday, 18th, everybody's going back to school and we're We're ready for it, but like I said, I'm not going to lie to you. It's been a rough summer trying to get some of these things done, and people, you know, trade force, there's not a lot of people in the trades anymore, so we don't have the workforce that we used to be able to pull from, so that's why the weekends have become a necessity more or less this summer to get things done.

We did make a significant technology investment two years ago in a program that is really – because we've seen this challenge coming. We've seen the labor pool decreasing, working overtime, just getting more crew isn't the answer. It doesn't work anymore. So we invested in a program called Smart PM that really analyzes at a very – it's basically a delay analysis in it. looks at things right away every month and every time you update it every week and says here's where the problems are. And it's not just the critical path problems, it's all the work that was supposed to start that didn't get to start. And Nicole uses that to really talk to Mike and look at that stuff. And we've seen a lot of positive benefits from just our trade partners understanding the impacts they're having by, they're supposed to be working here, it's not critical path but they don't go there and then a month later We're going, hey, you need 20 people here. And they go, well, I only plan on 10. Well, that's because you didn't start this stuff. So those are the things that technology has helped us a lot with that. Because the old adage of working weekends or just getting more people hasn't been working in the last five years.

Thank you. Can you please give an example of a project that had a supply chain issue or a lead time issue? And how were you able to overcome that while maintaining the schedule, the project schedule?

I'll give you a real good example. We did the due project, the most recent one, where COVID was hitting, things were shutting down, no one knew what we were gonna be able to buy. So what we did is, We actually went out and bought, we had three schools going. We actually went ahead and got all of the insulation and all the roofing materials for it because obviously you need a roof on the building in order to complete your interior. So what we did in that instance is I rented a warehouse and I got 52 truck loads, tractor trailer loads of material in that warehouse and we staged out of that warehouse. So the district had a committed cost already because they knew what that was gonna be. We bought it, put it in there. And then for the next two years, we took it out of that warehouse. And at the end of it, I turned the warehouse back over. So it worked out really well. But that's a way of us controlling costs and also knowing what's ahead of us. That's what we did.

Thank you. And I guess a follow-up would just be not just supply chain issues or lead time issues, but have there been any projects that you've worked on where there were any major issues that you look back on now saying, I wish we had done something differently.

Or could have

handled something better. Yeah,

we've got our finger on the pulse in terms of the market. So I guess to answer your question, electrical Equipment and gear and all so we've had that learning curve, but look we're up to speed with that now And so to your point we're gonna work with Paragon Perkinson will to get those early packages out first thing To get the clock started on that material procurement by the time we you know shovels hit the ground So there's a lot of those instances that we work through with the team to make sure those are the packages ready

end of the day goes through every job to say all of our stuff is still there perfectly every time but but because we're a k-12 builder we have patrick alluded to all these people back in the office they are watching that pricing they know what's going on in the market and every time and I mean these team members sitting here today have built so much and they sometimes lose track of the fact that look at all this collaborative knowledge they've pulled together but you don't have that understanding of that deep bench that's back when we do. So it's really about looking back and saying how can we make this project even more efficient than the last project.

Thanks.

Are you seeing tariffs affect construction costs? And if so, how? We

had bets on this question.

What was the bet and who won? That's my follow-up question.

So Mike gets to answer. There

it is, right?

So you won.

Think at the end of the day we we have not seen a significant impact today from terrorists There wasn't a lot of discussions about it, but it's something we evaluate and you know one of the Challenges when you have this discussion now is that's gonna be in seven or eight months when we're procuring this project at the end day So we've had discussions in the past where we proactively think about to the point we buy stuff Early when we know we can we also have a discussion about what is that pricing risk? arranged for contract arrangements with subcontractors where it's a shared risk, where they have the material price according to indexes. So that's one thing we use a lot is the indexes. So there are tons of indexes out there that'll tell you what the actual price was. You'll hear a million people tell you that it went up 20% every month for steel pipe for fire sprinkler. But when you actually look at the index or the asphalt index from MoDOT, the reality is something different. I think that's the one thing we really dig into deeply and look at that.

I think, I mean, your point is right. I think a lot, and across industries, a lot of these prices haven't really been baked into end-user costs or end-user prices yet. But I guess maybe a more on-point question for the timing of our project would be, do you know that your projects have sourced a lot of raw materials from countries that might be at risk for higher tariffs? Like, are you like, oh, this country, you know, we get a lot from, I mean, just China, right? We get a lot from China, and so therefore this, Two years from now might be an issue, right? Do you know of anything like that where you get your raw materials from

no I'll say that it's probably I see elevator contractors trying to be the And frankly, it was in a warehouse somewhere in the States. But again, our job is to really push back on that and really dig into the details to understand that. I mean, we were in that issue with switchgear a lot three or four years ago, one on the delivery, but also the pricing side of life. And, you know, at the end of the day, you found out that, hey, it was just this breaker that was coming from overseas. The cabinet was built here, all these other components. So that's our job is to really dig into that. We don't just take a blind, hey, here's my 20% price increase, give me a change order. Our job is to really... delving to that but your point there's a all the components of these products it's really hard to know exactly where some of

those things are coming from some of the checks and balances that we do too is the design team may have specified a specific one when you check the lead time on it's two years out and we'll suggest to them that hey We can get square D over here, and it's comparable. It's totally equal to it, and we can get it in less time. So that's one of the jobs that we try to make sure of too.

So that would be index pricing you talked about? If you're looking at a commodity like steel, is that how you're holding it? There's subs and suppliers. I

can see exactly what the global price is. There's the buy price too, right? So you hear those indices.

So were you hedging your- Well, not

hedging, but you know what you're buying it for in the market. And so there are some steel suppliers that maybe-

Have taken a position? No, no. Okay. That happens a lot. Yeah.

That happens a

Yeah, so you find somebody who's taking a long position or you guys know if somebody's taking a long Position on steel we see that

happen a lot with lumber and steel the one that an index plays a lot more a lot of times is Asshole because typically when you think about a project is we're gonna go bid a project out And you may not put that asshole down for two years There's a risk there that has to be addressed because what we don't want is we don't want an ultra-inflated number on bid day, and then those material price increases they thought were going to happen don't happen, and we collectively also paid a lot more for that product at the end of the day. Those are the type of ones that are so far out that they can't take a long position on it. We use those indexes sometimes on that, specifically asphalt's a good example of that.

Okay, I got the next question. What's your typical process when a project estimate is over budget during the pre-construction phase? I think we've already kind of covered this, but.

We'll come up with a lot of options. Yeah. And again, that just continues as an iterative, you know, kind of more collaborative process. That's the CMAR partnering with your design firms.

I think one thing to think, Patrick mentioned target value delivery, and really our intent here is to continue building momentum. Any Anytime something comes in over budget, we're taking two steps back. So our job is to really outline expectations with Paragon, Perkinsville, and BLDD and show them what our estimate is based on at a granular level. So we make an assumption that we've got 500 cubic yards of concrete in this floating and foundation package. That's our expectation from them on design, and it's coming from years of experience to know, hey, we built tons of these schools. We know that this is a typical column foundation pad When you effectively aim small, then you miss small at the end of the day. We're really looking at going, hey, we can have a discussion, but we're not gonna have a discussion about you have 1,000 yards of concrete. If they come back with a design that has 1,000 yards concrete, we're gonna start talking about that. But we're gonna outline that expectation. We're expecting a six by six column footing on the inside that's two foot thick. We want you to design around that. So that's really what we're trying to do is keep building momentum. And we talked about the short duration here is we can't afford to take a step back. So that's our job is

How do you ensure your construction bidding process complies with state statutes for public bidding?

So we have spec link is the software but builds full custom front ends for K through 12 public projects. We've done, you know, hundreds of these so we absolutely understand the statute requirements, you know, the drug testing the background checks that he verify the OSHA requirements all that it's all in the SMS package so we're ready to go again working with your designers really to get. The budget and scope alignment, getting those drawings ready, and then we're really soliciting those bidders and helping to get maximum bids for Clayton is the most important as well.

And then doing public bid openings with you present. That's what we do on all our projects is we have those public bid openings with with you, with representatives from the school to make sure we're compliant.

Do you intend to self-perform any work?

We do a lot of the temporary partitions that makes it safe as far as, you know, if we're going to isolate an area where we're going to be working in, a lot of times we'll build those things. As far as like installing casework and cabinets, we're capable of doing that. We just look at it, what's going to get you the best value for your money.

Mike and his team of superintendents to really focus on the construction and not worrying about calling for concrete or making sure he's meeting production rates on that the other thing we see typically is when you You know to the public bidding discussion when you're indicating your bidding this work. You tend to see less bitter response because people think you have an unfair advantage because it is very critical for us to get three plus bidders on every bid package we put out. From our perspective, we see a very large variance between number one and number two if we only have two bidders. When we get to three bidders, that variance gets down to five, six percent at most. So that's what we're focused on. We're not focused on trying to on your project overall at the end of the day.

So if you were to do some self-performing work, what would be the benefit to the school district?

