January 21, 2026 — Meeting Transcript

Okay, it's 7.02. Good evening, everyone. Welcome. We're going to get started. Adequate notice has been given. I would like everyone to join and say the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay. Chris, would you please move to adopt the agenda? I move that we approve the agenda as posted.

Second.

Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Motion passes. We are now moving to recognizing our own, which I think will be Gina. Is Gina presenting? Yes. Mike is going to make the presentation. Okay, Mike Parkinson who's our director of safety and security is going to make this presentation.

Thank you very much. Our school district is deeply appreciative of the dedication, professionalism, and daily commitment of our school resource officers. Their presence in our schools goes far beyond safety. They build meaningful relationships with students and staff, serve as trusted mentors, and contribute to a positive learning environment. We are grateful for our SRO's contributions that help make Clayton schools a place for everyone. We're also thankful for the strong partnership we share with Clayton PD. This collaborative relationship, communication, shared responsibility plays a vital role in keeping our schools safe and supported. Together we are better prepared to protect, educate, and serve our school community. Be it hereby proclaimed that the School District of Clayton honors officers Jack Bogar, Ryan Riley, and Herman Whitaker for their exceptional service and positive impact on school community. Their daily commitment strengthens the safety, security, and supportive environment essential to student learning and success. Thank you.

Congratulations, and please pass on to the other SROs our appreciation for all that you do.

Oh,

well, yeah.

Okay, we are moving on now to public comment. We have one public comment from Brad Bernstein.

I had a great talk by Stacy, John, the building principal there. But being there made me – I wasn't going to talk until I was at – we met today. So if we would have met tomorrow, I wouldn't have said anything. First of all, I want to thank the Board of Education, everyone I talked to, or speaking with recently. Evidently my passion for Clayton School District might have rubbed some people the wrong way. I mean to be passionate. I care. You know, my advice here is you need to listen with your consultants in the central office. They drink all their water. They listen to me, listen to Frank, listen to others, or drink our water. You may not want to drink it well, but at least be on that. So a couple comments. I am a big fan. I've always been of reading, writing, and arithmetic. When I was in the Navy and Marines, we had two different R's. One was rigor, and one was being resourceful. Rigor meant discipline, thoroughness, and precision, and resourcefulness meant creative, clever, and capable. Well, this weekend I went to the bank on Saturday, on Ladue Road, U.S. Bank, and the parking lot was packed. There was not one spot. I go into the bank, no one else is there. I go, except for me, get the stuff, and I said, where are all the cars? They go down to the end of the hall. We go to the end of that U.S. bank building, there's Kumon. There must have been 40 or 50 parents and little kids sitting outside the waiting room just as their older siblings were inside. So I like to talk to everybody. I said, where do you go to school? came Captain Glenridge Merrimack, Captain Glenridge Merriment. There was a Reed, there was a Wilson in there. I said, do you guys have any homework? And every parent said, no, that's why we're here. And that's where rigor comes in. It's hard for me to believe that a kid cannot get a worksheet at this age. And I don't know if it's district policy, but clearly it was a theme that day. I talked to all of you guys about the salary budget. I just didn't get a feel when I met anyone that anyone had a real grasp of it. So, I myself went to the June 2020, I talked to John about this, his budget presentation. It was a 10-page PowerPoint presentation. Nowhere in that document did it say what the budget is increasing. It was not there. You can look at it. He knows it was very difficult to go through that and say yes. Now, he said, yep, budget went up 6%, salaries went up 4.5%. But you could not find that. You've got to be transparent. And I told him there's not a CFO worth his weight that would write that. I mean, he would put it. Well, this was based on parents. And this is in your budget document that you approved. The budget and salary increases were made to meet the needs of the expectations of the district. That's not sufficient for us. I mean, you need to know. We need to know. Expenditure, we talked about this website five minutes ago. We are 10,000 more than Ladue. Five years ago, we were 5,000 more than the Ladue. Malena, where's Malena? She looked into that a couple of years ago. I remember that. We have increased 5,000 more the Ladue. They mentioned this to Kim Hersey, said, well, there are 300 kids in Ladue. And there are. There are 200 here, but 10,000 more. So I looked at Brentwood. Brentwood has the same per pupil expenditure as us, and they've got 33 kids in this graduating class. Brentwood's got other issues. He can't have one and not the other. Look at small district and community districts. I was told by another board member that, you know, we're afraid we're going to lose teachers to Kirkwood, Webster. There's no way. There's no one of our teachers is going to go to Kirkwood, teach twice the number of classes, get paid less, not have board grants. If someone's going to really leave for that, let them go. That just is not realistic. And I hope everybody realizes that. At one time, we compared ourselves. I think it's the Whitefish Bay in Milwaukee, Germantown in Tennessee, Grosse Pointe in Michigan. I mean, Frank will remember all this or Shawnee Mission. But Shawnee Mission was just the west and the south or something. Those are the blueprint schools we compared ourselves. So we didn't look at it. Webs are incorporated fine, but that's not who we are. My other comment is I think I talked today, you know, Ledoux School Board gave framework to their superintendent. Ten years ago, we will have either 2% to 2.5%. Increase in our expenditures every year. If you're going to go above that, you've got to, quote, cut something. This board, I mean, I mentioned something to Stacey, who's lovely. We really don't want to tie the hands of our superintendent. You've got to give a framework. It's unrealistic that our per pupil expenditure has doubled any other district and 10,000 more than most recently. With respect to what's going on tonight, you know, I think it would be helpful and transparent, because this is a concern of the community, from John, how much we've spent on this, on consultants, on media, on informational stuff, all indirect and indirect costs. I mean, the rumor out in the community, we've spent over $1 million to $2 million. It's hard for me to believe that, but that should be transparent information. I thank you. You know, Frank encouraged me to file, let me say. He did. He wanted to. But it was a transient experience. I think you're all great guys. I think you'll do a good job. Just be passionate. If you could be half as passionate as me, I'd be thrilled. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And we do have one additional comment from B. Marcel Williams.

Good evening, everyone. I'm not that tall, so. I am a new parent to the district, and I'm so excited to be here. I do have children in the elementary, middle school and the high school level. I had the opportunity this past fall to take a tour of the Merrimack School. And in doing so, coming into the district, it was very much so light, bright, meeting the teachers on the welcome days and everything. It was so much energy. And little did I know that there were so many challenges regarding our buildings. Because as a new parent to the school district, I really did not see any issues at all. But having done a tour with Merrimack and then also scheduling a tour with Glenridge, I did want to speak on behalf of the proposition that is before us. So like I said before, Clayton is an incredible school district. We have amazing teachers. We have amazing staff and programs. But our buildings, they are aging. And they are holding us back and making it harder to compete with other top districts. Updating our facilities isn't a nice to have anymore. It's an essential. Over the past year, the district has been working with community members, staff, and outside experts to create a long range facilities master plan. Putting Prop O on the April ballot and getting it passed is the way to take that plan and make it a reality. There is a key financial piece that I think should be noted, that Prop O does not raise taxes at all. These facility issues can't wait if Clayton wants to remain a top-tier district. Investing in our schools directly protects and increases property value. I truly believe that if we do this, and if this gets done, then Clayton won't just remain strong, it can become the premier school district in Missouri ever. and beyond. Again, I have students that are seven, that are 13 and 12, and I have a graduating senior. And so I'm here for the long run and I would love to at least have my seven-year-old enjoy all of the fruits of this labor. Thank you so much and thank you to the board.

Thank you. And just a reminder to the public that we don't respond here at the meeting to your public comments, but we will follow up at a later time. So thanks to you both. Moving on now to Dr. Patel's superintendent communications. Thank

you. Thank you, everyone, and thank you for being here tonight. So typically when I do a superintendent's update, I usually share highlights from across the district, from our communities, and our staff members and stakeholders. But tonight I have decided, knowing that we are having an a presentation later today for the Long Range Facilities Plan and the significance of that, I wanted to take a few minutes just to provide some extra context around it. So Frank, this will not be like behind the business card message, it will be a little bit longer. So as I was thinking about it and as I was saying, tonight we're gonna be hearing about the Long Range Facilites Master Plan, and this is more than just a master plan, it is really a conversation that we're about to have that's an investment in our community. Specifically, it's a $135 million proposal that we are going to put forth. And the proposal is a zero tax rate increase proposal. It is focused on our facilities where our students continue to have a sense of belonging. It is focused our facilities where our student continue to learn every single day and they grow. And we wanna call this proposal, we're planning on calling it Prop O for our schools, our community, and our future. Two years ago, more than two years ago actually at this point, we and the school district and the board were exploring the option of purchasing Calaris. At that time, the community spoke clearly. They asked us to slow down, they asked us to really be transparent, and they asked us most importantly to come up with a detailed comprehensive plan before we make any significant requests from our residents. And over the past two years, we have done exactly that. We've slowed down, we listened carefully, and we developed a plan. And you will listen and you will hear about the plan later today. But I say that to give you context of we didn't just come up with this proposal or this plan. A lot of work has gone behind it. When you think about the two years that we have spent We have had community engagement meetings. We have had steering committee with 33 people that represented seven different stakeholder groups. We have had over 100 people in building committee meetings that have been giving us input. We've hosted building tours. The board has been meeting on a regular basis with so many retreats and exec sessions, and questioning and pushing us and really challenging our thinking, which we appreciate. And with that, we have come across, we've come through with a solid, well thought out plan that will be a phased approach. And phase one will include Glenridge Elementary, Clayton High School, and Gayfield. Glenridge Elementary being 96 years old, and our hope is through demolition, new construction, and renovation, We can provide safe, more safe, secure places, accessible and places where our kids can have learning accessible that fits the needs of the learner today and for future. And then at Clayton High School, our proposal is to have a STEM learning lab where we can continue to be innovative and offer classes that other districts are right now that we cannot because we don't have that space. And remember, we always say learning just doesn't happen in the four walls of a classroom. So by improving gay field, we're improving learning for our students. And it's a place where our community comes together. So it is a point of pride. We have shared experiences on that field and we can build connections there. So I say all that because I want us to really know that this is a very well thought out plan We will share the details on it, but it is shaped by community voice over the past two years and it is grounded on fiscal responsibility. Zero tax rate increase. So with that, I just wanted to thank everybody that has helped shape this plan over the past two year. Thank you for your engagement, thank you for your partnership, and I look forward to our conversation later today so we can really discuss it. And with that, I am going to hand it over to Nina, because I'm sure she has some thoughts as well.

Hi, everyone. So last Thursday, I got the chance to meet with Clayton's Principals Advisory Club again. This is our first meeting of the new year, so we had lots to discuss. While we talked a little bit about finals and the new semester transition, the majority of our discussion surrounded the Long Range Facilities Master Plan. We started by talking about the new STEM learning lab, which would house geometry and construction, AMPT, and robotics. Everyone is super excited about these ideas, and using feedback from the group as well as student surveys, here are some of the key reasons why students think these additions will be beneficial. First, Clayton has so many opportunities to explore career paths. From cooking and childcare to chemistry and biomed, our school does a great job of preparing students for the future. The one area they are lacking in is construction and engineering, a subject many students say they would be interested in learning more about. The addition of geometry and construction at AMP would be a great opportunity for students to explore a new area while also improving Clayton's already thriving future-ready learning. Second, right now, Clayton has a great robotics team. They see great success in competition, but they don't really have a convenient space to practice. Students believe that an addition to their space would greatly enhance their already extremely impressive work that they're doing. And third, CTE is already such a hit. According to Dr. Compton, there were over 1,000 requests to take a CTE class for the 2025-2026 school year, meaning not only that almost every student wanted to take a class in CTE, but many students requested to take more than one class in CTE. So in addition to an already great area would give more kids the opportunity to explore CTE classes. Also, using information from the survey from last semester, a brief discussion with principal's advisory club, as well as multiple hallway conversations, I was also able to compile a brief list of the top benefits students would receive from the improvements to Gayfield. First, because of the conditions of the locker rooms, it often takes a very long time to change and get ready before sports practice. An improvement to these facilities would not only make them more enjoyable to be in, but also speed up the process and allow for more practice time. Second, the improvements to the bleachers, public restrooms, and concession stands would also greatly benefit game days. Right now, these facilities don't really match the overall vibe of the field. Making improvements would help make the facilities just as fun and energizing as the crowd at the games are. Additionally, when I looked back on my notes from my Glenridge meeting, it made me smile to realize just how happy these Glenridge students would be with the new possible improvements. When discussing with the students back in September, much of their feedback surrounded improvements they would like to see to their building. While they didn't use these exact terms, their main request involved modernizing the space. Using my notes from the Glenridge meeting as well as notes from the Glen Ridge Community Night, here is how these improvements will most benefit Glen Ridge students. First, right now students often have to leave classes like art and gym five to 10 minutes early just so they can get to their next class on time. A rearrangement and modernization of learning spaces will significantly shorten transition time from classes to specials, allowing students more time to be creative and to get their wiggles out. Right now, Glenridge classrooms are structured in a very close-off manner. If you are in a class at the end of your grade section, you have almost no interaction with other classes, let alone any other grade levels. Many students told me that they wish they had more chances to work collectively with students from other classes. An upgrade to these spaces would allow for more collaboration and time for connection across grade levels. This not only benefits students by building group work and leadership skills, but also prepares them for a wide-on middle school where they will be in classes with and working with many different students throughout the day. So that's an important part of the transition too. And then also, students at Glenridge made it very clear to me that while they would greatly benefit from renovations and updates, they love the exterior of their school, which is why it's so important that we keep Glenridge's shell as a representation of the history and community of the school. These were just a few of the ways that these additions and improvements made to CTE, Gayfield, and Glenridge would better the learning experience of Clayton students. Clayton students absolutely adore their community and schools, which is why we are so grateful that the school board is considering these improvements. Again, now just looking ahead to our 2026 semester, I am very excited to continue my work as student rep I currently have meetings with Glenridge, Merrimack, and Captain set up, and I'm in the process of coordinating with YNAH. I am really looking forward to meeting with these focus groups again, as last semester they provided me with lots of insight and laughs. So I'm very excited to continue my work. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Nina. I think, as always, the student perspective is so valuable and helpful, and I especially liked how you talked about the – registration and enrollment increasing for CTE classes at the high school that's not something I've thought about but knowing right there what you said that not only are on average I guess every kid signing up for at least one but more that means more than one CTE class tells me this reaffirms our decision that to add more dedicated CTE space at the high school so thanks for pointing that out

it's like by far the most popular like section

Yeah, so that makes me feel good about our decisions about what projects we identified as priorities. So thank you. Next on the agenda is our presentation from our architects, design teams and construction managers. And as they're coming up, I just wanted to speak on behalf of the board and I apologize, I'm kind of repeating a little what Dr. Patel said, but I just also wanted to remind the community where we've come in this process. And like she said, about two years ago we started this study of our facilities. It had been about 15 years since we had done a facility study prior to this, which was definitely overdue. Through the study we realized most of our facilities are not meeting the current and future needs of our students. So we took action, which was going to the community to get feedback. We engaged all stakeholders, community members, students, parents, teachers, administrators, support staff, coaches, former school board members, city council members, the mayor, the city manager, just to gather feedback to help guide our decisions. We wanted to know what are the community's priorities in relation to our facilities. So we've worked with these architects, design teams, construction managers and other experts that helped us guide the study and assess the actual current state of our facilities. And as Dr. Patel said, in addition to all the public meetings that you've seen us discuss this at, We've also had workshops, forums, surveys, offered tours. And the board has met in closed session and in retreats many times to discuss all of this behind closed doors, to review the design plans, cost estimates. We've analyzed the finances, asked very tough questions, and made very critical decisions that led us to where we are tonight. We hope these decisions will impact and shape the future of our district for generations to come. Through the process, we've eventually identified priorities and we developed an actionable plan to address the facility challenges, which led us to consider what we're gonna vote on tonight, which is placing a ballot issue referendum on the ballot in April that we will be voting on later, which will address just the first phase of facility renovations and upgrades in the district. I invite the design teams to come up and make their presentation, but just a brief reminder of where we've come and how we got to this point. So thank you all for your involvement along the way the last couple years.

All right. Good evening. I'm going to run through some of the intro slides. We've covered a lot of it, but tonight we're going to give an update on the facilities master plan, where we've come from and where we're headed next. Following tonight's presentation, all the materials that we discuss will be available on the website for the community at home. So that's a key detail. But here we go. Let's jump in. So as it was said, we've been planning this for nearly two years. It's been a combination of input sessions and working with experts to shape a vision that reflects our community's priorities. It's very much focused on innovative future-focused learning. The current reality is we've covered this in the past, but just at a high level, the take home is that learning today looks very different than when many of our schools were built. Glenridge is nearly 100 years old and it's aging and there are areas that are in need of renovation. And some of the spaces could be updated to better support student learning for generations to come. And beyond our school facilities, we're also looking at spaces outside of the classroom because we know learning happens everywhere in Clayton. This is just at a glance the process, which kicked off in May of 2024. The Long Range Facilities Plan worked with extensive experts community engagement process. The forum was formally presented in February 2025 and then since then we've brought on leading design firms to help identify steps for modernization and that included extensive community engagement and that is where we are tonight. Throughout the process, we've heard from many voices. Over hundreds of stakeholders have played a role. We've had over 40 meetings and this has been a very collaborative process and the goal is to ensure that our plans truly reflect what our community's vision is for its schools and its facilities.

Good evening. We are proposing tonight to fund the projects through a borrowing process called Bond Issue. Our proposal is to borrow $135 million to fund phase one of the projects. In addition, we'll be also funding some projects with budget dollars. Projects to be funded by the bond issue are shown here on the page modernizing Glenridge Elementary Constructing the stem or lab at Clayton element at Clayton High School and upgrading gay field the bond issue itself will be Repaid with a zero tax rate increase I'd like to introduce our project team from Perkins and will I which is the design team on the elementary schools. We have Steve Turkis and Amy. I can't remember your last name, Amy. From Paragon, who's also part of that team, Brad Irwin and Mike Younglove. From BLDD, John Whitlock. And from our CMAR, our construction management team of BSI, we have Paul and Anna. I'm sorry about that. They'll each go to make a presentation on their part of the project tonight.

Well, good evening. This is a slide that we've shared several times. You know, we really try to begin with the end in mind and working towards that April 7th date. And so tonight's the big night to kind of put the bow on a lot of the work that's been done to this point to present to you and to the community to help make that decision moving forward. So it's just a snapshot of some of the work behind the scenes. We'll go ahead and start with Glenridge Elementary School. And I'd probably like to ask Nina for her talking points because those were absolutely awesome and just a great representation of everything that we heard through the process. You know, Glenridge is one of the it is the oldest school in the sorry, the oldest building in the school district. We're approaching 100 years old, and really the teaching has completely evolved since even the 1994 edition, quite frankly. And so there's been a lot of improvements over the years, but really how are we getting set up moving forward? And so through the planned improvements that we'll go over tonight, it's gonna have flexible learning environments, tornado shelter, dedicated areas for wellness, for technology, And to really do all this still within the facade, the exterior of the historic building, which I think is really important. We heard that tonight. So let Steve and Amy talk a little bit more about that and that continuity of how we've gotten from the master plan to today.

Okay. It's a pleasure to be back with you this evening. There's a couple of slides especially for the board, ones that you probably could present yourselves at this point quite honestly, but this is the existing site plan for Glenridge Elementary School. North is up on the slide. Everything you see that's sort of not ghosted in white is the site proper for Glenridge. So just really, this is here more for context and understanding. One of the very lovely things about Glenridge is it's really tucked neatly into a residential neighborhood with single family, mostly single family houses all the way around it on every side. What is showing up on the site plan itself is the building floor plan. And I want to point out in the red dotted line that is on the north side of the building, that's the area of the building that is being proposed to be removed and replaced with new function. And partly one of the big drivers For that side of the building, this is true at Merrimack as well, is the gym is quite undersized by today's standards, especially not just for daytime elementary use, but also evening and weekend use by community members. So the gym is one of those kind of spaces that's being right-sized programmatically on the campus. The new site plan then that's going to come up next, you'll see the existing building. The portion that remains is the old historic front of the building that faces south on the site. And then in a darker blue is the new portion of the building. In the center of that in which Amy's going to talk about the plan here in a moment is the gym. All the spaces sort of surround the gym. The playfields off to the east are expected to remain as they are today, realigning parking on the site but keeping as many spaces as there are today. So no loss in parking with the new addition. In terms of what you might ask, why does the footprint look bigger than it does today? Programmatically, Amy's going to talk about this, but I just mentioned the gym is quite a bit larger than the existing gym. There are additional spaces in the program to provide that sort of variety and flexibility and space that you don't have in these buildings today, in the elementary buildings. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Amy. Not quite yet. This is just giving you an idea about the massing. It's those same colors on the side. You're seeing the new addition now off the north side of the building. Trying to keep that residential scale. We're going to show some sort of renderings of these to give you a much better idea of the flavor of the architecture. But just to foreshadow that, it's very much in keeping with sort of the roof forms and roof pitches and and sort of architectural vocabulary of the existing building.