Some of the examples, and Mike brought up temporary discussions. So if we had a temporary guardrail that had to be put up to protect students for safety-wise, and it's an hour worth of work, if we put that in a bid package with an undefined quantity of discussions The office and get a carpenter come over for an hour You'd only pay for an hour versus more likely you're gonna pay for four or eight hours for someone to come That's fair so typically

it's gonna be fairly small yeah, okay, I think that's covered it yeah

In the construction manager at risk process what financial risks are retained by the owner I

typically design side, geotechnical testing, special testing inspections. Those things are kind of outside the GMP, and we'll make sure you understand that because we have kind of a total budget scorecard, we call it, and those will be down kind of in the owner section. So we'll make sure we talk through those, and those are items, again, that are procured directly through the district. We can help, obviously, make sure you're on time with those, and we're getting those activities on board when we need them for the schedule, but those will be directly contracted through Clayton.

Typically the asbestos removal is also covered by the district And we run into that especially on the older buildings, you know and a lot of times though We'll go in and maybe they took it all up except for maybe underneath something that they didn't want to move or whatever So then we have to deal with that so that would be something that the district would be We didn't call it call you guys because you have to have the chain of command on custody on that So that's why that's done that way

Okay, a big one. Why should the school district of Clayton select SM Wilson?

I think the biggest reason is our experience. The sheer wealth of knowledge here with pre-bond planning. We are ready to go. We're ready to help jump on board with your design firm. your community and really get these projects moving forward on the right foot we understand these deadlines we understand we can't keep going back you know to reinvent something or go backwards in design so that's really what this team brings and again just the leadership of nicole and mike and kind of what they will lead in terms of these specific project teams you know and that's that's essentially what we're bringing and the reason why the district should look for us

kind of a selfish thing for me, but I've worked in a lot of districts and to work at Clayton so I mean it would kind of round out my portfolio I guess would be the best way to put it. I was thinking the other day how many different districts I've worked in and I've hit almost all the major ones in St. Louis so it would be nice to finish it out with Clayton and have a nice thing to look at. I'm very proud of what I do. I mean it's a good feeling and you talked about your students earlier. It's really nice and it's a great feeling to go into a school where And we get our kids involved in it. They get to see how we're building things. Some of the schools nowadays, I'm a product of Parkway, but some of the schools that I've worked in recently, they're almost like college campuses. It's incredible how some of the upgrades and things they're doing. But I think the kids seem to be happier in a new environment. It seems that way anyway. But I'd love to be able to do it.

Thank you. I'm curious if Nina has any questions for them about what they do. No pressure, but...

You talked about how you like to get students involved in the process, which I definitely agree with. Is there a specific plan you implement at every project you do? Or does it depend on the extent of how you're doing things and what kind of district you're working in?

Yeah, good question. So every district we work in, we do create a custom skilled plan. Because depending on what we're building, we just finished a new early childhood center in Jefferson City. And so with those kids, preschool kids, we went in and we read construction stories to them and we engaged, we had them draw, we had them do different opportunities. But here when we would get to work with high school kids, we actually integrate with like your geometry and construction classes. And we try to help put that into the actual curriculum. And we say these are all the careers and things that you can do. your door and let's see how what you've learned in the classroom relates to what's going on outside your classroom so it's a great question and we really like to get the administration and the students involved i've spoken with catalyst before great organizations get involved there as well and skilled is something that's near and dear to our heart because we built so many schools and

Any further questions from the board? Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate you being here, thank you. We're gonna take a little break.

Wow. I live over in Alexander, so I have an interest in this. I'm here with Steve Schrage, and he'll talk more about himself a little bit, but Steve has been with us 20... Six years, 26 years. He will be our project director and would be involved all the way through. Paul Shamatero here on my right has been with us only 25 years, and he would be leading our pre-construction. He's our director. He'd be leading that. Both these guys are super smart professional engineers. Steve's got his master's in structures. Paul graduated from Washington University. Paul started with us as an intern, and Steve started with us right out of school, so... We'll talk a little bit more about why continuity and low turnover is good for the client, and I really believe it makes a big difference. So a little overview on our company. We are family- and employee-owned, so I'm a family member. I'm second generation. We have three generations at our company. Paul and Steve are both significant owners also. Clayton Konechigan, I've lived here for a long time. We have a very local focus. So when you talk about where do we focus our efforts, we're not like eastern Missouri, southern Illinois. We are St. Louis, St. Louis metro area, particularly central core. It fits with the way we think of our business, the fact that we believe that active senior management, walking the job site on a regular basis makes a world of difference. So this is what fits in our business. That's why we like to stay close to home. 90% of our projects are CM at risk, which is the model that you have all selected. We think it's a great pick. It's mostly what we do now. They talked about extremely little turnover as some of the lowest turnover in the industry These are not the only 25 year plus people at our company. We've got a lot of that we've had we started a policy But gosh was it 20 years ago, maybe 25 years ago We had our first person at 30 years with our companies. I could do something special so we Gave him a $10,000 trip. I thought that's pretty cool. I Had we known we'd have 19 people in 30 years, we might have thought again. But anyway, we're happy to do that. And we've even had to raise it with inflation now. So now I want to tell you, so we're in a very tough industry that is a lot of legal work happens. We've never been in a lawsuit in 53 years with a client or architect. We have no legal budget. We just try to do what we say, stand behind our work, and things tend to work out that way. And we'll talk more about this. We have an unusually good history of controlling costs and meeting budgets. You know, we'll talk more what we mean by that. A little bit about our experience. So again, mostly CM at risk work. You know, obviously Clayton is an elite school district, one of the best certainly in our area of the country. We know that you turn out some of the top students and they go to the best schools and all that. And so we know it's a top school. We work for a lot of elite organizations who can pick whoever they want to work for them. Forest Park Forever we've done many projects there we're working on the Steinberg right now the big 6500 Steinberg St. Louis Symphony Orchestra A big project wrapping up, it'll open. The grand opening is the 20th, September 20th. $150 million project. They could pick anybody they wanted, they picked us. St. Louis Public Library is including, we've done several of those, including the St. Louis Central Library, Sawyer's Memorial Military Museum, the City Garden. For the Gateway Foundation, History Museum, Minnesota Historical, we've done seven projects for them over the years. Pulitzer Foundation, Missouri Botanical Garden, done about 35 projects there over the years. So we get to work for a lot of top institutions in St. Louis. We work a lot in Clayton. Our really first, well not our first experience, but a couple things that we did in Clayton back when we were doing more hard bed work, which we don't really do anymore very much. Shaw Park Pool, we redid Shaw Park Pool and got it done through a horrible winter, opened it in time for Memorial Day. The Clayton Firehouse Station. More recently, Emerson's Headquarters. Energizers headquarters, we're doing the condominium building that's probably driving you crazy with the lane we're taking over by Straub's. We're sorry for that. Commerce Bank, we did their headquarters. We're working on a ninth project over there in their tower. Cole Renat, an early childhood center for them. It's our third project for them. And then the Ritz-Carlton building Don Alfonso, the atrium, the cigar club, the lobby. We're doing the ballroom right now. So we like Clayton, love working close to home. We know the building department really well. Great relations with all the people over there. And we do a lot of K-12 work too. I kind of focus on things that are kind of close to here. Now, most of our work historically has been private school. And why is that? It's because for many years, public schools couldn't do CM at Risk. So since CM at Risk is our model, we end up doing most of our work with private schools like community school recently did a job there. St. Louis U High have done nine projects consecutively for them. Hopefully get a theme, a lot of repeat business. It's kind of our thing. St. Joe Academy, six projects. MICDS. STEM BUILDING, JUST DID THEIR TENNIS CENTER, BASEBALL FIELD, What was the other field we're doing? Field hockey. Field hockey and the lower school. We're working on the lower school right now. So, again, the theme, a lot of repeat business working in the central corridor. And then Lindbergh Schools is, we think, a very important example. We don't normally bid work, as I said, but we did bid to Lindbergh High School. It was during COVID, and we had had about – a third of our work canceled in about three days and then there was this bid opportunity so we put together a bid and we're the successful bidder on their 85-month-old high school which was interesting because we don't normally do that but it showed that we are able to get competitive and get the best bids to be able to get low on a job like that from that It was a very good experience. Lindbergh, I don't know, did we help persuade, encourage them to try CM at Risk, Steve?

They were intrigued by it, especially after learning about us and knowing that we do most of our work as CM at Risk. And so they kind of dipped their toe in the water on the Idea Center, which is their gifted center. And it was about a $5.5 million job. So they just wanted to try something small and see how it went. It was a big success so then their current bond issue that we're working for now is a CM at risk model.