So throughout the process, we programmed all three elementary schools together. So they all have equitable programs. So you'll see that realized here in more detail at Glenridge, but we've studied this across all of the elementaries as well. One of the big drivers at Glenridge is to take that beautiful front facade and be able to actually enter through the front door there in an accessible way. So you'll in the renderings that we've done that and that the administration and like functions are now on that main entry level, which seems to be a little bit of a lower level but it's actually almost at the grade level. So we're just doing some restructuring of the entry and making it fully accessible at the front door. The cafeteria remains where it is today with some renovations to it. Big idea for the planning of levels two and three are those grade level pods. So on the left side of the bottom, you see kind of that classrooms in a row. Nina mentioned that they were designed for a different era. They're very solid. Some feel very separate. The new configuration, whether it's in the new building or the renovated building, is to have the three classrooms per grade surround an extended learning area, which is really that variety of space, that space where projects can happen, where more informal learning can happen, really in a seamless way from classroom directly out to that space. So it is just that, it's an extended learning space. That's a different scale, and there's also small group spaces that come with that. We'll show you a rendering here. So this is what that collaborative space looks like today. It happens on stairwells. There's really not a lot of room in the hallways. The classrooms are up at the top, some examples of classroom spaces. They're not very transparent. Some of them have a lack of daylight, and this would give all the classroom spaces equitable daylight transparency and flexible space. So we've done a rendering of what a typical collaborative extended learning area looks like. In this rendering, you can see the classrooms on the left and right that spill equally out into that space. There are some operable walls that are transparent, so there can be supervision of those spaces passively. But they also can really open up and have a classroom flow back and forth. I think Nina mentioned that students really wanted to work together and be able to see each other and work in different grade levels. So this type of space really allows that to happen in a really nice manner. It also allows for different scale of space. So the classroom, this larger space, as well as you can see a little nook in there. We heard a lot about different types of learners and different types of learning and some quiet spaces sometimes needed. Some spaces like that are kind of baked into this design as well. And the furniture is all movable, flexible and can change over time.

So before we move off that, if we could go back one. I just want to point your attention to sort of the roof form here. Now we're on the second floor. This rendering was taken. You can kind of see it on the wall there by the stair. It's the fourth grade area, which is in the noose part of the building. So the window that you see in the back would be looking north. I'm gonna point that same window out in an exterior rendering here in just a moment. So you're seeing sort of the roof form on the outside is coming inside to give some shape to that space, which is kind of an interesting fun thing we can do on the second floor because we can manipulate the roof. Now, what you're going to see in the next rendering then is we're back on to the front of the building. And if you might drive by this and not really have ever paid attention to what the front of the billing looks like, you might not even notice the difference so much. But there is a major difference here. And that is that the front door of this building, which is in the back of the building today, by necessity to have an accessible entrance, is now relocated to the historic front of the building, where it was day one when this building opened its doors for its first academic year. As Amy noted, it's been relocated to the ground level, the lowest level of the building. So you're seeing that dead center in this image. To make that happen, interestingly enough, The sidewalk elevation at the street in front of Glen Ridge is inches difference in elevations, vertical elevation than that lowest level. So pulling the landscape back a bit, allowing pedestrians to walk right up to the front of the building is a very nice thing. And again, from a civic standpoint, the civic stance of the building, this is really where the front door of this building wants to be. Those spaces flanking that on either side of the front door are those administrative spaces. Amy noted the secure entry is best practices around how to get into schools in a secure way today is part of the design, not just here, but this is true in the planning for Merrimack and Captain as well. So the rest of that elevation, though, is what is there today. And what is there today is lovely, honestly. It has a nice scale in the residential neighborhood today, pitched roofs, the chimneys. The original architecture is bringing in those sort of historic homes that surround this, that residential scaled architecture. Yes, it's bigger. The homes aren't this big, but those elements are recognizable. So we really worked hard to try to bring that now to the new north side of the building, which is on the next rendering. So you're seeing some of those same elements, the stone base, the window treatments are very familiar and the notion of the half-timbered up in the gable. And as you go down the street to the left here, that first gable is that fourth grade extended learning area, sort of the window that peaks out there. The larger gable is the gym. And so really, again, trying to take... the scale of the building, break it down and have it be very respectful to the original building in terms of its materiality, its scale, its roof forms, the sort of the texture, the architecture of the building. Be friendly to the existing building but also friendly to its neighbors across the street.

Okay, and jumping into Clayton High School, had a lot of good conversations here. Again, Nina's talking points were spot on about how to create this new STEM learning lab for that hands-on project-based instruction that really there's no other room in the high school for these types of activities such as the geometry and construction. We talked about the robotics, the AMP program, and the career technical education type programs or the CTE. So similar to how when we look at a theater, how that's the hub for the performing arts, we imagine this CTE wing so to speak as the hub for the STEM program at the high school and just really offering experiences and classes that just can't be offered today because there's just not the space for it within the existing building.

All right, so here we have a site plan of the CTE addition. So on the right side in that gray area is the existing high school. We're proposing a 10,000 square foot one story addition there in the white on the southwest side of the high school in that parking lot area. On the left there, we are protecting the existing drive lane that has circulation around the entire site and also for fire lane access there. And on the far left is attic field. So I think the next slide, we have the floor plan. So as Nina mentioned, some much-needed space for the CTE program. So on the right, again, we're tying into the existing math department in pre-engineering space and shop area. We'll connect through that existing math corridor and extend a new corridor through the addition to a vestibule entrance there on the addition as well. The existing math office will get renovated. We'll have to demolish two existing classrooms, but those will get relocated in the addition of that dark blue there. At the top labeled GIC is the much-needed geometry and construction space. They currently do not have a space for that program right now. So dedicated space for them that's directly adjacent to the shop area. And then just left is the STEM learning lab as well, a much-needed space for Project-based learning such as robotics and then the bottom left is the amps classroom that has to break out spaces and a storage room And then here we have an interior rendering of the stem learning lab so a nice industrial look large open space high ceiling on the right there is some tables there for just our project-based learning and And then on the left is shown is the robotics field so like much-needed space instead of using the Commons area They have a space where they can have practices in the stem learning lab and Then here we have an exterior rendering of the addition, so this is at the corner of the STEM Learning Lab and the entrance to the addition as well. So being complimentary to the existing building, we'll have some brick that matches the adjacent existing and some metal panels and sun shade devices.

So Gayfield has served the district valiantly since 1930. However, it's been some time since you've invested significant dollars in this facility, and some of these facilities need some work. And so a case in point would be the press box, which is difficult to keep water tight, which is exposing AV and scoreboard equipment to moisture issues. The roof structure and associated guardrail, which is accessed by your coaches and visiting coaches for games, is a structural issue and safety concern. Your concession is woefully inadequate for the number of visitors you have at this site, but it also is located in a location that creates a lot of congestion, elbows bumping together, again, kind of a safety issue. So we'd like to give people more space and more room. And also, and I'm sure everybody's aware of this, that the number of toilets you have is woefully also inadequate for the number of visitors you have at this site. The improvements that we are suggesting will enhance the student and community experience, and I think even more importantly, help accessibility and safety within the field. These improvements will also give you the ability to do some things that you can't currently do, which is host large soccer district matches, larger track and field invitationals, and perhaps potentially hosting graduation events. So when you look at this project, it's really kind of, you can break it down. While there's work all over this site, you can break down into four sections. The synthetic turf needs replaced. It's at the end of its useful life, so that will be replaced as a part of this project. The upper level at the bleacher area, a new pedestrian walkway area for people to gather, enter with a new bleacher system. You currently can handle about 1,000 people at this facility. This will improve that to about 1,500. Another major component is the renovation of the existing concession and toilet area and also the field house. And another big improvement is parking, additional parking that is very desperately needed here and better access to parking. Let me go to the next slide. These are just some quick indicators of the different layouts for the press box, which would have a larger concession area below, would have access to single-user family-style restrooms, more restrooms for, again, those 1,500 visitors, and a complete renovation we're showing off there to the left, that existing concession area, which the concession would relocate, and then new toilets in large toilet areas in that building as well. For the next slide, this is the field house. Right now you have two locker rooms which handle your football in the fall and track in the spring. This would incorporate two more locker rooms and coaches areas to make sure that we're also accommodating lacrosse and the soccer programs. So in the fall you've got football going on and in the spring you've got track in those and then you've got soccer both spring and fall and then lacrosse in there as well so again you'll also see a lot of gray areas the need for storage right now is great if you go through the existing field house you'll notice that the track equipment is stored in the showers and the toilet rooms and so they need space for those right now So a couple of the images that we're showing, this is as you would enter the facility from where you're sort of at the northeast side looking back into the gated area. You have access to the ticket booth. I'll give you a nice masonry structure. Again, a place for people to gather and commune. We go to the next slide which is if you were coming up from the lower parking lot walking straight up to the ticket booth, this is what you would see. Again, swinging around a little bit more to the northwest, to looking back at the facility. And I want to point out that there are some of the issues that you have is the inability to sort of get out of inclement weather just when it rains. And so we are showing a lot of canopies, areas for people to gather in case that happens. Also, we will have structures that people can get into if the weather is more severe than just rain. Next slide. Again, just an upper, more of an aerial shot showing the press box access to the roof for coaches, for videoing, those sort of things.

Okay, now that the design team has updated us on the design, just a quick reminder for anybody who's online or in the room not familiar with BSI's role, we are the construction manager. And we joined the team several months ago to work with the district and the designers to provide input on cost, on schedule, and construction logistics planning. One of the big challenges any client faces as they embark upon such a large project across multiple campuses, is developing the initial project budget for planning purposes so that the client can make informed decisions about project scope and evaluate options for the project funding. And we have studied many different options in conjunction with the district and the board. The initial budget analysis must be comprehensive, so it includes not only the construction costs but also all the other costs that go along with the project, the soft costs, furniture, fixtures, equipment, et cetera. Anna has been instrumental in BSI's work thus far, and so she's going to describe the budget process and next steps for us.

All right. So if you could go back to that slide. Thank you. So this slide was shared at the last board meeting last month. We're including it again just to give a brief reminder of the process that was used to develop these initial budget ranges for the projects. Like Paul said, when a project is in the early stages of design and there's limited design information available, the most appropriate method for establishing an initial budget is to do a dollars per square foot analysis and use metrics from other projects to help inform our analysis. So we pulled data from other K through 12 school projects that BSI has constructed over the past few years, all in the St. Louis area. We derived dollars per square foot data points from each of those projects and adjusted them up to $20, $25. Each of those projects had varying levels of scope and quality, so using what we know about those projects combined with the proposed design concepts for the Clayton projects, we've established what we believe to be reasonable budgets for planning purposes for the school district of Clayton's projects. So at this time, the expected range for the phase one bond-funded projects is between 110 to 135 million We're showing this graph to demonstrate two things. The first one is that the design scope, the design scope and quality as those Components increase the cost increases as well. So that's represented by the diagonal line on this graph and then the second thing Demonstrated by this graph is we want to emphasize that there is variability in the numbers The projects are still very early in the design phase And the budgets will continue to be refined as the design advances and more information becomes available and then ultimately when the projects go out for bid So there are many scope and quality decisions that will be made between now and the end of design that will impact cost. And based on the information available today, this is the range that the team is expecting the phase one bond funded projects to be in. So the next step for BSI is to do formal project specific estimates for each of the projects based on the schematic design documents that were delivered to BSI last week. The goal of those estimates is to validate this project budget up here relative to this range, and the estimates will also allow the district in conjunction with design team and BSI to better understand how the scope and quality decisions are impacting the cost, and then allow everyone to make decisions and adjustments to the design if desired. And then, as Paul mentioned, those budget numbers are not just construction costs, but they also include soft costs such as design fees, furnitures, fixture equipment, and other owner-directly procured components of the project.

The projects that have been talked about so far, the three large projects with Glen Ridge, with High School and with Gay Field will be funded by the bond proceeds that we anticipate voters will approve. In addition to those, we will also have some smaller cost projects that we will fund out of our capital improvement project budget line. Some of those are updating the high schools auditorium and performing arts area constructing press box at adzak field along with dugouts upgrading the Y down athletic field and Funding the temporary bridge campus that will support it learning during the elementary school construction. I

Okay, we have the Performing Arts Center improvements. So on the top right there is the band, choir, and orchestra room. They're experiencing some HVAC noise that's problematic. It's above ASHRAE standards, so looking at doing some HVAC improvements to those spaces. On the bottom right there is the auditorium, doing a renovation to the auditorium that includes a seating replacement, carpet replacement, and LED aisle lighting. Backstage, we have a ADA lift proposed. So currently students can get on the stage from the seating area, but they're kind of stuck on there until the end of the performance. So it gives them another way to go backstage and get to that upper level. So just improving that accessibility. And then at the front of the auditorium and lobby area, there's two restrooms just doing a light interior finish upgrade to those restrooms as well. At the main entry of the building, we're proposing a school store. You've got heavy foot traffic and high visibility. So that's at the existing Hounds Ground location. So we would locate the school store there and then relocate Hounds Grounds to the floor below at the Commons level.

Okay, the work at Adzick and Shaw Park. While not sexy projects, they are going to be very valuable assets to the district and the community. The original Adzick project did not complete the dugouts or press box. Those are temporary structures. So this would provide permanent masonry structures for both the dugouts and the press box. The press box at the lower level would house two single-user family-style restrooms, which will be valuable to people visiting the site and teams that are using the site. If we go to the next slide, we just show, again, very simple masonry structures to accommodate those needs at the press box and the dugout, shown from both directions. At Shaw Field, or Shaw Park, field number five would be installing synthetic turf for the infield, which will again allow your softball team to hopefully miss fewer games, have more practices, and be a community asset when it's the park utilizing the facility. So a great amenity for everyone to use. At Y-Down, we say Y-Y-Down, I think what I want to stress here is that everybody knows the condition of the field, the adjacent field next to the building. It's not in great shape, but I wanna tell you that it's not a maintenance issue and it's not really because of the parking below either. It's a usage issue. If you want to keep a sodded turf field pristine during a season, you should expect to be able to use it 30 to 50 times in that season. 30 to 50 times. You currently have 10 PE classes using this field. You have five athletic teams using it in the fall, up to 150 kids. Six athletic teams in the spring, up to 200 kids. And that doesn't even count recess, movie nights, and the kids that are using it in the evenings whenever there's nobody there. So synthetic turf will be a real asset to this facility, allowing you to use it more than you do now. Other athletic teams need to use this facility, and this will open that up to them. So this will have synthetic turf. It will have a paved track for running, jogging. Some shade structures are shown, both portable and fixed. So very simple and easy to install. Next one.

A bridge campus is needed for, while Glen Ridge is under construction in phase one and then later in phase two potentially for Merrimack as well. We are exploring multiple locations for this and a couple different ideas. One idea is the Fontbonne campus. Another is next to the center. These structures would be brand new and would be clean learning environments for the students and staff while Glen Ridge is under construction.

So the expected budget range for the budget funded projects at Clayton High, Performing Arts Area, Baseball, Softball, Fields, Y-Down and the Temporary Bridge Campus is in the range of 17 to 20 million. And similar to the budget for the bond funded projects, proposed bond funded projects, this budget range includes soft costs and we will be doing a schematic design estimates for these projects coming up shortly.

In order to have equitable design across our elementary schools, we've been doing schematic designs for Captain Elementary and Merrimack Elementary as well. They would not be funded out of this initial bond issue but would be phase two and phase three projects. But we want to assure the community that we're working on those projects as well.

So Merrimack Elementary School, much like I described for Glen Ridge, the site plan for Merrimack bears resemblance. Now north is to the right of the screen. So in this case, the front door, the original front door to Merrimack faced to the west or to the top of the screen. And we'll show a rendering here again in a moment where we are proposing that it is brought back to the front of the building. It's currently off to the north side of the building. The Merrimack has the same issue sort of across the board in many ways as Glenridge from a spatial standpoint. The gym is too small. It doesn't have the flexibility and types of learning environments that we looked at at Glenridge. So we're just going to show you the site plan and a few renderings here. Again, the dark blue area is the proposed addition to the east side of the building. One thing I want to point out on the site plan here is that the playground for this building is in primarily two major locations. One is directly behind the building or to the east side of the building, and the other is to the south side of the building and that sort of dog leg that runs off to the left side of the screen. At one point, we were looking at potential changes to the retaining walls on the east side of the building. At this point, those are staying intact. And so the neighbors experience, those neighbors to the east is basically, you know, from a landscape perspective, the retaining walls access to south central, for instance, is exactly in the future, is exactly what it is today. So no real changes there. The retaining walls that are there are staying in place. The landscape that is there is staying in place. I didn't want to point that out. The next couple of images then are like Like we showed you for Glenridge, this is the proposed new front. It looks a lot like the existing front, except like Glenridge. We're sort of pulling the landscape away to allow access to that lowest level of Glenridge. The historic front door is on the second floor of the building now, so a little bit of facade work to sort of unify the entry, which is now It's kind of tucked in behind the people on the sidewalk leading up to it to create a more unified element there. But the flanking architecture that you see there is exactly what is there today. As we move around then to the rear of the building, this is what the neighbors to the east would see. Again, an architecture that hopefully its vocabulary is very familiar to and compatible with the existing building, sort of a residential scale and quality and feel with the pitched roofs, the treatment of the end gables, the window style, the divided lights, the sort of framing around the window, again being compatible. The gym, again, just like Glenridge, is the piece in the middle there that has the higher windows just to bring some daylight into that. Like Glenridge, the gym here is the storm shelter. It's the code required ICC. It's the section of the code ICC 500 storm shelter.

I might add also that the gyms at all the schools double as performance spaces that can be for large groups of people, community use, which was another large programmatic need we heard. So multi-use spaces there. Captain, we're just showing you a site plan today with a vetted test fit of what that program looks like. very small site as many of yours are moving the building to the west side of the site north is up here it's right now kind of in the center of the site more toward the east so avoiding much of the existing building Um, phasing of this could be all at once or it could be phased construction depending on how the district wants to handle that. But what we do know after studying captain is the program fits and it fits in the way the adjacencies and the programmatic elements in the way that the captain user group, um, was excited about.

The district is in a strong financial position. It's been 16 years since we last asked voters to approve a bond issue. Our bond ratings are strong at AAA bond ratings from Standard & Poor's. It's the best bond rating we can achieve. And we will be able to support the bond request that we are making without increasing the debt levy. So taxes a tax increase is not in the cards with this proposal. There are two ways to fund improvements one is from our capital budget and the other is through bond funds due to the size of these projects borrowing is necessary. It would be a 20 year bond We do have some existing bonds that will pay off by 2029. And after that, we'll be easily able to fund the, or even from the beginning, we'll be easy able to fund the request of $135 million without any tax rate increase.

All right, and then this slide shows some very early draft construction timelines for the phase one projects. So assuming that the design is completed and the projects are bid later this year, most of these projects could begin as early as end of this year or early 2027. All the construction start dates and durations continue to be discussed with the district and with the design teams to nail those down. So all very tentative right now, but those discussions will continue.

Okay. Thank you so much to all of you for that presentation. I really appreciate, for our sake as a board and for the community's sake, the way you explained what this proposed bond issue would fund versus budget-funded projects. All of those are projects we identified through the past two years studying this. And what we, of course, then spent a long time discussing is, are the finances, right? How we would fund all of these projects we identified And this is where we landed. We identified some that we could fund through our capital improvements fund and others that we needed to borrow money through the bond issue. As you all heard, I just want to reiterate that we've kind of decided to do these bigger ones in phases. The reason we made that decision and not all at once is for the community's sake, we did not want to raise taxes, raise the tax rate. So in order to keep it a zero tax rate increase, we need to phase it out. So as you see, though, we have been and will continue to work on plans for Merrimack and Captain for future phases of these projects. I also just wanted to tell whoever's listening, there's a few acronyms we keep using, and I feel like if you're not in the field, you might not understand what we're talking about. So I just wanted to clear up. One is CTE. CTE stands for Career and Technical Education Nina talked about it a lot, that it's the most popular requested department of courses at the high school. And the other one is one of the courses we talk about in the addition at the high school, which is AMPT, and it stands for Algebra Manufacturing Processes Engineering and Design, I believe. So that and Geometry and Construction are both co-curricular courses between the math departments and the CTE, Career and Technical Education departments provide credits in both areas for students and real-world hands-on learning so I just wanted to I keep hearing those phrases and I realize not everybody knows what those are so I wanted to clear that up too but thank you again to all of you the construction managers the entire design team all the architects I feel really good about what we're proposing and where we've decided to prioritize our projects for this bond issue which we will be voting on shortly but does anyone else have Questions or comments about the presentation for the team? Looks like Pam and Jason do.

Okay, I'll have a question. No, I mean first I just want to thank you guys. I think this is, I've mentioned to a few people over the course of the past couple years, like this has been a much more challenging process. I never gave thought to like is this an easy or hard process going into this, but this is a much more challenging than I anticipated given the variety of perspectives that we got as part of it, the financing economic realities and just constraints that we have, and particularly the land situation that we face as a district. I'm just a believer that if you ask the right questions and you put good people around the table, you'll get the right answers. And I think you guys did a great job all throughout the process, even last year when it was just Paragon, just asking the right questions, getting us to focus on the right things. And I think we really landed on a good spot. And that's in large part thanks to you guys. So I want to compliment the work that you guys have done to date. My only question is actually just like a very simple, odd question on gay field. Do we and I'm sorry to think about this earlier. Will we have sports seasons be disrupted? I mean, I know they can go someplace else, but like, are we anticipate Sports team not being able to use gay field for a season or two or what do you think about that

in fairness? The answer to that question is we don't know We know when we could start the work and we expect it to mostly be in the summer We have to work with BSI on what that makes sense the idea would be to work around but if there is the opportunity to Displace a team where you don't have home events and we're able to work that will benefit the district in terms of time and money and So it's still to be determined, which is why you didn't see a duration for that on this

construction. So there's a lot of questions that comes to that. OK. All right. That was my only question. Thanks.

Go ahead, Leo.