Right. Which will mostly pretty well be done in the field before we would start on anything here. So the team that you saw in our proposal if you saw our proposal is populated primarily with Lindbergh people coming right off that job. So you have a good way to know gee how how are these people. and because these are the same people be coming over and you can see how they do you know so um and i noticed things didn't line up very well okay it converted a different font so anyway there's steve and paul okay the top rows the operations the bottom rows of pre-construction so anyway those are some of the people that you'd be seeing here So we did want to talk just a little bit about, so you've got to make a decision and you've got a couple good options. But we want to talk about what we think matters when you make this decision. There's a few things. Number one, where the real money is. We know this is a professional services selection and we know that fees are involved. kind of like with architecture and other things, you know, the lowest fee does not always mean the best cost or outcome. It is rare that we are the low fee, even though we continually get picked for some of the best CM opportunities in St. Louis. And if you think, you know, working for people like Emerson, Energizer, these types of companies, if you think that they pick us because they want to pay more, that's not the case. They pick us because they think we can deliver the best value. And I'll talk a little bit about that. So the real money is in the cost of construction, of course. You know, so if the fees are different by, you know, whatever, half a percent of your program, the big difference is who's going to buy that, whatever it is, $77, $80 million worth of construction the best, who's going to have the pre-con process that's going to facilitate to make sure we get the right design and that we're buying the right thing, and then ultimately who will deliver the best bids. So... That photo there at the right are awards for the American Subcontractors Association of St. Louis picks the best general contractor in the region annually. We're in the large category. And this is one award you can't nominate yourself for. It is done by secret ballot and secret nomination, and the subcontractors pick who they think is the best contractor to work for based on efficient job sites, prompt pay, Fair contracts, safety. Am I missing anything, Paul? Those are the main things. So we were selected for that. We're pleasantly surprised to be awarded in 2025. And we've been awarded that five of the last nine years. So what does that mean? Ultimately, how much you pay for your building is going to be ultimately dependent at the end of the day. How aggressively subs bid it and who bids it. So a great example, and this kind of proves the point. We brought this up when we were interviewing for Energizer. We weren't the lowest fee, but we said, but you know, you really got to look at where the money is and it's in the subs. And so without our knowledge, we didn't know this, that the owner rep After the interview, they said, well, okay, that's what they said. Let's see about this. They randomly called 10 subcontractors in St. Louis, pretty well-known contractors, and said confidentially, who of these two firms would you prefer to work for? And who would you be likely to give a good bid to? And all 10 of them picked us and said, Three of them said they wouldn't even provide a bid to the other contractor. So, and Paul will talk about this later probably, but the swings that we see in the market today are pretty dramatic. And you'll see between low bid and second bid, you can see swings of 6%, 7%, 8%, even 10% or more. If you miss one or two low bids, you're going to cost yourself a lot of value for what you're spending. What matters also? Okay so no surprises. Your biggest risk as a board and I guess as a school district is that there would be a big surprise when the bids come in. You know you work together, you architect does the drawings, we do some estimates and then we go out to market and oh my gosh We're way over. And sad to say, that happens. It's happened a lot lately. What does that mean for the district, the board, the team? Well, it's embarrassing. You know, as a group, we have a loss of credibility. It can cause delays to your program. It's like, oh my gosh, we don't have enough money to start these projects. It can lead to costs of redesign. costly in terms of time and money. And then the worst thing, post-design scope cutting where you just start trying to pull stuff out after the drawings are done. You get pennies on the dollar back. You don't want to be there. Our record on the big surprise is unblemished, including in the last five years of pandemic era construction. We have had No big blowouts, no big surprises. Meanwhile, you've probably seen the newspaper articles. Oh my gosh, this school district was 20% over their budget, 30% over, things like that. We haven't had that. We've been able to hold our budgets, bring our numbers in, and we think that that's a great benefit to our clients. It gives them a lot of confidence. Another thing people don't talk about enough, what really matters in the long run is quality. Ultimately our product is the building that we leave you with and how that holds up over time, how the quality that's built with is going to have a big impact on your long-term maintenance and just your long-term character of your institution. We have continually been told by clients that have worked with other contractors that our buildings seem to be built better. They have less problems with them, less maintenance. This is we hear this from our clients. Paul's had many conversations with their clients on this. And why is that? Well, we focus on that a lot. We make a really big deal about the quality of the construction that we put in place. Just for reference, we spend virtually no funds on business development and marketing. We have no marketing department. We have one guy who does about half-time business development, almost all of our work comes word of mouth and repeat business. We put all of our efforts into our product, which is the building that we build. We both live and work in this community. So all of us, me included, we see people we build for every day. I mean, I live in Clayton. We work a lot in Clayton. I never want to have to run into somebody that I'm embarrassed about something I did for them. If we did something wrong, we're going to make it right. We value our reputation more than our profits. So we just take a lot of pride in the product, and we think people should focus more on that, frankly. We believe in customers for life. One of the benefits of continuity and low turnover is we're going to be here a long time. Steve's already promised me that he's going to be at least 15 more years. Oh, yeah. Probably 30. Probably 30, yeah. So I've been here 36 years. Last week, we got a call from a client on a building that we had built 19 years ago with a problem they were having. We were down there the next morning. You know, I swear, I'm sure 90% of the contractors in town would have said, well, it's way out of warranty, or we don't have anybody in the company who even knows anything about that. But at BSI, with the continuity of this company and the care for the work that we do, again, we're there constantly. the next day to help them figure out the problem and take care of it. That's just the way we roll. So what's the conclusion? I mean, you got a lot of things to think about. I'm just saying the things that matter, we think that BSI would be a very safe choice for Clayton and you can't go wrong and we'll keep you out of trouble. So that's all I got. Questions?

Thank you so much. Appreciate that presentation. There are six of us board members here tonight. We have prepared 12 questions, so we're gonna go around. Each of us will ask a couple. But I'll remind everyone, please ask any clarifying, follow-up or additional questions as they come to you. And we'll just go in the same order, I'll start. With Jason, question number one.

Thanks for the presentation. I enjoyed learning more about your firm. Question number one, what costs are included in the guaranteed maximum price and what costs are explicitly excluded?

I'll start with that one. Typically, the GMP that you get from BSI is going to include all of the costs that are considered the hard construction costs. So that includes all of the trade contractor work that would be bid out, multiple bids per category, and then all of the BSI costs to run and supervise the jobs. Our project management, our superintendent, we typically have a full-time superintendent on site all the time. and then the associated fees and things which were in the proposal, fees and insurance costs. Things that would not be included within the cost is anything that doesn't show up on the documents. The documents that are developed by the design team, those are contract documents. That defines a contract between the CM and the owner. And so the things that are not part of the hard construction cost would not be part of the GMP. there would be a separate budget, a program budget, which would track those items as a separate line item and that's work that would not typically be performed by the CM. That might be furniture, equipment, et cetera, that the school district would procure separately.

What happens if the project costs exceed the GMP due to unforeseen circumstances? I mean, I know that probably never happens, right?

If it exceeds the GMP or exceeds it, when we take the bids, it comes back and it's more than what the budget was.

I think that's

probably the right way. Yeah, okay. That does happen a lot, as Paul mentioned. It does not happen a lot with BSI. In the past five years, I have not had that experience with anything that we put out to bid where we were the CM and developed the budgets along the way. So when we went out to bid and took bids, we delivered the project at or below the owner's expected budget.

Happens with cost savings if the project comes in under the guaranteed minimum maximum price

I Just say So it's a guaranteed maximum price and and so their savings which typically there would be some savings. That would be very normal and Sometimes there's a shared savings provision We don't really We don't require that We will work hard for savings all the way through either way some of our clients feel from like a fiduciary standpoint that they feel more comfortable knowing that we have also a financial incentive and So they might suggest a shared savings provision. I think like a 3070 would be a typical one that we would see, but we really leave that up to the client. And so if it's full savings to the client, all goes back to you. If there's a shared savings, then we get a piece of it.

So I think 90% of the work you guys do now is really CMAR. What percentage of that work do you have those type of shared savings provisions? Half, less

than

half?

I'd say half. I'd say on the projects I'm currently involved in, maybe a little less than half. A little bit less than half, yeah. And those percentages might be a little bit different, but it's always a majority to the owner.

Okay.

How are change orders managed and priced under the GMP?

If we do our jobs well during pre-construction, you shouldn't have much in the way of change orders. Steve on Lindbergh School District got a couple examples of

Yeah, I mean, there's obviously changes from subcontractors that we evaluate. So we evaluate the cost, the legitimacy of the change order. Subs ask for changes that they don't deserve. And we never put forward anything negative I mean, you won't see anything from us, even if we're just tracking it, not even necessarily submitting it as a change. But, you know, it's all open book. And so we're working with whatever staff members or team that we're working with on the budget. And so there may be changes in scope or enhancements that you want to make during the project. And we will share those costs with you because you need to know what they're costing you. But we frequently... are able to absorb those changes within the GMP.

Just a follow-up question. So you mentioned sometimes some contractors request, I guess, additional funds for what they're being asked to do. Is that because they look at the, let's say, final drawings or something and they said this was different from what we did? Or I guess how does that come about?

Yes, or they may just flat out say, well, I didn't know it was going to be like that. You know, I mean, that sounds ridiculous, but that happens more frequently than not. And if someone is kind of going through the motions and pushing, oh, I have a change order from a sub, I need to mark it up and send it in to the owner and they need to approve it without doing a proper evaluation of whether they're even – The merits even warrant bringing it to you. That needs to stop with us. That's the whole point. You're hiring us to manage 40, 45 subcontractors. Everyone's out for their own self-interests, and when that all works well, that's great, but we're there as a protection against that. You shouldn't just be getting stuff that's stamped by us and sent off to you to deal with.