I also want to thank you guys for all your work over the last few years, two years. And what I thought about tonight was how to kind of summarize and capsulate for someone who's focused on this vote we're taking here tonight, what's going on for two years. And it's hard. We're not going to get it all in. But I thought there were a few key things that we could talk about. And one of the big things is, and one of the things that I think we're going to, you know, people are going to ask questions about is what is it that brought Glen Ridge to the top ahead of all the other places? Why is Glen Ridge, if we've got a dollar to spend, why is that the highest leverage place for us to be putting it in terms of educational outcomes?

And

anyone can answer

that. Sure, I can jump in there. So really through the master plan process, that's kind of how Glenridge bubbled up to the top. When we look at just the statistics, right, Glenridge is a little bit older than Merrimack. Glenridge also has a few more challenges just from the infrastructure and utilities and is a little bit closer due in time for some of those long-term maintenance items. I think the part that really stood out to me is when we did the Hawkins-Lilley appraisals. And what that is, is to help, that appraisal is to help assess older buildings that were in bygone eras and trying to compare them to educational suitability of buildings today. And the score that came out of Glenridge was 60 and Merrimack was a 69. Another way to look at it was, I'll say the the lower level of the scores, Glenridge had 60% of their scores were lower in that lower category and Merrimack only had 40%. So those were the things that really I think helped bubble up Glenridge to the top of why that was, I'll say more critical to get done earlier with hopefully Merrimack right on its heels.

And the reason Glenridge and Merrimack are both pretty high up on that priority list Amy, I appreciate it. You said the big idea. So talk about the educational idea that whoever wants to do it. I don't know who the person is. The educational idea that is behind this remodeling of the elementary schools. That's what I'd like to get on the table here.

Well, I'll start and you all can jump in. But via the workshops that we did with your educators and community members and students, and I think Nina echoed a lot of them, the programmatic needs. So it's good to hear that kind of backup information too. Programmatic items that bubbled to the top were spaces That supported the curriculum that you're already doing all of those project based hands on things those collaborative things they already doing that are hindered by solid walls long hallways some lack of windows things like that. That by reconfiguring your grade levels to work together collaboratively and these collaborative. I'm calling them villages, pods, whatever, that have a variety of spaces to do all those things, including small group spaces where a pullout could happen with a specialist to work one-on-one with students while they're still visible and working with their classmates just to not feel separate, to feel part of what's going on, to feel more inclusive in general. So that, I think, In those first workshops, the vision of being able to support the curriculum and what you're already doing, but what you're being hindered by your facilities to be able to do. So number one is those grade-level pods. Nina mentioned another one, which is the specials. The specials are kind of scattered all over the place right now in those buildings, with the exception of the gyms kind of in the middle, and it remains in the middle today. But in all of the plans, we are co-locating the specials as best as possible so that they're in the central portion of the buildings, they're easy to access equitably across whatever grade level you're in. So it helps with transition times, again, as Nina mentioned. Performing arts and gym, just having a space for all school performances or grade-level performances was a huge thing piece of the program driver, but using that larger gym that is again another program driver as kind of a multifunction space for that to be able to use it for community use after school, before school, and on weekends. and be able to perform in front of all the parents at one time and not have to split that up. That was across all the schools. So by combining a multipurpose music space as the stage and the gym as the kind of audience area, we're able to get everybody in a performance space and also use that space every day for gym and for orchestra program.

So I want to go back to sort of the beginning of what you said and you talked about I think the thing that took me a while to understand when we were talking about extended learning and future ready and all this. We're talking about individualized group small group instruction which is a multi decades long trend in education but it's not 100 year trend in education and it wasn't happening in the 20s and 30s when these buildings were built. So we're talking about and it's a continuing trend. I mean this board people have run for this board many times on more individualization and This is the design facilitates that Individualization and small group and that's what we mean by extended learning and that's that's a big focus there so that's one thing and we're talking about kind of the maintenance and age of the building and It's the second thing with Glen Ridge. And then the gym, you talked about it. But can you reiterate the kind of, there's the community gathering space, there's the storm shelter, which is a code requirement, and then there's the athletic use of it, the main use of the gym. And can you, you answered this question for me in a retreat, but can you explain why this is the appropriate size for our gyms to be, why it's the right size?

Yeah, absolutely. The court size is kind of the driver of a gym size and proportion, and that is sized to be just a standard elementary-sized court, which is... I'm going to probably mess it up, 42 by 74, I think. That's right? Okay. As well as some perimeter space to move around, as well as space for a handful of spectators to sit and watch a game. So it's right-sized for that. Your community could also use it for a basketball league. It's big enough to do that after hours or on the weekends. For rec leagues, yes, correct. It's not a high school size, but it's perfectly adequate for that kind of thing. What am I missing on that answer?

And the one thing that came out pretty consistently through the master plan process is that ability to get multiple age groups, multiple families in that space to experience it from a community standpoint and how that then impacts the instruction. I think the other part that jumped out at me in the feedback that we received while reviewing the floor plans, this doesn't happen too often, quite very frankly, but the reaction from the teachers was by doing what we're doing with the design from the specials and the gym all located together, is we're actually adding instruction time back into the day. And that was a pretty cool response that just frankly doesn't come out that often. Sure.

Okay, that's what I wanted to say about Glenridge. I do want to ask you, John, a little about the future phases of this plan and what degree of planning we've done on the timing of those. I mean, what's our expectation and what will drive our decision-making on phases two and three? Understanding that a future board could make a different decision, but at least as we've talked about it and planned it so far, what's driving that?

Everything we've talked about has been a commitment to not increasing the tax rate. So... As time goes forward and assessed values rise, there will be a point in time where additional borrowing is possible without, again, increasing the tax rate. So as time goes on and we were able to fund phase two, And then, ultimately, phase three will be able to do that with, again, no increase to the tax

rate. So it's at least consistent with a no-tax-increase approach. And there's a timeline for that that's I'll call it middle term, maybe 10 years, maybe 15 years. By doing that, we're not putting off. Obviously, a future board can do whatever it wants. But for planning purposes, It's realistic for us to have that done within a timeframe like that.

Right. I think phase two is probably in the seven to 10 year range and phase three is probably within five years after

that. And that's because of a commitment we've made to call it live within our means. Yes, sir. Okay. So I you know, I think I'm not the only one in this room who's thought a lot about this but I've certainly thought a lot about the balance between You know investment in our schools and then the people in our community who don't have kids in our schools and how to how to think about that and I certainly aware and people have reminded me that it feels like a very uncertain time for a lot of people and people are challenged by that and how do you balance those interests and And I also thought back to the fact that my family moved into this community in the 1980s. And my dad tells me he bought the last home in Clayton that sold for under $100,000 so I could go to kindergarten here. And it was a great decision. And it was great decision in part because for generations, this community has invested in its schools. And I think the balance that's struck by the zero tax rate increase investment and the plan to do that with all our elementary schools is a right and appropriate balance. This is always going to be a teacher's first district, but we do need to invest in our facilities. And I think this is the right decision. And then since Nisha, since you mentioned Calaris, I'll also mention Calaris. I think there were some lessons of that, but you're right about the big one was plan first and then spend. And to the extent possible, try to live, to the extent that it's the right choice for students and families, try to live within our means. And I think we've done that with this. So that's my comments on that.

Thank you. Well said. I'd love to follow Leo, because I want to thank you. Because you have this natural skill of just capturing what is really important and figuring out how to say it to all of the community who's here and listening. So thank you. I appreciate that. And as I do, I go down to the details. I have one detailed question and then one bigger way to rephrase something. The Clayton High School, I saw that the geometry and construction is the storm shelter. Is there another storm shelter in the high school or can that fit everybody?

So from a code perspective we're required to hold the number of students that are in that new addition. It can hold more than that, but it cannot hold the entire student body. So there'd be portions of the student body that would still take refuge in the spots that they do today.

Okay. Thank you. I'm trying to figure out how to say what I want to say following Leo's beautiful words. So in these two years that we've been doing this, We came up with all of these needs and all of these wants. And then we added them up, and we couldn't do that. We couldn't do them all without increasing the tax rate. We were very clear as a board and as an administration that we do not want to increase the tax rate for our community members. So we decided to look at this of how can we get as much done as soon as possible without increasing the tax rate. So that was seeing how much we can maximize up to the, I think, $135 million and what we needed to prioritize in that. But then we were also able to look at our current budget and our fund balances to say what can we allot from what we already have to take care of some of these issues as soon as possible. So those are things like the Performing Arts Center, ADZIC, the softball field and YM. And so I just wanted to really, I know we've all said it but just to say it in a little bit of a different way that we are choosing as a board to pay for those out of the budget, out of our current budget, our fund balance. And so John, I would love for you to explain to our listeners why or how we know that it is safe for us to estimate about $17 million to $20 million on these projects. Is that a fair question?

Sure. Every question is fair. Okay. We last had a tax increase, an operating levy increase in 2019. And since that occurred, we've been able to grow our fund balances. And there are sufficient fund balance today not only to fund our annual operating needs but to make allocations of those resources for capital improvement projects. As those fund balances continue to grow into the future and based on what we already have accumulated, we are able to fund a number of projects that have been proposed for budget funding out of that fund balance over the next few years.

Thank you. Okay, one final question. The last slide before this one. Um, do the student, this is kind of like Jason's question. Do the students in the high school get impacted by the new addition or just learning besides those two math classrooms that are going to be taken away? What happens to that learning space?

It's fairly minimal interruption, but with any construction activity, there will be some But right now, I think that there's capacity within the building to be able to absorb those classes through a scheduling exercise more than anything. But really it's demolishing two existing classrooms to make way for that new addition.