That said, what we're looking for is a fair implementation of the contract documents between the client and the subcontractors. If it's shown on the documents, then the subcontractor's owe it to us to do that work. If it's not shown on the documents then the owner's not entitled to receive something that they didn't pay for already through the original bid process. So we're trying to do a fair analysis So the first thing you've got to do is establish entitlement. Are they entitled to a change because it's a change condition, or do the contract documents define it and they're not entitled to a change? Gotcha. That's like a general to the subcontractor. So in a

dispute situation like that, so if it was deemed, I guess I don't know how it would be deemed, but if it was deemed... that they had a legitimate claim to additional funds, would that fall in your responsibility as CMAR? Let's say if you didn't establish in the bid documentation that this condition needs to be built, would that be the, would they have a claim

there? Can I give you a real world example? Yeah, please.

Okay.

I don't think they'd mind knowing about this. At Lindbergh High School, they have, which Perkins and Will designed, by the way, they have several classrooms that have garage doors where you can flex the space between, you can open it up and have a double classroom, for lack of a better term. And on the drawings, and this was just a mistake on the drawings, it didn't really cost the district any more money, but the electrical drawings didn't show power being routed to all the motors that have to run the doors, right? So we put it out to bid. We have a supplier furnishing the doors. We have an electrician supplying the power. He brings up the point that, well, the drawings don't show any power to these doors. They could have been manual doors. I don't know that. Turns out they're motorized. We validate that. It's a legitimate gap in the drawings. These are what contingencies have to deal with. The drawings aren't going to be perfect. And Lindbergh had never paid for that work because it wasn't in his bid, because it wasn't on his drawings. And so we evaluated the merit, right? And then we also evaluate, I mean, it's also not an opportunity for him to take advantage of the situation either.

Right.

Right. So now we're evaluating the legitimacy of the cost. And is it reasonable? And, you know, we're doing all that in collaboration with the clients. That's great. That's a great explanation. Thank

you.

Yeah, that's really good. So and just for like just to pull on that thread a little more. So that comes in out of the contingency budget and as part of a change order request all at the same time.

I would clarify this. There are two different types of change orders. There's a change order from the general contractor, CMAR, to the subcontractor,

and

then there's a change order for the CMAR contract to the owner

contract.

And so what we're saying is something like that, we can absorb that within our contingency And we have a change order to the subcontractor. They are due the money. Okay. But the owner doesn't see a change order from us to say this was not. So

what's an example where we might see a change order then as the owner?

If you decided that you wanted to add a...

Another 10,000 square feet on

something.

Another story on top of the building.

A dome on top of the football field. We had a closeout meeting today on a project. The project was delayed by a year. So there were escalation costs because they delayed it by a year. There was an owner change order.

Got

it. Technically speaking, the example I gave you would go to the owner. I mean, because that's not necessarily automatically covered in our GMP. But historically, what we're trying to describe to you is a situation where we typically return savings on the job. And the job savings that's already being realized as the project goes on can often fund those sorts of smaller changes that we know are going to occur.

But even that example, Steve, that was actually the hard bid job.

Right. That was on the high school.

That was the competitive bid job where we were just given a set of drawings and just bid what's on the drawings. So we still really represented everybody fairly.

Right.

If we had been CM at risk, which is one of the reasons I think Lindbergh likes CM at risk – is the odds of that kind of thing ever getting that far would have been a lot less. That's right. We were not involved

in any pre-construction effort. We weren't involved in

the original design, you know. And so that, and sometimes it'll be a case where there will be a gap and we will say, well, yeah, he didn't have it and he didn't have but there was enough information that we should have had it. So we're not going to ask you for a change order, even though we got to pay somebody downstream. So that can certainly happen within the CMR process. It's a high bar for us at CMR, much more than a competitive bid when they just say, bid what's on the drawings. You should expect more out of us to help debug these things. And

the gifted center, how many changes do we have? I worked on the pre-construction on that. Yeah. And we finished the job. Do we have...

Yeah, the gifted center, we had one change order to the owner. And that was largely for enhanced scope, kind of like what we described. They wanted to do more. And then we just finished Crestwood. In fact, we're getting occupancy on Thursday. And not only do we have no change orders on that job to the owner, but we're returning substantial savings back to the owner. And that's important to them because that's the first project out of the gate on this multi-project bond issue. And they have a list of other things that didn't make it into that bond issue that now they're able to start to look at and start to add other projects on other campuses.

And Crestwood's an elementary school?

I'm sorry. Is that right? Yes, Crestwood is one of their six elementary schools. We're also doing two others currently right now. And those don't have any changes on them yet either. Great.

How do you recover and get back on schedule when construction has fallen behind schedule?

Well, it starts in pre-con with a good understanding of what the subcontractors are capable of doing and laying out the expectations and working with a schedule that is collaborative with them, but not just whatever they want either. I mean, we have to lead the effort in terms of what the project demands are. I was relaying how many schools I currently am director over right now. I think it's about seven, and several of them need to be open. And schools present a unique challenge in that if you don't make a date, it's one thing maybe you open a hotel a month later or something, no one likes it, but you can, okay, you just don't get rent for, or sell those rooms for a little while. You gotta open those on time. Um, so it's important that you know that you're tracking the schedule both the short-term duration and long-term and that you address that at the very earliest possibility when you start to see things go off track.

I mean, but the tools... D-link activities, you know, make more things work in parallel. It might be overtime. I mean, typically if you're working through a school summer, there's a pretty good chance we're working some overtime to recover. You know, manpower is harder to get now. You know, five, ten years ago, you just say, give me ten more electricians. You can't just do that anymore. They just don't exist. So you really got to plan ahead. Really get ahead of

it. It's become a much bigger issue in pre-construction, dealing with the schedule ahead of time. the long lead times you know the pandemic marketing conditions really changed the the way the business is done and so things that we never used to have to worry about long lead time items are things that we have to address in pre-construction so that's why steve made the comment this this really starts in pre-construct our schedule templates we identify long lead time items so we can come up with strategies there was one school project that we had about eight months of construction but one of the pieces of equipment the rooftop equipment for the heating and cooling system was going to take 12 months to get well i can't fit 12 months in an eight-month schedule so we work with the client to authorize and release that early so that it would be able to arrive in time and then

That same example?

That same example about what, six weeks before it was supposed to be delivered? Yeah, so

those HVAC units were supposed to arrive in June. We were told by the manufacturer due to supply chain issues that they wouldn't show up until September and we were told that the day they were supposed to ship and so we worked with the, we put a lot of pressure on them but we worked with the HVAC subcontractor who has a relationship with that supplier and imparted on them the need for them to come up with a good plan B, which they did. Fortunately, in that case, there were existing units that had no refrigerant in them. So at their expense, which is substantial, these were large units, they charged those units, replaced some fan belts and motors and got those working in time for school to start. And then we made a swap over a weekend when the permanent units came in.

So you were able to maintain the project schedule? Oh, yes. Even though you had been given that? Yes. You had to deal with it?

Yes.

You never know what curveball is going to come, but we got to come up with a creative solution for every curveball that they throw at us.

An added benefit, coincidentally, was this school is now doing an expansion. So two years later, we're back there again. It's a repeat client. And because those units were charged, we actually kept those units, took two older ones off and put the units that had been charged in their place to run the areas now that we're renovating now. And that's obviously the benefit of us being involved from, it was almost as if.

Two separate projects. Two separate projects,

it was almost one continuous long project because we went right into pre-con, early pre-con after the completion of the first phase.

Well you all pretty much just answered my question actually which was give an example of a project that had a supply chain or lead time issue. How did you overcome that to keep it on schedule? You just answered that so.

You're welcome to ask another one. All

right. Are you seeing tariffs affect construction costs yet and if so how?

I would say minimally. For all of the hype that you hear in the news about tariffs, we have not seen too many direct impacts on the projects. The subcontractors recognize that they are always taking pricing risks on projects. The tariffs in many cases are impacting commodity type things and so some of those subcontractors strategically play the markets and they will try to pre-purchase you know they'll try to time it pre-purchased and they will maintain some inventories others will just say we're not we're not in that game we will just get a quote from the supplier at the time that a project bids and we will include that supplier's price at that time so it really varies by subcontractor i can tell you that on certain projects where we thought that there was risk associated with that within the gmp we identified or established like a tariff or market condition allowance uh... to because basically when you take the bid a lot of the bids uh... the bidder might try to qualify the bid say my pricing is good for seven or fourteen or twenty one days well depending on what the timing looks like from the time we get the bid to the time that the board approves the project and we sign up contracts there may be longer than that time has passed and so we will identify market conditions allowance within the GMP such that if a Bitter can come back and say I had this bid from my supplier on this bid date And here was the price and since then they have had a price increase and it is up by $5,000 and they can substantiate that then we would allocate dollars from that allowance to cover that That's a strategy. We've used with multiple clients. We think that that allows It's really about risk management and if you just tell the bidders like we're not going to allow that just put the money in your bid, the bids are going to come back higher. If they can bid more confidently saying I'm not taking a risk because I will carry an allowance and if something comes up, they know that they can get coverage, they can give you a more aggressive bid. So we will advise most of our clients that overall you wind up with a lower cost if you do it that way, as opposed to just pushing all over the risk downstream to the subs. And that's a common theme that we will use on different contracting things, and we don't have time here to get into all of those strategies, but we'd love to talk with you about them if you're part of your team. Not at 9.30 tonight. I have a

follow-up question on that real quick. So does it happen that you do a cost-plus kind of thing where you basically... You mentioned open book as part of it, so is that a strategy as well or is that kind of what you were saying?

Cost plus

meaning like my cost is this and we already established what my markup will be on the product.

You mean like with a subcontractor for instance? Yeah, the subcontractor,

yeah.

There are certainly circumstances where we subcontract work on a cost plus basis, where it makes sense for the client. Whether that would come into play for these projects or not, we'd have to evaluate that. But yes, there are times where we have done, I mean, certainly on private projects, we will bring subcontractors on board strategically early in certain things and put them under a cost plus arrangement, similar to choosing a CM partner because it winds up You get the benefit of having that contractor on board early, and as long as you trust them to deliver good value, you wind up paying the lowest cost in the final design. Oh,

good. That's probably not normal. Typically, though, it's going to be a hard bid, a competitive bid from that sub, and what you're talking about is we're going to identify what do you include in your bid for whatever, copper wire, whatever it is, and establish a number that we can track and validate if that were to move in the intervening period before they could lock that in. So we're not turning the whole contract into a cost plus. We're just acknowledging that there's a volatile component within that $100,000 bid as a $10,000 component that is very volatile. So if we let them break that and identify that, then we can validate, yeah, that really happened.

Because that's an area where they're going to inflate it if they receive risk. Right, right.

Like he says, if you just tell everybody you got all the risk, then we're going to pay for it. Okay, perfect. Thank you.

It's mine I think. Right? Yes. So and I think you guys this may be a redundant question because you guys have already talked a lot about your process for the pre-construction but I'll ask it anyway. So do you have a typical process and what is it when a project estimate is over budget during the pre-construct phase?

Yes. One of the one of the things that is very important is budget and scope alignment. We have had projects in the past where A budget is established before we're brought on board, and then you're trying to make whatever work to that budget. We have other... To get the numbers to align. We have had other projects brought on board before any budget is established. I would say those processes generally go more smoothly because we can help advise from the very start where those budget numbers ought to be set. Obviously, there is, you heard earlier, there's a ton of design work and things that they have to think about over the next 60 days between now and the October 8th meeting or 9th meeting. But your CM partner, if they're doing their job well, they will be interacting with them and talking about the cost impacts and trying to set the high-level budgets to make sure that when they get to the next stage, after you go through all of the approvals, when you get to the next page and you do your budget check, you're closely within budget. The process, though, if things are misaligned is we have a very detailed cost model which breaks down all of the costs, the construction costs which would be included within our GMP ultimately. And so the process we use is collaborative approach with the design team and the client to sit down and review the cost model and understand what are the decisions and the scope items that are driving those costs. And then typically we would go through a process that we would prioritize things and say where are some dollars that we could save to scale things back and get things better aligned. Certainly we would want to check original assumptions and if there are differences or often something changes in the course of your design. Well previously we thought this but now we think something else. Okay well that's something we need to accommodate Is there something else we could trade out for it? Additionally, we would evaluate contingency percentages as you move through design. Earlier in the project, you want to have a higher project contingency to address unknown things. As you move through, you can reduce that contingency because more things become known and you become more sure about some of those costs. So that is another strategy to keep in mind as you work through budget alignment is making sure you've got the right amount of contingency. You don't wanna have so much in there that you give up things that you could have afforded, but you don't wanna have too little that when you go out to market, you get a surprise and it comes back and you don't have enough to manage that risk.

How do you ensure that your construction bidding process complies with state statutes for public bidding? Yeah,

so the state statute obviously has certain public solicitation requirements and public receipt requirements. So it's all out in the open. The statute is not so hyper-specific that districts don't have to make their own policies with more detail, like how are we going to, I mean you all had a lot of discussions tonight about How do we tailor our policy to match the statute? And so in a similar way, you know, we're flexible in that. I mean, a lot of our clients are private and can kind of do whatever they want, so to speak. Within the confines of the state statute, there's still some latitude regarding how, for instance, how your attorney would interpret the what sort of public solicitation, public opening would look like. So we're flexible with whatever the policy needs to be. I could tell you at Lindbergh, which is where we're doing most of our work right now, we are involved with the design team and the owner in the solicitation process, but then they host the documents and the invitations that get sent out. And then the bids then are submitted to Lindbergh and opened up by them. We're of course in attendance, but we don't even see them until the public opening. And then once they're open, then we take them and do a full analysis because, as Paul mentioned, a lot of these bidders still include a lot of clarifications and may or may not include everything that's within the documents that they're supposed to have. So that's where our professional opinion needs to come in and do a proper evaluation, and then we submit that to Lindbergh for their approval before an award.

So in any event, so the follow-up is, so you're working successfully within those processes at Lindbergh. You have the same statutes that

apply.

Yes, absolutely. And

I would say that we, to the extent that the district we're working in allows, our goal is to make the process clean and simple for the sub as we can. That's really our goal. There are subs who will literally not turn in a bid if you make it too hard for them. So we really, within, again, working with your attorney, we want to make it not intimidating for them to turn in a bid.

Despite all the efforts of the Missouri

legislature.

That's right. You may or may not find it surprising that different municipal attorneys interpret the statutes differently.

Do you intend to self-perform any

work? We're capable of self-performing demolition, concrete, carpentry. So we have trade workers that are capable of doing that. Many of our clients want us to perform those. We can often deliver them at a savings. We can often absorb, in particular demo, which is very difficult to define. A price from a demo subcontractor is often, you know, a guaranteed minimum and all the things that they discover and find in the process becomes added change orders. Whereas we often absorb all that with our, you know, our guys are working there and they just go ahead and take care of it. Now, some of the, in Lindbergh's case, as our most recent example, their policy is that we have to bid that, just like anyone else. So we submit a bid, again, that's to Lindbergh, so we don't get to see the bids before anyone else does, and we've submitted bids on all three of those scopes, demolition, carpentry, and concrete, and in that particular case, we've been successful with demolition, successful meaning we were the low number, sometimes by quite a bit, and we execute that with no changes. We also get the benefit, and there may be some opportunity here, because we have that, we can do selective demolition, discovery, try to, you know, in a surgical way, try to open up some of the unknowns early to assist the design team so that we get more information, the drawings are better, and there are fewer unknowns.

That covers it. Thank you.

In the construction manager risk process what financial risks are retained by the

owner? It depends on what part of the process we're talking about so certainly early in the process most of them because until we define what is the scope and you know We have to figure out what you really need and what we're up against Once we put that GMP down there though. We got pretty much We get the vast majority of it. The only thing then is I guess if there would be Again, if you would want to add scope like we talked If there were some underground condition that wasn't detected during all the pre-testing or what else? I mean, there's

not. Usually the biggest risk to the clients on the projects where we're the CM are unforeseen conditions, either subgrade, underground, or in an existing building demolition discovery that you can't see until later or scope changes. I would say the other risks then fall outside of the hard construction cost, GMP, and would be like furniture pricing when you go buy all new furniture desks, et cetera. If you sometimes technology, some clients want to have all of the technology within our scope. Others have certain things that they do in-house, and so they would keep some portions of that. So there can be risk. Obviously, if you keep some things to self-perform or do yourself, then even under a CM process, you still retain the risk of that because you're doing the purchasing and procurement of those items.

But if it's under our scope, then it's on us. And so, for example, if a subcontractor went out of business and we had to go hire somebody else, that's ours to deal with within our GMP. That's one of our biggest risks, frankly, is sub-failure or sub-inability slash unwillingness to perform. Right. Those are the big risks. Right. But that's on us. Once we give you the GMP, that's our risk.

Okay, perhaps the most important question, why should the School District of Clayton choose BSI?

I guess I'll go first. I think it probably, well, for a lot of things we've said. I mean, you know, this... This is, you know, we are not just a school contractor. You know, I know some, all they do in schools are mostly school. We do a lot of things, you know. But our track record on doing, you know, high-profile work for really good clients is unsurpassed. And we would encourage you, I don't know if, you know, you've probably got to make a decision quickly because we got to. put an estimate together. But when we have clients who are able to take the time to really do thorough reference checks, we normally get picked. We just really live on the experience of the work that we've done. So I guess biggest thing would be that we're going to do what we said we're going to and we're going to stand behind our work And this guy and his team and their pre-construction is phenomenal. And Steve, I have complete confidence in him. And again, you can talk to people at Lindbergh just to say how that experience has gone. You can call anybody we've ever worked for. So I think we're going to keep everybody out of trouble because we're not going to have a big budget bust. We're going to buy really well for you. We think we can buy this better than anybody else in town. And then we're going to build you a quality building and stand behind our work. Did I miss anything? Thank you.

Thanks. I'm curious, Nina, if you have any questions for BSI at all.

Do you guys have any procedures in place to minimize disruption to the school day?

Oh yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's all going to happen in pre-construction where we're going to be meeting with the principals and the building staff. I mean, handling things like parent pickup and drop off. How do we segregate construction traffic from parental traffic or even just entrances? You know, where are the workers coming in? Where are the students coming in? We typically perform demolition at night or on weekends if it's allowed and disruptive. We've had to cease operations during standardized testing. Again, this is all a lot of this is related to communication and schedules. If we get the information and we know what the needs of the school are, then we work around that. Right. And then and we communicate to them, hey, we're going to have to bring a crane in here. Is it OK if we bring it in at six in the morning so that we're here and set up an in, you know. behind the school well before parental drop off. So it's very common, very typical, very few projects and virtually none in St. Louis anymore built in just some open field somewhere with no disruption whatsoever. It's either extensive renovation in an occupied school or a substantial wing on an active campus. And so yeah, planning, communication, and understanding the needs and addressing them.