Any, Ben?

all right wow this is this is uh this is a big moment i feel like um so yeah and thank you up to the design team and construction management and district thinking about you know for myself who's the newest member of the board um kind of like and clarice has been mentioned so i'll say it again but kind of experiencing that moment up until this moment um It's pretty awesome. That feedback really hit home. Nisha, your leadership, your management team has taken us down this path, which is on top of everything else that everyone's already doing on a daily basis. It's a lot of extra effort. It just shows that passion and And I think, you know, it's clear that we've established the need, like the needs. And I think that was not always so clear. But we continue to press and press through all the collaboration and discussions. This is it's time. It's like my feeling is that these buildings are it's time for like a generational change. We have excellence across our community. community, our teaching, how we invest in what we do and how we continue to iterate and change but our buildings are just not there anymore. So that's to me it's everything has really been impressive. I think one of the things that that you'll hear said is that it's kind of an unsure time, right? Like education, where are we going with technology, AI? But I think what's becoming more and more clear is that our physical spaces and how we interact physically has never been more important. I think the technology will always be there, but we're gonna need that social interaction and we're gonna need to continue to invest in that. So there's never a perfect time to do these things. And so the costs seem kind of like, may perhaps for some outrageous, but like to Leo's point, I mean, I think if we all look back at what we paid at the time for say our homes or our parents bid for their homes, I think I would urge everyone to think about these costs not so much in the immediate terms, but in the long term. I mean, this is a long-term investment. It will change the dynamics of our buildings and how we interact, how we feel about, this is an investment in our district and how we feel and an affirmation of what we hold dear. Um, so I have, do you have a couple of questions? Um, so, um, I guess for, for the construction team, um, what are, what, what questions maybe should we be asking in terms of, you know, what, what are some of the things, the headwinds let's say, uh, or things, you know, you hear about tariffs, you hear about like cost of steel through the roof or, um, some reason um i obviously one of the things we clearly have established this team the way we have to try to mitigate a lot of that uh with both the level of professionalism and some of the construction management approaches on this project so i just feel like it's helpful to know from your perspective you know what do you what keeps you up at night

I would say one of the most challenging parts for us on the pre-construction side, which is when working with the design team, helping develop the cost standpoint and cost range in the plan when there are so many decisions yet to be made and so many things that are up in the air still. We've all seen projects where clients go in with an expectation that things are gonna cost one thing, and then they wind up costing something else. And if we think back to the graph that we had up there, as you look at scope and quality, there's this continuum that it can be. And what we're projecting right now for this project is that range, but there are certainly decisions that anybody in the room could make to drive costs that could be less than that range or higher than that range. And that reality exists everywhere across construction. Many of those things are within our control. It's about the scope decisions that we make, it's about the materials that we use, it's about designs that the team comes up with. Some of the things are not though. When we go into construction projects sometimes the AHJ, the authority having jurisdiction in this case, the city of Clayton reviews the documents and says nope, we're not gonna allow that, we're gonna make you do something else. And so there are things that come up. So from our standpoint, we're engineers on the construction side and we like to have everything very analytically designed and analyzed and costed out, and we're just not there at this point in the process. The good news is we think we have done our very best to develop that comprehensive analysis of where the numbers are. As Anna mentioned, we are benchmarking other projects built in the St. Louis market in the past few years. We're making judgments against those compared to what we're hearing from the design team and what we hear from the district that they would like to incorporate. And one of the best parts of the CM process is that Anna mentioned we're in the process of going through the schematic design estimates right now. We just received documents last week. And so the district will have feedback along the way, and you get to make decisions and see how the decisions impact the projected cost of the project. And you can make decisions to drive those costs down or drive those costs up. And that's completely within your hands and ability at this point. If you get too far down the design path, you lose some of the ability to control those things. And so it's great to have this process available for school districts now so that you can make those value judgments along the way and make sure you wind up with the very best quality, the very best scope for the price point that you are trying to hit with the project. So the things that keep us up at night are making sure that we help you as best we can to stay on track with those things because you mentioned tariffs, labor shortages, geopolitical things going on in the world right now. I mean it's an unsettling time. It's pretty clear though through, I've been in this industry 25 years. Costs rarely ever go down. As things move forward, the costs continue to get more expensive. And I remember when I bought my current house in 2016 and I had to do some renovation work at the house, I thought, oh, my gosh, how can it cost this much? Maybe I should just wait. Well, thank goodness I didn't because my neighbors two, three, four years after that were paying way more than what I paid to have the renovations done at my house. And so the reality is it can be challenging sometimes for clients to – bite the bullet and proceed, but the costs are not going to get any less expensive. The fact that the systems are at the end of their life now, approaching the end of their lives, every so often you've got to refresh the building, and you have the opportunity here to not only do the basic refresh, but also substantially improve the function of the project. From our perspective, the things that we see various clients do, schools, office, commercial clients, others, this is a very exciting time for you, and you've got a lot of great decisions and opportunity moving forward in this design process of Phase 1.

Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, I guess to tack on to what some of you said, so what does the sort of cadence look like going forward, assuming that we get the affirmation on the ballot? We've come through a certain process of engagement. How do we ensure that our community stays engaged or has the opportunity to stay engaged and be updated? What does this team look like going forward? Anything else to share there?

Anthony? So I'll say the school district, the design team, and the construction team are just tight at the hip from this point moving forward. And that's the benefit of bringing the construction team on board during design is that we're able to make those decisions together that help impact the cost, the schedule, the level of finish and design. Ideally, WEDNESDAY AFTER THE BALLOT PASSES WE'RE MOVING FORWARD IN THAT DESIGN PROCESS. SO THERE'S STILL SOME THINGS THAT WE HAVE TO DO ON THE DESIGN SIDE TO WRAP UP SCHEMATIC DESIGN AND WE'LL BE DOING THAT OVER THE NEXT SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS SO THAT WHEN WE'RE ALL PREPARED COME THAT FIRST WEEK APRIL WE'RE READY TO GO. But the process is that we still have what's called the design development phase, and that's where we're taking these preliminaries and really making a lot more decisions that are then going to be able to provide a higher level of that cost accountability. So at that end of that design development phase, we'll be able to have a really clear picture of what those costs will be and be able to make the design decisions accordingly to align that with the budget. We then, after that phase, once we're all in agreement that We're good to move forward then we turn that design into a set of documents that can be bid permitted in construction That's that construction document phase. That's a little bit longer of a phase. So for Glenridge, for example, that might be four months but really We're still working together with the construction team. They're continuing to do at least two other cost estimates during that to make sure that the design decisions that we made still align with the budget, but then also as things change within the market, whether that's labor or materials, that can impact and make us make additional design decisions or revisit design decisions to make sure that we're aligned with the budget. And I think if we go back to that schedule phase, we're looking at essentially being wrapped up with design for the high school and Glenridge at the end of this calendar year should we be able to start right away in April. So there's still a lot more opportunities that we're gonna be in front of you and therefore the community with design updates, with cost estimate updates, with schedule updates to be able to then forecast what the remainder of that schedule looks like.

And there will be continued engagement during those phases with your teachers and administrators on Glenridge and the high school, and I'm sure your athletic folks as well. Because as we layer in those details, we need to know, did we do it right? Is this in the right place? Where do you need an outlet? Those level of decisions, we work with your folks as well on that kind of detailed stuff.

Brad mentioned the cost and the schedule. One of the other things that we'll be looking at, there were questions earlier about logistics. How does the construction impact the gate field and the usage? That's another study that we'll be doing in conjunction with the client and the design team as these designs advance to figure out what is the right solution. Construction is a disruptive process, but we want to minimize the disruption as much as possible and do it at times that are convenient, the most convenient windows for the district.

So I was just thinking for a second, I like the sort of the detail, like when we can expect certain things. So you're saying so early 2027, we would kind of achieve that sort of construction like GMP, like the roughly the first quarter of 2027, we would, I'm thinking of Glenridge right now, sorry, yeah. Is that roughly accurate? So we'll know exactly where we stand? Because at that point, that's locked in, essentially, right? I mean, with some variation on contingents or choices to be made, but that... Is that roughly? Okay, thank you. And then I think, oh yeah, I had one question. This is very kind of random, but what about lockers? Do kids, what about a locker? I mean, are those still, I mean, my kids don't use their lockers. Are those part of design anymore?

Well, I don't think...

Yes, locker room. I'm talking about in schools.

For elementary level, we see cubbies. They're basically lockers but open and they are used for all that stuff and the coats and the boots and everything. I don't think you're putting any in at the high school. I mean, I don't know about your children. Mine wears a hoodie whatever the temperature is. So coats are not necessarily a storage issue and You know just it depends really on the district and your policies on backpacks and everything But we're seeing less and less lockers at the older level

And I think Nina could probably attest to that too from a student

perspective It's not like we're bringing all of our stuff like every single day so it's not like our backpacks are like super duper heavy So I don't really see a need for like additional ones

Is there a need to have an area where everyone can throw their bags, like a little cubby cut-out kind of area?

Yeah. I know for sports, there's a square in the commons where people put their sports bags and stuff. But I would say – I mean, I don't really see a need for – I'm totally fine carrying my backpack all day, and I think a lot of people are too.

Okay. Very good. Thank you.

Okay, Chris? Thank you to my colleagues for asking so many great questions. They took a lot of mine, but of course I still have a few. But I also want to take Jason's lead and make sure to thank all of you for doing what you've done. You've been wonderful partners in this, you've educated us on what is modernizing classrooms, what is future ready, what that means, what that offers us and you've listened to what we want And I was struck by the idea that this past summer we were doing workshops with, you know, the Glen Ridge faculty, the Captain faculty. You know, we were asking these stakeholders per your lead saying, this is what we need to do. You really guided us in a way that I think is going to, like Jason said, we're going to end up with a product that is very um compatible with our needs and wants and there'll be great pride in knowing that so many people came together and now we have this um you know these new facilities that are going to really um up our game, I guess, you know, because I think we all have a very high standard. You know, we value academic achievement. We value health and wellness. We value safety and security. All of those things get lifted when we improve these facilities. So it's a very exciting thing to be a part of. So yeah, thank you all. The questions I have, some of them have been asked. One of the questions I have is scheduling with construction scheduling is also is slightly out of your hands due to weather other things like that. How do we help our neighbors of Glen Ridge for example feel comfortable with the timeline you're giving And beyond that how do we help them feel comfortable with the amount and when the construction is happening. I really want this to be something that you know our our community sees as being managed really appropriately and that we take into consideration the fact that they are living across from that that construction site for a certain amount of months so first talk about scheduling and how we manage unexpected events, you know, weather, et cetera, and then talk about what your role is and what our role would be in making sure that the neighbors of Glen Ridge really feel respected and informed about this process.

I'll take a crack at that. Steve Schrage is our project director. He was not able to attend the meeting tonight, so I will answer on his behalf because while we will do the planning in the pre-construction, ultimately he will be the one who is overseeing the execution in the field once we start construction. As far as scheduling and the timeline, the way that we have typically done with other school districts is you're working towards a school calendar year. And so you're trying to figure out how much time do we need to responsibly build the overall project based on what it takes, and then how does that tie in to starts and stops of the school year? And so that will be part of the planning process starting now with the schematic design development of the schedule, and then continuing on through the other phases of the design. It's it's our goal we We will develop a schedule early on that we think is reasonable until we get the subcontractor bids at the end Contractors have to be able to commit to achieving achieving that schedule So that's the the GMP guarantee maximum price time frame after the project bids that Ben mentions But you know generally we are working with the district to come up with a schedule that works for the school year some of the thoughts right now are you know, it's probably easier to move over if the project is completed in the summertime and the school moves into the summer as opposed to completing it say at winter break and the school moves in mid-year. Those are decisions that are up to the district and we will adjust the start of the construction timeframe to accommodate that. As far as the neighbors then, that will be driven by when are we going to start, when are we going stop. The city of Clayton has restrictions on start time, stop time for the construction projects. Contractors, the people who work on the project, they are notorious that the project starts at seven, some of them will be in the parking lot at 530. They show up, they drink their coffee in their car, they read the news on their phone or their newspaper. You know, they're there, they're ready to start their day. But there is a prescribed time before which construction activity does not begin. BSI manages projects in residential neighborhoods all the time. And so we've got protocols in place for how to deal with those things. We can't control everybody, but we will publish the protocol and make sure that they adhere to it. And if there are issues, remedy that right away to make sure that we're minimizing disruption to the neighbors. Part of the logistics planning will also be accessed into the site and out of the site and figuring out What are the best ways to come in in the streets? Is it coming onto the site turn around and go back out the same way or is it you know? A drive-through thing where it's a one-way traffic Those are the types of things that during the during the planning process will be worked out That will then be communicated to the bidders as part of the bidder instructions so that they know what to expect when they arrive on site Does that address everything you asked about?