Does anyone else have any additional questions? Chris?

So along those same lines, can you tell us how you, our elementary schools are very much in the middle of everything. Yeah. So can you help us understand how you're to communicate with the neighbors around those schools and help them to deal with the construction? What do you guys have in place that you do that really takes into consideration fact that it's not just that school that's going to be impacted, it's our entire community

We would often work with you on establishing what messaging do we want to say, and we would probably encourage that coming from you all. Not that we wouldn't participate in it, but they don't necessarily want to hear from us, but they want to hear what are the proactive measures so we would develop that plan and then share it with you to try to communicate that to the adjacent constituents. Other than that, it's just being very diligent about understanding that there are folks that are gonna be disrupted by this and we can't pretend like they won't be but we have to minimize it to the greatest extent possible whether that's being sensitive to noise or street cleaning or handing out car wash. You know, we created some dust and we're going to hand out some car wash coupons. I mean, these are all things that we've done. And it sounds like silly, not a big deal, but that goes a long way for... It's a big deal of that person.

I can't overstate the importance of the personality of our superintendents is a really big deal. And they, I mean, typically... They befriend people pretty well. Absolutely. Jake Finnerty, Jason Hiesman, guys who might be – Jake would be on one of our projects here. Jason, they're just salt-of-the-earth kind of people who –

They usually become best friends with the old guy in the neighborhood that walks around and wants to know what's going on. Yeah. Yeah, they get real tight.

I had just one final question. Paul, you had mentioned your buildings are just built better or that's reputation. So what would be some examples of things that you're doing to ensure that that is the case? Just a couple maybe.

Well yeah let me let me give you an example of so there we followed another contractor on a particular campus and we went through a very thorough pre-installation meeting on how we were going to put in the windows in this building and how we were going flash them and to make sure that we got all the details right. We had the the manufacturer of the window and the flashing system that we did a mock up and we had everybody there like OK here's how we're doing it. And so we did that, and everything was going great for about the first week. And then they brought in a new carpenter to start installing some of the windows. And he did it wrong, and our superintendent was on him right away. And he said, hey, wait a minute, wait a minute. This is not how we're doing this. He said, what do you mean? I put in all the windows in that previous building, and everything was fine, you know? It wasn't. It was a sloppy, lousy way to do it. So it doesn't happen if you don't make it happen. I mean, sad to say, most people in the trades, they want to do a good job. But I will say that In general, the average level of a trade worker is not quite what it was maybe 25 years ago. So we have to do more oversight than we used to, sad to say. It's just the reality. But you've got to do it. And so you've got to set the tone. We're just fanatics about pre-installation meetings. And then our superintendents are fanatics about enforcing what we talked about. And so that's how you do it.

Thank you. And I'd say just to clarify, that's the third part of our quality control program. We really have three big components. One is starts in pre-construction and it's the reviews of the documents. We're looking for water infiltration problems in places where we don't think the flashing or the drainage is going to work properly. We flag those types of things all the time for the design team. We bring it up, we talk about it, we get the drawings right before they ever go out to bid or to be built. Then the second piece is when we go through the submittal process and making sure that the submittals come in and it's the proper product. So that's a project manager will do that. And then finally, the pre-installation meeting is a meeting that happens on site with the people who will be installing the work led by our project team to make sure that everybody agrees, okay, this is what the documents require. Here's how we're going to do this. And then the superintendent is watching them as they start to work to make sure that they follow through on those commitments. Okay.

So that's interesting. So as part of the design process, you guys are involved looking for potential because it may look pretty, but it may have a maintenance problem or some foreseeable issue?

100%. Absolutely. We are absolutely looking for that. We have a code of ethics, and one of them is build it like you're going to own it. And even to pick another example, so Powell Hall, it's a big job. They're spending a lot of money. It's like $115 million. And we got to a certain point in the design, and we realized that they had camera'd the under drain underneath this building. And whoever it was, the engineer said, I think it's OK. And so we noticed that during the design. We're like, you've got to be kidding me. We're going to spend all this money and we're going to leave a 90-year-old drain under there hoping that it has, what, another five years in it? And so this is the kind of thing that we raise our hand and we say, no, don't do this. And so we really do try to take that responsibility on to put ourselves in your shoes. If we're going to own this building, what would we do? So yeah, we'll probably bring some things up to the design team and you guys during reconstruction that... A lot of people wouldn't.

Yeah, a couple more. You said you've worked with Perkins and Will. How often have you worked with them? Have you worked with Paragon?

I can just speak to Perkins and Will. Perkins and Will designed Lindbergh High School, and they also designed Crestwood Elementary, which is just wrapping up. Oh, and the Idea Center. And then they are also designing what's going to be, we call it the Farmer's Club because that's what the property that Lindbergh bought, but it's going to become their agricultural technology building. Cool. For the K-12, so they're going to do programs all the way through K-12. And Perkins & Will is designing that one as well. So that's four of them, I guess. And my experience with them, I mean, they're a Chicago-based firm and specializing in K-12 education, as you heard. And so, yeah, that's the four of

them. I would add that I worked on a project with Perkins & Will from their Minneapolis office. It was a corporate conference center. and there was an associated project out there so we had a couple experiences with them that office was also very it was a very positive experience The one thing that we've found with them, in particular on these school projects, you asked earlier about keeping budgets aligned. They have been much more responsible to that. Once a budget is established, they're going to try to figure out, let's get everything that we can into this budget. But there are things that usually don't fit. And so you've got to make compromises and compromising decisions. But they have proved to stick to those scopes very well compared to some other architects that we've worked with who tend to veer off scope and then Well, we added all these things so the costs go up and then we got to take things out and you go along and they add some more things and then you get to take cost back out. So that's been, you

know. Yeah. I'm going to piggyback off that. You already hired them so you don't need me telling you this. But not only do they stay within the guardrails of the scope, but they also hit their dates on drawing production, which is obviously very important because the schedule really is made on the early end, right? I mean, you asked about recovering the schedule on the back end. Well, yeah, but we really got to meet the schedule on on the front end. And they also, I've been in many of those design charrettes or the things that they led for you all and they do an outstanding job. So yeah, you're in good hands with them on those projects for sure.

We have not worked directly with Paragon yet.

And then my last question is, do you do anything to do any sort of integrating our students in being educated around your work? Do you have anything in place that includes our students as helping them learn actively around what you're doing? Yeah, for

sure.

Well, you want to talk about your presentation? We have done that for different school clients in the past, depending on what they're looking for. One specific example is St. Lucia High, after we did their chapel project, we went up and we did a presentation to, it was directed to the STEM club and any students, it was open, anybody who's invited who's interested specifically in engineering and considering engineering for college. And so we did a presentation to talk about the construction of the chapel, how we transformed it. It was an interior renovation project. And then also all of the different professional disciplines that are involved in the project to give them a better understanding of if they have an interest in that, what paths of study they might be able to pursue. So that's one specific thing. And then Steve, you...

Yeah, we give tours. I mean, a lot of it's very age-dependent. But often it's at a time of day when we can safely take students through in a supervised fashion with hard hats and proper, yeah. I've brought student journalists through to do stories for the paper. Teachers. Some teachers want to see the space that they are going to be working in and sometimes have comments that, you know. I can read

the change order,

Steve. We can avoid the changes that occur after they move in, right? If we know what they're looking for early enough. Um, so it's really, I've, I've gone to, uh, present to, um, I don't know, second or third graders, uh, in a gifted, gifted program that they were studying structures and being a structure engineer. I, I was able to try to communicate with little I retained from school. And so,

so it's It's by request.

I mean, you know, it can be, it can be as varied as, as the idea of what we want to do.

There's nothing that we try to force upon any clients. If something works and you're interested in, we can help develop it.

Oh, I forgot, a drone. Lindbergh has a drone program. So they were flying drones over the project site documenting progress photos and things.

Thank you. Okay, well, thank you very much for your presentation and for answering all of our questions so thoroughly. We appreciate it. I know it's a late night, so thank you very much.

Thanks for your attention this late at night. We appreciate it.

Thanks. Okay. So everybody should have a sheet at the top that says CMAR scoring. Does everyone see that? It's on the back. Does nobody have this? Does nobody have this except me? Oh, yeah. Nina, you can go.

Are you guys sure? Absolutely.

Okay.

Okay, hold on. We're looking for it. We're looking. I'm sorry, I thought everybody had a copy of the scoring sheet. Oh, you do? Okay, do you see what Kim's holding up? Does everybody have that? It's a sheet of paper at the top. This is what's on the back. It's the questions, but they're single-spaced. A sheet that has our interview questions single-spaced? Okay, yes. Okay, we do have it. Okay. So I'll wait till everyone finds this. Sorry, we had a lot of papers tonight, so. Okay, everybody found it? So you'll see that there are several categories that we're scoring them in. Several have already been filled in and we have subtotals. At the bottom, you'll see where it says Board Interview. There are three categories to score them in, bidding, procedures and transparency, ability to maintain schedule, and ability to manage budgets. So I would like for everyone to score in that section, but also please review the subtotals at the top that we'd already filled in. There are certain categories. that may be more important than others to you. So pay attention to the top as well, but go ahead and score the bottom. I'll give everyone a few minutes based on our interviews, and then we'll come back around with the scores, totals.

Yeah,

just fill it out, and then we're just gonna, yes. Whoever scores higher will win, yes. Yeah, I'm sorry, yes. Yes, we are gonna discuss. I want us to score first and then we're gonna go through it.

Okay,

I know just just hold on we're just gonna discuss so the top portion John I Think I would like to direct any questions about the top portion to John since he did the legwork on these these sections and the scoring So I would just open it up for him to explain in Any other questions? To answer any questions that you have about the top part.

And I can make a few statements here. Yeah. First off, I think you just interviewed two outstanding firms. Both have excellent portfolios of work. Both have excellent references. Our review of their credentials that they've submitted to us indicate to us that they have adequate bond capacity to perform the work that we will anticipate through these projects. They have the financial resources to cash flow these projects on their side of the equation. They have good staffing that can do that. So they have all those essential qualities. One of them has been working for Ludu recently, that's us in Wilson. One has been working for Lindbergh recently and so I hear from both of those districts good reports. So they they did submit their RFQs those were very complete very informative the RFPs were Complete and generally informative. I I if you look at my scoring here, I Have a lower score on S.M. Wilson slightly and I'd like to explain that when we sent out that RFP we asked for fee structure and they both supplied that. We also sent out a proposed draft contract for the CMAR services and within that we gave them an opportunity to take exception to provisions of the contract and Asked them in the alternative if you don't like this tell us what you want Yes, I answered those questions they had some exceptions they clearly delineated What their alternatives might be but they also indicated we'll take this contract as is SM Wilson had some exceptions Had general conversation about their what they would prefer but Wanted to still have further discussion and most of this is around how we handle allowances and contingencies Maybe liquidated damages things like that. So We've had some follow-up email and discussion, but I did give them a slight Deduct on that One of the things that impresses me with BSI in this case is their lack of history of litigious situations. You don't like to ever have that. I don't like to be in a situation where we're in Court or even mediation situations where some third party is going to tell us What to do usually both of us walk away unhappy. I think the idea of us being able to Retain control of those decisions and work that out with the other party Ultimately yields the best outcomes takes less time Usually we can solve that we both should be mutually Satisfied with that S.M. Wilson's fees are lower. All these fees are really percentage rates of fee. I've put dollars amount to them based on a budget of just shy of 80 million but they're actually percentage fees so in the work that would be granted I would say S.M.Wilson's fees are lower But the difference on, say, $80 million is around a half million dollars of difference of project. So those are some of the differences I see between these firms. I think either one can do the work. If we're going to pick one, that's our challenge tonight.

Does anyone have questions for John? based on how he scored some of those ahead of tonight, or based on what he just said. Clearly, looking at the numbers here, they're very, very close.

Yeah, they're very close.

Yeah. That explanation was helpful, John. And I agree with you. I think we do have two very good firms. And so thank you for running a process that got us those options. I understand that how you score, I think I now understand how you score the top part and where if you didn't give someone a five, why that is the case. And I don't know if we're really doing points at the end of the day and doing that as a matter of our process. Not necessarily, but it just

helps us see who rises. Like in

some cases, you gave one like a 20, one a 17. When it comes to the dollar figures, how did you decide... To get, you know what I mean? How did, how did you decide to give those points?

Right. Well, I say to some level they're arbitrary, but, um, I just based on the magnitude of difference, I made those scores. Gotcha.

Personally, I'll speak as treasurer. I don't think when we're talking about like six tenths of a basis point that those the numbers as far as the costs are Going to be a material consideration for us given where we are financially as a school district So I think probably the the things above the cost if we're going to talk about If those factory decision are more important I guess what's not reflected on this list that I'd like to hear about is the reference checks and So who has the school district talked to? It sounds like both these firms, both very qualified, both have done exceptional projects that we're all familiar with. Has somebody talked to Lindbergh? Because it sounds like they've done projects, both of them have done projects for the school.

I have.

And how was the feedback?

Glowing.

Oh, glowing.

Okay. Excellent.

For both? I had an opportunity to talk to the superintendent of Lindbergh and he had excellent references for BSI.

Did you mean glowing for both firms, John? Or just BSI who's currently doing Lindbergh?

Lindberg had glowing or excellent references for BSI. LeDoux had excellent Rex references for SM Wilson.

And in talking to LeDoux's superintendent he I would agree he had excellent references for SM Wilson his only challenge he felt when he expressed it to me was that there was quite a bit of rotation in terms of the team pickup and that that was a little frustrating for him.

The only other wondering that I have is that there seems to be a difference in kind of project management process based on what we heard from wiki at Ladue about the change management process where the board approved every change management order that came from us and Wilson. And it sounds like, I can't remember the number, the total number they told us, but it was a very high number. And then to hear from BSI that they really limit the change management process. I mean, that is a, that's probably a consideration factor of, you know, Is it just a different way in which they manage the project overall? Is it just the process that LeDoux had in place? I was going to say, that might have been

LeDoux's board. Exactly. I thought that

was

done.

Why are there different approaches to that?

Yeah, I just think, yes.

I can't speak for the two CMs that are here. I will say, you know, in my experience, contractors and subcontractors, depending on who they are, Some of them want to feed change orders in for every little thing. It's not in the plans or this condition change or this. Others will absorb those smaller ones and limit it more to serious undiscovered items or changes in scope, things like that. So I think it really comes down to the owner, the district, setting the tone as well is that it starts really in the design process. We're gonna design a project And when we get to the construction documents, they have to be complete. And we're going to review them and make sure that they are as complete as possible so that the bids are legitimate and you have a defense to not accepting change orders. If the plans are complete, it really is completely rational and defensible to say no, the plans were there. You bid what the plans were. We're not going to accept the change order. I think that gets solved in the document phase.

That's fair. Did you have a question there? I thought I saw you about to ask

something. I was going to kind of... agree with what Kim was saying and say it a little different way which is not only within the scope of the budget of the school district but within the scope of a project we're looking at here you know control of the overall picture of the project is much more important than some numbers some of the smaller numbers that we're looking at. Here smaller in the grand scheme of things they

You know, I don't think this district and I have not engaged in a CMAR process before. What sounds good at the beginning of transferring risk potentially really is we're trying to manage risk but they're trying to manage risks. We both have risk in the situation just like any contractor seems to. So as we move forward in this process, We're both trying to protect and manage risk in these things, and that's a good thing. I mean, we all wanna do that, but we should not be under the impression that we're handing off all of our risk to someone else. That's not what's happening here.

Being that they're scored so closely and we're dealing with two very qualified firms, what does everyone see are the distinguishing factors that will help us make our decision? when we look at this

chart. Well, can I just say that the things that I think are distinguishing aren't even on the chart. I mean, I literally scored them both the same for those last three questions. They both got total points, you know what I mean? That's how close in terms of quality, you know? It's just we were dealing with really quality firms here. So the distinguishing factors for me are the things that I was asking about at the very end of the BSI. Thank you, BSI. SM Wilson spokes very clearly about two things that they have baked into their system one being that they go knock on doors in the neighborhoods and I am just very concerned about our neighborhoods right I'm concerned about our neighbors and what this how this will impact them the fact that they already have in place the system where they know how important it is to engage with the neighbors and to make sure that that they are informed and they feel heard, et cetera, et cetera, I think is a really cool thing. I don't doubt that BSI would do that if we asked them to. That's what their response was. But I do like that S.M. Wilson has that as a value and as a thing that they know to do, right? The other thing is that... SM Wilson has the skilled program, and it's just a baked-in thing. They come to us saying, we want to help your kids be engaged in this and have this be part of the curriculum in any way that works for us. I think that's pretty amazing too. I think BSI would probably, again, if we wanted them to, would do X, Y, or Z, but that's a different mode than doing things proactively. Okay. you know, rather than just us asking them to. And I really like, you know, our philosophy is hands-on learning, you know, all these things we want, you know, active learning, all these things. I think having our kids be as involved in this process as possible would be what I would vote for. It would seem to me the best way for our kids to get the most out of this, not just because they get a school at the end of it, but because they have learned about this process in such an active and engaging way.

I mean, I hear what you're saying on that. And I think perhaps even if you pull out a little bit, the one distinguishing factor, and I can go through what I thought distinguished BSI from SM Wilson and vice versa in multiple areas. But I do think SM Wilson demonstrated a clear just more experience in the K through 12 space, right? In the public school space. And so, and I think what you're talking about is a reflection of just lots of experience with that. You know, BSI has worked on and is doing some really cool projects. I'm excited to actually see Powell Hall, so I was interested in that. You know, like there wasn't a ton of K-12 experience that came across.

Except the private schools were often compared to.

Yeah. Community. That's fair.

SLU. But I

would say – but I think that's a reflection – I suspect that the neighborhood relations, you know, that Chris was talking about and some things like that might be a little more important in a public school setting.