What about vehicles, construction vehicles on those roads that are Oxford, Wellington, Glenridge? During the day during construction, are those vehicles going to be on that road or are they going to be on the actual premises so that they're off and out of the way?

When you say construction vehicles, are you referring to the vehicles that the workers themselves drive and park or are you talking about dump trucks and concrete trucks and cranes and those types of things? Those ones. The larger vehicles generally traverse the public streets and then onto the site. We have not started to develop the overall logistics plan, but we will work with the school to figure out where can they be staged. Do we have space on site that we can stage them? Sometimes you do stage them on a public street that might be located four or five blocks away and then they radio them in when they're ready for

them.

There will be prescribed delivery times. We usually try to work around pick up and drop off because that's an important consideration for the schools. And so we will have times where the deliveries are not going to be accepted because you'll have student-impaired traffic there for drop off and pick up. And so those are some of the considerations that will need to be worked into the construction logistics plan.

Let's see. Staying on schedule.

Again, I might add to that that one of the important decisions that the district has made, and John described it earlier, is the bridge campus.

Yes.

So in a project like Glenridge, Merrimack, and, you know, Captain when that happens, The Glen Ridge, let's just talk about that one. It's a very invasive project inside the existing building. And so without having the kids not on site, having them learning someplace else during the academic year, one of the benefits to that is it gives BSI and their team, I won't say free reign, but they don't have to worry so much about student safety on the campus during construction. So that's a fairly substantial consideration. That actually helps in a positive way the construction schedule, because in other words, you know, we've done, you know, would use one of your neighbors will do school Spady Elementary. There's a leapfrog process that had to happen to phase that construction in that made the overall timeline for that quite a bit longer as a result.

Anyone else?

Nina, do you have any questions or comments for them in addition to what you said? Yeah, I don't have any questions. But I just want to say how much I really appreciate your commitment to making these improvements really centered around students. In my opinion, all of the improvements you guys listed would greatly benefit learning. So thank you so much. I really appreciate that you're keeping students at the center of everything you're doing.

And I would just like to say, kind of in closing, all of my fellow board members had great questions and comments but as a Board of Education every decision we make whether we're voting on policies or approving budgets or reviewing curriculum or approving staffing decisions every decision we make always is a student-centered decision and I feel like what we're about to vote on which is calling for a bond election is an absolutely student-centered decision that the Upgrades and improvements and renovations we're talking about hoping to do will directly improve the student experience in our district. Whether it's improving educational outcomes, the learning and athletic experience, and also their physical and emotional safety and well-being. All of that. So I view this as ultimately the most student-centered decision we can be making, which makes me feel proud that we got to this point. and that we've kept students at the center of all of these discussions for the past two years, and we'll, you know, moving forward. So if there's no other questions or comments for the team, we are moving to vote, to call for a bond election. Oh,

wait.

Oh, they'll go, okay.

Let's let this team sit down and then I'll invite Eric. Oh, okay, got it, got it,

thanks.

Joining me at the table is Eric Creech. He is a partner with Gilmore and Bell. They have served as bond counsel for the school district for numerous bond elections. And Eric is the person responsible for drafting tonight's resolution. So if you have any questions, he's the best one to ask those questions to. He's the answer man. What you have before you, though, is a resolution that would authorize a ballot measure to be on the April 7th, 2026 municipal election date seeking voter approval of a $135 million bond issue. The approval of that requires a four-sevenths majority. And we're looking forward to a positive outcome. Eric, would you care to add anything?

No. Despite Leo's eloquent discussion earlier, people don't usually like to hear lawyers talk too much. So I will refrain from saying anything unless you have specific questions. I will also note I am going to also be a voter on this, so it will be exciting. If I get out of here in time, I will get to talk to our Clayton graduate who is in Chicago for college tonight. So it would be nice to get to talk to her. I haven't talked to her in a couple weeks. A successful Clayton grad.

Buttering up the board, are you?

Well, thank you for all your help

here. I wish I had pictures. I mean, and more people.

It's hard to compete with that big team and the graphic design.

That's

right. Any questions or comments? Oh, we should need to move forward. Read the

motion first, right? Yeah. I move that we adopt the resolution calling an election to secure voter authorization to issue general obligation bonds for the purpose of improving school facilities as set forth in the resolution.

Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Now does anyone have questions or comments? Jason.

I do. Okay, great. I'm sorry. I thought we were talking during this time. But I'll be quick. First of all, I thanked the team earlier, but that is not the only people that I thought were thanking. First of all I want to thank Nina, who I guess supplied a lot of the bullet points tonight. So way to go, Nina. I want to thank my fellow board members. We spent a lot of time getting to this point, and everyone at this table made this process better. There are things that I never would have thought of that a lot of you guys did. Hopefully, I thought of a couple things too, and so I think that helped, and State's dear leadership was helpful. I also just want to thank the administration for keeping us focused. keeping the ball moving down the field, so to speak. This is just, I think the leadership and Dr. Patel, the leadership of you and your team has just been really helpful in getting us to this point. So I just want to thank you guys for the process. I agree with what everyone said about the value of this project, so I won't go through that. The last thing I just sort of want to say and put out there that Part of this is, and we've talked about this a little bit, I'm a firm believer that school districts have different funding options, different levers to pull for different needs. And what we're asking the community to do tonight is to let us, this district, pull the bonding fund in recognition that that is what our strategic needs are at this time. We should also recognize that if we are able to pull that bonding lever, that we won't necessarily need as much operating cash, cash from the operating levy, as we would need otherwise. And I would just ask us to consider lowering the operating levy on our residents when this comes up again at the next tax rate hearing in the fall. And we should consider, you know, lowering that voluntarily over the course of the next couple weeks.

Thanks, I think that's a great idea to explore. It's in line with the fiscal responsibility that I know we take very seriously and that's been seriously considered with this bond issue so I think that's great suggestion and idea. I think if we could ask John to look into that further and also I would want Kim Hurst who's our treasurer who's not here tonight to be involved in talking about that too. So yeah, Kim sorry she can't be here tonight Thanks for bringing that up, Jason. That's a great idea to look into as well.

Thanks. Ben? I want to just make sure I'm on tracking here, that this language is permission to borrow up to this amount. Doesn't mean that's exactly what we will do. Or even in the sequence that felt like immediately we will incur that debt, it will be done in a way that's So we could borrow, let's say, $125. That's all we really need. Is that fair?

Yeah, that's correct. You can borrow up to the $135, and you can do that in any number of issues that you wanted to do. I would recommend not doing it in $5 million increments, but you could do that if you wanted. But you can borrow it in however many... Trotches of that nonsense for you up to the 135 assuming you need all 135 gotcha.

Okay. Thank you

Any other questions or comments about this vote or the bond or the ballot language

I just want to say that As we've said before, we've had many meetings as an executive session, closed session, as well as retreats that were open. And so we have all seen this language. This is something that we've studied, and each of us has looked at it. We've asked questions. We have gotten feedback on all of it. So much of it is just legally what we got to do. But I just want the public to understand that we've really taken a good look at this, and we feel like it covers all those things that all of our wonderful architects, et cetera, have proposed. To me, when I first saw it, I'll just say this. I was like, but it doesn't say Glenridge, you know? So I just want to point out to everyone that it's not supposed to say those specific things. Instead, it's a general understanding. And what our job will be is to point out what we've done tonight, which is actually the specifics are, and we'll tell you all of that in the coming months leading up to the vote. So that's why it feels vague. And that's why as a board, we've had taken time to understand this language and understand why it's important, but also to tell our Dr. Patel and our staff how important it is for us to get the specifics of what these mean out to the public. Tonight, we've talked about a lot of specifics. We're saying which buildings we're doing and what wings, et cetera. And we're going to continue to have to do that because we don't want anybody to walk into the ballot and look at this and think on what, right? So our goal is to make sure they know exactly, even though this is vague, specifically what we're asking to improve in this particular bond. So I just want to make that clear, and I appreciate the fact that we have to do it this way. That's fine, but we certainly are going to make sure our voters know exactly what this is talking about.

Go ahead, Leah. To say it a different way, despite Eric's best efforts, ballot language is incomprehensible. The decision for this board is the one we were deliberating a few minutes ago, which is whether we support the projects that were just presented to us and want to seek a bond issue for the voters to do that. And this is the contract to buy the car. It's not the car or a picture of the car. That's how I would think about it. Good way of saying

it, yeah. Anyone else? And as Chris said, as a board, we've studied this ballot language already. So if we're not all asking lots of detailed questions, that's why we came here ready and prepared for this. OK. There's no other questions and comments. We are going to do a roll call vote for this instead. Kim is absent tonight, but this will just give a clearer picture of exactly how everyone votes because this is a very important one. So if you would go ahead with the roll call,

Chris. And you just say aye? Yes. Or nay? Yes. Okay, just for our newest board member? Yes. You're welcome. Okay, here we go. Ben?

Aye.

Leo?

Yes.

Okay. Lawyer? Pam? Yes. Jason.

Aye.

Stacey. Aye. And I am an aye. Okay, motion

passes. This is exciting. That was a big vote. That might be one of the biggest votes I've had in my seven years on this school board. Maybe in the history of the district. You're right, Dr. Patel. Very exciting. Well, thank you, Mr. Creech, for helping us

with

this. Appreciate it. And I think we're going to take a five-minute bio break before we move into policies. Thanks.

Thank you.

We are back from our

break.

Okay, we are moving on through the agenda now to policy. We are on 7.1, the first reading of policy, JEA, which is compulsory and part-time attendance. Dr. Poole's coming to answer any questions about that. We have... Five first readings of policies. So as you know, we don't vote on it. This is our opportunity to ask questions or comments, and then the second reading we will vote to approve. So does anyone have questions or comments on the first policy, JEA compulsory and part-time attendance for Dr. Poole?

I don't, but I just want to say the reason I think maybe none of us have a question on this one, even though I could be wrong in saying that. is that it's just like adding a phrase of something that has been renamed.

Right, it's just an addition of three words.

Yeah, it was not a big change.

Also three Oxford commas.

Right.

I appreciate you reiterating the board support for the Oxford comma.

Okay, the next policy, JECC, Assignment of Students to Grade-Level Classes. Does anyone have questions about this one? JECC.

I did have one possible addition to add to this. Jason, and it was based on the email that we had in terms of, it talks about transfers from accredited schools and it defines an accredited school. And just for clarification that we want to put in something that talks about a provisionally accredited school, which that school still has accreditation, but provisional accreditation just indicates that they have some improvements that they need to do with the state. So I'm proposing possibly to add in the second sentence under transfers from accredited schools, a provisionally accredited district is not treated as unaccredited. It still holds accreditation just at a lower level that signals the need for improvement. Just so, you know, just in case in the future we do have a student transferring from a provisionally accreditted school that we know that the same rules don't apply.

Thanks for addressing that. I appreciate it. Yeah, I think that's helpful.

Is that an operative category under the current S.E.? The provisional accreditation is being

used? It's almost like you're on a performance improvement plan, if that makes sense.

What districts are in that status today? SLPS. That's a recent

development. That's kind of what brought us here. Any other questions or comments on this? Cameron,

will you just say again where you propose adding it?

Oh, and the second sentence under transfers from accredited schools, so right after the green portion that was added in, we just add in the definition or just a meeting of a provisionally accredited school. Just so we have that in there for clarification.

I think this is the one I had the question. It talks about IB education, is this that one? It does mention an IB, and I was just wondering why we, I understand why MSBA offers it, but we don't have an IB program. So is there a need for us just to have that language in here when we don't have

one? And I can check with MSBA to make sure that we can take that portion out since we don't offer that.

It's minor. I just don't see why we need words

we don't.

Maybe. That's why I was kind of hesitating, like, does it hurt to just leave it in there in case we ever introduce that program? I

don't know. This may not be the right question, but don't we get kids coming in mid-year perhaps from an IB school or, you know, WashU?

Probably, but it wouldn't apply to them because then they're – They can't go into an IB

program

at our school.

Oh, at our school. I got you. Sorry. Thank you.

So yeah, maybe ask about that.

Okay.

Yes.

Right. I think though if we were going to have an IB program, it would be very intensive and we would probably have a lot of language around it in policy. Yeah.

And it

would probably be

before this policy comes up for review again.

Yeah. I will check on that.

Okay, next is policy JFCL A plus scholarship program. Any questions or comments on this?

Let me say this and see if I understand right. This scholarship program is something that has existed before, but there's a separation from a related program that we're now memorializing in a separate policy. Correct. So the change is to separate how we're memorializing these two related programs. Yes. Is that accurate? Right.

The program's not new. They just broke it out into its own policy. That

was what I was

getting at. Yeah. Thanks.

So I had a question, I don't know if any of my colleagues here saw this, but under citizenship component, Number two, it's basically saying that students can only be a part of this if they have not unlawfully used or possessed drugs, drug paraphernalia, or alcohol on or off school property. And I'm wondering if anyone else had questions about that. I do because we are not monitoring our students' activities off school property, unless there is some legal reason it has come to our attention or safety reason it has come our attention. And so I have concern that if we say that here and then something comes out, it, I don't know, can hurt the student. It just makes us. It's

a fair question, but is this up to us? I think the answer is this is defined by state law and it's not up to us. To change the criteria.

It is proposed by the state, yeah. Because they fund the program. Well, exactly.

Yeah, it falls under the A-plus program guidelines.

Correct.

Oh, so we can't change that.

And

I think

that it would be stuff that... Well, it's a yes or a no. I think. Because it's a

law. I can check on it

either way. Thank you for checking. I think if we took it out, I'm going to make this up, some kid who would have otherwise qualified for A-plus funds gets arrested for underage drinking, regardless of what our policy says, that kid is not going to get the state funds.

Correct.

I think we should give some guidance to the state.

Will do.

If they only

listen to us.

Yeah, Pam, were you referring to, you know, we don't know if kids are underage drinking it, you know, or not? Like this is really talking about kids that have been caught underage drinking, not just whether kids. Right, but I, yeah, you're right. But I do think it's those that have been reprimanded or disciplined or in some way. But it really just says used. It doesn't say disciplined or reprimanded. You're right, I understand. You're right. Well,

lawyers.

Lawyers, yeah, lawyers.

Okay, yes. Okay, next policy is... Do I have

to get Eric back in here to defend me?

Yeah. Is JG... Okay, next one is 7.4, JG, student discipline.

And the addition in there...

This is another small addition.

Yeah, it comes from the Senate Bill 68, which gets rid of zero tolerance... behavior and discipline policies

yeah which i like um

did anyone oh pam did you have a question about this one of course i did um

in that same part equity where did i find it Halfway through, it says the superintendent or designee will regularly review district discipline data to determine whether policies are being equitably enforced, blah, blah, blah. Dot, dot, dot. Not blah, blah, and so I asked the question who, was it Nisha who reviewed it as the superintendent or was it the designee? And it is Dr. Poole who is the designee and he shared with me that he reviews this data on an annual basis And so we proposed or he proposed changing it from regularly review to annually review. To be more specific. Or at minimum annually or something.

Yeah, annually we do it. Each building gets a district equity report for their specific building, and discipline data is broken down in that, and that's something that's reviewed with each principal at the end of each year. So yeah, it's definitely annually.

Yeah, then

I would change that word from regularly to annually. Lawyers like vague, doctors like certainty, so I would prefer that.

Sometimes it's the other way around.

And the last first reading of a policy is JHDE Behavioral Threat Assessment.

And then this one they added in, MSBA added in definitions for behavioral threat assessment and the different assessments that fall under that umbrella. This would be a brand new policy that we have not adopted, but different parts within the behavioral threat assessment were included in Senate Bill 68. and our systems are moving toward having a district behavioral threat assessment, and we're underway with that. So just in terms of student safety and wellness, I think this gives us a policy and an accountability piece to make sure that our systems are on the up and up when it comes to those threat assessments.

Yeah. And Cameron has shared, I asked the question of who in our district are on these teams to do this and they already know who is on, you know, who the district is on the team and building specific as well.

Yes, we have a district-level team which is fleshing out the details of the assessment and the specific assessments that we're using. That include building principals, K-12, social workers, counselors, as well as district admin, and then the behavioral threat assessment team when things happen within the building are comprised of administrators, counselors, social workers. instructional coordinators as well as other folks within the building. If a threat does come in, we have to gauge the level of threat it is. So we're working on district level and each building having their own level team too.

Oh, were you done? Sorry. And there are Oxford commas added as well.

Thank you. I asked the question, this policy is optional. You might have all seen that. And it first came up in 2022 and we chose not to adopt it. I admittedly do not remember why. I emailed with Cameron about this. However, being that we do conduct behavioral threat assessments, I do think we should adopt it now. I think it's an important policy to have in place. And now that we have the teams established and everything that goes along with that, I think it's important, even though it's an optional policy I think it's a good one for us to adopt.

And, Cameron, you didn't mention, but you and I talked about the fact that Mike Parkinson, our head of safety and security, is also a big part of this.

Correct,

correct. Yeah, which is great. The work that he's done over the past, since he's been here, not yet a year, just a year, what, exactly a year, is... very reflective of what you see here and goes into even more detail about the procedures, et cetera. But yeah, he will be doing training about all of this and Assure training every year to make sure that all of the team you just mentioned and all of our SROs, et cetera, understand this and are Now that we have this in place, here it is. We've got to do it. So I know that he'll be on top of making sure that everyone is trained appropriately for this.

Agreed.

Okay, and we have one policy that's a second reading to vote on. It's KB Public Information Program. Would you read that motion, please? 7.6.

I move that we approve policy KB, public information program with the recommended changes.

Second.

Okay. It's been moved and seconded. Are there any other questions and comments after the changes we made last time? No? Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Okay. That motion passes. We are now moving to the consent agenda. If you could please read that motion, Chris. I move that we approve consent agenda items 8.1 through 8.9.

Second.

Okay, that's been moved and seconded. Any questions or comments about the consent items?

Okay. Sorry, was the... Something was not here originally. It was... It was the surplus items, I think. I just haven't seen that. Okay. It wasn't attached initially.

Oh, I saw it.

Yeah,

oh, I saw it, uh-huh. I guess I just went through it

before

you

all

did. Yeah, you did, yeah, you did. I just

looked through it before you guys did. Yeah,

sorry,

yeah. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No, okay, the consent agenda passes. Okay, we're moving into board communications. Pam, did you have an equity committee meeting?

There was an equity committee. Sorry, an equity committee meeting a week ago and sorry I'm getting my brain into here right now. One of the top themes from the last year of work was the idea of recruitment, how can we better or more effectively recruit and retain diverse staff to build an inclusive workspace? And how do we build and create an inclusive workspace for all of the current staff? And so Cameron, kind of led us through this charge of create in small groups of creating a survey to go out to all of the staff to ask them about what they, their interest in having affinity spaces for staff at each of, whether it's buildings or district level and thinking about ideas of different types of affinity spaces. So these are things such as, you know, black staff, but also things like staff who have kids in the district or an affinity space for staff who are caring for elderly parents. Just some sort of way of asking them if they have an interest in these sort of spaces to make this a more inclusive, increase the sense of belonging in our school workspaces.

Great. Did anyone else have a committee meeting? Okay, a couple things that I'd like to mention is, which I don't think we've brought up in a while, but just so the public is reminded that All of us on the board do regular walkthroughs of the school buildings. Chris and I did one at the high school today, and all of us attended them quarterly in all the buildings. And it's, I just want the public to know that we do that because it's really a great way for us to really see these decisions we're making, the real impacts they have in our classrooms and on our students and our staff. So it was great. Today we walked through, several different disciplines of classrooms, math, English, history, and also walked through the Performing Arts Center to look at specifically these improvements that we're talking about doing there with the seating and the accessibility and the restrooms and all of that, which was great to see firsthand. And secondly, I'd like to mention also Okay, that's what I just wanted to confirm. Sorry for the mute for a second. That we will also in April have a school board election. And although it's uncontested, we do have three candidates on the ballot. Jason Growe, Erin Linnenbringer, and Meade Greenberg have all filed to run for school board. There are three open seats. And I'd also like to thank Aaron and Meade for coming to the board meeting tonight. And... We look forward to that election and to having you join the board. So thank you. And I guess we can adjourn. That's

Great. Did anyone else have a committee meeting? Okay, a couple things that I'd like to mention is, which I don't think we've brought up in a while, but just so the public is reminded that All of us on the board do regular walkthroughs of the school buildings. Chris and I did one at the high school today, and all of us attended them quarterly in all the buildings. And it's, I just want the public to know that we do that because it's really a great way for us to really see these decisions we're making, the real impacts they have in our classrooms and on our students and our staff. So it was great. Today we walked through, several different disciplines of classrooms, math, English, history, and also walked through the Performing Arts Center to look at specifically these improvements that we're talking about doing there with the seating and the accessibility and the restrooms and all of that, which was great to see firsthand. And secondly, I'd like to mention also Okay, that's what I just wanted to confirm. Sorry for the mute for a second. That we will also in April have a school board election. And although it's uncontested, we do have three candidates on the ballot. Jason Groh, Aaron Linenbringer, and Meade Greenberg have all filed to run for school board. There are three open seats. And I'd also like to thank Aaron and Meade for coming to the board meeting tonight. And... We look forward to that election and to having you join the board. So thank you. And I guess we can adjourn. That's

it.

I move that the meeting be adjourned.

Second.

All those in favor? Any opposed? Motion passed.