I guess – I mean, I look at this chart and I look at the things that are above the numbers in the portion that John filled out. And I think those are some pretty important things for us educationally because we're going to put kids in these spaces and we're going to control the amount of money we spend on them. And there's a small but real preference that our Chief Financial Officer has expressed in those numbers there, and I would like to give that some weight myself. A small but real preference for DSI. Anyone

else? Were you going to say something, Ben?

Oh, I was just going to say, I do think that, you know, given the sort of... unique spaces that we have, buildings we have, that maybe actually experience in other types of buildings might actually be of some real value. Think about...

The old buildings they've worked on versus new construction. I was going to say

that too. I mean, that's crazy marriage of old and new, you know? So, I just think... That's a fair point.

I thought the same thing when we saw that slide. Like, if you can do those kind of spaces, like, what cool experience that brings to what

we're trying to do here. Well, and they spoke to how important Perkins and Will is in that process too. We know we've got a partner that's going to give us a really good understanding of our design for school purposes regardless.

They kind of fill that

void. John, do you have a recommendation for us? By any chance? I

mean. Or this might say it. It's

there. But it's so small, so is it really? And you also need

to factor in tonight.

Yeah.

As I said, I think you've got two, you know, these are sometimes unpleasant decisions that have to be made because the good side is you, I don't think you can make a bad decision. And I'll offer you Two recommendations, or an alternative recommendation. I think based on my evaluation of this, my recommendation to you if you're gonna hire one would be BSI. At the same time, I would say that we have two teams going. This would be my alternative recommendation was we have the Paragon Perkins team working on elementary buildings and we have BLDD working on outdoor athletics. You could hire one firm for one team and another firm for the second team. That would be an alternative recommendation. I probably didn't give you the recommendation you wanted to

hear. Clear as mud. How does everyone feel about that, what John said?

Going with one versus two. Well, does one firm have more experience with sports facilities? We didn't really spend a lot of time asking about sports facilities.

I think they're both excellent firms that I was

reluctant to let you look into pick

one or the other but if I like I said if I had to pick one I think I think the narrow edge goes to BSI myself

I would say... And

the idea that they've had continued business, like the same people keep going back to them again and again, it does speak a

lot. I have to admit of all of these categories, even though it wasn't a huge difference in the scoring, but something I think that stands out to me is the history of conflict resolution in the cases of mediation. And I don't know the details of those. Obviously, you have more information, John. But I think that's something to strongly consider here. If we have a firm that has a clean history and has not engaged in any mediation or litigation, it gives me a little more confidence in them.

Y-Down, I think, S.M. Wilson built Y-Down as a general contractor, I believe.

Yeah. So what about the plumbing issues we've talked about that have come out of the facility study that we're experiencing at Y-Down, even though it was recently built?

I think my understanding of that story was at the time that it was under construction, there was some budget issues, and they were trying to restrain the cost of that. And I think they chose a different grade of, there was a decision that was involved with the Board of Education at that time to put a different type of drain pipe, cast iron drain pipe into the facility. And that stuff today is challenging us.

Or who knows who's to blame for that, who's decision that was.

I remember there was the mention of the stairwell, the lights above the stairwell that lie down and were poorly placed. There's some lights that they don't even use because it's almost impossible to change the light bulbs. It's over the stairwell.

Am I making this up? We have that challenge in our theaters too, but that may be more of a design issue than a construction issue. I just bring

it up for things. Yeah.

We are six people tonight, not seven, so.

Have we worked with BSI? Have they done anything for

us? Not that I'm aware of.

I don't think so. So we have worked with SMLSA and we would say that it was a good relationship.

None of us were around when that happened, but. As far as we know. Except for what Kim's talking about. But we don't know whose decision that was.

I don't think you should make your decision on that basis.

We hired him more than once in the past, so that says there was some confidence there. Does anyone, if we were, we don't have to decide tonight, but we'd like to because of course it just puts the whole project back if we

don't. We should get this decided.

Yeah, so I'd like to decide tonight. Does everyone in their heads feel that they have that they know who

they would choose? Ben and Leo are saying yes. Yes, could we vote is exactly what I'm trying to get to. Could you, Chris?

Sure. I would be happy with either one of these.

I would be

too. I would be to vote. Do we all feel A preference to choosing one versus John's other option.

Go

ahead, Leo. Unless John is recommending doing two because he has a preference for that, I think what he said was as a fallback

to

two. And so if the recommendation is one, I would go

with one. Are you recommending two?

I would recommend one. I made an alternative to you in case you needed a different recommendation.

Look, I mean, as far as the things that we were asked to evaluate tonight with respect to... And just so that both the firms that are still waiting here so late on a Tuesday night for a decision. So we are asked as a board to evaluate bidding procedures and transparency, ability to maintain schedule, and ability to manage budget. And from what I heard and from what I saw in the RFP responses and the RFQ responses, for me it's a dead tie for both. So then... You know, for me then I defer to the scoring that's above.

Yeah.

Because both firms are well qualified to do this work.

Yeah. And just so everyone understands what Kim's getting at here, the scoring above has BSI at a slight edge.

Very by like a hair.

Yeah.

But again, the

scoring above does not include the things that I mentioned about getting our students involved and the way that S.M. Wilson would integrate with the community and the way that we know we are going to need in this community. I'm not saying BSI can't. I'm just saying they really spoke to that. So those things aren't on here. And to me, if we were going to rate those two, I would give S.M.

So how do we want to evaluate that aspect? That's a huge one.

I wish we would have asked more questions. Well, they're still here. We can ask. In the pre-bond

part of our work anyway, they will be developing all the cost data that we will be using to inform the public.

Say that again. I was going to... I

thought it really...

How involved with helping with the bond would a CMIR be, I guess? John

mean as far as

like Kim mentioned this didn't this didn't talk about helping with the bond how much help with the bond what a CMIR be

I think is in this particular bond issue is going to be very critical that we have accurate well-developed cost information so the selected party will be developing that in conjunction with the design team to prepare that for and it's information we're going to use as part of the informational campaign that we have for the bond issue

But there's a whole communication strategy and like language around ballot measure. But is that there? I don't know if

that's up to PSI or Sam

Wilson.

Would we be hiring help with our bond campaign?

different firms in terms of just the survey portion of it. We're talking to someone else as an advisory role who's done this work before. And then we're looking at hiring someone for the communications department for the long run to do the work so that Gina can lead some of this work, which she also has experience

with.

But we would be looking at the information we would need to get

So are we saying, so is there anyone else here that's really invested in it? I'd like to know

what you think you should do about having our kids be more involved and

going with us and Wilson because of that.

I personally wouldn't make a decision on that. I think some of these things are more important.

Yeah, I guess what I'm saying is they're 50-50 in my eyes, and that's the one thing that would that be the one thing? Because I'm like, yeah. If they're 50, they're not 50. To me, they're equal to me. Right. So how do you feel about that aspect of it? I think it absolutely

does. Yeah, absolutely does. SM Wilson has a very thorough program that they have that they approach with. But that's also not to say that I don't think BSI would not do that.

Correct. Right. You're

saying they did say they would respond to whatever we needed. So that would be something that. Do you feel like you would ask them to engage in that kind of stuff? Yes.

And to your point, SM Wilson already has that program in place.

Do you have a preference, Nisha?

I think looking at all the information and looking at the rubric, which I don't have in front of me, I would give a slight edge to BSI.

For similar. And

again, for me, it was talking to the two superintendents and getting some information through that. The reference checks you did. Yeah, from the reference check. And again, I don't want to say that SM Wilson didn't get a great reference check, but I do feel there was a stronger one from Lindbergh's.

It's an important one. Yeah,

I agree. That's why I brought that up because it is so close, but I think that's a really important difference. Vote. Okay.

Make a motion. Did you read the motion?

The motion... but it has a blank in it, so we kind of need to vote. But we need to vote and then read the motion for that firm, I think, no?

So we just read,

or you're saying read the motion both

ways? Right,

I was just gonna have everyone raise their hands. Is that what you mean? Okay. although we're an even number tonight, so. Okay, all those? No, well it's

a...

Okay, if you prefer S.M. Wilson, raise your hand. Don't be,

you can raise your hand. You can raise your hand, Chris. I don't, I'm not, it's hard. I know, it is

hard, they're very close.

I want SM Wilson to know that I think what they do with students is extremely important. And I value it so much. And I prefer that in that firm. I really do. And so I'm asking Nisha to please do a good job of making sure that BSI, if that's what we choose here tonight, also engages with our

students. It's a great opportunity to do that. I agree. If you prefer BSI, raise your hand. Thank you. Now will you read the motion, please, with BSI? 8.2. Thank you.

I move that we approve the selection of BSI to service CMAR and authorize the administration to negotiate a contract for the desired CMAR services to include a clear scope of work, reasonable fees, and other acceptable

terms. Second.

Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, motion passes. Thank you, thank you, thank you everyone for coming here tonight for that long, late, thorough process. As we said, this was, and as you heard, very close and hard decision here so we appreciate everybody's work around this. Moving on to agenda item nine. Ben, do you have a Parks and Rec update? Felicia thought you might.

I actually was out of town for the last meeting, so I just did. Sorry.

That's okay. Does anyone else have any other committee reports or updates? Thank you so much. Thank you. Anyone else have any other reports? Okay. We can move to adjourn.